31–40 of 92 posts
Great read and good take-away message "if your not enjoying your job, try something else" - it's a medicine that is sometimes very difficult to take. Speaking of medicine - you were given a twice daily injection for six weeks, and you don't know what was in the injection?! > I still don’t know what was in it but surely it was some really good stuff :)
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Your first paragraph now is aligned with my own statement, which is either that it's deliberate or accidental overwork. My conclusion was that people need to be able to recognize that there's a problem (either in themselves, co-workers, or employees) and be able to talk about it. Your point is that people should keep this sort of issue hush-hush. It is in that where we disagree. While it may be best for someone, depe…
> Your first paragraph now is aligned with my own statement, which is either that it's deliberate or accidental overwork. No, your posts imply that burnout is entirely work related. > Your point is that people should keep this sort of issue hush-hush. You missed the "in any way that can be traced back to your real name" part. Posting a story like this under your full name, with a picture of your face, can have conseq…
But given that your advice was only meaningful to those who want to get future employment, I think my assumption that - in the context of your comment - there's a strong job component to being burned out is valid.
"Hush-hush" doesn't mean completely secret. It can also mean "not openly practiced or engaged in or shown or avowed". If one has to be anonymous to discuss it, or lie or demure if asked point blank 'did you write this piece?' or 'are you burned out?', then it's a problem. Ditto for 'you try to hide it on your CV'.
Now, I may be using 'hush-hush' incorrectly, as it's mid-20th century slang, chiefly British. My original point remains, which is that your original response used language to reenforce existing social mores ("something you better not blog").
It doesn't even consider that the person who write the piece may be well aware of everything you wrote, took it into account, and still believes it's better to write under a real name.
After all, anonymous reports are often dismissed on grounds that they are anonymous, which lets the person making the report lie, exaggerate, and otherwise make things up without fear of consequences.
> even I wasn’t even 30 at that time
I don't want to sound like a grammar nazi, but might I suggest proofreading the next time.
> weak-up-call > even I wasn’t even 30 at that time I don't want to sound like a grammar nazi, but might I suggest proofreading the next time.
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Happened to me a couple months ago. Fainted on my desk, had to go to the hospital by ambulance. Almost 8 weeks at home. Don't wait for it to happen.
> Don't wait for it to happen. Sounds so much like what's happening to me here, yet how to distinguish between the "real thing" and confirmation bias?
One day, I was at my desk, speaking on the phone with a work colleague. On my side, there was another colleague also speaking to me. I started to see everything blur. I tried to speak but I couldn't. Started to feel a huge pain in the chest. I remember putting my hand against my heart and then passed out. - When I recovered my senses (a couple of seconds later), I couldn't feel my legs, I was shaking, and couldn't speak. It was terrifying. I really though I was having some sort of heart attack. In the end, was a really bad burnout, stress, altogether. I'm still doing my job (sysadmin), but I don't know how long will I be able to stand this.
So, take care!
I don't mean to be a jerk or anything, but a burnout is something you better not blog about or write about on facebook or speak about in any way that can be traced back to your real name, if you ever want to find another job again. Potential employers will google the names of applicants before an interview, and if the first thing that comes up is your name and photo on a story about your first job burnout, you're goi…
I would love for this to happen, but this never ever happens. I would love it if, at some point, employers looked at my Github account before the job interview, or if they read some of my comments on Hacker News (I put my Hacker News account on my resume, but they still don't read it), or if they read a few of my better known essays, so I could walk into the job interview and we could skip over the basics and start talking about advanced subjects, but instead, every job interview starts off with "Do you know what Object Oriented Programming is? Define an object. Do you know what the keyword 'private' means?" I would love it if a potential employer read about the disaster that struck my last business, and then we could have a serious talk about risks and burn rates and being honest about bad news, when all the news is bad. Those would be interesting conversations. There are some potential employers who would immediately know that they disagree with my views, if they ever searched for my name, but they never do. At this point, Google associates my name with the blog post "Object Oriented Programming is an expensive disaster which must end", which was much discussed here on Hacker News and Reddit and other places. Those potential employers who are strongly in favor of the Object Oriented approach could avoid a job interview with me, if they ever searched for my name. But they don't. Not ever. In the 16 years that I have done professional programming, no potential employer has ever used the Internet to try to track down information about me (or if they did, they were very good actors, and pretended to be ignorant).
This makes me sad. Live to work, not work to live.
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I couldn't disagree more. I would fit into the 'potential employers' part of your comment, having hired In fact, I would prefer a candidate who knows their limits and is obviously willing to communicate them. I would view a person who would publicly talk about a subject that few others in their position do as someone I would want on my team, as I would view them as more likely to not only push when their workload/lif…
Unfortunately, there are still many bosses who would be put off by a mental health issue in someones past though. In a former role, I interviewed a candidate who cited burnout as one of the reasons for a career change a few years earlier. After the interview my boss (who was in the interview) made a big thing about how that put him off. I think it was his main reason for rejecting the candidate. It is important we do…
I don't mean to be a jerk or anything, but a burnout is something you better not blog about or write about on facebook or speak about in any way that can be traced back to your real name, if you ever want to find another job again. Potential employers will google the names of applicants before an interview, and if the first thing that comes up is your name and photo on a story about your first job burnout, you're goi…
Dodged a bullet there.