111–120 of 463 posts
> “No way I’m burned out. Look at all the women that are actually suffering. Who am I but a privileged white chic taking up space.” It’s sad that so many white people have been conditioned to think this way.
I have a friend who once told me that they can only work for about 4 hours a day. When I challenged them that this seemed like a very priviledged position to be able to take, they insisted that it was actually true for pretty much anyone, it's just that as a society, as an economy, as a series of employer/employee relationships, we pretend that it's not. What they meant of course was not whether they could be "at the…
Meetings, administrative tasks, emails, chat messages, more meeting requests, for most people the default setup has all of this coming at them like a firehose, and then bizarre expectations build and build like sedimentary rock into this seabed of constant immediate response times and work without productivity, a feeling of working with nothing at the end to justify it.
The idea of "legacy" and the "craft" certainly poke at me often. I am able to develop software for myself that automate much of my job, allow me time to spend with my young family, and maintain my home. I sometimes wish I had the title, and had something I could point at and tell my son "Dad helped build that," one day, as my father did when we would pass a new sub-division of homes that he helped build. However knowing how much drive it takes to stay on top of the newest stack, etc, almost makes me want to strive to stay where I'm at: 40 hours and no more, relaxed, working from home, being with family, with the same salary I would have as a mid to senior dev... life certainly isn't always about the easy decisions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a weird fixation on productivity that gets drilled into our heads at a young age. It's beyond okay to not be running 100% all the time, regardless of what the paradigm espouses as value.
The problem I see is that the delivery system has evolved in many companies / tech in general to be JIT, but for human resources. While at FAANG, I was at capacity every week. So a 'normal' week (which was actually quite rare), I expected to spend 35-45 hours in work + meetings. But 75% of those weeks, some urgent issue would come up. Then you have an extra 15-25 hours of attending to the urgency, falling behind 5-15…
As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
I’m younger than you, had the same issue and solved it by working less and doing more outside. Lifting weights in the sun, mountain biking, golf, surfing. In understand this is a luxury not everyone can afford but what I do now is work from about 6-9am, go out during the day until about 3, work 4-6. Which if you add it up is still a solid 5 hour day. For whatever reason it just makes me more productive and sleep bett…
I see no point to be sitting at the computer if it's a beautiful day and I already got stuff done early or am going to do stuff late.
As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
As an example - we had a very useful, functional internal developer tool written in Elm (the language, not the mail program). The original devs all quit and no one was interested in learning a new language, so the tool is being shut down and "all" (minus the useful parts) content is moving to a half-assed mix of Wiki, Atlassian tools, and honestly just falling through the cracks.
I wasn't involved in the tool's development or depreciation, but just the fact that we have tons of interns and junior software devs around that couldn't be bothered or forced to learn a new language backs up your "I'm spent" motivation TED talk.
I think it’s pretty clear we have an epidemic of burnout on our hands. I think it’s a new phenomenon. And I think immersive online experiences are the underlying cause. I’ve lived much of my life for the past 30 years in virtual spaces of one form or another, from MUDs to IRC to MMORPGs to early and then fully evolved social media. As commercial virtual space showed up, I noticed the engagement hooks and potential fo…
I agree, but I also agree with your observation that a lot of the burnout is coming from the activities that people choose to fill their free time with.
I see a lot of people in the tech communities boasting about quitting social media, but they then go on to spend countless hours every day on non-traditional social media like Reddit or HN. Or they endlessly scroll news articles and outrage bait that isn’t really relevant to their lives. Or they spend hours upon hours in video games or watching TV. Or they immerse themselves in drama around things that don’t directly impact them, like anti-vaxxer debates or Twitch live-streamer drama or online culture war arguments.
I’ve also noticed several common themes among the burnout-resistant people I’ve worked with, even at some very demanding jobs. These people tend to be unaware of the latest news headlines or the latest culture war debates. They aren’t keeping up with weekly COVID case counts or fretting over the latest anti-vax trends because they aren’t interested in the drama. They program in their language and framework of choice and aren’t concerned about using the latest and greatest every time the landscape changes (with allowances for steady learning and adapting to mature trends). They’re happy with their job even if it isn’t paying top of market year after year. Most importantly, they spend their free time doing things that make them happy and active instead of angry or lazy.
Unfortunately, I think HN comments and articles tend more toward the former group because debate is interesting and results in engagement. That’s partially why burnout seems to be an epidemic especially in HN discussions, whereas the situation isn’t as universally dire in my real-world experience. Still a problem, but there’s more to it than blaming jobs and Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.
Like you said, a lot of the idle activities that people choose to fill their free time are actually quite draining.
I had a third kid 4 months ago and my company is transitioning from a small to medium-sized company. I am the tech lead/architect on our company's flagship software and I am constantly struggling with the skill sets of my friendly but incompetent members of my support teams.
We are also trying to move 14-15 customers from single-tenancy to a brand new multi-tenant platform that uses a totally new stack at the same time we are transitioning all our processes.
It's INSANE.
PS: Writing this comment was really helpful for organizing my thoughts for the meetings I have this week. Hopefully I can communicate more effectively to leadership about what is happening. Thanks hackernews.
I have a friend who once told me that they can only work for about 4 hours a day. When I challenged them that this seemed like a very priviledged position to be able to take, they insisted that it was actually true for pretty much anyone, it's just that as a society, as an economy, as a series of employer/employee relationships, we pretend that it's not. What they meant of course was not whether they could be "at the…
Depends on how you classify "productive" in a 40-50hr work week I would say 50-60% is productive actual work (i.e writing a program, or doing the actual task you are paid to do), 10-15% is administrative (making task list, organizing your work, reporting about your work, etc) 10-15% is meetings about your work, 10-15% is socialization with co-workers, unofficial breaks, informal meetings, etc. So if you do not count…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a weird fixation on productivity that gets drilled into our heads at a young age. It's beyond okay to not be running 100% all the time, regardless of what the paradigm espouses as value.
The problem I see is that the delivery system has evolved in many companies / tech in general to be JIT, but for human resources. While at FAANG, I was at capacity every week. So a 'normal' week (which was actually quite rare), I expected to spend 35-45 hours in work + meetings. But 75% of those weeks, some urgent issue would come up. Then you have an extra 15-25 hours of attending to the urgency, falling behind 5-15…