111–120 of 370 posts
Since then ive started on carpenter school which all though fun and "real" also has made me poor.
I picked up the computer two weeks ago and coded some badly written code to do visuals for a friends techno gig, first time coding for half a year and i liked it. I dont know if i would be able to go back to full time coding but the idea of teaching others sounds interesting to me.
Good luck!
I worked very hard for a long time, whilst also trying to start my own SaaS products, and basically ended up not being able to do anything anymore. I couldn't bring myself to do any work. No amount of logic, rationale, money or anything was able to get me to care. I never took any leave, so I had something silly like 12 weeks of leave pay when I left. That plus savings, I took a 6 month break, and slowly got into freelancing as money was starting to run out.
Freelancing let me engage with work in a way that let me slowly build my enjoyment back up, and during this time I was able to build up new hobbies, start caring about old hobbies again, and start engaging with life properly. I did some cheap travel, I was always a gym nut but I got into mountain biking too, I was outdoors a lot.
I was fairly adamant I'd never work a 9-5 again. Then the pandemic happened, and work was good, but I was looooneley. I missed the hustle and bustle of the city, banter with workmates and after-work pints at the pub.
So this year I started another office job, I don't do a full week, and I clock in and out on the dot. I doubt I'll be in the office forever, but it is really great right now and I'm enjoying caring about the work again. Eventually I'll move on as everyone does, and hopefully it'll be to something not in an office.
It has also helped to have goals outside of work, during my time away from full time work I was able to dig deep and really consider what I wanted my work-life to look like in 10, 20, 30 years. Knowing what that could look like gives me a purpose to work toward, and I find that takes a lot of the FOMO/anxiety out of work. One burning question I always had during burnout was "Is this all life is?" and it was important to take the time to figure out that the answer is no.
I found that just moving teams and dropping a load of baggage made a huge difference and a huge improvement. I also found that regular physical exercise outside (running for me) is a game changer and totally allows your brain to disconnect. Finally, don't guilt trip yourself on your free time. There is nothing you "should" be doing on your spare time. Want to code? Fine. But do you really? Want to just veg out and wa…
Also - and I can't stress this enough - absolutely use your vacation time. And when you do, utterly disconnect from work. Turn "do not disturb" on your phone and other devices and not only don't answer work emails, don't even look at email, slack, etc.
I agree with the comment about doing whatever it is that will relax you. Sometimes that is just binge watching the latest Netflix show. But, if you work from home, I've found that absolutely nothing beats GOING somewhere for your vacation time. I - and friends who also WFH - find that just being at home on vacation can still be emotionally draining. Even a 4 day weekend away from home doing something completely different can be very recharging.
Even if I've come back to work and had to fix things others "broke" because they had to work around me not being there, I was much happier with that than if I did any work during my time away. And it also pointed out to me where documentation and knowledge was lacking or tools could be improved, etc. ;)
This advice is going to be hated by a lot of people but.. care less. You’re in an industry that values your skills and seems to always have demand. Whether or not that’s true in the future, it certainly is today , so the best thing you can do is put yourself first and worry less about work as a whole. Especially if it’s not your own company. Spend more time on you, on activities with friends and family, on hobbies. I…
This advice is going to be hated by a lot of people but.. care less. You’re in an industry that values your skills and seems to always have demand. Whether or not that’s true in the future, it certainly is today , so the best thing you can do is put yourself first and worry less about work as a whole. Especially if it’s not your own company. Spend more time on you, on activities with friends and family, on hobbies. I…
Work is a tool to enable your private life. Not the other way around.
I got pretty burnt out in my second last role. A change in tech leadership saw the arrival of someone who took to shitting on everything, suggesting instead the combination of several OTS products. They were gone before the project even really took off, but the effects were already in full swing; culture destroyed, us vs. them mentality, job insecurity, loss of autonomy due to Committee For Improvement, high turnover, backfilling with anyone with a pulse. All of these problems were left to fester, or worse in some cases, exacerbated; project devs started to leave, so they upped project dev pay.. guess what that did to the morale of non-project devs.
There was no escape; I couldn't simply put my head down and keep doing good work. Material was being disseminated by the org to justify the big project, and it specifically called out my team's applications as unfit for purpose now and into the future. Particularly frustrating were the outright lies in the material about my team's applications, presumably used to build a narrative that the big project was the only way forward. The big project was penny-wise pound-foolish; they could send 100 staff on multiple team-building days, but refused to furnish their team with a key piece of $2k equipment (sorry for vagueness: trying to stay anon here), instead demanding my team share ours. There were ridiculous exercises mandated where developers had to document "how" to do their job so that it could be compared with "how" a developer job would be performed, post big project. But I think worst of all was that myself and my team were no longer able to work with smart people; the product owners were backfilled with imports from the org's call center. Every day seemed to be a fight just to write good software and keep the product afloat for the 100,000+ individuals using it.
Leading up to this, each year I used only about 25% of my yearly leave; I worked hard, took work home with me, and genuinely wanted to grow myself. When the big project rolled around, I felt my investment going south. All the knowledge, rapport, and comfort I'd established was about to evaporate. The value of my team's work was being actively undermined by the org, and any new work inherently had no real value. Before I left, we quietly completed a 5+ year project consolidating our legacy platforms, and we got a 10-second mention in a unit meeting.
In the last year I was starting to get physical manifestations of stress; headaches, unpleasant pangs in my chest, anxiety, grinding my teeth in my sleep. This was all a first for me. I took a month of my leave, but that didn't help. I took another month, 2 months later, but that didn't help either. So I quit. It took several months before the 'symptoms' eased, but I still get some of them when I get stressed.
I thought I'd be ready for another job in 3-4 months. It's been 16 months and I'm still dreading it. I took a job about 7 months in, but it was shit in its own unique ways so I left after a couple of months.
In my time off, I've built a couple of little things for fun, consciously trying to fight any thoughts saying I need to make progress, or I need to build something worthy of publishing, or I need to learn a new technology so that my time off wasn't a "waste" in some recruiter's eyes. It infuriates me that the developer is expected to spend close to 100% of their time generating value for an employer OR improving their ability to do so. It has actually been good to work on these little projects, and has confirmed that I do love writing software, but I'm starting to believe my career will kill my passion for writing software.
OP, I found this to be helpful in understanding my burnout: https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/. My post certainly doesn't have any answers for you, but at least you know you're not alone.
Burnout is kinda like an injury, it makes new injuries more likely and you need to train around it. I think there are a few things that I've found that always help: * Removing the source of frustration or the thing that is burning you out -- this might mean quitting a toxic job, reducing hours, whatever. But be honest with yourself, ask for somebody who you talk to a lot to give input on what they think it is and lis…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a society we should figure out some sort of systemic work exchange program where people suffering from burnout can leave their career for 8 months to work in a brewery or be a fire watcher or herd goats or whatever until they figure out that, "damn, my old job wasn't so bad after all." Either that or they become a full time goat herder...
You do realize, illegal work environments and unreasonable expectations on developers is "best practices" in software development. As a society we need to end illegal best practices that require developers to work so hard they have physically damaged brain issues from the overwork and stress afterwards.
This doesn't match my decade+ of experience. 35-50hr weeks and open communication on project statuses and timelines. I've had two or three crunch-times. Worked at a startup that went unicorn.