171–180 of 207 posts
I stated my own consulting company a few years ago. Right now, it's just me. But I plan on hiring employees at some point. Consulting has prevented me from burnout. I almost never have to deal with bullshit corporate politics and if I hate a project, I find a new client.
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If the only purpose of your life truly is to pay bills, that would cause anyone to burn out.
The problem is some need to work to burnout or else they can't pay bills. This is especially true in places like the USA where so many social benefits are tied to employment. Employers understand this. They know a lapse in employment could be devastating, so they can put the screws to employees.
If not, it looks like a growth industry, and it might be a good idea to monetize the things that burn other people out.
Most 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.
I've been reflecting on this recently and I think in the context of a job, it operates at both a macro and micro level, and ultimately to feel fulfilled in the long term you need to feel like you matter on both levels.
Macro contributions are the stuff upper management sees— the new products and features, the deals closed, the systems you designed and maintained, the technical directions to advocate for and staff you mentor, the conference presentations you give. These are highly visible contributions are are "easy" to recognize you for, but on the other hand they're also relatively easy to succinctly describe, for example, on a job req, which will be necessary if you do indeed stop showing up.
In contrast to this, the micro contributions are what your close colleagues see. They're who recognize your taste, your care and attention to detail, the thoughtfulness with which you lay out code, balance requirements, utilize tools, and maintain hard-to-measure things like interface boundaries and testability. It's these contributions that quietly keep technical debt under control, save time by preventing problems from ever occurring, and push systems toward ever greater reliability and observability. If you disappear tomorrow, none of this stuff will fall apart overnight; it will degrade in more subtle ways that take much longer to manifest as an actual "problems".
I think for me at least, I sometimes feel a disconnect where I have lots of acknowledgment at the macro level, but still feel burnt out and unappreciated due to gaps at the micro level. The Q12 question about having a "best friend at work" [1] I think is also really tied into all of this, since that's likely to be a person who will see you and what you have to offer much more than a busy manager hustling between meetings all week and rubber-stamping your code reviews.
[1]: https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397058/increasing-importanc...
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Why did you think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait? I don't mean any disrespect but when i read sentences like that all that pops into my head is "sucker"
A lot of that I think was rooted in low self-esteem. Which is something I still struggle a lot with. The mind is very powerful. At my last job I stepped up to head of engineering after our CTO resigned, and never got a raise. In my mind I didn't deserve it and was a horrible engineer.
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> But they feel it especially at work, because that's the place that they interact with other people the most, so it's the place where there should be the best chance of real human contact. And it's not there. The worst part is, modern workplace is actively hostile to creating meaningful interpersonal bonds, while it keeps a face of being ridiculously welcoming and inclusive. When you are in such environment it's har…
I'm not saying you're wrong. But would you (or anyone) mind listing the ways that you think that the modern workplace is "actively hostile to creating meaningful interpersonal bonds"?
2. The HR officially encourages people to escalate all and any issues, instead of having people deal with things between themselves. This makes me distrustful because people can be smiling towards me while gathering evidence about my mistakes to make a complaint
3. All conflicts are resolved according to "who is technically right" instead of "who is a better human". Think of all the people who got a promotion by throwing their coworker under a bus because technically speaking they didn't break any rules. This is selective breeding of shitty people
4. Negative behaviors are heavily punished, while positive behaviors are not rewarded. Nobody cares that you helped out many people in need, if you said something mean because you were having a bad day or you simply misread the situation, you're out
5. Companies discourage employees from discussing difficult topics that could potentially bridge gaps between people
6. We collectively accept "at work pretend to be whoever your employer wants you to be" as a normal thing
I did some volunteer mentoring for a while. Burnout was the most common complaint. However, once you dug into each complaint of burnout you discovered that “burnout” has become a catch-all term for a very wide range of feelings. Before that experience I assumed everyone defined burnout as a severe state of deep distress and lack of energy following extended periods of intense stress, frustration, overwork, and/or lac…
And ironically it makes society worse at supporting everyone, even those for whom the proper noun is appropriate.
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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.
Unless you have had a career as a janitor, it is extremely patronizing to tell the janitors of the world how fulfilling they should find their jobs.
I used to be an employee that would kill themselves for even minimum wage. I think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait, but keeping that up for decades is difficult. Naturally I am very loyal and agreeable. I like to solve raw engineering problems, but also social ones. I find a way to adapt to pretty much anything and anyone. This almost always ends with my employer exploiting me. Recently…
Why did you think being a hard worker regardless of reward is an honorable trait? I don't mean any disrespect but when i read sentences like that all that pops into my head is "sucker"
You'll end up with more cash at the end of the day, but perhaps they go home filling fulfilled.
Not everything in life can be reduced to a profitable equation.
It’s hard to know what to make of this when you also read that job satisfaction is at historic highs[1]. One reading is being highly engaged in your job is related to burnout, because you’re more likely to be unhappy when your job doesn’t go the way you want. Whereas just punching a clock you take it less seriously. 1 - https://www.conference-board.org/press/job-satisfaction-hits...
It's surveying overall satisfaction, and what they identify as components of job satisfaction. It's the kind of stuff you'd use to compare between multiple job offers. The burnt out can recognize they have "good" jobs when their subjective experience is miserable.
The measured things that you might think are related to burnout (workload, recognition, vacation, interest in work), those things are scored in context of working for a living, not existential satisfaction. Very different from the items and context of the Maslach Burnout Inventory.
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No not typically. In my experience most people work 40-45 hours at the boring companies that I’ve been at
In my experience it's usually 35-40 hours "butt in seat" time but 1 mins - 5 hours of work actually happen. The rest of the time is dopamine switching between news, personal communications, and other forms of non-work entertainment. I count checking emails, work instant communications, and working through bureaucracy (paperwork flows) as work, not just hands on keyboard working on software solutions. Also in my exper…