Burnout and Mental Health
stephaniehurlburt.com
stephaniehurlburt.com
I spent 3 years of my life, working ~100 hours a week on the same project. It was a startup (local one) and I can't remember the details of that time. I went to 2 vacations, only to spend my time working on my laptop, just by a pool rather than at the office. I carried my laptop to everywhere. Kept my phone accessible 7/24. Even got stressed on ~1 hour flights I had to take, because I'd be offline. I planned to quit but never acted on it. That mental state somehow locks you in.
As far as I can remember, my only comfort was my cat. He'd sleep on my lap while I was working at home. Like a stress reliever.
Then he died one day without a warning. I just went ahead and quit my job the next day.
Best decision of my life. I had some stock in the company and sold it during a later investment round to our older VC. Spent 6 months doing absolutely nothing. Then started a new company, started working healthy hours. Started cycling, eating healthy. Lost a ton of weight. Taking care of yourself makes everything work much better in long term. Later, even found a cat with a broken rib on the street, barely breathing. He's now sleeping next to me.
Please, please if you are in a similar situation, just stop. Doesn't worth it.
Many of us have sacrificed multiple years of our lives for a better future. Four years of medical school and 6 years of residency/fellowship were my sacrifice.
Certain paths in life require some initial torture, unfortunately.
I don't even care about memories anymore - I'm in survival mode; I'm just a bullet moving towards its target.
It's like I've been running through a tunnel as fast possible for a long time and I can finally just see the light at the end of it, but I know there's a train coming in my direction and if I don't make it out of the tunnel in time it's going to get really dark and ugly.
You need to choose to take time, push through the initial panic rush that will come from it, then come out the other side.
The symptom tsunamifury talked about is what we call Catastrophizing – that is you over-estimate / over-value negative consequences over positive or neutral ones. It’s not just “If I stop working or slow down, I might not make as much money,” it is instead, “If I even take time to slow down, all my peers will be better than me or I might miss that one opportunity that’s going to make or break my career and then my professional life will be over and I might as well spend my time making software for businesses in the middle of Oklahoma.”
What I’d try and get patients to do is to rationally evaluate the evidence that any or all of these might happen. Is one missed connection really going to make or break your career? Is one failed pitch? Do you know of any founders/devs who failed big and recovered? What makes you think you couldn’t do the same.
If you want to know more, here are some good places to start – mix of websites and articles. (Apologies in advance for the potato quality on some of these links – I’m slowly dragging my field into the 21st century.) I’d also recommend going to see a therapist – even if it’s just for a few sessions. It might be helpful to get an outside viewpoint on your current situation.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201212/cogn... http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/step1.htm http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263389/ http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/anxiety-treatment.aspx
(Source: Me, I'm a psychologist who's done therapy with clients and now makes mobile apps. I tried to make this as HN-oriented as possible)
If your anxiety is more 'phobic' in nature (i.e. it spikes when you're exposed to specific stimuli) , a therapist might inter-weave elements of 'gradual exposure therapy' in as well. For instance, if you have severe arachnophobia, you might start off standing on the other side of the room to a large spider in a glass cage. Then you might stand half-way across the room. Then next to the glass. Then touching the glass etc. But CBT is the workhorse of modern psychotherapy, and can be quite effective for anxiety suffers.I'd also suggest steering well clear of any therapists that use psychoanalysis/psychoanalytic theory in their practice. It's arguably a non-falsifiable pseudo-science.
Unless your anxiety is so acute that you can't function on any normal level (like the time I didn't leave my house for about 2-3 weeks), I'd hold off on medication and try your non-chemical options first. To be clear, I'm not one of those people who thinks that 'unnatural drugs are bad maaannnnn', and have in fact been prescribed (and taken) meds at various times. In certain circumstances, for certain people, they are the only option and they can be a god send for some. But in my experience the pharmacological options for anxiety are are pretty poor. There are really only two mainstream choices: anti-depressants like SSRIs/SNRIs, which are rarely effective for anxiety and take 6-8 weeks to have any effect. So you end up on a very long-term course of trial and error.
