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The Burnout Machine

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Re: The Burnout Machine

#581

Post by bgilroy26 »

iteria wrote: post #561
bgilroy26 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If factory workers could delete the processes and equipment they work on with the press of a button, they would be bought off too Paying tech workers high wages reflects the need for them to side with capital when it comes to protecting assets I had an Ask HN last weekend that did not get any responses but I would still love to learn what governance prevents workers from deleting key software products and their backu…

What prevents them is sane compartmentalization. Even in accounting it's understood that you cannot defend again things like embezzlement if multiple employees cross different functions conspire, but you can defend against individuals by compartmentalizing their functions making every step further from their function more difficult to execute. Same with tech. In a mature agency, if random dev has the ability to delet…

That makes sense. Treasury and Cash Management have been business functions forever.

The novelty of software engineering from an employee risk standpoint from my perspective was its control over product but in an insurance company, funds are the product too.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#582

Post by joquarky »

achenet wrote: post #338
d3ckard wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s exactly the opposite. Burnout happens when a person with high reasoning skills is not allowed to actually used them and forced into map lookup tasks (most commonly with a useless, here be dragons kind of map).

This is exactly my experience. I like to think I'm a decent thinker. I've spent the past 6 months basically in constant burnout, started smoking again and am up to a pack a day now, because my job is "we're going to tell you that you have ownership over this perimeter, and then give you basically zero leeway in how to do things. You have to do it this way because that's what the senior architect with the hard-on for…

Being given responsibility without the authority is an increasing trend in this industry.

Why do companies hire self-directed SMEs for six figures, only to put them in a micromanagement box and override their advice?

Re: The Burnout Machine

#583

Post by odiroot »

nekochanwork wrote: post #530

I am an engineering manager for a large team of developers. Part of my job is to estimate the cost and potential revenue of big projects. I have a spreadsheet of everyone's salaries (including bonus compensation, other perks). I've done the math at my own company: average developer salary is approximately $100k. Our largest teams have 10 developers, so about $1M in labor costs. These teams work on projects that bring…

And then it gets even worse in Europe.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#584

Post by SR2Z »

h2zizzle wrote: post #570
Nemi wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it should be. I am not begrudging anyone of that. As a matter of fact, I often mentor employees on treating their career as a business, and build it accordingly. Just like a strong business, you should be selling your services for as much as reasonable, and if your employer is not paying the appropriate price then find another “buyer”. To maximize the price you can sell your ‘product’ (you), you should be making c…

>As it should be. No, this is just the (insane) status quo. Ideally, however, businesses exist to carry out a mission (beyond making money). Part of this mission is supporting the livelihoods of employees; part of it is giving a return to investors; part of should be some social net good (maybe within a larger societal context, if not unilaterally). Much as "maximizing" the price at which you sell yourself (ick) ofte…

> Ideally, however, businesses exist to carry out a mission (beyond making money).

I mean, sure, but the defining difference between a business and a nonprofit is making money.

It's important for companies to provide value to society but the way we measure that is by how much they earn. Despite several hundred years of people trying to come up with better ways to do this, this is the only one that seems to work.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#585

Post by SR2Z »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #527
thom__ wrote: post #28

Awesome to see something like this on HN. As we keep working for less pay, more hours, the constant threat of layoffs, and business leaders frothing at the mouth to replace us all with AI, it's important to remember that we aren't powerless as workers. It's also important to remember that your relationship to the higher-ups is adversarial. They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible…

> It's not because they're evil, it's just good business Almost everything I have ever heard described as "good business" is pretty evil You never hear "Oh we should give everyone a raise, that's just good business" It's always stuff like "we put 10000 orphans through a meat grinder to make 10 cents, it wasn't personal it was just good business" Edit: of course that is an exaggeration But more realistic examples incl…

> You never hear "Oh we should give everyone a raise, that's just good business"

Lots of big tech companies give people raises automatically when they think they're too underpaid.

> Frankly, maybe if companies need to make such "good business" tradeoffs frequently, it shows that the people running them aren't actually good at business in the first place

I really, really don't get this. Sometimes companies overhire. Sometimes it's even their own fault that they've overhired.

Either way, clearly IT HAPPENS and sometimes companies will need to lay off workers when it becomes clear they're not useful enough to justify their pay.

