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Surviving Burnout (2015)

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Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#71

Post by lannisterstark »

I've been burnt out since Christmas. It has been five months. It was so bad that I started seeing a counselor purely because of my job.

The only good portion of my job is that the work is extremely light (healthcare and govt contracting) so I get a lot of time to myself.

Most of my good team and mentors have left in the past year and teh new execs are micromanaging fkers who'd rather have Mandatory fun meetings and have our cameras on during morning 0800 scrums because why not? "It builds teamwork!"

...I've resigned myself to looking for another job at this point.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#72

Post by AmericanChopper »

bruce511 wrote: post #18
brailsafe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very well-articulated. I finally felt like I was bouncing back when I just accepted not giving a fuck and doing the absolute minimum to fulfill whatever the goals seem to be of whoever's deciding on them. Do they care about rendering performance? No? Well then I'm sure as hell not goimg to lose sleep over it, and if it seems actively harmful to customers *that I've met* then it's just a place to leave. There's always…

As you move up the business ladder, or indeed start your own business, it's interesting to see how priorities evolve. When you're a coder, the code matters. It can be frustrating to see resources allocated to say marketing. When you are responsible for acquiring resources, then there's more to care about, more to balance. When to market. When to get new hardware. Programmers care about code performance, code elegance…

I would say this is more about maturity than the level to which you care about things. Understanding that there are considerations other than the ones you care most about relates to maturity imo. You would probably hope that the more a person is made responsible for, the more they come to understand this. But I think your interpretation implies that prioritisation requires a decreased level of caring about the lower priority issues, which I don’t think is true.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#73

Post by mongol »

buggy6257 wrote: post #2

A harrowing tale and I'm thankful the author made it through alright, but I have to fundamentally disagree with one possible takeaway from this: Her solution to burnout was to _start her own business_?? I'm glad this worked out for her in the end, but holy shit this would be the literal last possible thing I (or I hope many others) would consider as a solution to burnout. That's a _fast track_ to burnout.

To me it helped. Granted, I had some economic security beforehand but it helped a lot with my depressive mood.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#74

Post by delusional »

ElFitz wrote: post #70
bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

> Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day. The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting). “Frustrated" and "stop to fruitlessly care…

This might be asking too much on a public forum, but would you be able to describe what differentiates these two for you? Feel free to decline if it's too personal or you just don't feel like it.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#75

Post by rhizome31 »

ElFitz wrote: post #70
bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

> Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day. The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting). “Frustrated" and "stop to fruitlessly care…

> To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day.

> The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting).

Thank you for writing this. I've been through these states recently and it helps to know other people had similar symptoms.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#76

Post by rhizome31 »

dasil003 wrote: post #63
jimnotgym wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be really unpopular for hn... Maybe it is because being a good manager is hard. Maybe running an effective organisation is hard. Maybe being in your 20s and having a bunch of VC money doesn't translate to being able to do the above? Being a good manager takes time and a willingness to be emotionally aware. It also requires mentoring. On the other hand, if a bunch of burnt out engineers with capital want to…

I think this comment is spot on. Another thing I’ll add: building something successful enough to be sustainable is incredibly difficult, especially when market value for SWEs is established by a few winner-take-all disruptions that panned out in the internet and smart phone transitions of the past two decades. The saccharine platitudes and subtle gaslighting of the corporate world is really just a thin veneer designe…

> the brutality of globalized capitalism

Thank you for saying this. It takes some guts to do it on this particular forum.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#77

Post by OJFord »

pts_ wrote: post #66
bruce511 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you move up the business ladder, or indeed start your own business, it's interesting to see how priorities evolve. When you're a coder, the code matters. It can be frustrating to see resources allocated to say marketing. When you are responsible for acquiring resources, then there's more to care about, more to balance. When to market. When to get new hardware. Programmers care about code performance, code elegance…

It's not about age, it's where your interests lie in.

I think GP is making an (obviously incomplete) assumption that with age comes movement up the org chart, away from code, and towards an awareness of other departments and ultimately owning/directing the business worrying about cash flows.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#78

Post by cookieperson »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #21
bruce511 wrote: post #8

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, y…

The most burnout-inducing environments I’ve worked in have all had one thing in common: They had a person or class of people that had wormed their way into being in control of everything while being responsible for very little. This left the rest of us to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions while having little to no input on the things we were held accountable for. The absolute worst company I work…

You described the symptoms of psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists in a single sentence. Research these personality disorders. It will bring you peace and explain the majority of malfunctions in the world. Specifically look into the sociopath apathy empath triad.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#79

Post by bheadmaster »

delusional wrote: post #74
ElFitz wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day. The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting). “Frustrated" and "stop to fruitlessly care…

This might be asking too much on a public forum, but would you be able to describe what differentiates these two for you? Feel free to decline if it's too personal or you just don't feel like it.

Not the person you asked, but I have had experience with both depression and burnout.

Depression, in my case, makes things meaningless in a "calmer" way - I can think about any activity, but it just feels meaningless, as if somebody was asking me to dig a hole then bury it back up. Like, why? What is the point?

Burnout, on the other hand, had an avoidant element to it - when thinking about work, I start feeling helpless and frustrated, which makes my mind go into some primordial "fear" state, rendering me unable to think clearly at all. If I were working while burned out, my "mental context" would be extremely limited - I'd read the words, but couldn't comprehend anything beyond basic instructions (e.g. change config from "foo" to "bar"). The mind is just avoiding making any connections relevant to the work.

This is just my experience. Others' milage may vary.

Re: Surviving Burnout (2015)

#80

Post by cookieperson »

jimnotgym wrote: post #41
slushh wrote: post #19

Why isn't there a known company with a healthy structure that is the place of recovery for burned out developers? 'we can build it together' - why is that not happening? >Structural problems require structural solutions. Healthy organizations, healthy people. >How can any of us get better if we can’t afford to extract ourselves from the environment that caused the harm? >When you’re finally in recovery, you’ll start…

This might be really unpopular for hn... Maybe it is because being a good manager is hard. Maybe running an effective organisation is hard. Maybe being in your 20s and having a bunch of VC money doesn't translate to being able to do the above? Being a good manager takes time and a willingness to be emotionally aware. It also requires mentoring. On the other hand, if a bunch of burnt out engineers with capital want to…

There are lots of bosses. But very very few leaders. One requires skill, the other requires politics.
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