The other pharmacological option has traditionally been benzodiazapines (valium, kloponin etc.). Again, unless your illness is extremely acute, I very strongly urge you to never go down this path. They're very physically and psychologically addictive in the medium to long-term (sudden withdrawal can even result in in grand-mal seizures), and you will experience 'rebound' anxiety when you stop taking them.
Lastly, although not a cure, a few lifestyle changes can vastly improve your quality of life while you're seeking out profession treatment. The big three are exercise, regular sleep and mindfulness meditation. It's difficult to start at first, but if you can make even 1 or 2 or those a regular habit you will see an improvement in your life.
Anyhow, I really wish you all the best. Anxiety sucks, but fortunately there's a growing number of ways to make it suck less.
The only very minor risk with them is if you're taking a fairly high daily dose and then suddenly stop. From what I understand this is really only a problem if you have some sort of pre-existing coronary disorder. Also contra-indicated if you have asthma (as it basically does the exact opposite of what those ventolin puffers do).
Thanks for the recommendation. My girlfriend thinks she needs benzodiazepenes for anxiety. The doctors give her just enough to get addicted, then take them away.
Looking around just now, it seems like Clonidine is another anti-adrenaline drug that would be useful for acute anxiety. It's commonly used for smoking withdrawal too.
Beyond that, I know that for myself, anxiety keeps me from taking a real actual measure of my resources (costs, burn rate, etc) because as I get more anxious I just fill those data points in with a vague thought that its doomed. When I sit down, take an real mathematical measure of the situation, I am able to overcome the internal misconceptions that "i can never stop" or "I'll never escape this."
To put this in perspective, I live in the SFBay where the financial spiral here is terrible. That being said, taking the measure of reality, helps me accept what I can and can't do. Once that is defined, I find myself feeling a lot more confidence in handling even the most dire situation -- because at least I have formed a rational plan.
Recovery (at least partial) is still possible, but you might be at the point where the first year of recovery looks like a lot of doing nothing but sleeping: http://jacquesmattheij.com/dealing-with-burn-out
Years before (11 years ago I think) I left a start-up completely burned out, having just bought an apartment, with no spare money (all my cash went into the purchase). The start-up had run out of salary, I was angry and wasn't in a clear space. I bailed the UK and walked around Morocco for a month on my own (I got very bored of my own company), on the very last of my money. When I returned, very refreshed, I started my consulting career. That break was essential to let myself recover. It surprised me how much the rest of the world hadn't changed in that month, whilst my outlook was totally different (happy, positive and ready for the challenges ahead).
It helps to have something to look forward to.
Go to a different country, a change of scenery, new cultures to explore are always a great way to take your mind off the daily grind.
I did change countries recently - I'm working remotely but it's definitely not a break.
The only way over burnout is to put some distance between yourself and work.
Also, it's incredibly hard to self-evaluate your output when you're overworked and stressed. You may think you're making forward progress but you're usually harming the project and yourself more.
If you actually start to feel worse when having time to relax, that hints at different problems like depression or anxiety.
I think memory is very important for programming. I can work a lot faster since I take this treatment.
I've never raised any funding and I'm competing against really well funded startups so basically every few months, I see some other company implement my idea (ahead of me) and I have to keep refining the idea and narrowing my target market in order to stay competitive.
I managed to find some people to join the project so it's a bit better now but much of the weight is still on me.
My advice isn't for everyone, but I got over the rut by realizing we're not going to be young and healthy forever. The term YOLO has become epitomized with young people making stupid decisions but some of us should really take it to heart.
I read a piece about making life decisions based on a regret minimization framework. Essentially you ask yourself which life you'd regret least when you're 80 and that's what you should do. I asked myself whether I'd regret never launching a successful product more, or never living a fulfilling life with adventure and meaningful relationships.
