Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Surviving Burnout (2015)

lifeofaudrey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 171 posts

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#21

Post by PragmaticPulp »

bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

The most burnout-inducing environments I’ve worked in have all had one thing in common: They had a person or class of people that had wormed their way into being in control of everything while being responsible for very little. This left the rest of us to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions while having little to no input on the things we were held accountable for.

The absolute worst company I worked for had this separation as a core philosophy. They had different managers for everything: Product managers to make all of the product decisions, UX managers to make all of the design decisions, project managers to decide when we’d do things and how to check in on our progress every few hours of every day, program managers who thought they were engineers who just didn’t write code, VPs who would choose all of your programming languages and frameworks for you, and on and on. These people would shuffle from meeting to meeting every day with a 2-hour company-paid lunch in the middle (which they ultimately got in trouble for) but wouldn’t ever do any of the work themselves. Meanwhile, if any engineer dared make a suggestion we’d get a long lecture about staying in our lanes. Then when projects were late/wrong/failed or just missed the mark about what the company needed, they would do long post mortems to assign blame to different engineers for doing it wrong. At best, they’d come up with vague statements about how “we failed as a team due to communication issues” or something.

It was the most demoralizing work environment. Every meeting was full of sad, dejected engineers. People would quit without having other jobs lined up because they just couldn’t take it any more.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#22

Post by kerkeslager »

slushh wrote: post #19

Why isn't there a known company with a healthy structure that is the place of recovery for burned out developers? 'we can build it together' - why is that not happening? >Structural problems require structural solutions. Healthy organizations, healthy people. >How can any of us get better if we can’t afford to extract ourselves from the environment that caused the harm? >When you’re finally in recovery, you’ll start…

It's companies that created this problem, and I'm skeptical that a company is going to be the solution to this problem.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#23

Post by scruple »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21
bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

The most burnout-inducing environments I’ve worked in have all had one thing in common: They had a person or class of people that had wormed their way into being in control of everything while being responsible for very little. This left the rest of us to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions while having little to no input on the things we were held accountable for. The absolute worst company I work…

Completely spot on from my personal experience. FWIW, I have seen this in every startup I've joined.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#24

Post by xyst »

buggy6257 wrote: post #2

A harrowing tale and I'm thankful the author made it through alright, but I have to fundamentally disagree with one possible takeaway from this: Her solution to burnout was to _start her own business_?? I'm glad this worked out for her in the end, but holy shit this would be the literal last possible thing I (or I hope many others) would consider as a solution to burnout. That's a _fast track_ to burnout.

this "harrowing tale" was written in 2015 with a 2013-2014 backdrop, so it was a much different landscape back then. Starting your own business was much easier back then (still hard af) but the VC money was flowing and anything in the mobile space was mooning.

Would be interesting to see if the author's opinion has changed today.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#25

Post by kerkeslager »

fatherzine wrote: post #16
notimetorelax wrote: post #10

Does anyone have an advice for those who stay employed by a megacorp? I’m on a vacation this week and have just realized that I was effectively in isolation outside of my work.

Engage in regular social activities. Take beginner classes, to gain some confidence and build a small social group. Plenty of 4-8 weeks series to choose from. Then take higher level classes, too. Plenty online resources (meetup, fb groups, .org website) to get you going. * Team sports. Soccer, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, basketball, etc. There is a pickup game somewhere in your city every day/week. * Outdoors. Grou…

Most of these are good suggestions, but I'll say from my experience, doing too many things also creates a problem because you don't gain skill at any of the activities or spend enough time in one to create deeper connections with the people involved in it.

At one point in my life I was dabbling in like 30 different things and never really getting good at any of them or feeling connected with any of their local communities. I made a decision to narrow that down to rock climbing and guitar, and get really committed to those two things. The improvement in my quality of life just from that change was honestly pretty huge.

