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Burnt out on a three-day week

jennywanger.com

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Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#51

Post by HEmanZ »

nicbou wrote: post #10
ifwinterco wrote: post #3

Ultimately the common thread in most of these cases seems to be a lack of purpose and meaning in life in general, not really an issue with the specific work environment. The purpose of life is to make meaningful human connections, become wiser, become a better person. This is something that some combination of family, traditional social structures and religion used to provide for a lot of people. "Create shareholder…

In my case, my work is being devalued by AI.[0] The same effort nets smaller and smaller returns every month, even though the work is _still_ necessary, because AI does not do original investigative work. It's hard to put work into something that might vanish in a few months. I'm starting to feel something a lot like how people describe burnout. I need to do a bunch of different things to stay afloat, but I ain't got…

I'm feeling the same way, and when I brought it up to some friends in tech it turned out in our group of 8 I was the least depressed.

The wife of another friend of mine confided in me that AI replacing his work in such a short time has made him depressed to the point she's getting scared he'll hurt himself.

I think we need a support group or something. But I'm too busy burning the candle at both ends trying to "catch the lifeboat" before its too late. So are most other engineers I know.

I'm sorry you're going through this but know not only are you not alone, but you're in the majority of software developers at this point (I think, anecdotally).

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#52

Post by Aurornis »

ifwinterco wrote: post #3

Ultimately the common thread in most of these cases seems to be a lack of purpose and meaning in life in general, not really an issue with the specific work environment. The purpose of life is to make meaningful human connections, become wiser, become a better person. This is something that some combination of family, traditional social structures and religion used to provide for a lot of people. "Create shareholder…

> not really an issue with the specific work environment.

I’ve contributed some time in a mentoring group. Many of the cases people would call “burnout” had little to do with their work. Once they started talking details about their life situation it would become obvious that their problems ran deeper, but blaming work was an easy way to externalize it and place the blame on easy villains: Corporations, capitalism, managers, coworkers.

There were a lot of situations like this where someone would get a new job, take fewer hours, or even some people requested demotions and took a pay cut. Then when nothing changed about their well-being, they’d shift to blaming something new at work. I talked to people who could seemingly find ways to “burnout” in every situation they’ve encountered from high school through job hopping. It’s really hard to get someone to accept that maybe the problem is running deeper than their environment, and maybe something they’re doing (unintentionally, I’m not trying to place blame) is actually leading to this outcome over and over again.

I agree that work coaching is not the solution. It presumes the diagnosis and anchors blame to work, which starts obscuring possibilities outside of that pre-chosen explanation. Regular old therapy from a trained therapist is probably a better place to start. Might be cheaper, too, especially if insurance is involved.

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#53

Post by aogaili »

goosejuice wrote: post #45
fusslo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're probably right Right now I have a mental block with reading ai written or ai enchanced text. So unless the article has a pre-2021 date... I'll ask ai to summarize it I think I'll eventually have to get over that bias

> Right now I have a mental block with reading ai written or ai enchanced text. So unless the article has a pre-2021 date... I'll ask ai to summarize it That's uh, an interesting solution. As long as it's your LLM?

But then you are reading an AI generated text as well?

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#54

Post by tclancy »

Aurornis wrote: post #46

If you didn’t catch on, this is an ad for coaching services. The solution it’s proposing is to start paying for coaching sessions with this person. The prose has a very AI feel to it, especially the second half where it starts breaking down into the AI-isms like “What actually shifts things” section header. The actual “coaching” examples are about addressing the people’s self-worth and self-perceptions, which is unco…

Interesting. It would seem to me to be a piece from someone who made a role for themselves and enjoys it enough to write about it, which was the kind of “truth marketing” we thought would win out in the Age of Blogging. It absolutely functions as an ad, but it was also worth a read.

>It’s a mismatch between who you are and what your current role or workplace is actually asking of you

Over the last five years ago I finally realized that is an issue for me. A combination of that plus having far too much of my (low) self-esteem bound up in needing praise from work. I chased my way to a senior role at a big SaaS that would look grand on my resume and paid quite well. After a little over two years, I simply resigned because the crippling feeling of not being useful at all was killing me. And I knew it wasn’t fixable, because my role was a “bullshit job”. So I took the summer off and that was wonderful, but when I started looking for work, for the first time in decades I had to chase it instead of it chasing me. Wound up at a startup that was a perfect fit: my chosen technology stack, still really small and needed fires put out.