On a more concrete note, it's important for me to schedule time for exercise and fun. It helps by keeping me productive and my brain healthy, but also you won't have that voice in your head saying "hey, you should really be working on that other feature right now".
The worst thing is that deep down I enjoy the pressure even though I know it's slowly destroying my life and everything I love. I just seem to take it and turn to stone.
So like the others are saying -- I really hope you can take a vacation soon.
This is a real part of burnout--the realization that as employee #3422 you don't have much bargaining power. But I came to the opposite conclusion to the author's.
You either work to burnout levels or they'll just replace you with someone who will. I used to be a really cocky 20-something programmer, not afraid of getting fired or laid off--until it happened! Ending up about a month from insolvency gives you a realistic perspective on the power imbalance between you and your employer. Combine that with having a family to support, and you become much more willing to go into the "burnout zone" in order to keep the bills paid.
Ever since I finally saved that amount, it's helped a LOT with that feeling... If I lose my job today, I'll have enough personal runway to take a little time and find a good new job. I'm lucky in that I've never personally been laid off, but I know some people who have, and it's definitely a huge burden if you don't have even a month's worth of solvency.
Takeaway: do whatever you can to save at least 3 months' spending in a liquid emergency fund. Try for 6+, especially if you are supporting a family.
Part of that, for me, is being > 40, the notion of "3 months of savings" just doesn't feel like anywhere near enough. If I needed to go get a new job... most of my >40 yo colleagues who have looked for jobs... it's taken most of them far more than 3 months. In one case it took a friend more than 9 months, and there were moving expenses involved as well. If he'd had "3 months" and that was it... I'm not sure what situation he'd have been in by that point.
I think if we have that bare minimum of comfort (i.e. 3/8/more salary months), then after that we should try to focus on being healthy. Working more and compromising health is a very bad deal. Even getting over-anxious about things leads to stress (which can lead to bad health).
Most of us programmers like our jobs anyway, provided work/managerial environment is not too bad. If we can just do it in a healthy way (YMMV, of course. 100+ is healthy for Elon Musk, and 40/50 for me).
I think even working towards an early retirement, may also not be a good thing, as some people try to. I have seen people age very fast after they retire. So if we enjoy our work, and are paid a healthy amount, and have decent savings. Should look to live a good life, right in the present. And not worry too much about long term.
Long term: I think for most programmer-entrepreneurs long term is more like a big exit after a few (3-5) hard years of work. The problem happens when realistically only a few of us can have such good luck. So being realistic, we should look at returns for the long haul (10 year periods). So staying healthy and alive, is very much needed, if and when we have the big exit.
I personally, started long(ish) distance running, to attune myself for a long haul work wise. At present work only around 40 hours (M-F). Sat/Sun only when needed (which is rarely). Don't compromise exercise for work. Get it done in the morning itself, before I have a chance to log in.
I also try to minimize the stress. What's a business without setbacks? So there are setbacks, e.g. partners breaking/not-renewing contracts . But I try to think of these things as just -ve events in a series of various +ve/-ve events. There are technical worries as well, e.g. EC2 volumes running out of disk space, within the next archival cycle, and increasing them fsck/resize2fs them, burning them in the image.
But also life goes on...in the present.
PS: Sorry, for not being specific, and randomly articulating even tangential things to the topic at hand. Hope its not too bad. :-)
I hadn't seen Orman recommend the 8 months, but it's definitely understandable. Whenever that runway goes down for any reason, I get a bit nervous. Thinking this way has pushed me to reduce the monthly outgoings where possible; reduce cell phone plan, cut satellite at home, etc. None of these are necessarily life altering, but saving say, $200/month means that an extra few $k savings adds more months to the runway.
The other thing to consider, which only applies to crazy countries like the USA, is that losing your job also means losing your health insurance, which can be a significant risk to your life. Sure, there's COBRA, but it's super-expensive, and should be factored in when calculating how much you need in savings.
