I am inclined to say that burnout is so widespread because we are managing engineers badly. Try to manage artist, designer, song writer, actor, or stand up comedian and they will burn out as well.
Daily stand-ups for the university professors!
Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#52Autistic here as well, tremendous burnout and trauma from my last job. It took me a lot of writing / reconnecting with why I love technology in the first place, and a 3 months sabbatical at the recurse center to… feel like I’m back. A big part in this is also the very privileged fact that I have total freedom and trust at my current work, which allows me to follow my holistic way of thinking and not having to do hierarchy and workplace cosplay. I do work from home, and it feels like I’m back in my days of freelancing.
If I ended up in the same situation again, but say, without that job, I would tell my older self:
- take a big break, and reconnect with your enthusiasm. The book “Unmasking Autism” has a lot of concrete ways to do that, since it can be hard for us. It also talks a lot about autistic burnout
- go back to freelancing, or find a job where I have lots of freedom to follow my routine, and where I am valued for my thinking and communication style
- reconnect with writing code for fun. Programming is legitimately the one activity that fully calms me and replenishes me. I stopped doing any side-programming for 10 years, and reviving that atrophied part of myself has been absolutely invigorating.
- get monster ear protection. This has to be one of the revelations: noise stresses me out sooo much, and I have been repressing it for so long. I now have -35 dB + noise cancelling earplugs and can basically live in complete silence, in the noisiest environment. I can finally think things true the way I want to.
(edit: formatting)
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#53No advice to offer you, as I am in the same boat, but I am hoping there is something in the comments that will help pull me out of this too.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#54Do something that reminds you about the value you provide - to users, not managers, not administrative bureaucrats, not marketing people - real users.
I have ~40 years experience delivering software around the world in a variety of industries. I have found that whenever I get burned out on the subject of software, its usually because I haven't had a good hard look at my users.
The people whose lives will actually be impacted by the value I provide in the software I write.
If you can't conceive of how you're going to see your users, or get a feel for the way their lives are improved by your work as a developer - there's your problem.
Everyone needs to have their work acknowledged - everyone, no exceptions. If you can't get access, fix that. If they're unhappy - fix it. If their lives are not impacted positively by your efforts - fix that.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#55I got burnt out switching jobs while fixing up a new home. What helped for me was finding another hobby. I made sure to not bring work with me home, I started riding a bike in the woods nearby and once my brain was a bit better I picked up electronics.
After some time I could enjoy the challenges at work, but I've almost stopped programming at home. I still do some embedded firmware programming for my electronics projects, but programming is no longer my main hobby.
It was weird at first, but at least this way I can enjoy work and enjoy going home.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#56Yes. I have burnt out a couple of times. Given enough time and rest, you will reset. But my suggestion is that after you feel recovered, get into therapy to find out the root causes that got you into burn out in the first place. It's hard work but it will pay off both for you and your near ones :)
"Yes. I have burnt out a couple of times" a couple of times? Dang. My near-burnout scared me so much, i can't even imagine surviving a couple.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#57I stepped away for a few months to sort it out. Did not like where I worked and love where I am now. Same line of work different company.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#58I've been burned out a few times and I'd suggest reducing work to minimum hours to give yourself some recovery time. Keep exposing yourself to new things and follow your inspirations. Eventually something will take and that spark will turn into a flame again.
I've been burned out a few times, some I didn't think I'd recover from at all. Each time though, learning something new is what brought me out of it.
Good luck.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#59You're likely at a career inflection point where passion isn't going to cut it anymore. Passion and motivation are fleeting and unreliable emotions. Realize that what your employer is asking you to work on isn't going to align with your interests. You likely are seeing patterns of how organizations function (or dysfunction), patterns in what you're being asked to build, and technology trends cycling their way back into the fold and it all feels the same, right? That is just how things go - I've spoken to people in other fields and they observe similar patterns.
Its like playing a video game with a leveling system and you have an aha! moment where you recognize a grindy pattern from the past has come back and are sick of it. The difference here is your employment is directly linked to being able to eat, etc.
Be more disciplined, put in the hours, slog through the work and also be more disciplined about stopping the work when the day is done and taking vacation or time away to recharge. Discipline is something you will need to build up but is much more reliable than waiting for passion or motivation to stop by (they still will). Find hobbies or interests outside of computing/digital things.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#60"What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work." https://thetech.com/2010/04/09/dubai-v130-n18 I recommend reading the whole section on burnout. Although burnout isn't really the topic of the article this is the most enlightening writing I have ever read on it. Hoping it might serve you.
I enjoyed the article a lot. Not only the burnout part but also to enlighten me why free marketeers true believers incorporate as their moral ground on it.
This quote brought to me how naive that view can be:
> I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others. Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man. A high income is not only justified, but there is nobility to it.
Truly believing that free markets have some inherent morality in its mechanisms was not something I considered before, probably because I came from a poor background and have seen how flawed that assumption is in reality.
Thanks for sharing it, definitely worth the read much more than just the burnout section.