How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
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Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#2I really appreciate posts like these. Alot of posts that get popular on hacker news are about the struggle between management/developers and the best practice for success. This on the other hand is far more relatable to me. I am a developer that gets burnt out on jobs quickly and don't have a mentor I can look up to. A post like this gives me actions/patterns/history of someone that is still working and still wants to work in the industry like I do. Thank you for posting this!
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#3Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#4"If you don't learn anything new, eventually you not only will hate your job you might not even have one anymore!"
This is true. I know many people who are in a job that they do not particularly love. And they stay because of intangible benefits like flexible work schedules or ability to work remote or sabbaticals. And I worry a little about what will happen if they ever need to find another job with their specialized skillset and years of the same experience, copied and pasted from one year to another. Many of these people will stay until their kids are out of college (or even longer). The market does not change much (stable) but there is no growth (few companies doing the same thing, or even contracting). However, I don't worry as much as I used to because we all live our own lives - coding is just a part of their lives, not the main one. Family is really it. To the 9 to 5 coders, I wish sometimes I could be more like you.
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#5Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?
The first time I experienced burnout, I didn't fully understand what was happening, so I kept spending 12-16 hours a day staring at my desk. My productivity got close to zero for what I think was well over a month. In retrospect I think I should have:
a.) accepted that I've begun to experience burnout
b.) recognized that I would lose some output over this
c.) talked to my boss and organized a week or two of out-of-office time to reset.
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#6Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?
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Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#7Good advice. The hardest part of following the suggestion is going to be getting past recruiters and HR, who don't want you in whatever industry unless you have 5 yrs+ experience of it already.
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#8Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?
Obviously it would be impossible to continue doing what one was doing. So, one should just stop, do something else, learn something new and it'll pass in a year.
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#9Good tips for preventing burnout before it happens! Anyone have any tips for how to recover from burnout _after_ it has already happened?
A month in south East Asia.
Then another month simply learning something new. Get excited about programming again. Make programming your hobby again, and not just your job.
Re: How I’ve Avoided Burnout During Decades as a Programmer
#10"(thankfully I'm not a Javascript programmer)"
As being a js programmer, i had to laugh at this :)
Nice article anyway, the sad part is, that i nearly had all those points at once, at one job(unpaid overtime, the management part, and so on...). The last 3 months i spent there was only because they asked me, and i was dump enough to say yes (they actually offered a 'bonus' to stay, but don't think anything big).
Something i would add, which i read somewhere, is when you begin to work somewhere, look around at the other people, how they behave and everything. If i knew these things a little earlier, i probably would not have ended up (a little) broken, and unemployed.