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Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
11–20 of 207 posts
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#12Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
I think Office Space summed up the problem nicely:
"Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
Most companies only care about the next quarter, or next investor call. Quality be damned, cut corners, work late. It's a never-ending series of death marches.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#13- Good access to resources - Senior managerial support - Psychological safety with direct manager - Fair and equal opportunity for success These are all leadership solves. Not process solves, not spending solves. Leadership. It's ironic that consultancies like BCG – who are masters of technocratic administration, would post this! Innovation excellence is great. Technical excellence is great. You also need soft-skills…
The funny/ironic thing is, all those items tend to be the first to go when management experiences personal burn-out themselves. I wonder how much burn-out is transferred downwards due to this phenomena.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#14If I can give any advice in this area in a late mid-stage career, find a way to have productive conversations with your supervisor/manager. After about a decade of working in IT, I felt burnt out and left to pursue a PhD. Pursuing a PhD was my high academic achiever's way of dealing with burnout by doing something more intellectually stimulating. But 10 years into a career in academia, the symptoms of burnout can sti…
Ac actual academic career is the WORST in terms of burn-out. I was writing paper reviews at 4am. People I know who are professors board planes with a pile of papers to read or review. Midnight meetings to discuss conference organization. Add in the pressure of publish or perish.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#15Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
I don't want to exotisize "blue collar" labor. That being said, I've always wondered if burnout ends up being more likely in roles where you feel like you're suppose to care.
Being bored all the time is annoying and sucks, but being in a thing where you feel like you _shouldn't_ be bored and yet are also sucks. Does it suck more? Not sure!
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#16I used to think my burnout was from long hours, but I recently got a chance to work on a greenfield project at work and loved every second of the 60-70h weeks just building something really cool with a small team.
The burnout nearly vanished during this time and only recently has started to reappear and I have a much better understanding now of what causes burnout for me specifically.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#17Yeah no shit.
Corporate work has gotten a hellscape. Work got ever more compressed as ever more oh so minute details are being constantly tracked and evaluated - just look at Amazon warehouse workers, your average callcenter staff, or truckers, once the "kings of the roads". Take a second too long on the loo and your manager gets automatically pinged, third time and you're let go. Or if you're in IT, the rat race to the bottom that is called "agile" with sprint points whatnot. And on top of that comes all the surveillance software where every mouse movement, every key stroke is analyzed for performance, and on top of that come stack ranking and similar bullshit pitting employees against each other.
The trades don't have it much better. Private customers don't have much spare money left over so they let their stuff degrade until it breaks down completely which makes repair jobs much more complex and extensive, and the customers try to haggle on price wherever they can, landlords are notorious penny pinchers and large construction projects pit tradespeople from across the continent against each other, the cheapest bid wins.
And anything public service has it the worst - education is usually the first ones who get their budgets cut when politicians need to fiat money (often leading to teachers having to pay for their own classroom supplies or assisting the poorest of the poor children from their own paycheck), payment usually sucks compared to the private sector, you're subject to ridiculous public records requirements, and (for the Americans) should Project 2025 pass as planned, what used to be career track positions will now to a large degree be political positions, so anything as simple as a party donation can led to you getting fired.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#18Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
Big part of the problem is arguably alienation. A janitorial job can be rewarding because you can see that you are making a difference in the world. You get to meet the people whose lives are improved by what you do, every day. Filling out spreadsheets, it can be hard to tell what the purpose of what you are doing, whom it benefits, and how the world would be worse off if you simply didn't show up.
At least in software it's not alienation, it's never-ending hamster-wheel of sprint after sprint of delivering features by cutting corners atop of existing cut corners.
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#19Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
Big part of the problem is arguably alienation. A janitorial job can be rewarding because you can see that you are making a difference in the world. You get to meet the people whose lives are improved by what you do, every day. Filling out spreadsheets, it can be hard to tell what the purpose of what you are doing, whom it benefits, and how the world would be worse off if you simply didn't show up.
Do you say that as someone who's been a janitor or is this only fantasy janitoring?
Re: Half of Workers Around the World Are Struggling with Burnout
#20Most people don't have "fulfilling" jobs. They have a paycheck. A very small percentage of Americans, let alone those around the world, have the privilege of analyzing how their job makes them feel. I get paid great money to play with computers. My father was an elementary school janitor.
Big part of the problem is arguably alienation. A janitorial job can be rewarding because you can see that you are making a difference in the world. You get to meet the people whose lives are improved by what you do, every day. Filling out spreadsheets, it can be hard to tell what the purpose of what you are doing, whom it benefits, and how the world would be worse off if you simply didn't show up.
This is a large part of my experience of burnout. Perhaps not so much alienation, as i understand it, but what you say in your last paragraph resonates with what really sticks in my mind when I'm starting to feel burnout. I end up having to endlessly push the idea of the pointlessness of my work out of my mind and that becomes a form of additional mental 'overhead', so to speak.