This is what's truly hosed up about US-based health insurance/services. People are so divorced from the reality when things are 'good' that the horribleness of it is exposed only when you can least deal with it.
Everyone should be required to buy their own insurance, with no employer interference at all. We'd see massive shift in peoples' attitudes, and probably a bigger shift to single-payer, quickly.
I'm self-employed and have had to deal with the expense of health insurance head-on for years. I was happy when we got 'high-deductible' HSA options, as it reduced monthly expense. ACA/Obamacare has more than doubled our monthly premiums in just 3 years, and I still can't afford to get sick at all without incurring hundreds or thousands of dollars in medical bills. :(
And the beautiful part of the saving process is that you're almost getting 2-for-1 on each dollar you save. People with little savings are, duh, spending basically what they earn. In that state, it may seem daunting to think, "How can I save 6 times what I spend when I have so little left over each month?" But as you cut back expenses, you start to see how little you actually need to survive. And that 6-month target, when translated into dollars (or whatever currency you're saving), starts to shrink. So, for instance, say you make $5k/mo after taxes and are spending just about that much. Saving $30k seems really hard. But if you can cut your expenses by 30% down to $3500/mo, now you're saving $1500/mo and only need to save $21k to get to 6 months of savings. That can be done in roughly one year.
I'm in the middle of a high profile project which goes to UAT in two weeks, and I know it is slated to fail. There's just too many issues.
I have been working 85+ hours every week constantly for the past ~5 months. Being an Immigrant ( H1B) makes it more difficult. All I do these days is code for 15+ hours everyday with an impending weight hanging over my head constantly that I'll be made a scapegoat if the project fails.
I've started to lookout for opportunities, and since it's September, the number of companies offering jobs in my domain are _very_ less.
What did you do when things like these happened?
This is a legitimate question, not a criticism: why do you think that you, specifically, will be the scapegoat?
Is it possible that you can find a way to not work 15 hours straight? Since you know that the project will crash and burn anyway, this effort will be meaningless. Trying to carry the weight of a doomed project by yourself is not a good idea.
Now, if the project is a high-profile one, expect that some management cuts will happen. In some companies, but not all, this also means "pruning" all the reporting tree. Is the company big enough that you could move to another division, or whatever they call it? If so, you should focus on that.
The ship is sinking and all you have is a bucket. Start sending signal flares.
Because I am the lead developer on this project and the manager of this project was always unavailable to escalations / concerns. In the end I just think he'd wipe his hands off and say he was never involved in this project ( though he is supposed to be working 50% on this project)
If not -> start producing them.
Doesn't matter what the actual outcome will be, the paper trail is your only defense.
Back up your reasoning as clearly and simply as you can.
From the perspective of your employers: because they're paying your salary (and others as well, including half your boss' salary dedicated to this), for a failed end result -- firing you as the scapegoat doesn't leave them with nothing, it leaves them with far less than nothing; all of that time and salary lost, plus the costs of replacing you (whether because they've fired you, or because they've burned you out entirely). Plus costs to reputation, which harms client relationships and hiring both.
Being able to say "I told you so" later doesn't really help anyone; but if you can suggest a better path (drastically reducing scope, extending or segmenting the delivery timeline, or even canceling the project), then you should be able to get someone to listen.
If your boss really grasps where things are going (and that this isn't just "the usual developer griping"), then he'll get credit as well for saving the situation, and you both benefit.
H1B folks can't easily do that. One reason why companies love hiring them.
As Jack Sparrow said: "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do."
At least H1B's are transferable. I'm on an O1, which is technically non transferable.
The world is getting smaller and more companies are realizing that remote workforces are possible. The network of people you build is far more important for finding a job than your location. Coming to the US can be an excellent way to break in and establish that network. But once you've done that, it's not necessary to stay here.
L1, on the other hand...
