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Burnout is caused by resentment

iamnotaprogrammer.com

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Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#31

Post by joshu »

anontheanon wrote: post #17

Haha. I am currently going through this phase at my current firm. I can almost track how I have reached this phase: 1. I find on the first day that in the nine months before I joined the company, three people who were doing the same stuff I do were fired. 2. I make an expensive move from a different state. Then on the first day get told that the move in contract had changed and was forced to be sign the new one. An i…

re the bonding activities: i've decided they should a) be fun and b) be instead of work. otherwise it's just forced.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#32

Post by nandemo »

boofar wrote: post #30

Most here have commented 3-4 hours ago, but 2 hours ago Isaac Yonemoto left an excellent comment on the blog. So if you read this message, because you're checking the thread for new discussion, I encourage you to check out his comment as well. :-)

Indeed the comment is better than the post.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#33

Post by Aaronontheweb »

I agree. The biggest reason why employees (or hell, founders too) quit is because they don't feel appreciated.

If I'm working 60-70 hours a week and have a never-ending stream of people inside the company griping at me about why I wasn't able to get non-essential-to-my-role task X,Y, or Z done for them (this is what being in a big company feels like) - that really starts to mount even for employees who know that they're appreciated by their immediate peers and leadership.

Being appreciated by your managing team or your peers isn't enough - YOU need to feel like you're doing a good job. Even someone with a stalwart self-sureness will crumble if they feel like they're constantly failing to deliver what the business needs.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#34

Post by polyfractal »

Agathos wrote: post #26
cletus wrote: post #20

At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so I'm not authority, etc etc). stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one time or another. There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Goog…

> you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you. As a recovering academic, I felt a twinge of horror when I read this. When I didn't love the work I pushed on mainly out of guilt, and it was more than I could carry after a while. Maybe I should have tried resentment.

As another recovering ex-academic, I would often tell my friends that academic science (biology in my case) keeps 90% of people around because of guilt and a misplaced sense of honor/duty.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#35

Post by matwood »

makmanalp wrote: post #19
j_baker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that there's really that much data on the subject (and if there is, I probably wouldn't be able to disclose it). I will say this though: I've never been asked to work long hours. Nor have I ever been assigned enough work that I've had to work long hours. We tend to not have fixed deadlines, so it's rare that I have to work in crunch mode. Some people love their jobs and work at all hours. Google is more…

The interesting thing about a culture where the long work day is more common than not is that it starts becoming an expectation even though it isn't codified in any rule. So for example you'd be less likely to get a raise or promotion than a person who puts in more hours than the required. So even though you're not abusing the company you get less benefits for doing the amount of work you're getting paid for.

So for example you'd be less likely to get a raise or promotion than a person who puts in more hours than the required.

If person A does more work than person B who should be promoted and paid more? Some people get more work done than other people because they are smarter. Others get more work done because they simply put in more hours. Is there really much difference between the two?

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#36

Post by anthonyb »

philh wrote: post #29
MrFoof wrote: post #2

I'd agree. Every time I've quit, it's because I felt I was repeatedly getting the short end of the stick, and management was expecting me to roll over every time I brought such things up. I quit my first job at 15 1/2. I worked at a Wal-Mart during the summer to buy a computer. I covered 200% more departments than I was hired for. I never took a day off, despite coworkers just not showing up so they could go to the b…

What you describe isn't burnout though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)

There does seem to be some confusion about what is and isn't burnout. This link might help. While it's aimed at doctors rather than tech workers, it does give you some idea of the mindset involved: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-education/medical-education-stu...

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#37

Post by abalashov »

Unplug for merely a week? How very masochistically American. Let me teach you something about burnout, you poor, pathetically narrow-minded little man. I'd like to unplug for six months out of the year, at an absolute minimum. That's burnout, my friend.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#38

Post by neilk »

Agathos wrote: post #26
cletus wrote: post #20

At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so I'm not authority, etc etc). stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one time or another. There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Goog…

> you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you. As a recovering academic, I felt a twinge of horror when I read this. When I didn't love the work I pushed on mainly out of guilt, and it was more than I could carry after a while. Maybe I should have tried resentment.

I'm not sure guilt is quite the same as gratitude...

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#39

Post by neilk »

andrewcooke wrote: post #22

no - resentment leads to "being pissed-off enough to go work somewhere else". please, lets keep "burnout" for burning out . you know: when you're in a foetal ball sobbing, begging for it to stop; when you need years before your work is enjoyable again; when the client liaison goes on leave after an "accident" with a knife. there is a difference between that and "resentment".

Yup. If you're resentful, you are antagonistic towards your boss and your co-workers. You'll be ready to quit.

If you're burned out, you're probably hardest on yourself. It's been described as a 'crisis of self-efficacy'. I suspect that burned-out employees often don't have the self-esteem to quit, until it's absolutely necessary for health reasons or they get fired.

That said... going back to resentfulness... if someone believes they're being gypped by their employer, perhaps that punctures some of the illusions we all have about work. A lot of us knowledge workers strive more for praise and recognition than we do for salary, a fact that our bosses exploit. Maybe the kind of 'burnout' that Marissa Mayer describes, I would call 'waking up to reality'.

Re: Burnout is caused by resentment

#40

Post by xtremecool »

boofar wrote: post #30

Most here have commented 3-4 hours ago, but 2 hours ago Isaac Yonemoto left an excellent comment on the blog. So if you read this message, because you're checking the thread for new discussion, I encourage you to check out his comment as well. :-)

Yes, he says something like you burnout when you effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
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