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Burnoutindex.org

burnoutindex.org

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141–150 of 190 posts

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#141

Post by chrshawkes »

I feel this industry is burned out due to the fact that the magic doesn't feel like it's there anymore. If we want a salary we're forced to sign NDA's & NCA's and forego all our personal ambitions to the company.

We have endless pointless tooling for basic shit like writing CRUD apps. Need to make a web app? Install Node to use NPM to install a million and a half packages to write a Hello World example. It's cool though, this project was made by so and so, even though the creators themselves aren't using it in production. God forbid you're writing an SPA, that will be 2 million dependencies. So many noob's entering the work force every day trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, constantly cheer-leading the latest worthless framework which is built upon the same old logic used for the past 40 years.

Managers and tech leads suffering from blogitis reading some dumb ass opinion on why he chose React etc.. and pushing the entire team and company in that direction. As far as I can tell, our webapps are still a broken pile of patches just the same as they we're 10 years ago. Only this time around, they're much more difficult to write and maintain.

On top of that we have endless meetings all day, arbitrary 1 - 5 ranking systems, biased promotions and endless arbitrary deadlines. Not to worry though, Agile and all it's pointless complexities to the rescue.

Finally, we have smug spoiled people all over this industry talking down to us about the tech we use and how much smarter they are because they hit the jackpot due to mommy and daddy's connections etc...

It's not the wild west anymore and tech isn't nearly as fun or as competitive for the individual. It's just a choice between the corporate grind or starving startup hipster.

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#142

Post by hug »

baumy wrote: post #138
hug wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you mean by apathy. I'd look up the definition for you, but honestly I can't be bothered. Hyuk hyuk. Anyway: I am incredibly productive in my ops job, where I feel like the platforms I support are largely meaningless and do nothing but drive efficiency to achieve nothing important for no one in particular. I feel I am driving 'value creation' for people whose wealth is already immeasurable, in a wa…

This isn't on topic, but assuming you were serious about writing novels in your free time - I enjoyed this comment so much I read it several times, and probably will come back and read it again at some point in the semi-distant future. You have a wonderful way with words.

I was serious about the writing and the cocktail bar.

I owe you a heartfelt thank-you: It plainly and honestly brings me an incredible happiness when people compliment my writing.

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#143

Post by adtac »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #87
Freak_NL wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No personal information is asked, so the dataset will be pretty useless for monetization (you could just computationally generate a couple of thousand of responses and pretend it was the real deal). uBlock Origin blocked one weird tracker-like third-party I didn't recognize: fullstory.com. The rest were the usual Google analytics crap.

The IP address (therefore city and country) and browser data already says a lot.

At this point, it's just 0.0.0.0/0 and Chrome

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#146

Post by monktastic1 »

bagacrap wrote: post #88

When I joined the tech industry in my early 20s and for years after, I noticed that many in their 30s or older seemed burned out. It didn't make much sense to me, because to become a tech worker takes drive and ambition and how would you just lose that one day? Now, 12 years on I can definitely see how burnout is so prevalent. It's like living in the desert and hearing about people drowning. You'd ask yourself, "how…

For me it's a bit similar to how I felt as a kid playing with legos. Who wouldn't want to play with legos many hours a day, most days every week? It never occurred to me that there'd come a point where I wanted to know that my work genuinely improved lives. It turns out that being good at something and getting paid for it isn't always enough. It's hard to avoid the question of meaning forever.

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#147

Post by redisman »

Honest question, is someone not mentally drained after programming(or just working) all day? That has been my experience for my 10+ year career every single day. Am I doing it wrong?

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#149

Post by redisman »

bagacrap wrote: post #88

When I joined the tech industry in my early 20s and for years after, I noticed that many in their 30s or older seemed burned out. It didn't make much sense to me, because to become a tech worker takes drive and ambition and how would you just lose that one day? Now, 12 years on I can definitely see how burnout is so prevalent. It's like living in the desert and hearing about people drowning. You'd ask yourself, "how…

I'm also at 12 years now, extrapolating to 25 years in the industry is actually pretty difficult to imagine.

Re: Burnoutindex.org

#150

Post by sangnoir »

burntoutfire wrote: post #122
dunkelheit wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the term burnout was first applied to social workers. Just imagine the situation they are in: a steady stream of people with serious problems in their lives comes to you and you are supposed to help them. But you have so little time and power to help any particular case that you hardly seem to make any difference. And no matter what you do that stream never ends. No wonder that feelings of sheer helplessness,…

> ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.

> Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.

You might be confusing cause and effect; you feel those things after being burnt out. Once upon a time, I worked at a start up doing very rewarding, high-impact work with cutting edge technology...just too much of it. I could feel burnout creeping up[1] and I asked my boss for time off, he agreed, but feared I would not return after my break and pressured me to finish the project before leaving by working at an even faster pace - you can guess what happened next. I walked in one morning, sat and my desk and I discovered I no longer had any gas left in the tank: I was completely empty inside, no motivation, no interest in any doing anything work-related, all I could do was browse web comics all day, and even this didn't bring me any joy at the time.

I took my break and switched employers soon after (which wasn't my plan initially), fortunately the new organization had a much slower pace, it took me months to get close to my previous level of productivity. Never again.

1. When weekends doesn't feel like enough time away from work, you might be on your way to burnout

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