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Surviving Burnout (2015)

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Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#41

Post by jimnotgym »

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…

This might be really unpopular for hn...

Maybe it is because being a good manager is hard. Maybe running an effective organisation is hard. Maybe being in your 20s and having a bunch of VC money doesn't translate to being able to do the above?

Being a good manager takes time and a willingness to be emotionally aware. It also requires mentoring.

On the other hand, if a bunch of burnt out engineers with capital want to pop me an email why don't we start something?

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#42

Post by jimnotgym »

AstixAndBelix wrote: post #28
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?

I guess that presupposes that pushing your staff into burnout is a way to get things done quickly. I haven't found that to be the case.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#43

Post by stevezsa8 »

surfsvammel wrote: post #32

I suffered burn out about 15 years ago. If you would have asked me back then, if I was feeling stress or was nearing burn out, I would have said no, not a chance. I was feeling great. If you however would have me take one of those self assessment tests, it would show all the red flags. I guess what I am trying to say is this: don’t necessarily trust your own assessment of the situation. Keep your eyes out for the war…

How was your recovery from burnout?

When I see someone who seems stressed or overworked... I try to remind them that recovering might be easier before they get fully overwhelmed.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#44

Post by jimnotgym »

slagorfotrest wrote: post #39

Throwaway Ive been on leave from work due to severe burnout and even just reading this caused me to feel panic. It's this weird feeling where the back of my throat feels like it's closing, my head begins throbbing and my heart races. I know how seriously burnout can affect your life and I'm really glad the author found a way out. We need better options for dealing with burnout because having medical insurance tied to…

> because having medical insurance tied to work is obviously suboptimal.

That is a solved problem in many countries.

When the US grows up from its individual first, frontier moxie, pissing context it could have it too.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#45

Post by throwaway8456 »

scruple wrote: post #23
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Separating things orthogonally into different functions/silos sounds like how stable and large companies are run. Sounds like a recipe for disaster for a startup.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#46

Post by gedy »

slagorfotrest wrote: post #39

Throwaway Ive been on leave from work due to severe burnout and even just reading this caused me to feel panic. It's this weird feeling where the back of my throat feels like it's closing, my head begins throbbing and my heart races. I know how seriously burnout can affect your life and I'm really glad the author found a way out. We need better options for dealing with burnout because having medical insurance tied to…

Can certainly be triggered by work or burnout, but this sounds like anxiety and panic attacks. Take care of yourself, as have had this happen even when work wasn't that stressful.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#47

Post by groestl »

dilyevsky wrote: post #29
yunohn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Well, I'm skeptical of the overall approach, but isn't the premise of this thread, that coaching keeps people from quitting? You probably won't improve performance of a single engineer, but make a key player quit, and you can kill performance of the whole operation for months and years.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#48

Post by LesZedCB »

slushh wrote: post #31
kerkeslager wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Companies are an abstraction. The humans behind the company define the company. How else could burned out developers organize to create a space for recovery? *edit: to mention the elephant in the room: caring without control results in self-doubt. What does it mean for humans to be 'self'?

employees behind a company labor to create value, they don't necessarily define the company - the owners do. owners set the policies, hours, hire and fire to promote a particular culture (or set the rules or expectations to). this power imbalance between employer and employee is exactly where the burnout tends to happen.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#49

Post by [deleted] »

stevezsa8 wrote: post #43
surfsvammel wrote: post #32

I suffered burn out about 15 years ago. If you would have asked me back then, if I was feeling stress or was nearing burn out, I would have said no, not a chance. I was feeling great. If you however would have me take one of those self assessment tests, it would show all the red flags. I guess what I am trying to say is this: don’t necessarily trust your own assessment of the situation. Keep your eyes out for the war…

How was your recovery from burnout? When I see someone who seems stressed or overworked... I try to remind them that recovering might be easier before they get fully overwhelmed.

[deleted]

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#50

Post by reddoormat »

Throwaway account.

I work at an early stage startup which I joined on the day one about two years ago. I don’t want to get into too much details but couple months ago we did a pivot, threw away most of the old product and now pretending the new offering is complete (it is the opposite).

I was onboard with the new vision for the company but couple months ago I started noticing something isn’t right. I felt anxious, tired, frustrated yet I desperately wanted myself to be that cliche enthusiastic startup dude. I’m no longer in my early 20s (experienced burnout before as well as two major depression episodes) so started reflecting and looking into the causes. The pivot and the product debt it caused made me do an incredible amount of production debugging and interrupted ad-hoc work for customers we tried to impress. It got so bad I rarely remember the things I worked on the day before. Meanwhile, the product scope keeps expanding and we haven’t even nailed the basics.

Then SVB happened and my guess is that leadership started receiving more heat from the investors. Shit rolls downhill so now CTO only wants to hear about solutions, not problems.

I’ve had it. I gave all energy and skills I had to this company. Now I’m just hitting my head against the wall. I need a break and possibly a new employer. Burnout comes in all shapes and sizes because we are all different. I escape into physical activities and cooking, but mostly try to distance myself emotionally from work.

I wish the best of luck to all of you who are going through a difficult time. Wish me luck as well.

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