It's not inherently a reflection on the workers or the company; most of the time it's a reflection of interest rates and nothing more.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#586

Post by joquarky »

fjfaase wrote: post #441
stared wrote: post #100

Software engineering is one of the ways of playing life in "easy mode" (I moved from academia over a decade ago, and I know the difference). This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels like it lacks perspective compared to virtually any other occupation. > We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code, demanding 80 hour weeks under the guise of "passion…

This is true and not at all. Last year, I quit my job, because I was in the process of getting a burn-out. It was primarily because management refused to give me recognition for my efforts. (I dreamed about it last night.) While I was unemployed, I did voluntairy work at a farming coop, physical labour, often simple weeding. Working there for just one morning per week felt more rewarding than working as a SWE. You co…

I quit a 24-year SWE job after reaching KPI-induced burnout.

Volunteering three hours at the food bank makes me feel better than any day I spent at that job.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#587

Post by joquarky »

goostavos wrote: post #45
protonbob wrote: post #20

The author seems to think that everybody works this way. In reality, many of us work 40-45 hour weeks with no on call and low amounts of meetings. These jobs are in the boring (military, banking, insurance etc) sectors but I make a good, not great, living.

I work at a FANG. Senior SDE. I don't have slack on my phone. I don't read emails (unless someone tells me out of band that one needs a response). Once I close this laptop work is dead to me until the following day. You pick and choose your own involvement. I'm "passionate" about the job. I consider it a craft and a lifelong pursuit. I'm writing a book on the topic. But the job is just a job. I'm here because they gi…

> I'm here because they give me money. That's where my obligation ends.

This is reality, but we are expected to serve like dancing monkeys jumping through hoops to make up some cult-like zeal-for-productivity story to get through the interview.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#588

Post by ActorNightly »

captainbland wrote: post #218
ActorNightly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think one thing that needs to be understood better is the concept of "burnout". I can explain it pretty well. You can classify pretty much all jobs into 2 categories - map lookups and reasoning. A map lookup job is something where you learn to associate a specific problem with a solution. Most jobs are like this. You go work in construction, its pretty much map lookup - supervisor tells you to go prep the concrete…

My experience with burnout doesn't really gel with this. I find map lookup style tasks as you describe them pretty draining and the reasoning tasks relatively more energising. But generally what actually causes burnout for me is a sense of pointlessness, that the work is nothing but the pay because it's, for example, just some B2B finance adjacent system or something.

I don't think thats burnout, its more like apathy. I am the same way. When I worked for Amazon, I spend half sundays writing scripts that almost automated my map look up tasks (like stuff for oncall)

Burnout is when you are overworked with regular activities that you see no other way to accomplish.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#589

Post by ActorNightly »

d3ckard wrote: post #250
ActorNightly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think one thing that needs to be understood better is the concept of "burnout". I can explain it pretty well. You can classify pretty much all jobs into 2 categories - map lookups and reasoning. A map lookup job is something where you learn to associate a specific problem with a solution. Most jobs are like this. You go work in construction, its pretty much map lookup - supervisor tells you to go prep the concrete…

It’s exactly the opposite. Burnout happens when a person with high reasoning skills is not allowed to actually used them and forced into map lookup tasks (most commonly with a useless, here be dragons kind of map).

I would argue if you are actually good at reasoning, you can easily optimize and make the map lookup tasks efficient and automated. Unless the environment doesn't allow you to do so.

Re: The Burnout Machine

#590

Post by ActorNightly »

ayewo wrote: post #464
ActorNightly wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think one thing that needs to be understood better is the concept of "burnout". I can explain it pretty well. You can classify pretty much all jobs into 2 categories - map lookups and reasoning. A map lookup job is something where you learn to associate a specific problem with a solution. Most jobs are like this. You go work in construction, its pretty much map lookup - supervisor tells you to go prep the concrete…

I’ve heard a similar jobs classification but in 3 buckets: 1. builders (maps to reasoning) 2. fixers 3. maintainers (maps to map lookups) Companies are often a mixture of these 3 classifications. How they skew often depends on maturity (startup vs enterprise).

In terms of mental process, whenever someone is performing a task, they are looking up information on either directly how to do the task, or are running some thought process (i.e simulation of the world) to figure out some unknown.
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