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

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

#61

Post by RemoteIsHeaven »

JohnBrookz wrote: post #48

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’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.

Well done! I explained this paradox in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

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

#62

Post by RemoteIsHeaven »

sublinear wrote: post #13

I burnt out after 4 years at my first job. It was at a startup. I have been working 5+ years at my current job at a much larger company and burnout is unlikely. I get paid better and have less responsibility. I'm undecided if the burnout was caused by the job or my inexperience. It was probably both.

> I'm undecided if the burnout was caused by the job or my inexperience. It was probably both.

Likely the job as in the management - I explained their role in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

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

#63

Post by indymike »

My experience is that burnout comes in two forms:

Fatigue - too much stress and/or effort over an extended time.

Disillusionment - company doesn't have your back or love you back.

Honestly, most burnout is mostly caused by managers and culture that just doesn't care about people. A good manager will get an employee who is approaching burnout to take a break/vacation or even change up what they are working on.

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

#64

Post by RemoteIsHeaven »

indymike wrote: post #63

My experience is that burnout comes in two forms: Fatigue - too much stress and/or effort over an extended time. Disillusionment - company doesn't have your back or love you back. Honestly, most burnout is mostly caused by managers and culture that just doesn't care about people. A good manager will get an employee who is approaching burnout to take a break/vacation or even change up what they are working on.

> most burnout is mostly caused by managers and culture that just doesn't care about people. A good manager will get an employee who is approaching burnout to take a break/vacation or even change up what they are working on

Agreed and a great manager won't cause burnout because they fundamentally understand what the expectations of their employees are!

I explained a bit of this in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

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

#68

Post by araes »

RemoteIsHeaven wrote: post #59
araes wrote: post #57

I recommended "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation". [1] From the general discussion: > Across four studies, we found consistent support for our hypotheses. First, we found that loyal employees are selectively targeted by managers for exploitation in hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1–2), and that the targeting of these loyal workers is mediated by the expectation that loyal people a…

> Fortune 500's and FAANGs, as large organizations, generally shift towards exploitive, or at the least, behaviors lacking the reciprocity expected 1. What could be causing that? 2. What are the chances of this same behavior happening at a Fortune 500000? 3. How would an employee detect that behavior, potentially as early as when interviewing for the job?

1. The first paper's rationale, is: "agents/entities with less power may not feel free to decline the more powerful agent/entity's request". The second paper would probably argue that "the diffuse nature of large organizations reduces reciprocation so it's lack becomes normalized" (my paraphrase).

2. The second paper would probably say lower. Closer to a small friend / family group, with more obvious reciprocal behavior.

3. Maybe if they ask you to do a bunch of weird stuff on the interview? Give you a bunch of homework that feels like "off the clock time". I donno. With the second, only that maybe it all feels super hands-off in hiring, like you're just being handed to someone.

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

#69

Post by JohnBooty » 

    This makes me wonder if finding a low-key, sane 
    culture is the key to sustainability in the industry, 
    and avoiding burn out.
They are exceedingly rare.

The only way these can really exist is within a small bootstrapped (self-funded) venture or perhaps within an open source project that has both autonomy and outside funding.

The paradoxical nature of commercial software development is that the entire fucking industry is a contradictory anti-pattern.

What most of us would consider "good engineering" (elegant, maintainable code that is correct, maintainable, and relatively resistant to bit rot) is explicitly at odds with nearly every commercial software development situation.

Management wants you to be visibly "working" at all times, cranking out tasks/stories/code/whatever. So you are explicitly discouraged from writing code that "just works" and doesn't need constant heroic fixing. If you get it right the first time, and kick back and relax, they'll think you're a lazy piece of crap.

Even if you work for a place that "gets it" from an engineering perspective, they are almost always going to look at your relatively high salary and want you to constantly produce new things. And once you have multiple levels of management, you can absolutely forget about them "getting it" -- a manager two levels above you can't be intimately involved enough in your code to understand when you are writing shit code and when you are writing true 10x code that will save countless hours of headaches in the future.

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

#70

Post by javman »

I worked for a small contracting company that did work for several larger (but not FAANG) companies for >10 years. I quit 1.5 years ago after being burned out for quite a while, and I'm enjoying life for now. The thought of going back to work is a little stressful, and I'm holding out for as long as possible :)

Reasons for my burn out:

- Unreasonable expectations from stakeholders. "We need x, y, and z done by Friday" with no regard for developer input on what that actually entails. Not all projects are like this, but some are. It's fine when it is rare, but the more frequent it is, the more burnout it causes.

- Frequently changing requirements, or total shifts in what needed to be built from one week to the next.

- Working on projects with outdated dependencies and never given any time to refactor to support updates (i.e. working on an Angular 4 project when Angular 12 is out).

- As a contractor, it always feels like you need to perform, or the company you're working for will drop you.

- As a contractor, the clients' internal FT devs have seniority and will make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the project.

- Abruptly being moved (without much input) from one project to another takes a toll, especially when you care about what you do.

- Not enough vacation time. For most of my 20's, I got two weeks a year. For most of my 30's, it was three weeks a year. That's not really enough time off to enjoy life.

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