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Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#161

Post by sph »

I am currently recovering from extreme work-related burnout. Also got diagnosed with ADHD while taking time off.

What helped was having enough money for a therapist, enough freedom to reduce my life to the bare minimum, and enough money to take a year long sabbatical away from work. I'm 13 months in and there starts to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

I don't want to think what would have been of me if I hadn't had that money saved.

Burnout is hell, we do not take it seriously enough, and it destroys people. It takes years to recover from, and that is not hyperbole.

Hit me up if you wanna chat about it, email in my profile. I've had excellent chats with people about ADHD, I am starting to really enjoy connecting with other humans about mental health.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#162

Post by molsongolden »

flamebreath447 wrote: post #125
monological wrote: post #93

The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life. Unfortunately in modern society, we have to trade our time and focus, staring at a piece of glass all day, just so we can survive. It’s absolutely insane if you think about it. I’d bet that most ADHD, depression, anxiety is caused because we see no end in sight working on these meaningless tasks. My advi…

Finding something you love is only momentary. Even if you find something you “love” to do it will have moments where it gets rough, boring, frustrating or cumbersome. We need both work and rest, and typically burnout comes from pushing yourself in situations that are a net negative; either because you are over working in an environment that is compromising something valueable to you or because you don’t actually know…

Any book recs or tips for proper rest?

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#163

Post by lnsru »

AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote: post #119
lnsru wrote: post #27

I have been there too! I was also incapable of working afterwards. All the code was alien to me. Being in the office was a nightmare. I wanted shout and jump through the window! And seeing all the people whose mismanagement let me into this bad post burnout situation was even worse. Corona, my savior, came to me and office was closed. In hid at home and forced myself to do 6 daily pomodoros. That was enough to keep m…

I'm curious if you did your pomodoros at 25minutes or had a different interval.

I was trying to work half day during these times. Still more output that usual in my group.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#165

Post by lnsru »

silent_cal wrote: post #143
lnsru wrote: post #27

I have been there too! I was also incapable of working afterwards. All the code was alien to me. Being in the office was a nightmare. I wanted shout and jump through the window! And seeing all the people whose mismanagement let me into this bad post burnout situation was even worse. Corona, my savior, came to me and office was closed. In hid at home and forced myself to do 6 daily pomodoros. That was enough to keep m…

What do you mean by 4-6 daily pomodoros? Is that 45 mins of work with 15 min breaks?

~2 hours coding and ~2 hours meetings daily average.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#166

Post by megous »

didgetmaster wrote: post #82
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a government thing, my workplace had no say in the matter as long as my GP said I needed it.

Even if your employer 'had no say in the matter', it is still generous. Somebody had to pay for that medical leave whether it came out of the profits of the company you work for, their insurance company (which leads to higher premiums for everyone), or came out of the taxpayer's pocket. It sounds like you could benefit from a completely different environment. If you can't find any joy working in your chosen field, it…

> Even if your employer 'had no say in the matter', it is still generous. Somebody had to pay for that medical leave whether it came out of the profits of the company you work for, their insurance company (which leads to higher premiums for everyone), or came out of the taxpayer's pocket.

Workers "pay" for it by having on average a bit lower wages in said country, then they could have had otherwise.

It's just like any other country wide or industry wide constraint companies can do little about avoiding, and have to price in somehow somewhere or not operate at all.

Generosity is a weird concept to apply for mandated things.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#167

Post by GameOfFrowns »

simonswords82 wrote: post #55
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if they want to try and medicate me I'm not going to say no at this point, regardless of my personal views on the diagnosis. I've reached a point where I don't think any additional harm would be caused by doing so. I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not and I will just do whatever they tell me to do. I mean I'm not a psychologist, I'm paying them for their…

I agree that it would be foolish not to take their advice, however... One data point from me - ADHD medication (Elvanse specifically) has some gnarly side effects which meant my wife had a very rough time with it. I won't go in to detail other than to say we nearly ended up in the A&E a couple of times. By all means try medication but be prepared to switch to another or abandon it altogether if the side effects are o…

This is not to be underestimated. It can have quite a detrimental negative psychological effect to realize that the last hope, the only thing that could potentially help you to have the semblance of a normal life makes you extremely nauseous and dull.

