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Burnout

johnnyrodgers.is

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Re: Burnout

#31

Post by metalgearsolid »

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression?

Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.

I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration.

My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.

Re: Burnout

#32

Post by mikeash »

hellisothers wrote: post #19
didgeoridoo wrote: post #11

My wife is a clinical psychologist focusing on the mental health impact of high-pressure jobs. She had me build this “Burnout Calculator” based on a self-evaluation protocol they use in their practice. Leaving it here in case it’s helpful for anyone: https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator

Assuming this is a relatively standardized protocol this is a great idea. However, getting a score at the end and then the tag line “you’re fine but you should contact us anyway to see if therapy could help” feels icky

It’s exactly the sort of straightforward, low-key advertising I’d like to see more of. “We offer Service. Consider us if you need Service.”

Re: Burnout

#33

Post by polote »

metalgearsolid wrote: post #31

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexpla…

it is called bore out

Re: Burnout

#34

Post by blinkingled »

dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

> because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences.

This resonates with me a 100%. We forgot that we aren't machines and our mind and soul needs variations - clutching on to something, letting go/resting and moving on to something else is necessary physically and psychologically.

Absence of that we have sustained stress and resulting bad consequences.

Re: Burnout

#35

Post by anmipo »

metalgearsolid wrote: post #31

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexpla…

Absolutely.

We get stressed when job requirements mismatch our abilities. Usually there's too much work, and we deal with burnout. Sometimes, however, the mismatch goes the other way round, you are overqualified for the job and it becomes excruciatingly boring. That's boreout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout

Re: Burnout

#36

Post by westoncb »

dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

> more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self.

That rings true to me. My speculation as to why: at the most general level, our 'work' in life resembles a hierarchical optimization process--goals and sub-goals (and so on) forming a structure defined by nested utility functions.

Our professional goals (and their day-to-day sub-goals), may be pretty significant, but they're still subservient to more fundamental goals implied by fundamental values.

I think burnout is working extensively on some sub-goal (that may be large enough to appear as a top-level goal in itself), that is fundamentally misaligned with some ancestor goal(s): working on it makes no progress or even regression on more significant goals.

I think a common source of this misalignment for tech people of my generation (I'm 33) is being taught as kids that we can do "anything we put our minds to" and that fundamentally we should be aiming to "change the world". Then we grow up and find ourselves faced with the practical reality of the large scale professional world where not everyone gets to run things and the vast majority of folks end up working on insignificant little corners of someone else's probably anti-altruistic money making scheme--just consider the opposition between the early-formed life goals/values and the day-to-day goals of your typical tech worker.

(And perhaps what makes it extra bad is that contemporary perception of how evil/exploitative etc. tech is, is quite high: our culture is steeped in the likes of Black Mirror and other sources of tech paranoia [or maybe just tech cautionaries--who knows].)

Re: Burnout

#37

Post by cheesymuffin »

dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

Do you also believe that low birthrates and rampant athiesm are causing the degeneration of your race? Honk honk? Dogwhistle?

Re: Burnout

#38

Post by singron »

coffeefirst wrote: post #18
jacknews wrote: post #7

Is this really burnout, or just overheating? To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc. This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.

Two things surprised me about burnout: 1. It has physical symptoms. 2. It doesn't go away when you stop. Vacation is good. But two weeks after my vacation I had a rough couple of days, nothing that I couldn't handle before, and I was right back where I started. I've come to think of it like a mental equivalent of a torn muscle. Recovery takes time—probably far more time than I expect, and if you overexert it, even a…

Sometimes vacation makes it worse because it makes you realize just how much your job makes you unhappy.

Re: Burnout

#39

Post by kirstenbirgit »

Something I think that has helped me avoid burnout is to stop at 16.00 (or whenever your regular working day ends) and leave work, physically and mentally.

On the weekends, I don't think about work ever (unless something happens to the system and I'm on-call, which very rarely happens. I realise I'm lucky in this regard.)

I just can't work more than 6-7 hours on a given day. Working more won't make me more productive, on the other hand I'll waste more time on reddit since I can't stay focused and I can "catch up" my pre-noon procrastination later.

A part of this, of course, is to insist on not working outside work hours from the beginning of joining a company. In doing so, your colleagues will learn to know not to disturb you outside of work unless it's really necessary.

I feel like that's the mistake the author of this article is committing: not doing anything else than work. Everyone needs time off to recoup no matter what business they're in.

Re: Burnout

#40

Post by lanstin »

blinkingled wrote: post #34
dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

> because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. This resonates with me a 100%.…

Even within a purely work perspective, we arent machines. My productivity (as perceived by the impact of my work not Lines of Code) gies up and down. I will have a good year and save millions of dollars or make a platform that ends up employing dozen software engineers for many products and then you know have years where I make some python framework used by five people have 10 percent better latency. There is a certain tendency by management to reward me in the up years and punish me in the down years but for me as a human they aren't two things. Stuff just goes in cycles. I don't get the big years without the fallow years. I focus on learning stuff each year and trying to get people to always improve things a bit, and it all works out. At least i have learned a lot of cool stuff. And management still hasn't come up with floating promotions where you are a Senior blah blah blah for 24 months then can ebb back.
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