Some people have a sixth sense for this; you will see them transfer to different departments or companies before anything seems wrong. Other less ethical people will see the writing on the wall too late to transfer and will maneuver someone else to take the fall. It sounds like they picked you, I'm sorry. Being H1B just makes you an easier target. My advice would be to take any other job you can get.
Not trying to be rude here, but what is the worst outcome here? What does being made a scapegoat actually mean? Will you be fired? Deported? Or just... have people at work making you feel worse than you already do? Honest question - not trying to trivialize your situation at all.
I didn't realise this when I was younger and suffered three burnouts. The first two sucked but were reasonably short term problems. The third destroyed my ability to think clearly and I'm only now starting to regain the ability to think as I used to - after a ten year break in a completely different career.
Don't ignore burnout!
Meditation. 15 minutes a day is all it takes, and I get myself to that place of not giving a care in the world and feeling all the stress just drop away. The only way I can describe it as, is like when you go on a beach holiday and you're lying in the sun, not sure what day it is (Saturday, Wednesday?) and feeling content.
Its now become vital and essential for me to mediate, it feels as important as sleeping and eating. I don't have any aspirations to become enlightened, I just wanted to stop waking up fearful in the morning and content during the day and night.
The 'Mindfulness' app has decent free guided meditations, but I highly recommend the Headspace paid subscription, it costs peanuts compared to the value of your health and happiness. It's so well organised, has heaps of content, and they seem to be fairly science-based in their approach.
EDIT: Typo.
There are some very short ones for free, longer ones cost money
Helped me through times of personal and work burnout stress.
https://www.tarabrach.com/guided-meditations/
http://self-compassion.org/category/exercises/#guided-medita...
http://www.mindfulselfcompassion.org/meditations_downloads.p...
I realized things needed to seriously change when I couldn't recall how long I'd been living in NYC or my apartment (4 and 3 years), and when I did the math I couldn't believe how much longer it was than I thought. The last year or so has basically been a blur aside from a few interesting memories (eg. vacations). It's not even like I've been working really hard, I've just been living a dull life on autopilot doing the same thing over and over again.
I've noticed that time passes slower when you're doing more interesting things. When I'm on vacation, the days feel much longer and fuller and I remember them in vivid detail. On the other hand, a month at the office is often just one continuous blur (I wrote about this here: http://jdiculous.blogspot.com/2016/04/slow-down-time-routine...). Also I'd been struggling to wake up before 10am and generally feeling sleep-deprived during the week, but on vacation I naturally wake up bright and early at 6:30-7:30am and fully awake.
I just quit my job and flew to Tokyo just to experience something different. My first day I woke up at 7am and went to bed at 7am. That single day was more memorable than the weeks if not months before I quit my job.
I've just managed to land a remote job. My plan is to travel around, and I'm hoping that the freshness of constantly being exposed to new environments and experiences outside my comfort zone will keep me sharp and more engaged with life rather than another forgettable year in an air-conditioned open office at the same desk around the same people.
A year ago, I was burned out from a VPE level job for two years before and after moving down to a Engineering Lead (developer) job, responsibility greatly reduced, so were the stress level. I am able to take care more on myself and my family. So for the pay-cut and title downgrade, it's a good tradeoff so far.
Having said that, by no means responsibility is the only factor, I also feel that the work culture is also geographical. For instances, from my anecdotal experiences, same type of company in U.S. and Japan are working longer hours than the ones in Canada or France. A startup job in S.F. may seem a bit more stressful than a similar job in the Midwest/South. Your milage may vary.
PS: 8-hours of sleep is a great way to help me wean off the heavy coffee-drinking lifestyle. I remember reading an article recommended by my Jawbone UP wristband app about the quality of sleeping - REM sleeping is the key for brain consolidate memories. [1] [2]. As as aside, I love Jawbone's health awareness content. Too bad, they are going under :(
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-michael-j-breus/whats-in-a-...
I started on the opiates and benzos to self-medicate. I had all the symptoms, panic attacks, getting really ill whenever i took a break. Complete lack of perspective. Just stress from all sides, work, relationships, bills. Insane working hours for years. So, of course as my tolerance rose so did the dosage and strength.
