I've felt like I've had serious burnout for almost four years now. We've lost about 70% of our development team with no plans on filling the positions they've left open. We've not had a manager for over two years now. Haven't had a project manager for over two years. Our workload constantly increases. I recently got done with a stint of 45 days straight. Down to only 6 days a week now, but will be back to 7 before the end of the year to meet deadlines. I work for a healthcare company that is top 5 in size in the country. Our CEO had record compensation last year. I'm very excited by that. I love technology! What an interesting and exciting job.
Burnout is real – how to avoid it
101–110 of 128 posts
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If your company doesn't believe that burnout is an issue and ignores your "no"s, gives you zero control over what is on your plate, and pressures you culturally, then ...give notice and quit. No company would do this if they weren't completely toxic.
Far far easier said than done for many people. You never know a person's life situation - medical issues, financial obligations to family, etc. This also shifts the onus of the situation back onto the individual. Again, you are the one who determines if you burnout. No control? Just leave. If you stay, it's your fault if you burnout.
People who cant will have much better negotiating position when people who can actually leave set boundaries. Also, being software developer is not that bad job that you would be so much locked at one place. While there are some people who have no choice, many of us do have a choice.
Crazy hours are not something driven solely by management.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#103None of this advice really addresses the core issue: people don’t want to be on other people’s schedule nearly all the time for 30+ years of their adult life. It’s relentless and soul crushing. I get 4 weeks off a year, and even if I take them all in a row, the only thing I can think of once my vacation starts is “the clock is ticking till I have to be back in the office.” And that’s always in the back of my mind no matter what and will be till I retire or somehow figure out a way to get fuck you money. No amount of meditation, saying no, time management etc., can fix that. I basically have no control of my life until then. Is there any fix to this? Can there be any fix really?
My plan now is just to save aggressively until 40 or so, then either lean FIRE or switch to a 6 month on 6 month off contracting schedule.
The only other option I can think of is take a job I might enjoy. But all those kinds of jobs pay poorly (relative to a software engineer’s salary), so I’d be locking myself into the working world for an extra decade or longer.
Edit: I should note that I realize I am extremely fortunate to be in the situation I am. I don’t mean to sound like I’m ungrateful for a lot of the things in my life.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
While true, this doesn't have to actually mean being more assertive at your job. I worked at a place where I constantly had to be very up front about my boundaries and work limits. We would plan something, say some certain things can't be done for 2 weeks, and then two days later someone would come back and be like "So... about those tickets, could we actually squeeze them in this week? As well as all the other ticke…
Unfortunately for every one tech employee willing to set boundaries and say no, there are 10 in line outside the door, resume in hand, willing to say yes and burn themselves out. You can quit in protest but where are you going to go? You’re competing with dozens of talented people straight out of college willing to work 100 hour days for Mountain Dew and a dual screen workstation. Unless you believe the “Shortage Of…
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Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#105the only cure for burnouts in the us is a workers’ union. everything else is just attempting to deal with the symptom of the real problem of corporations having too much power.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. It's like overloading people constantly and then offering mediation classes so people can cope.
Wait .. this is exactly what my workplace is doing. I didn't attend the meditation because they clashed with my therapeutic daily walk..
My meditation teacher told me that the result of meditation shouldn’t be to tolerate BS but instead realizing that it is BS and changing things.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
While true, this doesn't have to actually mean being more assertive at your job. I worked at a place where I constantly had to be very up front about my boundaries and work limits. We would plan something, say some certain things can't be done for 2 weeks, and then two days later someone would come back and be like "So... about those tickets, could we actually squeeze them in this week? As well as all the other ticke…
Unfortunately for every one tech employee willing to set boundaries and say no, there are 10 in line outside the door, resume in hand, willing to say yes and burn themselves out. You can quit in protest but where are you going to go? You’re competing with dozens of talented people straight out of college willing to work 100 hour days for Mountain Dew and a dual screen workstation. Unless you believe the “Shortage Of…
I find this to be the perception of:
1. New engineers, and it's certainly valid. The net pros and cons of your abilities are equivalent to those coming straight out of college. You must set yourself apart from the competition by putting more time into your work or increasing the quality of your talent.
2. Experienced engineers who work for companies that devalue personal growth, and that is valid too. Our most challenging daily work will usually come from employers -- If that work isn't mentally stimulating, you're not learning anything, and nothing is being meaningfully done to separate you from those college level entries.
3. Experienced engineers who work in fields with a lower barrier to entry, and it seems valid to me. If your company's projects are more resilient to the mistakes novices will make, or there are less mistakes to make because it's easier to understand, it's difficult to increase the quality of your talent in a competitive way.