Of course you need to try a bunch of stuff to find out what you like, but once you find something you're really passionate about, it's okay, beneficial even, to limit how much you try other things so you can really delve into the activity and community you're passionate about.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#26

Post by sledz »

brailsafe wrote: post #13
bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

Very well-articulated. I finally felt like I was bouncing back when I just accepted not giving a fuck and doing the absolute minimum to fulfill whatever the goals seem to be of whoever's deciding on them. Do they care about rendering performance? No? Well then I'm sure as hell not goimg to lose sleep over it, and if it seems actively harmful to customers *that I've met* then it's just a place to leave. There's always…

Yeah, i totally agree. The more years I have behind my belt as developer the less I care.

I do what I'm paid for. I do it to best of my abilities, but I don't care much.

I care for my wife, my unborn child, my dog, myself. Seriously live is so much more than work and code.

I learned to balance myself. I need job for $ and that's it.

If I won lottery I would still code, just not as much (2 h/day) and only fun stuff. Work is usually borning.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#27

Post by bheadmaster »

fatherzine wrote: post #16
notimetorelax wrote: post #10

Does anyone have an advice for those who stay employed by a megacorp? I’m on a vacation this week and have just realized that I was effectively in isolation outside of my work.

Engage in regular social activities. Take beginner classes, to gain some confidence and build a small social group. Plenty of 4-8 weeks series to choose from. Then take higher level classes, too. Plenty online resources (meetup, fb groups, .org website) to get you going. * Team sports. Soccer, volleyball, ultimate frisbee, basketball, etc. There is a pickup game somewhere in your city every day/week. * Outdoors. Grou…

Here are some less mainstream social suggestions:

* Cult. People in cults are very supportive to other cult members.

* Black metal band. Blast beats, tremolo picking, shrieking vocals, pick your poison.

* Cult black metal band. Best of both worlds.

* Mongolian throat singing group.

* Artistic burping club.

* Discord server with guys wearing knee long socks and speaking with voice modulators.

* Trap house. Nothing solves a burnout faster than a psychonautical trip!

* Bird watching club. See what them birds are up to.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#28

Post by AstixAndBelix »

slushh wrote: post #19

Why isn't there a known company with a healthy structure that is the place of recovery for burned out developers? 'we can build it together' - why is that not happening? >Structural problems require structural solutions. Healthy organizations, healthy people. >How can any of us get better if we can’t afford to extract ourselves from the environment that caused the harm? >When you’re finally in recovery, you’ll start…

Because companies earn money by producing goods or providing services, but those goods and services are required by burned out people.

Let's say your company can build and ship a product in 2 years and none of the workers end up crunching. What if every single client is not in the position to wait 2 years (because they are themselves crunching) so they go with the company that builds it in 6 months?

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#29

Post by dilyevsky »

yunohn wrote: post #20
dilyevsky wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More companies should employ such coaches and schedule regular sessions for all their employees. If everything's great, then great. If not, it's definitely cheaper than employee churn. Actually a few companies i know do that for their executive staff just not rank and file employees like in the show. Also if we’re talking about engineers beyond very early stage imo it would have very limited utility for the company

> imo it would have very limited utility for the company Could you expand on this?

I'm thinking small gains in performance for executive/sales/trader-type roles could lead to disproportional gains for the business (big deals, trades, etc). For engineers and similar type roles what are you going to write couple thousand more lines of javascript a month?

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#30

Post by scottydog51834 »

notimetorelax wrote: post #10

Does anyone have an advice for those who stay employed by a megacorp? I’m on a vacation this week and have just realized that I was effectively in isolation outside of my work.

Switch teams or leave? I left my faang a few weeks ago and I'm glad I did (though I realize not everyone has this luxury). Can't say everything is figured out but I don't have to interact with my former manager or feel anger when leaders promise they care about slowing down but then assign more work. In terms of isolation, if you're in SF and looking for a friend, happy to grab coffee and talk about something that isn't tech.
Post reply on HN