CBT, therapy, meditation, exercise and stable routine are what i have utilised to get myself out of what i would call, without any sense of over-dramatising, hell.
It is not worth it. Please, please get help. There is no shame.
I've burnt out twice, it ain't pretty and once you've experienced burnout it opens doors in your brain that are difficult and time consuming to close again. So you're best off making sure those doors remain closed by taking care of yourself :)
For the first five or so years of my software company I worked like a dog on meth. It wasn't smart working, it was sheer brute force and ignorance that got the business off the ground. Come Christmas every year I would be a shell of myself. Christmas was the only time I really stepped back from work, and I inevitably got ill most years as my body recovered from the sustained beating I'd given it that year.
My first burn out was 2011. The recession had kicked in, clients were going away or shrinking their spend with us in droves. To compound matters my personal finances were intricately linked to the businesses success or failure due to the personal guarantees I'd signed on loans and the office space. I started to suffer panic attacks and general anxiety. I tried to self medicate both positively (exercise) and negatively (drugs), but ultimately hit the deck hard.
The noise in my brain caused by the anxiety and stress had my brain at 100% CPU all the time, leaving nothing for work or, well, anything. It took about three months before I could go back to work in any normal sense of the word.
Fast forward to last year (2015) around Christmas time. Another very busy year but this time business is brisk and so I was rolling around in our moderate successes. Again, December came, and I hit the deck. This time I had a wicked health scare to boot. It took about four to five months, so slightly longer, to recover from this one.
Fool me once and all that. I've now restructured the business so that it's almost impossible for me to work myself to death. I appointed a managing director to take care of the day to day stuff that was burning me out, leaving me to focus on strategy and leadership - the things I'm good at.
It's ironic that I called my business Atlas - Clever Software because he's the Greek God condemned to hold up the sky for eternity. I condemned myself to holding the heavy weight of a very complex and difficult to scale business. I'm very lucky to not have long term physical or mental issues as a result of the stress I needlessly endured. I know other founders who are not so lucky.
It's due to this backstory of mine that I have an deep dislike of the 'hustle' culture. It's alright to bust your backside to get a business off of the ground, but at all times you owe it to yourself and those who love you to put your health and wellbeing first. You've got one body but there's millions of business/work opportunities out there that you don't have to kill yourself to make a success of.
It often hinges on what you count as success. If you want to grow something to a place where you can appoint a managing director to take over your least comfortable responsibilities, you'll often need to work yourself into burnout or burn through a ton of capital.
But plenty of people set up little lifestyle businesses or contract shops without all that. You just have to be able to see opportunities for growth and go "nah, not for me".
Agreed. However, even in a lifestyle business, I have a hard time imagining not working like crazy to get it off the ground. I've tried starting a couple (obviously doing something wrong since I didn't succeed), but that's the way I felt I needed to work.
I'm a student, and I had a burnout a couple months ago. Thankfully, I was able to learn important things about myself, namely certain limits of mine (and I was studying limits at the time for calc class). I was far behind and yet I was struggling everyday to grasp the material. I ended up having to drop two out of three classes and managed to save the one I didn't drop.
I had been ignoring other parts of my life, like social interaction, and with my thoughts always running I eventually developed delusions(I have mental disabilities also). Since then I've put away social media and have been making time to go outside and around people to try to make connections, as well as yard work (can be therapeutic).
Now I see imbalances in my life more clearly than before. So, like a problem solver, I'll see what I can do about it. :)
Eventually, it turned out what really worked for me (it also worked with some friends who tried this) is to just do something else for a change.
Work on small, contained projects - maybe on unrelated problem domains, and consider changing your habits and do more things for fun, but whatever it is you do, don't try to 'force' yourself to do it. Working out at the gym work wonders. Getting some good night's sleep also helps.
