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Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

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Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#61

Post by alok-g »

seagullriffic wrote: post #5

Burnout is a thing which should be taken more seriously by more people. Go on holiday. At least two months. The first week you'll think you're still at work. The second week you might have some time to collect your thoughts, and plan. Then beyond that you might hopefully have the headspace to catch up on chores and life admin. Month two is for enjoying yourself and your family. Do the above first. Not addressing your…

Is there a reasonable level of confidence that this would work. Asking as a two-month holiday is significant.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#62

Post by alok-g »

Jach wrote: post #57

Can you "retire" yet? If you had 15 years at BigCo, that should really be a yes, but with startups it depends a lot more. By "retire" I mean that you can pretty safely coast by with your annual living expenses set to (depending on your risk appetite) 4% to 10% of your investments. If you can do that, pull the trigger and quit. Commit to only a few years gone, if "indefinitely" is too scary or you don't feel confident…

I wonder if the 4% to 10% guidance continues to apply with significantly higher inflation now seen.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#63

Post by jsiepkes »

nik736 wrote: post #58
Uehreka wrote: post #35

My honest advice: Get out of the Hacker News hivemind. The folks on this site act like every programming job is either at a FAANG/MAGMA company, a startup, or not in tech. They are wrong. If you are willing to look outside the valley (but still in almost any big city or suburb), there are oceans of tech companies that work in like, financial compliance dashboards or healthcare documentation or if you’re OK with it de…

This has one disadvantage: You will be working with people who don't want to work, do everything to waste your and their time and will drag you down. If you are fine with that everything is good, but if you have at least a bit of drive to achieve something great you will be very very unhappy.

If you are into those kind of generalisations you could easily argue that's not very different from working at FANG where a lot of people only care about their own career and care very little about creating good products.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#65

Post by 0xjmp »

I took a year off. I couldn't exactly afford it, and I didn't exactly sign up for it either (laid off). But it was exactly what I needed.

I lost a loved one and mistakenly assumed work peers would understand that I was struggling. They didn't. No secret the workplace makes people astoundingly cold. This left me feeling bitter at the industry.

Towards the 8 month mark I started to have a different crisis: I still didn't want to work again. Would I ever want to work again? Just in the knick of time I did find my stride. My point is that it took patience. You're in the wrong environment for that.

I'm sure you've heard this before but your work doesn't care about you. Your co-workers don't care about you. If you put even a small amount of care or emotion into the job you're playing yourself.

Your kid matters. Your job doesn't. Your deadlines are a lie made up by someone who should be focused on going to therapy. Sounds like you're a driven, talented individual. Take a break for you and your kid. That ambitious drive won't leave you just because you took a break to focus on what actually matters.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#66

Post by hardkorebob »

paulus-saulus wrote: post #43
Uehreka wrote: post #35

My honest advice: Get out of the Hacker News hivemind. The folks on this site act like every programming job is either at a FAANG/MAGMA company, a startup, or not in tech. They are wrong. If you are willing to look outside the valley (but still in almost any big city or suburb), there are oceans of tech companies that work in like, financial compliance dashboards or healthcare documentation or if you’re OK with it de…

I agree. Quit all IT news feeds and do only one thing . RELAX

I say quit it all And LEARN a new ontology. ;) Perhaps the (1972ACSP) Srimad-Purana or Gitoupanisad will assist? You want that year or previous. Anything after '72 is garbage.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#67

Post by kingTug »

Uehreka wrote: post #35

My honest advice: Get out of the Hacker News hivemind. The folks on this site act like every programming job is either at a FAANG/MAGMA company, a startup, or not in tech. They are wrong. If you are willing to look outside the valley (but still in almost any big city or suburb), there are oceans of tech companies that work in like, financial compliance dashboards or healthcare documentation or if you’re OK with it de…

It is really discouraging how defense contractors seem to be some of the easiest to get / most prevelant jobs at the moment.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#68

Post by nprateem »

busterarm wrote: post #39
theptip wrote: post #28

IME working at a big tech company post-burnout is much more relaxing than working at a startup. There is definitely opportunity & reward for working hard and getting stuff done, but planning timelines and deadlines are so much longer. And none of the existential dread from “will we run out of runway” or “how do we get to PMF”. Especially if you go in a level or two below your actual tryhard level, you’ll still likely…

IME it's trading one pressure cooker for another. There's less time pressure but more organizational inertia and sickness blocking doing _any_ meaningful work. If you're the kind of person that can just punch a clock and not give a shit, fine, but someone used to working in startups is someone used to taking responsibility for things and that's career death in big orgs or asking for further burnout.

The opposite of burnout - rust out - can be a serious problem for good devs in large orgs where it's impossible to get anything done. Just fill the downtime by working on side projects, hobbies, fitness, etc. Even still it can be draining achieving nothing at work.

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#69

Post by nprateem »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #4

Time off and complete disconnect from all things work related. It doesn’t even matter if you travel or do whatever, just disconnecting is enough. Three months is considered the ideal minimum amount of time. I burned out hard many years ago and this was the only thing that worked for recovery. I’m at that point again now with my current startup but I have no choice but to force through the burnout. I’m gonna be in a r…

We always have choice

Re: Ask HN: What to Do After Burnout?

#70

Post by theptip »

busterarm wrote: post #39
theptip wrote: post #28

IME working at a big tech company post-burnout is much more relaxing than working at a startup. There is definitely opportunity & reward for working hard and getting stuff done, but planning timelines and deadlines are so much longer. And none of the existential dread from “will we run out of runway” or “how do we get to PMF”. Especially if you go in a level or two below your actual tryhard level, you’ll still likely…

IME it's trading one pressure cooker for another. There's less time pressure but more organizational inertia and sickness blocking doing _any_ meaningful work. If you're the kind of person that can just punch a clock and not give a shit, fine, but someone used to working in startups is someone used to taking responsibility for things and that's career death in big orgs or asking for further burnout.

My recommendation for recovering from burnout is to find the sweet spot of caring less about the work, while not finding it boring. Care 60%, not 0 or 100.

“Sometimes I work hard, sometimes I just work”. It’s hard to “just work” on something you are passionate about. I think most startup folks will need to correct in the direction of caring less about work. (For a while! Not forever!)

I agree with your concern in that this is a U-shaped cost function. You don’t want to over-correct. But it’s not binary. You can care less than 100% and not be “punching in”.

There is a lot of variance between orgs and even teams within an org. But there are definitely companies where startup folks can do good work and not feel burnt out by the organizational inertia.

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