4. Experienced engineers who knowingly have poor talent quality, and it's valid. It's challenging for some people to critically think, to navigate the abstract nature of engineering, and to learn those deeper concepts that typically separate experts from novices -- And that is surely difficult to overcome.
5. Experienced engineers who believe they have poor talent quality but are indeed quite talented in meaningful ways, and it's invalid. It's imposter syndrome and it's absolutely rampant in our industry.
6. Experienced engineers with good talent quality but poor interpersonal skills, and its validity depends on your interpersonal growth. If you're not great at negotiating or you intensely value validation, you're certainly at risk to being taken advantage of, and not necessarily with malice on the company's part.
There is definitely a shortage of engineers with high talent quality in fields that require it. Many people believe weekly hours are the only competitive aspect of our industry and it simply isn't true in many cases.
While we will almost indefinitely feel pressure to stay busy, talented engineers have far more leverage to push back than they realize. Great engineers are hard to come by and many companies will work hard not to lose them.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#108Good compilation of the advice you often read about on the internet. However, a big factor in all of the solutions is having the support of the entire org/company. If your company doesn't believe that burnout is an issue and ignores your "no"s, gives you zero control over what is on your plate, and pressures you culturally, then to take back control, you are stuck fighting another battle on top of burnout. I've found…
Way back in ancient times, employees formed unions to demand better working conditions instead of waiting for a company to benevolently provide them. Replacing burnt out employees and writing good PR articles is cheaper and easier than fixing the many systemic issues that lead to it. They might get better productivity out of non-burnt workers, but companies are afraid to invest in employees that could leave any time for better opportunities. For better or worse, this is the situation that is incentivized by at-will employment and other factors.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#109Good compilation of the advice you often read about on the internet. However, a big factor in all of the solutions is having the support of the entire org/company. If your company doesn't believe that burnout is an issue and ignores your "no"s, gives you zero control over what is on your plate, and pressures you culturally, then to take back control, you are stuck fighting another battle on top of burnout. I've found…
> A good start to this conversation can be: What does Atlassian (or your company) do to prevent burnout throughout their company?
I agree completely with this, since this is a health AND socio-cultural problem. Trying to solve the problems without the necessary cultural resources in any organization will just put a heavier weight on the worker, and it will eventually crack him. Without true commitment this is a Catch-22.
Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it
#110Burnout is an inevitable consequence of the modern workplace for a lot of people. A lot of those who don't have any problem with burnout are the ones burning out other people. In the modern workplace, workers are often given a task without being given the good conditions to take it through, or a good overview of the context that the task is part of. A good percentage of the tasks but not all are hot potatoes, and it…
> Burnout is an inevitable consequence of the modern workplace for a lot of people I agree 100% For me, I found two workable solutions. 1. Get to work at 6am and get a ton done before 8am, or stay after 6pm and get a ton done. I basically write off the hours of 8am-5pm, knowing I'll achieve essentially zero due to meetings, interruptions, 'urgent' emails, etc. 2. Get to work at a normal time, put my stuff on my desk,…
Unless you have the short sleep gene, it's going to be hard to be at the office at 6 AM. This means you wake up at minimum 5 AM probably earlier and would have to be sleeping at 9 PM to get 8 hours sleep, which means being in bed at 8 PM, not doable with kids.
Also, you will have the tendency, no matter how early you start, to always leave late anyway, at least that's what happened to me so I would end up getting in slightly later.
As for option 2, it's really not an option for the majority of companies. The things you need to work are on the internal LAN, you have a desktop and not a laptop, etc.
The constant interruptions either in person, by email or chat in the open space prevent from getting anything done, I used to stay later and have my most productive hours late in the evening.
Still, there was occasionally some colleague that would also stay late due to having to catch a bus or a plane and would chat all the time.
It was doable, but I always felt I was constantly living on the edge, always scrambling to get things finished in the last day of the dealine, thinking what I'm going to say on the status meeting that immediately interrupts the work at the beginning of the morning, etc.
The only thing surprising to me in these working conditions is how there are not MORE people burning out, I suspect it happens to a lot of people at least once, and then they learn to recognize the signs and leave the company before things get to that point.
But I don't think it's about taking more yoga classes, meditating or whatever, it's the working conditions and not the people.
People are getting grinded like beef chuck by these companies, these working conditions are literally taking years out of peoples lives, and no one calls out these companies by the harm that they cause to society.
Also, a lot of the work people are so busy with is completely unnecessary and people know it. Several times I was scrambling for deadline after deadline doing super "urgent" stuff, and one day I left and I literally wasn't even replaced!