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Comment by quickben | Hacker News Reader

I have a friend that is to damn good as a developer and allowed one of the big Canadian companies failed projects to burn him out thoroughly.

He is looking into opening a bakery now, and by the look of it, no amount of convincing is going to change his mind.

So no matter what you do, your mental robustness and coherency comes first. Don't let anybody every come close at touching that.

Btw opening a bakery is an amazing prospect if you go into it full force ahead, with happy thoughts and planning. Opening one as a result of a burnout, well I guess it can be therapeutic, but not sure about the validity of the idea in that case. Taking half a year off everything can probably bring you more life force at your disposal.

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As someone who's been there, it all depends how hard it was. You can recover from light burnouts quickly (by traveling, taking sports), however, hard burnouts change you for life - you'll be lucky to not end up as alcoholic or drug addict.

For me, it took couple of years and few failed jobs until I got on track. Today, I'm more than happy to be my own boss as freelancer.

Hello! I'm currently on the "couple of years and a failed job" track... any advice?

Not the op, but, Therapy, exercise, and develop at least a few deep friendships.

For me talking about stuff helped me realize i was angry and depressed. It's hard to see how your mind comes up with ideas, an outside observer can point out motivations for behavior that aren't obvious from inside my own head.

Exercise kind of quiets my mind down. While burning out, work kind of hurts. It's not exactly but something like painful to execute. With excercise, I kind of rescale that feeling. Executing on X isn't as bad as running for a half an hour.

Having a couple of friends you can talk to about whatever is nice. Family is great too, but they don't always have the perspective to give helpful insight. Parents, spouses, might not tell you the whole truth, or their perspective is colored by the past. A friend will tell you you're being an idiot, or not.

Stay away from anything remotely stressful for a while, slowly build your tolerance for stress back up, pay attention to what your body and mind are telling you and don't let anyone force you back into the same situation.

* Be patient - time is the best healer. * Find a partner who understands your situation. I was lucky and my girlfriend at that time (today my wife), was in IT too. * If you are programmer and like coding, change language/environment - pickup something totally different. At that time, I adore Rails/Ruby and today I can't think myself ever touch it. However, I find joy in LISPs and C/C++ coding these days. * Sport is essential for you; it will clear your mind and improve your physical health. More demanding sport, better. Boxing, swimming, hiking, diving, pick one and be consistent.

Also, fellow commenters gave pretty good advice too.

Good to hear you found your way. I'm getting burned out on freelance.

What is it that burns you out most? (fellow freelancer here)

The thing that burns me out about freelance is the client just views you as a cost center. Always want more work in less time. I start to fantasize about the "camaraderie" of being on a team. Maybe there needs to be a Freelancer's Local Union.

I had the exact opposite experience freelancing. I was lucky enough to land some really smart and well-funded clients, while also filling a crucial position that made my value obvious and impossible not to appreciate.

How do you land those roles reliably? I have no idea. Some combination of luck and networking, I'd say, as my best positions were always inbound requests. (Generally: Hey Courtland, we saw that you built cool thing X. Could you build the same for us?) It really helps to be in the financial position to say no to anything that doesn't meet your standards.

Try to find a partner and do your freelancer thing as a team. I incorporated with a fellow student of my university, and as a result we became fast friends. We are basically two freelancers under one brand, and share everything. This really helps!

I second this. Every time I drive by a big corporate building and I see groups of employees joking while having a smoke or coffee, it makes me envious. I joke about it saying that I m something like Batman who always works alone. Lately I ve been doing short trips to the client's offices, about 2000km away (on my expense) just to get the teamwork feeling.

Loneliness is the killer. I recently found out that I had this belief that the others don't need me around, and so they don't ask me for my company. That was actually self-victimization, because I should be the one to reach out when I want company. Doing much better now with that out of the way. This goes for every aspect of life, for me.

I found reframing myself as a vendor (and small business owner) rather than a freelancer changed everything.

This is especially valuable if you can develop a specialized skill to sell as a "product" over and over... I suppose I've found that a "can/will do anything" attitude is much better suited to employment/cofounding than consulting.

Try joining a meetup or two, they are really good for meeting people in similar situations to yourself and having conversations about work.

You need to learn to say no more often & get also get some new clients.

This is very true, not sure why you were voted down.

Don't be afraid to say "no" to the client, especially if you have given them an honest estimate and they are pushing you to revise the estimate downward.

It's gone quiet of late but The Remote Together Slack group [1] is a great place to chat if you're working on your own.

  [1]: https://remotetogether.slack.com

Thanks, will check it out!

Thanks for asking. For me, the issue is not the quality of clients and work. I tend to keep my prices high which seems to filter many junk jobs. I'm also lucky in a sense that many jobs find me and not the other way around. I suppose what burns me out is the instability in income. I try to mix it up as much as possible with fixed cost and hourly jobs but most good thing eventually come to an end. Some days I'm lucky and good projects find me and we come to a mutual agreement quickly but occasionally I have a time gap in my daily schedule that needs to be filled. I'm not a developer or I'd work on a side project to fill my time. I typically spend any extra time on making a new, more thorough portfolio but then I'm reminded that the clock isn't running and I can't bill myself. Is anyone in the same shoes or have some advice?

