Ask HN: How common is developer burnout? Have you ever been burnt out?

burnout for me was not because I was "over worked" but rather the work I was doing was very boring. It was the exact work that didn't get me motivated. This particular company was known to hire the shittiest of consulting groups, and farm out "talent" to low bid offshore contracting companies.

Onboarding these people every quarter knowing they will likely get shit canned the next quarter was a tiring position. The level of incompetency of some of these people was similar to doing support type work for boomers (ie, instead of "did you turn your computer off and on" type deal. It's literally having to point these people to existing documentation and having to read it out to them like they are in elementary school. Basic reading comprehension is not a skill these people are required to have apparently).

I also remember a consulting firm trying to migrate system to some proprietary shite. Asking basic questions about the system, I always get the "we will get back to you on that" and never get it. Follow up, is basically hand waving magic, throw some generic bullshit buzz words ("ItS iN tHe ClOuD, mIcRoSeRvicEd OrIeNteD, DiStRibUtEd"). I remember management eating that shit up.

When push comes to shove, I finally black box test the system and its fails on even the most basic performance tests. Too many scam artists in this industry tbh, and too many incompetent idiots that somehow got into the C-level suite. I think in the end they were able to get the vendor to throw in an extra product or reduce cost to close the deal. Fortunately, I left that shit hole before it was implemented.

In my experience, burnout is EXTREMELY high for developers. My group of friends and colleagues that I started with in my early twenties have mostly left development and tech for the most part.

By the time most of us were turning 30, about half my cohort of friends and colleagues had given up as developers. By the time I turned 35 almost everyone had. Out of about 30-40 people that I have been somewhat associating with during my career, I can only think of about 5 right now that are still in tech. Four of those five are in management roles. Only one of those people is still a "true developer" (pushing code and commits all day). The rest have moved to infrastructure, security, and related fields.

The ones that left. A surprising number moved to rural areas to slow down their lives. Building homesteads (small personal farms). One actually built a large-scale mushroom farm (culinary/legal mushrooms). A few teach. Quite a few retired early doing the FIRE thing (wish I had been disciplined enough for that). Several are expats. So for the most part, most of them went off to do things that were less chaotic and less stressful.

I almost quit myself in my early 30s. But I was fortunate enough to get promoted into a senior management position, where I am mostly focused on tech strategy and not true "developer work" anymore. I also went back to school and joined a PhD program where I started doing research on encryption and security in something that truly interests me. So that kept me sane. At this point, I am "resting and vesting" at my current job, waiting for them to sell, which they are extremely well suited to do right now. As soon as that happens, I doubt I will find another job in tech. I plan on taking my PhD and staying in academia.

This is anecdotal experience. So your mileage may vary. The pandemic hit as most of us were between 30 and 35, which might have had a disproportionate affect of taking people out of the industry too. So my experience might be more extreme than the average. But basically, I have decided that the reason tech is mostly young people is because it breaks you down as you get older and people just leave. So burnout is a VERY real thing in this industry.

At my first salaried position, burnout was so common that the studio heads just made a point of giving the team a month or two to relax after major deadlines (so basically, something like 5-10% of every year on average was 'slack time'). We still showed up and did work but I'd estimate our productivity was 50% or worse. There was seemingly no alternative, because burnout did hit me there and there was probably a period of over a month where I could barely do my job despite the fact that I was only 18 and hadn't accumulated decades worth of fatigue. No idea how the people in their 40s kept up with us.

Yes. I work at a very comfortable job with decent pay and benefits.

What burns me out is the bureaucracy, politics and having to deal with people who simply aren’t curious or interested about anything in the slightest leading the charge.

I’ve been working on a startup on the side with my friend for almost a year now and the work has rarely ever burnt me out.

> I would never have reached the point of ability that I did reach

I think you're conflating skill and ability with impact and expectations.

Early on in your life, your expectations could have been to gain tremendous skill and grow your abilities. You probably didn't care that much if your work went into the trash because in the process, you learned some extremely important and valuable skills. That journey itself made it all worth it and met your expectations.

Over time, as you become more skillful and able, your expectations could change to seeing your work having real impact on the world instead.

This is perhaps, to you, now there's marginal return on being even more skillful and able. You ask "what's the end goal and did I reach it?"

> risk being disappointed once more. Maybe this time, you will be able to recognize it before it's "too late". I don't know

I mentioned in my own comment, the root cause of burnout - be it coding or otherwise, is when expectations don't match reality.

If you're a developer, your impact and outcome is beholden to management, so even through you might not realize it, part of your jobsearch now has to focus on ensuring you detect great management - and you make it a part of your interview to locate them.

The real solution to not being burned out: work with a team that actually knows what they are doing and have strong fundamentals.