It turned out they couldn’t live without the fires and thought the disaster they kept enlargening was good (VC money is a hell of a drug) and they severed me (along with a bunch of other firefighters they had hired) and finding a new gig wasn’t easier that time. Plus the one I found went under 6 days before I was to start.

I wound up taking on a QA role at a huge, old-school company and it is theoretically mind-numbing drudgery, but there was so much room for improvement that I started to dig it. Somewhere in there, two decades of depression eased all the way up. Now they’ve transitioned me into inventing their QA for AI and I am over the moon, digging into research papers, butting into high-level academic discussions and feel like I’ve found a fit. So I do think there’s something to what the author is saying.

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#55

Post by [deleted] »

Aurornis wrote: post #46

If you didn’t catch on, this is an ad for coaching services. The solution it’s proposing is to start paying for coaching sessions with this person. The prose has a very AI feel to it, especially the second half where it starts breaking down into the AI-isms like “What actually shifts things” section header. The actual “coaching” examples are about addressing the people’s self-worth and self-perceptions, which is unco…

[deleted]

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#56

Post by john_strinlai »

orwin wrote: post #47
john_strinlai wrote: post #16

over my long career, i have had the (dis)pleasure of working with many of these career/organization/employment consultant/coach types. if i can pass on a piece of advice for younger folk: avoid them. dont waste your money. especially now, if you want coach-style advice, just put your thoughts/problems into chatgpt or whatever. that's probably all the coach is going to do anyway.

I would never advise anyone to get mental health advice from a computer, but if you're contemplating using the service of those 'life coach', yeah, consider using an AI. Even Emacs' therapist.

>I would never advise anyone to get mental health advice from a computer,

yes, sorry, to be abundantly clear i am not suggesting to replace a licensed therapist with ai.

i am suggesting to replace "life coach", "job coach", etc.

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#57

Post by jpadkins »

ifwinterco wrote: post #3

Ultimately the common thread in most of these cases seems to be a lack of purpose and meaning in life in general, not really an issue with the specific work environment. The purpose of life is to make meaningful human connections, become wiser, become a better person. This is something that some combination of family, traditional social structures and religion used to provide for a lot of people. "Create shareholder…

The purpose of life is to make more life (children). Life forms that do not do that die out. Having children give you so much fulfillment and purpose.

There is a good book on this topic "Selfish reasons to have more kids" https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-selfish-reasons...

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#58

Post by cindyllm »

Aurornis wrote: post #52
ifwinterco wrote: post #3

Ultimately the common thread in most of these cases seems to be a lack of purpose and meaning in life in general, not really an issue with the specific work environment. The purpose of life is to make meaningful human connections, become wiser, become a better person. This is something that some combination of family, traditional social structures and religion used to provide for a lot of people. "Create shareholder…

> not really an issue with the specific work environment. I’ve contributed some time in a mentoring group. Many of the cases people would call “burnout” had little to do with their work. Once they started talking details about their life situation it would become obvious that their problems ran deeper, but blaming work was an easy way to externalize it and place the blame on easy villains: Corporations, capitalism, m…

[dead]

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#59

Post by tclancy »

tclancy wrote: post #54
Aurornis wrote: post #46

If you didn’t catch on, this is an ad for coaching services. The solution it’s proposing is to start paying for coaching sessions with this person. The prose has a very AI feel to it, especially the second half where it starts breaking down into the AI-isms like “What actually shifts things” section header. The actual “coaching” examples are about addressing the people’s self-worth and self-perceptions, which is unco…

Interesting. It would seem to me to be a piece from someone who made a role for themselves and enjoys it enough to write about it, which was the kind of “truth marketing” we thought would win out in the Age of Blogging. It absolutely functions as an ad, but it was also worth a read. >It’s a mismatch between who you are and what your current role or workplace is actually asking of you Over the last five years ago I fi…

Also, if it were an ad, wouldn’t the author have posted it? Someone found value in it.

Re: Burnt out on a three-day week

#60

Post by DougN7 »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #15
ifwinterco wrote: post #3

Ultimately the common thread in most of these cases seems to be a lack of purpose and meaning in life in general, not really an issue with the specific work environment. The purpose of life is to make meaningful human connections, become wiser, become a better person. This is something that some combination of family, traditional social structures and religion used to provide for a lot of people. "Create shareholder…

Burnout is learned and/or imposed helplessness. When your agency is missing it's like part of you is dying.

Can you expand on that? I’m not sure I agree, and at the same time I think you might be saying something profound that I haven’t understood.
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