Growing up, I was "taught" / conditioned to "endure" severe, chronic stress.

This led to an accumulation of adverse events I was too stressed to effectively manage. Including especially physical injuries that had lasting negative effects.

I "hung in there" until my early 40's, when a career blow knocked the last pin out from under me.

I knew what I needed and wanted to do next. But I was frozen.

Physical health issues have continued to accumulate and to paint me into a corner.

Guard your physical health! Without it, life is much harder, and one problem tends to become two, become three...

Your physical health is the basis of your mental health and well-being. When you are physically unhealthy, it is much harder to be positive and productive. Especially when symptoms weigh on you persistently and take away your ability to focus and think effectively and to be comfortably social.

There is precious little in life that is worth the sacrifice of your physical health. And beware of scenarios that suggest or demand a trade-off against some future promise.

Those reassurances most often simply serve the person or system demanding the sacrifice. And it is a sacrifice -- don't expect to "get it back."

God please do everything you can to convince him not to open a bakery. The hours are brutal, the money is poor, the margins are slim, and the people are terrible. Customers, employees, vendors, they're all terrible.

Baking for friends is a fun way to pass the time. Baking for money is a quick road to a second burn out; it was literally years before I was able to stomach the thought of baking cookies or bread for my wife after I left the bakery I worked at.

My father was a baker for a large portion of his life. It really is difficult work, with insane hours, for low pay.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a working class mexican neighborhood where trades and unskilled work are the majority of occupations, but sitting in an office chair for 7hrs a day is paradise compared to baking, mechanics, or any type of manual labor.

> for low pay.

This is the real problem with manual labor, low-skilled labor, and jobs like baking.

The real stress isn't the day to day work, it's knowing that you are slowly wearing down your body but not earning enough to "get out of the game".

It's lack of financial security.

If as a baker you could buy a nice home and pay it off in 7-10 years it wouldn't be such a tough gig.

"Baking for friends is a fun way to pass the time. Baking for money is a quick road to a second burn out"

8+ hours a day, 5-7 days a week, nearly every week for years on end is liable to turn any hobby in to a slog eventually. Except for some people and some hobbies it doesn't. Somehow some people make it work, and enjoy it in the long run, without burning out.

Don't ask me how. I haven't found that magic job myself, and always tend to burn out on anything eventually. I need variety. I can't do any one thing for the long run without getting sick of it. Unfortunately, making career changes is difficult and stressful. So I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe someone who's made it work for themselves can chime in.

That's odd, an ex cs classmate went into bakery. Some HS friend in chemistry speaks about leaving all this to open a restaurant. I, too, am thinking about bakery or coffee place.

There's something about serving food to people that seems to be the emotional counterpoint of mad tech.

Most restaurants fail. It doesn't seem like a way to avoid stress?

You know sometime even a failure in something you like can be healthier and more motivating than safe thing you ended up dreading deeply.

Unless you drain your life savings, end up divorces... etc.

Professional gamblers* have something to teach everyone about managing risk.

In this case, the primacy of establishing a separate fund as your bank roll, and protecting it by not letting too much of it ride on any single bet (no matter how great the bet seems), is very appropriate to self-funding your own businesses. If you lose your bank roll, then you have to stop gambling, which is bad if you are convinced you have an edge.

*I'm not a gambler of any type, unless you count investing 401k/IRA savings in index oriented ETFs and mutual funds gambling (not an unfair position).

You're right, management risk is extremely important for anyone wanting to quit their job.

My advice would be to not even consider it without having enough money to sustain yourself for a minimum of 2 times the period you predict will take you to become profitable in your desired venture.

So if you spend 3000 a month, want to become a freelancer and expect it to take you 6 months until you build up steady business you should have a minimum of 36,000 saved up.

I learned this the hard way, hope someone out there heeds this advice.

You're doing it wrong

i think stress really just depends on the kind of work, and the expectations of your customers.

yes, most restaurants fail, but most businesses fail, because people think of it as some kind of paid vacation rather than an actual job.

getting up at 5am and making croissants is a very different thing than getting up at 5am and dealing with people screaming at you because an api endpoint isn't functioning.

It is very easy to fail as a restaurant because you signed the wrong lease/for the wrong place/at the wrong location/in the wrong neighborhood, or any combination thereof. Everyone I personally know in the food services industry works harder than anyone I know doing computer programming. Every task that happens in back and front of house has a very specific start time and a very specific duration allowance - there is no flexibility and no opportunity for pacing or giving yourself some slack.

The difference is the type of stress, the mental effort, and the expectations.

At the end of a hard day in the kitchen I'm ready to go hang out with friends and enjoy my free time.

At the end of a hard day as a software dev I can hardly string a sentence together and want to go be by myself.

Likewise in the kitchen I didn't get given completely unrealistic timeframes. As long as I focused and worked hard it was all good.

As a software dev I constantly have pressure to perform miracles and hit unrealistic deadlines from all sides. And the pressure is cumulative. If I have a bad day today I'm going to have to work extra hard and under more pressure the rest of the week to catch up.

