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How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

thecodist.com

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Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#31

Post by goda90 »

michaelchisari wrote: post #26
mentos wrote: post #22

The burnout I'm struggle with is cognitive fatigue. I love programming but find my mind can only handle so many hours. Answer is simple, take some time off and exercise but easier said than done. I always thought this is what people referred to when they spoke about burnout?

> I love programming but find my mind can only handle so many hours. I think coders in general are useless outside of a 7 hour window of programming. Sure, there's exceptions. Crunch time or when you're particularly inspired. But my experience is that any place that insists on 9+ hour days is really just encouraging their developers to "veg out" for those hours past the healthy 7 hours.

What I've heard is that when someone is worked overtime they always end up working under time too, whether they are sitting at work or not.

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#32

Post by hyperpape »

I'm not saying this to try and discredit this post. However, there's a very interesting trilogy here:

Oct 2012: Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This At 56 http://thecodist.com/article/yes_i_still_want_to_be_doing_th...

Jul 2015: How I've Avoided Burnout During More Than Three Decades As A Programmer [this article]

April 2016: My Biggest Regret As A Programmer [is not going into management] http://thecodist.com/article/my-biggest-regret-as-a-programm...

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#33

Post by andretti1977 »

I avoided burn out becoming a freelance developer. So it is true that there are still difficulties but it really changed my work-life: always something new to learn, new challenges and the possibility to say "no, i won't do this job": obviously you will lose some job opportunities so you have to balance "No" and lost incomes but it is really better then burn out or hate a job that i truly love.

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#34

Post by quonn »

hyperpape wrote: post #32

I'm not saying this to try and discredit this post. However, there's a very interesting trilogy here: Oct 2012: Yes I Still Want To Be Doing This At 56 http://thecodist.com/article/yes_i_still_want_to_be_doing_th... Jul 2015: How I've Avoided Burnout During More Than Three Decades As A Programmer [this article] April 2016: My Biggest Regret As A Programmer [is not going into management] http://thecodist.com/article/m…

Wow. The lesson here is perhaps to not kill certain doubts with various defense mechanisms except as a short-term strategy for situations that will eventually pass. Instead, facing the doubts and making necessary changes while it's not too late may be better to avoid future regrets.

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#36

Post by kuhzaam »

yuumei wrote: post #17

Any advice for someone that really enjoys the work, but has been at the same place 5 years and is underpaid?

Why are you still at the same place you've been for 5 years if you are underpaid?

I don't mean that as a dig of any kind, just trying to get an idea of what your motivations are. Maybe you really love it there aside from feeling underpaid, or maybe you don't feel like you have the adequate skills to make a move?

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#37

Post by bikamonki »

I think your first point is the most relevant: endless hours stuck trying to finish a project while struggling with a tight deadline/budget. It all boils down to a common problem amongst developers: guesstimates.

I believe it is a shared fault between clients and consultants. The former does not want to spend money/time preparing complete in-depth requirements/functional descriptions, they want to start yesterday and deliver tomorrow. On the other side, the programmer that bids on the safe side (b/c requirements are a blurry incomplete list of wanna-haves and it's better to over-estimate) runs the risk of not getting the contract, so he commits to a dead-end project: underpaid and overworked.

After many weeks of coding stuff that was not on a list, naturally one burns out. One subtlety: the burnout may not be due to the actual number of hours worked but to the fact that one does not see an end to it, one can never call it done (pressumably waiting to collect a payment due on delivery).

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#38

Post by Joeri »

galdosdi wrote: post #3

Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?

Having battled with burn-out myself twice I noticed there were some general principles at work for me:

(1) The cause must be addressed for recovery to start.

(2) Getting out of the hole takes as long as sliding into it.

(3) The key thing was to find the joy of programming again, and to just have fun in general. Hobby projects helped.

Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer

#39

Post by CuriouslyC »

formula1 wrote: post #2

I really appreciate posts like these. Alot of posts that get popular on hacker news are about the struggle between management/developers and the best practice for success. This on the other hand is far more relatable to me. I am a developer that gets burnt out on jobs quickly and don't have a mentor I can look up to. A post like this gives me actions/patterns/history of someone that is still working and still wants t…

I don't know if this will help you, but in my case the only times I've ever felt like I was heading for burnout were when I was when I was writing fairly mundane code under time constraints. If you can move into a job role where you spend more time learning and solving problems than coding everything will get a lot better.
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