Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

This isn't meant to play down others But seeing comments here, I feel they don't know what slavery is like or have come close to working like it.

My dad in his mid 30s worked 13 hours a day + house work...he was a single parent back in 2011. There were no fixed weekends off. Sometimes, there would be a cool off season (heavy rain) but that's it. It was also pretty hard physical labor outside on a bike in 45C+ for hours in long summers. There was no AC or air cooler.

He earned $220 monthly as a salary after taxes. Of course, this was/is a small town and costs are not much but that was still pretty tight for a family of two - one of which was a small kid.

People at that stage don't complain anymore about work. They don't say anything at all about it. They just continue without speaking or showing any signs of burnout. The burnout may be realised for a short duration but afterwards, it's normal. I have done this comparison before and I think it still holds true. You are like a fighter jet or ambulance. Even if you are damaged, you can't stop and worry about it. There are people to look after or protect and without you, they will suffer. This is pretty counterproductive in practice. First, you will deteriorate your health and ignore any suggestions to improve short term issues. Second comes the switch from short term health problems to long term ones, this is a point of denial. At this point, those people stop caring about what happens to them and will dive even deeper.

I don't see my dad and think, "oh he looks like a slave". (Neither does he because he thinks it will pay off and he doesn't have time to be self aware of how much "slave" he is)

In any case, I feel slave is a pretty bad remark to describe a person.

I hope some people in the comments realise this.

I was wondering if/when Amazon would get mentioned in this thread, lol.

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Cop-out rationalization: conventional wisdom holds that IT/CS folks should jump every 2-3 years or they're leaving money on the table -- and turnover rates reflect that. They're going in 2 years anyway, so get what you want out of them before they go. Most of them can't write fizzbuzz anyway, and it's easy to poach better talent by throwing money at them.

> Interestingly, and in my observation, the managers got more leeway than individual contributors in terms of evolving slowly

Managers run the system, so the system evolves to support them and their needs, like a more reasonable pace. Another way to look at it is if you've made it through the burnout phase then you're going to hang around longer, so it makes sense to hold on to proven performers who have much longer employment horizons.

Yeah, but if you ignore that part of the article, it's a pretty good description of burnout.

That’s the thing about burnout; it feels great because you’re so productive and respected ... until one day your energy is gone. It might take years, it depends on how much support you get from people around at managing your stress, and of course it depends on your own ability to manage it too. I’m skeptical of how effective toys like a Rolex and booze is long term at easing the stress.

My ex-wife felt like she was on top of the world until she was burnt out and it developed into full fledged depression at age 27. I’m not saying everyone will end up like her, everyone won’t develop lung cancer from smoking either.

Serfdom is a better metaphor. Microserfs was published in 1994:

“The plot of the novel has two distinct movements: the events at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, and the move to Silicon Valley and the "Oop!" project.”

”The novel begins in Redmond as the characters are working on different projects at Microsoft's main campus. Life at the campus feels like a feudalistic society, with Bill Gates as the lord, and the employees the serfs. The majority of the main characters...are living together in a "geek house", and their lives are dedicated to their projects and the company. Daniel's foundations are shaken when his father, a longtime employee of IBM, is laid off. The lifespan of a Microsoft coder weighs heavily on Daniel's mind.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs

Turns out the author was onto something:

”When Microserfs first came out, most people thought it was a tightly focused anthropological look at a tiny group of historically transient information workers in the American Pacific Northwest. It turns out they were forming a template of the way everyone else in the world works in and around information. As time went on it became a lot broader, instead of a lot narrower, which is what happened with Generation X.”

— Coupland, The Times, June 1998