Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
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Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
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Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#2GitLab team member here.
While this blog post looks at what managers can do, we've also recently started using Yerbo (Slack app) internally to help individuals to assess their own risk of burnout. See: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#yerbo-slack...
Mental health and well-being is always a concern at GitLab (ex: the Friends and Family days that we implemented and maintained throughout the pandemic to ensure team members are taking time off). This month, however, we've been adding additional focus to the topic as May is Mental Health Awareness month.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#3Short-and-easy read that contains much truth. Especially item #10, "Lead by example" which encourages managerial review of recurring meetings (which often boil down to "well, here is my Excel sheet, you tell me how you're doing on each line item: I'll let you talk a lot, but I'll only jot down the completion percentage in the end") is worth emphasizing.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#4GitLab team member here. While this blog post looks at what managers can do, we've also recently started using Yerbo (Slack app) internally to help individuals to assess their own risk of burnout. See: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#yerbo-slack... Mental health and well-being is always a concern at GitLab (ex: the Friends and Family days that we implemented and maintained throughout the pandemic to…
@john_cogs: Are there any plans to connect a self-assessment of mental state to the assignment of issues/pings about mentions/incident-response pages in the GitLab app?
So, on "I'm on top of the world" days, I get assigned All The Issues, get a full-screen popup about each mention, and will be asked to be incident lead on just about anything.
Then, if my state is "slightly hungover", I mostly get a list of the most pressing issues still pending, without being overloaded with new stuff.
And finally, the "hugging my teddy bear" state: no additional automated workloads, respectful notifications to anyone pinging me, and a note to my manager if it lasts more than a few days?
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#5A lot of this is fluff. I don't really care about plaudits, your gratitude or other fake positive reinforcement. Give me extra money if you think I'm doing a good job. For those who need a manager to tell you that you're burned out then that's totally the wrong way to perceive it. You tell the manager that you are and tell the manager you're taking time off. It's not a conversation. Those are statements you make and execute.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#6GitLab team member here. While this blog post looks at what managers can do, we've also recently started using Yerbo (Slack app) internally to help individuals to assess their own risk of burnout. See: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#yerbo-slack... Mental health and well-being is always a concern at GitLab (ex: the Friends and Family days that we implemented and maintained throughout the pandemic to…
@john_cogs: Are there any plans to connect a self-assessment of mental state to the assignment of issues/pings about mentions/incident-response pages in the GitLab app? So, on "I'm on top of the world" days, I get assigned All The Issues, get a full-screen popup about each mention, and will be asked to be incident lead on just about anything. Then, if my state is "slightly hungover", I mostly get a list of the most p…
I'm not aware of any plans for a GitLab x Yerbo integration right now but that's a really interesting proposal.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#7All the "strategies" (really just tips) follow the same pattern of either tunneling on overwork as a cause, treating symptoms or pathos.
>Sid and Michelle emphasized that the earlier a manager can identify burnout the better.
Honestly, at the point of identification, you're likely too late. Especially for something as insidious as burnout, which can last for years and not show any symptoms before it is beyond the point of no return.
>GitLab team members are often under a lot of pressure.
So stop putting them under a lot of pressure. The second tip hints at this, but it only seems to be a reactionary measure. Maybe all this goalsetting, OKRs and such is exactly the problem with the industry, always having to feel pressured to an extreme by metrics and stats which effectively mean nothing, when most people just want to put in an honest day's work and progress.
Maybe it's time to admit corporations went too far pressuring the average worker to worry over every little detail.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#8A lot of this is centered around doing less, expecting less from your workers, hiring more and "being more positive". These are pretty sentiments, but frankly they're completely dis-joined from the reality of working in a competitive, high-stakes engineering environment, where your boss WILL call you while you're on vacation, where you WILL go 8-12 months without finding a qualified candidate, where you WILL feel pressure to deliver products by deadlines. Unfortunately, Gitlab doesn't strike me as a high-stakes job for engineers nor managers. This isn't a moral judgement on them, but a reminder that serious work requires sacrifice and some burnout is inevitable, and even unavoidable. And that's not necessary a "bad" thing to avoid as it provides valuable life insights and growth in its own way.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#9A couple jobs ago I got very burnt out, MSP where I was the only senior tech left. 60-80 hour weeks for many months straight. I was so burnt out, that I became extremely defensive and worried I was imminently about to be fired literally all the time. Here's what my boss did relative to this list, it's a funny parallel:
1. Disallowed taking vacation because they couldn't afford for me to be unavailable. Overtime was switched to time off in lieu but couldn't be used. I complained and got special dispensation to get overtime paid out.