I would also snap out of it after a few days. This never failed me, but I realize that it may not work for everyone.
So I locked my computer up, took a road trip for 3 days and did literally nothing for another 2 days. I started working again yesterday afternoon and was quite surprised how much more agile my mind has become.
It's hard to let go and relax sometime when there is always so much to be done. I think we are need to realize everyone is human and every few months we need some break no matter if we feel like we do or not.
After working for 10 years now, I now realize that nothing is really every that urgent. No matter what anyone tells you. Its your perception (or your boss's) that make it urgent, but objectively, it probably isn't.
The world won't stop spinning just cause you took one more day to finish something. Burn yourself out, and it may even take up more time.
When my co-author died (of old age at 90) and our book was unfinished I began to distinguish between artificial deadlines and true deadlines. I realized I'd missed a real deadline because I'd allowed myself to prioritize other projects with deadlines that turned out to be artificial, but had more insistent people demanding urgency.
We often operate in a culture where the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so urgency is usually exaggerated as you describe. Look out for real deadlines though.
A true deadline, like death, has irreversible consequences. Most "deadlines" are really targets and can be reprioritized or deferred, especially to avoid unhealthy behavior like burnout.
I know that's on me. It's a will power thing. But I'm only human. When I didn't have my phone on me, it forced me to really examine if I cared about something or if it was just fleeting. Like, who won the NHL MVP in 1978? If it was still a burning question the next time I was around an Internet connection, I'd look it up.
But 9 times out of 10, I'd forget. And wonder. And my life was better for it.
My current system is that I turn off all notifications except from my mother and wife. My email is not fetched unless I fetch it. I have no games on my phone. I've never had Facebook and haven't posted to Twitter in over two years. But with all that, it's still not the same.
I've relapsed at least twice since that talk. I have a phone. And it's still my boss. But I'm working on a bigger plan to abandon it all together. Whether I can get there or not, that's another story.
Folks in the military do 84-hour work weeks when deployed (twelve on/twelve off — and really, with 30-60 minutes of handover time factored in it works out to 91-98 hours/week), and are deployed for up to a year. It's brutal, but it is sustainable. Having no other responsibilities to think of probably helps; I've no idea how distracting modern communications technology is to folks with families.
I'd sure as hell would never want to work with them.
I assume this also means the responsibility to keep one's health in check is sacrificed for additional workload?
I can't imagine keeping up an exercise routine working that many hours.
Not everyone means the same thing when they say something like "15 hour work day". That said, I think short busts of non work specific activity without changing your surrounding is no substitute for changing your surroundings and context enough to switch gears for a while. A trip to the local coffee house with coworkers where you still discuss work is a poor substitute for an extra 15-30 minutes at the end of the day where get out and do something entirely different.
But what happens to your health? How can you exercise and eat healthily? Go for a run on your only day / half day off?
Your future self will be angry at your past self when it sees what you've done.
This article made me realize that I don't remember hardly anything of the time I spent working at one of my startup jobs. Bits and pieces of specific events stand out, but not a lot. The last six months I was working there I worked at least 60 hours a week, and it crept up to 80 hours a few times. The hours let up after I was hospitalized for a day because of all the stress. I didn't do much else besides sleep and go to work. Maybe that's why, it just blended together.
And I have a crappy memory in general, so I don't know how much of it is because of that. Anything more than a few years ago is kind of hazy.
But still, it's almost like that year and some change might as well have not existed, other than to put a few lines on my resume. But there are much easier ways to do that.
Stating this not to brag but to make my point: 8 months ago I was clearing north of $140k plus options at a top tech co (plus all the usual perks/full benefits) at age 23. The path was probably open for a management position and easily over 200K per year by age 30.
I hated it. The work was agonizingly mundane. The environment was intellectually letheragic (a tremendous irony given the pedigree of my coworkers). I was pulling long hours to write code that I knew had little real value. And everywhere I looked I saw constraints and barriers to doing something meaningful. Eventually it got to the point where I started having a lot of anxiety and even moodiness and feeings of hopelessness.
