231–239 of 239 posts
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Until you have children, then they come first.
That's not entirely wrong, but it's not quite correct either. When our first was born, the nurses at the maternity ward (about as pro-baby advocacy a bunch as one could imagine) advised us to "take care of yourselves so you can take care of the baby"; you're not doing your children any favors if you're driving yourself into a breakdown.
I think burnout is just depression. but what do I know
Ive had both. For me, they are very different. Burnout is not being able to make myself do a job I am completely capable of doing, which I once loved doing, to the point thoughts of self harm start to creep in. Depression is feeling worthless about everything and anything. With depression, I cannot do anything. With burnout, I can easily keep doing things, I just cant do that one thing.
Must be nice to be financially comfortable enough to give that up. I’m glad that they’re addressing the issue, but how many people are stuck with the mortgage and the student debt and the family that needs almost every penny of their income to make ends meet for every person that has the resources to do drop out of the tech industry in less than half a year?
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OMG you've nailed exactly what I've been feeling for the past six months or so. :/
Take it seriously. I don't know if there's a ton of studies around this, but IMHO there's a lot of anecdata that suggests that this sort of burnout can be a lot like other bodily trauma... a little bit of it isn't permanent, but if you ignore it and keep re-traumatizing yourself, it can become permanent. I've never personally experienced true burnout, but I also have a policy of taking it seriously and making sure th…
Sometimes I'm just really not feeling like work and take a day off. Unless something important is happening that day, management could care less. Sometime I stay up late the night before because something caught my attention outside work and I couldn't put it down. I'll take the next day off.
Helps that my company have a seemingly generous PTO policy (at 5 years it a bit more than a day per paycheck (every other Friday)). If you're not a problem employee everyone just wishes you a good day.
But, I don't think I really felt burnout before the pandemic. Working alone has pushed me to the point where focusing feels like a strenuous task. My most productive stints (in my subjective self-opinion) are when I'm working with other people on a call (my role is basically half research / half implementing it).
Part of me hopes going back into the office will help calm my mind but I'm just not sure.
Must be nice to be financially comfortable enough to give that up. I’m glad that they’re addressing the issue, but how many people are stuck with the mortgage and the student debt and the family that needs almost every penny of their income to make ends meet for every person that has the resources to do drop out of the tech industry in less than half a year?
It sure helps. Are you saying that only people who are in the worst possible situation (unemployed, in a civil war, with cancer, raped daily, low IQ, blind, …) can talk about having problems?
No. I'm glad that they're tackling their burnout issues by changing professions, but I'm trying to have a conversation about how social and financial issues may keep other people in not as advantageous a position from doing the same. That's all.
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That's an interesting way to put it. Throughout 2020 I felt that way. I just could not force myself to work, and I've been in the workforce a while (I'm 39 and had a job non-stop since I was 12). I know how important it is to maintain income. I was thrown into a new position where I didn't know how to do the work, so I was trying to figure everything out with a new platform, and I was mostly isolated without any help…
> make a rich man richer While true, this can be a very self-defeating way of thinking about it. The reality is that we are paid quite well, and it takes an entity with lots of resources to be willing to take on the risk of a fulltime hire like us. It's not easy to build a business that gets to that stage; believe me, I tried. So on the whole "working for the man" is a very rational choice, your end of the deal isn't…
What you're describing is far more rare. Building a product out with no buyer waiting at all. It happens, but that's generally known as bad business and a prototype is at least shopped around before any big money goes in. Usually the client has already signed on to start paying as soon as I join to work on it.
The rich man you're making richer is typically only different from you in that he's paying you less than the value you're creating. He's just holding the contract as a middle-man and his value add is perhaps limited to managing the project or relationship at most. Which you can end up handling as well in most cases.
The way you know my story is reality is because anywhere the money does not come in, you're let go. It's all contingent on you paying your own way and making the employer wealthier than they already likely are.
Employment is actually not a favor as people see it. It's a predatory arrangement with an extreme imbalance of power in the employer-employee relationship.
Finding a workers' cooperative resolves this conflict, or a professional lobbying organization (which are essentially de facto unions).
I don’t know how to frame this well and I apologize in advance. But I think this idea of “oh wow burnout is real I’m so woke” is a privileged person problem. I don’t mean that burnout is a first world problem, but that this “Burnout is real” is. I struggle to put my head in a place where I can be amazed that burnout is real and that I have to warn others of this “thing” as if it’s not part of millions of people’s liv…
I have worked in retail, dealt with some of the rudest people. Sometimes, I still get angry about it. But my job satisfaction was certainly higher back then. At the end of day, I was tired but I didn't had to think of work anymore. Sure I met some assholes, but I also met some great people, some are still my friends. Other jobs I had were tutoring, security guard, IT helpdesk. All these jobs had higher satisfaction a…
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> Renting is pound-for-pound far more expensive than owning. Come to Toronto and say that to my face. I'm going to laugh, and laugh, and...
I'm speaking as an American. Owning also lets you build equity and get it back someday.
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"Poor people have kids all the time, a lot of times they are even smart!" is extraordinarily classist. It makes a joke that based on the assumption that the majority of the time poor people are stupid. Not a good look to say something like that.
I think there is a charitable interpretation of that sentence where they were being tongue-in-cheek with the understanding that readers would all agree that obviously being born to a poor family does not determine your intelligence.