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Burnout is real – how to avoid it

atlassian.com

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Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#91

Post by gerbilly »

ticmasta wrote: post #73

>> Job burnout is an epidemic Start of sub-title. def: a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time So a wide-spread, non-infectious phenomena that has been occurring... forever?, doesn't really meet the definition. I'm not debating this is a real thing nor that it may be more prevalent, but a bunch of generic tips that put the entire responsibility on avoiding burnout onto me…

Most of western propaganda is aimed at preventing class consciousness and solidarity from forming between workers.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#92

Post by duggan »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
squeaky-clean wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, this doesn't have to actually mean being more assertive at your job. I worked at a place where I constantly had to be very up front about my boundaries and work limits. We would plan something, say some certain things can't be done for 2 weeks, and then two days later someone would come back and be like "So... about those tickets, could we actually squeeze them in this week? As well as all the other ticke…

Unfortunately for every one tech employee willing to set boundaries and say no, there are 10 in line outside the door, resume in hand, willing to say yes and burn themselves out. You can quit in protest but where are you going to go? You’re competing with dozens of talented people straight out of college willing to work 100 hour days for Mountain Dew and a dual screen workstation. Unless you believe the “Shortage Of…

I don't believe for a second that there is an endless supply of capable software engineers. The salaries available to folks of even modest experience simply don't support such an assertion.

This problem should be self-correcting. If it's as unproductive as it is unhealthy, then better companies will win by retaining talent for longer.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#93

Post by outworlder »

john_fushi wrote: post #66
bitL wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a manager with a PhD who insisted on never writing multi-threaded applications because when he tried he failed and considered them dangerous. I routinely wrote apps using 10,000+ threads before. Now he is a head of development of some company. Real life is a comedy.

Just create child processes with a shared memory region. That's not multi-threading.

Hah, I've used the forking server approach very successfully before.

Plus, threads and processes are essentially the same on unix land – kernel flags will control behavior like shared memory. Which you can still setup manually. Or just use whatever IPC fancies you.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#94

Post by topherjaynes »

I'm glad Atlassian is calling attention to this, but I'd love to see them incorporate tools and features into their products that could help identify and measure these recommendations. Most of the data is there, but we just need to expose views of worker metrics and not solely focus on projects. A teams burnout indicator would be just as important as velocity report.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#95

Post by andrew_gardener »

mikelyons wrote: post #82
Balanceinfinity wrote: post #60

Step 1: TAKE YOUR VACATION!! - every minute allowed, every year. If they won't give you a chance to recharge your batteries, look elsewhere.

And do what with it? For many of us burnout is tied to depression is tied to lack of a mate, hobby, social circle, life purpose. What outside of work is even worth doing? Seems like all I can think about outside of work is how badly I just want this all to be finished.

Might be stepping out but I think you've already identified quite a few things that can be worked on in order to help yourself out.

hobby - honestly just try a bunch of different things for a while and you might be surprised what you like. Take up gardening, hobby games (build/paint miniatures and play 40k, battletech, etc.), hiking, really anything that requires some focus and a bit of work. In a lot of cases its more about having something to do other than work and being tired/lazy/depressed at home vegging out and/or getting into a worse headspace.

mate/social circle - honestly this can be hard (especially if you’re really introverted) but getting into a hobby can open new doors. Also think about getting a pet or two. Animal companionship can really be more than a substitute for other people and fill you with all sorts of joys.

life purpose - this is really hard but honestly you and in complete control over this if you push yourself hard enough. Literally just choose something. It can even be to just live as long as possible despite any shitty circumstances (doesn’t have to be some grand unachievable goal).

I really hope I'm not stepping out of line but your message seemed like a call for help. I've had my own long spells of depression and some of the above have helped me a lot. Please also consider getting in contact with professional help if it’s really getting bad. Forget about shame, nervousness, or whatever had headspace your currently in, your life is 100% worth more than any of that.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#97

Post by fivre »

vfc1 wrote: post #11
agloeregrets wrote: post #6

What is funny about this is that Atlasssian’s Jira product is designed for two week “sprints”, a term referring to the idea of running quickly at a rate above a sustainable pace with no intent to keep running after the end. But these sprints normally are done repeatedly with no actual stop or sight of a finish line. Employees just churn through tickets with no designed breathing room or planned downtime. Jira is prob…

In JIRA your performance is constantly measured comparing the actual work against the estimates, which are usually not under the developer control. There are reports produced that developers don't get to see that the manager does to compare developers this way. Of course, this can be easilly gamed. The most cunning developers will go out of their way to get the tasks that are clearly defined in scope and that they ar…

Management by "make metric go up" is almost always terrible in every situation, since human misery is generally not considered an important metric (too hard to measure!) and metrics themselves cannot expose long-term consequences of optimizing for a metric at the expense of anything that isn't being measured.

Death by metrics isn't the fault of Jira--Jira provides tools to do many things more effectively, and gathering metrics is just one of those. Providing effective tools to ineffective people, unfortunately, does allow those people to shoot themselves (and in management's case, everyone around them also) in the foot more easily.

Exacerbating this, as you mentioned, is that metrics do provide a simple, cheap representation of productivity, even if that representation is not aligned with reality. Middle management can present this to upper management to show that they're doing a "good" job, and upper management will be none the wiser about what's not exposed by the metric until a while down the road when problems created by optimizing for those metrics become more apparent.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#98

Post by chillwaves »

mikelyons wrote: post #82
Balanceinfinity wrote: post #60

Step 1: TAKE YOUR VACATION!! - every minute allowed, every year. If they won't give you a chance to recharge your batteries, look elsewhere.

And do what with it? For many of us burnout is tied to depression is tied to lack of a mate, hobby, social circle, life purpose. What outside of work is even worth doing? Seems like all I can think about outside of work is how badly I just want this all to be finished.

lately when I am stuck in a rut, I get in a "just do it" mindset. Thinking is sometimes harder than doing.

Thinking about exercise, thinking about cleaning my room, thinking about doing laundry. I can sit in misery thinking about what needs to be done, or I can just start working.

Re: Burnout is real – how to avoid it

#100

Post by wojciii »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #55
Zeebrommer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>all of the language in this article (until #8) is centered around you. You are supposed to take full responsibility for burnout. It is your choice. Your lack of self-management is causing your burnout. Yes, this! My company seems to be halfway there: acknowledging that burnout is a problem, but then turning that into helpful advice (eat healthy, take breaks, go work out, etc) that is focused on the individual, ignor…

Yeah. It's like overloading people constantly and then offering mediation classes so people can cope.

Wait .. this is exactly what my workplace is doing. I didn't attend the meditation because they clashed with my therapeutic daily walk..
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