I went through a 1.5 year long process to ADHD diagnosis and being prescribed first methylphenidate and later LDX (Elvanse) in the lowest available doses. It did what it was supposed to do and helped me focus better but the side-effects were to unpleasant for me, so much that I preferred to not take the medication at all. Seeing how my life spirals toward rock-bottom, every once in a while I give it another try but it always ends up in me regretting that I've taken the meds, as it ruins that day and worsens my insomnia. The doctor has no advice on what to do about it except for toughing it out.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#168

Post by ravenstine »

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #39
ravenstine wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech prospects look bleak, I think the party will be over in 10 or less years as engineers are viewed more as a cost vs value add. Seems realistic, though optimistic. I think the party will be over sooner than that, probably in the next 5 or so years, but we'll collectively be in denial about it for at least another 5 years following that.

You're both wrong, I hope ;) Tech jobs just seems to follow the usual hype cycle so IMO tech jobs will still be needed in the future but perhaps fewer of them. Tech jobs are also much harder than they used to be - when I started 'coding' HTML+CSS was considered high skill. Now you're expected to have serverless lambdas generating those pages and to configure a CDN and SSL and maybe talk to some backend Machine Learni…

Tech jobs are harder than they used to be, but that doesn't necessarily mean the effort is proportional to the value being produced.

Let's be honest here; a lot of what we do involves navigating the theology of software more so than actually performing valuable work. Take frontend, for instance. Frontend development is continuing to move towards Java-esque complexity all while providing no measurable improvement in efficiency or reduction in bugs. New features ship slower than they used to. Until someone can show actual evidence that "modern" web development is a measurable improvement over the old days, I'll believe it when I see it, and what I've seen for most of my career now is adherence to a bunch of clever ideas that don't really improve anything.

Yes, more tech jobs have been needed to compensate for the onslaught of bullshit, but much of that bullshit was invented by the holders of those very jobs. Much of object-oriented dogma alone invented a bunch of jobs that otherwise wouldn't have existed because it created more problems than it actually solved. When the going gets tough, economically speaking, no one's going to give a fuck about all the frameworks, all the needless abstractions, all the supposed "best practices", all the build tools, all the lint rules, all the devops, all the stupid ass containerization schemes, or any of that jazz. With some exceptions, machine learning probably being one of them, what isn't necessary will be culled. Companies that know better are going to suddenly become interested in what their engineers are actually doing, will remove the low-performers, and tell their remaining engineers to stop making things complicated.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#169

Post by annyeonghada »

monological wrote: post #93

The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life. Unfortunately in modern society, we have to trade our time and focus, staring at a piece of glass all day, just so we can survive. It’s absolutely insane if you think about it. I’d bet that most ADHD, depression, anxiety is caused because we see no end in sight working on these meaningless tasks. My advi…

>Unfortunately in modern society

Not that in ancient societies was any better, your place in society was practically decided at conception: your father was a fishermen, well you know exactly what you will be doing in your life, that you like it or not. Almost all the disorders typical of this new millennium seem to originate from an infinite liberty without a guid, a paralysis analysis of some kind if you like. "What will I do with my life?" was not a question that pestered my ancestor (I come from a country where, untill my father's generation, all jobs were de facto hereditary). "What is the purpose of my existence?" was a question with answers in the local religions. I hope that, in building the future, we will use something like the fichtean dialectics (wrongly attributed to Hegel):

thesis --> antithesis --> synthesis,

and that wi will be able to take back all things positive present in our traditions and assimilate in a modern vision of the world: it is evident that, taken in isolation, both visions of the world had negative aspects that greatly surpass their benefits.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#170

Post by Enginerrrd »

willio58 wrote: post #156
TrueGeek wrote: post #56

> I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary Be careful of comparing yourself to what people post online. It's easy to read social media and think everyone else is waking up at 5am, drinking their keto coffee, and making millions with their startup while working as a digital nomad. Even on a tech heavy site like HN I would classify someone with 6 months of savings as very well…

Yeah HN is a bubble within the tech bubble and there seems to be a vocal minority here that derives pleasure for putting others down for making less than 250k TC.

My favorite recent example of this was someone talking about how they were "really struggling" in their early days as a founder and going through all the ways they were scraping by and saving which included eating out to get a burrito at Chipoltle everyday, possibly for multiple meals.

After tax and any extras, that's likely near $8/meal! 8x3x30 = $720/month. For ONE PERSON! I spend ~$900/month to feed my family of four in CA, in what I consider to be an extremely privileged and luxurious way with all organic food, etc.

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