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Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

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Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#181

Post by bps4484 »

kodah wrote: post #120
malfist wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a very negative opinion about management. Please remember that managers are people too and they're (likely) trying their best too. Just as they give you feedback, it is often helpful to give upward feedback too. Especially if it's in the form of "I need you to do X to help me"

Interesting you thought I haven't tried to have those conversations upward. The problem is there's zero incentive for managers to listen or change. I do have a negative opinion about managers. Managers mandated themselves into making x times the amount of their top paid report, control decision making, and have hiring and firing powers all in one position. Managers being people doesn't make them immune from criticism…

"Managers mandated themselves into making x times the amount of their top paid report, control decision making, and have hiring and firing powers all in one position."

I'm curious where you work (not specifically, I'm talking about generally the industry), because it's not been my experience either as a manager nor my understanding of anyone else in silicon valley or large or mid sized software companies. I've managed engineers who get paid more than me, never have had unilateral hiring or firing powers, and don't control much decision making power other than my ability to hopefully influence engineers or upper management.

I could imagine your case being true in other places (finance, for example) where managers usually aren't engineers and there is much more of a fiefdom organizational structure, but it hasn't been my experience in software.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#182

Post by bradlys »

Cringey type of article - tbh. It reads a lot like - “people are programs - here’s how to optimize them further.”

Which is exactly what causes a lot of burnout to begin with. People being overworked or worked in such a way that only optimized for the manager - and no one else.

I find myself having not worked insane hours very often. I’ll be real - I’ve never worked much more than 60 hours in a week. (Excluding college) Even then - those were exceptional. However - I’ve been “logged in” for 80+ hours many times. Constantly consumed by the ideas of work, what’s going on, hating my manager, disliking the systems we work in, etc. in some sense it might be better to just log more hours in the chair and actually do a thing that might move the needle but honestly - I’d rather not. I feel they don’t deserve that and when I have done it - it never was recognized or was substantial enough to move us forward or change the fundamental cultural issues.

The fundamental issue is that managers in tech treat people like programs and not like human beings. I know this happens outside of tech too but we try to act like we don’t do that here. But we really do. It’s all a lie.

It’s insane how much lying we all do just to get by. Sometimes I want to found a company just to see if I could actually get rid of the bad incentive structures and actually have a radically honest and helpful company that was driven by compassion and enthusiasm for helping one another. Far fetched tho - I’m not really into brown nosing anyone, VCs included.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#183

Post by rgoulter »

caffeine wrote: post #113

How about: * Listening to each person’s specific concerns carefully and in detail, and then applying as much creativity and empathy as possible to help them come up with a resolution? * Giving people increased responsibility and increased autonomy as a response to signs of burnout? * Quickly transitioning coddlers (who stifle growth), complainers (who destroy motivation), victims (who destroy alignment), braggarts (w…

> Quickly transitioning ... out of teams?

While those behaviours are (to varying extents) anti-social, I think some lee-way has to be given for people being human.

e.g. To an extent, someone burning out and thinking "I don't have enough autonomy to fulfill my responsibility" is complainer/victim, even if it's not what you had in mind.

I think that rather than emphasis being on productivity (a growing, motivated, aligned team), I'd think the more important think in psychological safety. -- The anti-social behaviours have a negative effect; but, without safety, there's a heavier social/political cost to counteract them.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#184

Post by blahblah123456 »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #105
StevenWaterman wrote: post #37

I suffered from severe burnout around a year ago, and only now am I starting to feel back to normal. Nothing here would have helped me, and it's pretty clear to me why that is the case. (Paraphrased from literature that I read at the time) There's two kinds of burnout. One is caused by overwork, stress, long hours, not enough breaks, no holidays, not enough headcount, and so on. The kind of things this article talks…

These are not two different types of burnout... They are one and the same. Pressure and overwork do not per se cause burnout... What causes burnout is if the effort-reward cycle misses (either repeatedly for small efforts, or if you put in a lot of effort and have a categorical miss) Reward could be anything. The feeling of a job well done (easy to miss if the project is a failure, or if management pivots), it could…

I agree with this definition of burnout.