2. Increased pressure, I was afterall the person who held the place together. New clients are needed to keep the business going right?
3. Regularly micromanaged and brought to light any and all mistakes like prioritizing my tasks incorrectly. I shouldn't have worked on X, I should have worked on Y.
4. Hired fresh out of college people and expected me to train them. I couldn't give anyone any work. I was expected to train them during lunch periods.
5. Certainly provided coaching, see #3 on how to prioritize tasks well.
6. Reminded me regularly that I was disposable. Even came out that he was actively looking for my replacement. Debian, postgresql dba, cisco and hp enterprise networking, MCITP, typical microsoft enterprise stuff, etc. My replacements were way too expensive for some reason.
7. They did have various things in the office like foosball lol. Very cliche at the time. They sold it because we were too busy to use it.
8. Absolutely celebrated progress. There was weekly meetings about salesforce metrics. Like how many hours each of us were billing out. I did very well here. Coworker who did get to take vacation came back to one of these meetings and got publicly chewed out for really bad numbers... because he was on vacation...
9. No sympathy. He explained that he was too busy doing sales and managing. He would regularly say that if he had the time he could go do my job easily.
10. Oh yes, he would affirm that he was the one working the most in the company. 100+ hours he said. I'm not sure what he did. He refused to cold call. He didn't do accounting, there was people for that. He didn't do tech work. Sure he spent probably 10-20 hours a week micromanaging.
11. Reduce hours? I remember this one time where I was headed out of the office to a client site but this was maybe 20 minutes before the usual end of the day. I got chewed out for trying to skip work and go home and be paid for no work. I stayed silent and took it. Anyone who would leave 1 minute after the hour wasn't in the wrong but there would be comments made.
12. There was a small list of banned words. You would be punished if you ever accidentally said "I'm too busy to do that right now" Busy was a banned word.
Minimum wage about 10 years ago was maybe $12/hr in my area. I only earnt slightly over $20/hr for this job. The stress from this job got me so sick, eventually I ended up in the ER. While in the ER he had a coworker 'find me and determine if I am still alive.' mind you... he knew exactly which floor I was in at the hospital.
After I got onto sick leave, he made the ultimatum that if I don't get back to work I would be considered as quitting. I replied explaining that it sounded illegal to be firing me for getting sick. He backpedaled quickly on that. Few months later I got fired anyway for no reason.
I got a new job. He lost a significant number of clients. He assumed I was stealing his clients; of which only 2 actually followed me to my new job. I got sued for 1.1 million $ for poaching his clients but after they found out that none of clients he listed were even either of the 2. They didnt even realize they lost those 2 yet. There was no non-compete or anything, the assertion was that I was a fiduciary employee obligated to protect them even after my dismissal. They wanted to drop the lawsuit, ended up costing me $2000 for a lawyer.
Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
#10All the "strategies" (really just tips) follow the same pattern of either tunneling on overwork as a cause, treating symptoms or pathos. >Sid and Michelle emphasized that the earlier a manager can identify burnout the better. Honestly, at the point of identification, you're likely too late. Especially for something as insidious as burnout, which can last for years and not show any symptoms before it is beyond the poi…
Anecdote time. As I’ve moved into larger companies and am shackled by OKRs, I am enjoying my work a lot less and feel under more pressure than ever but am getting less useful work done. It feels like a lack of trust and assumes the organization is run very efficiently and fairly—which I don’t think any company can truly claim. People just seem to adjust by gaming these systems instead of putting useful effort into their work.