I felt like what I was forcing myself to become was suffocating the person I wanted to be, deep down. So I asked myself, honestly, if the money was worth trading off so much of my life. My answer was 'no'. However, I think I might be an outlier in that regard. A lot of other people place a high value on experiences, socializing, buying nice things, etc. There are only three things I can ever remember giving me genuine contentment: building complex things, learning (reading, programming, lectures), and hanging with a handful of very good friends. Turns out working a job was diametrically opposed to my main priorities in life. And the weird thing is I'd known that for a very long time before having a decisive 'epiphany' about it. I'd been running from that truth because it was so contradictory, relative to what society tells us we should do and value. This line of reasoning was essential in clearing the final mental hurdle between myself and the decision to pursue entrepreneurship. I had to reconcile myself with having less in the immediate term and the likelihood of long-run financial consequences in taking a break from working in the industry. I acknowledge that this isn't possible for everyone. Some people have dependents, mortgages, and other obligations. But if you can somehow make the numbers work and don't find the luxuries of a six figure salary as compelling as the opportunities you trade away, then you owe it to yourself to stop and think about it.
As for what happens on the other side: freedom is a beautiful thing. I'm now convinced there's 'one easy trick' to becoming a 10x engineer and that's quitting your job. You learn out of necessity when you have few resources and no fallbacks. It also seems obvious now in hindsight that the surest way to realize your full potential is to work on your own terms building something you care about. I get to see friends more often than I have in years and I'm working with two of my best friends on a startup. I've also been exercising consistently and eating better. But by far the most energizing change in my lifestyle has been my improved sleeping habits. Imagine a world in which you don't have to set an alarm clock and always get enough sleep - that's what you get to do when you work on your own terms. I can't be sure about this but I feel like I might actually be improving in mental acuity as well, which I would attribute to getting more sleep and the compounding effects of expanding my skillset (full stack engineering, PM, marketing). I think the phenomenon of interdisciplinary study leading to improved cognition is fairly well-studued and I'm now realizing that entrepreneurship is at least a good approximation of that. I furthermore spend several hours per day in flow because there are no meetings, emails or other interruptions.
All this adds up to a lifestyle that's so dramatically superior to where I was before that I have absolutely no intention of going back, if I can avoid it. Sorry for the poorly-constructed stream of consciousness. I intend to write a blog post on the subject at some point, but wanted to get this down here in case it helps anyone trying to make a decision. If you're going through burnout and feel like your personal narrative resembles mine, I hope you'll take some time to consider quitting to work on something that gives you purpose and that might have value to others. Regardless, I'll end with the handful of things I needed to keep hearing back when I was burning out: there IS an other side and you WILL get there. It's okay if you have to quit because the safety net for software engineers is incredible and your health is comparatively fragile. By far the most important thing for you to do is let the good people in your life be there to help you get through this.
I couldn't agree more. I see a lot of engineers in startups that claim to have X years of experience, but when you read their code, it more like 1*X years of experience. They never progressed passed the 1 year point because they were doing the same things again and again. Most of the time it was not the correct way either but because they have repeated the same process so many times, its the only ways they knew and naturally accepted it as is.
The best programmers I have seen are always those that worked on their own project with very limited resources. You are force to learn and do things out of the box this way. It's definitely a slow learning process but for me, just thinking back on how much I have learnt (and be able to utilize my knowledge correctly) in the last year is mind boggling.
BTW 140k at 23?? Jeez I am the same age as you and I am getting payed just below 100k and I work in SF.
I got lucky with that comp package since I had been an intern the previous summer and they wanted me back - gave me a lot of room to negotiate.
Impressive. Once I said to my coworker that I'm not drinking a coffee because I can't sleep at night. She replied she drinks coffee because she can't stay awake in the daytimes without coffee.
I can even recommend it even if you never experienced burnouts, PA's.