Another second order consequence of this thing is putting in a lot of effort almost certainly sets you up for this effort-reward cycle miss

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#185

Post by throwaway6532 »

LinearEntropy wrote: post #174
StevenWaterman wrote: post #37

I suffered from severe burnout around a year ago, and only now am I starting to feel back to normal. Nothing here would have helped me, and it's pretty clear to me why that is the case. (Paraphrased from literature that I read at the time) There's two kinds of burnout. One is caused by overwork, stress, long hours, not enough breaks, no holidays, not enough headcount, and so on. The kind of things this article talks…

This is exactly what I have been going through for the last year or two. I even changed jobs, finding a role that was supposed to be better. At a company that would allow my skills to improve, while having what I assumed would be a better run company. Unfortunately the new company is so full of corporate BS that I'm finding it even harder to get through each day. I genuinely feel like there are staff who are hired to…

Are you me?

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#186

Post by senojsitruc »

twh270 wrote: post #45
spacemadness wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I agree fully with this. I'm currently at a small company (which has a different set of challenges), but my experience is that large employers come up with flavor-of-the-year useless metrics in an attempt to measure progress towards goals and productivity.

Google Plus.

https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employe...

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#187

Post by PolygonSheep »

twh270 wrote: post #19
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #7

All 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…

I'd shorten that to "Maybe it's time to admit corporations went too far pressuring the average worker". It took me a long time to realize it, but work/life balance in the U.S. is weighted far too heavily in favor of business, at the expense of the individual and their family and community.

Is burnout a major problem in Asian countries which are famous for their long working hours? I'm thinking China's 9-9-6 system, Japanese salarymen, and South Korean gwarosa.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#188

Post by mellavora »

s_dev wrote: post #24
nixgeek wrote: post #12

“Working at a startup is demanding. GitLab team members are often under a lot of pressure.” Isn’t being a $7.5B publicly-traded company the definition of not a startup?

This is HN while not everyone's subscribes to everything pg says there is a lot of agreement on what constitutes a startup and differentiates it from other more conventional businesses. PG says a startup is any company who looks at growth as their primary measure. A business is any company who looks at the bottom line as their primary measure. So it depends on the definition you wish to subscribe to. There isn't a un…

Disclosure-- A contact I discuss with regularly gives me some insight into what C-suites are actually thinking.

Novy-Marx (http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/) showed that top-line revenue growth (rather than bottom-line, the "primary measure" cited above) was the strongest predictor of share price appreciation. He may or may not have been right, but he was undoubtedly influential, in that his insight lead to the "management quality" factor in factor modeling. [The Other Side of Value: The Gross Profitability Premium, Journal of Financial Economics 108(1), 2013, 1-28. http://rnm.simon.rochester.edu/research/OSoV.pdf]

So I would say most CEOs are looking at top-line revenue growth as their key measure.

Which makes PG's distinction more of a polemic than a discriminant.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#189

Post by mellavora »

scrollbar wrote: post #97
s_dev wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is HN while not everyone's subscribes to everything pg says there is a lot of agreement on what constitutes a startup and differentiates it from other more conventional businesses. PG says a startup is any company who looks at growth as their primary measure. A business is any company who looks at the bottom line as their primary measure. So it depends on the definition you wish to subscribe to. There isn't a un…

Seems silly though. The term "growth company" seems a lot more authentic. Of course these labels are not black/white, but it's a useful distinction. There are simply different dynamics at a growth company vs. a startup.

A "growth company" is a company with high P/E, with the added assumption that the high P/E is justified based on an expectation that E will increase much faster than P.

"growth" is taken as the opposite of "value". A "value" company is a company with a low P/E, and with the added assumption that P is low due to reasons which are likely to change in P's favor.

Thus the difference between "growth" and "value" is simply if you are looking at the numerator or the denominator. This has no bearing on "startup" vs. "not startup"

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#190

Post by mellavora »

s_dev wrote: post #69
dijit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PG says a startup is any company who looks at growth as their primary measure. Intel is a startup by this definition.

Correct -- and he cites big companies like Google and Amazon as still being startups. I agree with this definition -- it's very useful for distinguishing different types of companies and ultimately why some can earn SO much more in investment compared to others.

What about Cisco, then?

They are also very much focused on growth, and there was a time not so long ago when they were as dominant as Google/Amazon.

I really don't see how the definition is helpful in distinguishing companies, nor on how it has anything to do with which companies will be market winners.

For another example, Twist Biosciences. Some truly amazing tech, in a market which will dominate the future. They traded for about $20-30 from 2018 to early 2020. Peaked around 180 (6x 30)in Jan 2021. Currently trading as 31.92.

Are they a startup?

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