Getting rid of burnout permanently

This misses the point of the article.

The author's premise is that you burnout because you do not spend time on the things that truly fulfill you, whatever those may be. It is very possible, and maybe even probable, that people who do not "work so hard" can still experience burn out because they do not use their free time to do the things that fulfill them.

If you are working so hard that you simply cannot find any time to fit in fulfilling activities, then yes, you should not work so hard.

If you are being taken advantage of and pressured into working too hard without adequate compensation, then you should find a better job.

However, "not work so hard" is not an answer to the problem as outlined by the author and seems more like a response to the headline than to the article itself.

I think it's a bit apples to oranges. Programming is for the most part sitting quietly in front of a computer screen for hours each day. At face value it looks easier, but it's actually a lot more brain-numbing. If I'm honest with myself, I think I can do it for 4 hours a day before my brain starts to slowly shutdown. I've been working for only a couple years and I'm seriously concerned about my future in the industry.

So what is responsible for this miraculous change? Simply working fewer hours?

Sorry to hear about your partner, that is horrible. Best of luck.

Unfortunately, very few people acknowledge what it really takes to keep the "trees" healthy, even if they think they do. A great deal of "progressive" companies assume that a break room with an Xbox 360 and a soda fountain should automatically translate into astronomical employee morale, despite regular overworking and underpaying.

How often does a company see its employees as equals? How often does a company try to ensure that the employee's demands and the company's demands are equitable? Most of them mask their blatant anti-employee bias in moralistic language to try to shame people out of asking questions: as one example, if you leave for another opportunity whilst involved in a project, you're considered "disloyal" or "unstable" and guilted, even though a company would shave off a unit in a heartbeat if it meant a major change in their financial prospects.

Even companies that claim they understand career progression, work-life balance, etc. often have these problems lurking underneath the glitzy exterior. I say this and people will think, "Yeah, that sucks, but not my workplace!" The reality is yes, your workplace probably has this same issue too. Just think about it for a while.

We need to start thinking of employment as a mutually beneficial exchange between equals with equally applicable moral rules. Why should the company keep 90%+ of the revenue an employee generates? Would that fly if it were a partnership deal between corporations? Surely the services of an employer are worth something, but are they really worth that much? The only reason employers can take that much is because employees don't believe they can claim any portion of that revenue without an employer, and they have to take the paltry 2% or they won't be able to get anything, which is usually false if the employee has a marketable skill.

I am a programmer. My industry does need a huge cultural overhaul.

But I also know that my co-workers and I have shared personality traits that make such an overhaul extremely unlikely, especially given the shared personality traits of those whom we typically serve.

The traditional manner in which workers overhaul their own industry is via cartelization and collective action. And to us, that just seems like trading in kings and getting back a tsar. We think the cartel enforcer would immediately turn on us, because we all know both game theory and history, and it totally would.

But we're still stuck at that Nash equilibrium, where all of us get a little bit screwed, because any attempt to get less screwed would make you more screwed.

I'm not going to propose a solution here. I'm just saying that it should be readily apparent to anyone, not just an insider, that we need to seek a new equilibrium.