If the food services industry paid as well as software dev I'd go back in a heartbeat.

That's most of what I tried to express earlier about the difference between dev/eng and "production" work. Being in the blur and under pressure, without moving targets around and under your feets that creeps in your life seems to be prevalent in the former way more than in the later (even though https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12987866 tells a different story too).

Seems like you're describing the experience of being a worker? I expect someone starting their own restaurant has a whole new set of worries.

we're talking about workers, not management/ownership. e.g. like at apple, vice president in your title means the excuses stop mattering. it's your job to fix it, or you're fired, end of story.

A piece of fish cooks in 6 minutes regardless whether it's plain or encrusted in black pepper.

> It is very easy to fail as a restaurant because you signed the wrong lease/for the wrong place/at the wrong location/in the wrong neighborhood, or any combination thereof.

this applies to any business.

> Every task that happens in back and front of house has a very specific start time and a very specific duration allowance - there is no flexibility and no opportunity for pacing or giving yourself some slack.

you've clearly never worked in ops or SRE. or working in a mine, on an oil rig, or on an airplane, or a squad car.

not everyone lives the life of a spoiled computer programmer which seems to be your baseline for evaluation.

I don't think you would need to do much due diligence to rise above most restaurateurs.

Many restaurateurs have been running restaurants and cooking professionally for years before they try to open their own. I'm not sure writing software is as helpful experience wise.

You would be surprised. It's an extremely competitive industry, with some very hard-working people. And hard work is no guarantee of success either.

What strikes me as recurring problems from the things that make it on to shows like Kitchen Nightmares are the following.

  * Can't or won't keep the accounting books in order.
  * Micro-management of staff that want to do the job.
  * Under-management of staff that aren't doing the job.
  
  * I /suspect/ not paying the staff enough (in money/respect/etc) to keep good staff and keep the motivated.

Unfortunately the real world is not like Kitchen Nightmares. Often restaurants with good management still fail due to other reasons, the margins in hospo are razor thin, it doesn't take a lot going wrong to go out of business.

> Don't let anybody every come close at touching that.

Another way to look at it is, nobody can tell you what to do unless you're willing to hear it from them -- so always be mindful and reasonably opinionated about who you have at your "ear".

Stressed and burned out so he is opening a food business? What??

I operate a restaurant and I know about 50 people who do. Believe me - there is no shortage of stress and your just as likely, if not more so, to get burned out.

Tell your friend to seriously think twice...

It's well known that food industry is stressful, but maybe the nature is different. It's more physical and less mental. Also more social (you interact with customers, kids, families, birthday cakes paint a different mindset)

One of the hardest job I took, digging trenches (summer) which made me cry the first week, was one of the less stressful mentally too.

There's plenty of mental stress working in a bakery.

You have a 100# mix of french bread, and it isn't rising properly. Will it continue to rise if you leave it in the proofer long enough, because the water it was mixed with was too cold? Maybe the guy doing the mix forgot the salt, or the yeast (because trust me, unless you're doing the mixes yourself, those things are going to happen).

If the mix will rise eventually, how long will it take? How are you going to change the schedule of the bakes so that the oven is at the right temperature and the bread is finished baking before the local restaurant comes to pick up their daily order?

If the mix is missing an ingredient, do you have time to make a new mix? Do you have room in the freezer for the dead dough, so you can save it to stretch out other mixes? Do you have anything delicate in the freezer that might melt when you dump a hundred pounds of warm dough into the same space?

If you're making a new mix, do you need to order more flour now, because you're using more than you expected? How is this going to impact the rest of the mix schedule?

Repeat that chain of thought for every kind of bread or pastry your bakery sells. It's exhausting as hell, mentally.

Point taken, but....

Humans have been baking bread for thousands of years. At this very moment I could find 100 sources of information, free and for sale about the specifics of baking bread. I could get these in the context of baking at home, baking for a group, or baking for commerce.

Contrast that with the poster's problem of implementing an architecture for an identity access management system. (I have experience with this).

There is no way to relate the tasks involved in baking for profit to designing and building a working technical system that likely is highly unique to the technologies and circumstances of his environment.

I quite sure IBM could set out to design and build 500 profitable bakeries with their own people and be successful on upwards of 90% of cases. Those people setting out to build 500 different <insert your favorite complex computer system here> would fail upwards 50%.

I'm not saying running a bakery is easy, but I am saying running a bakery is less stressful than implementing a functioning computer system.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/793/

I think it's really easy to look at something from the outside and think "how hard could that really be?" I bet if you asked someone who wasn't in CS how hard an identity management system is, they wouldn't think it is all that hard. Only once you get into the details do the challenges become apparent, and I suspect that's very true for bakeries as well.

>but I am saying running a bakery is less stressful than implementing a functioning computer system.

Has anybody here claimed the opposite?

Somebody (who I suspect has never worked in a bakery) posited that perhaps the stress of food service was physical, as opposed to mental. That's a guess which sounds reasonable, but it turns out that there are a lot of problems that need to be solved in a commercial bakery that are perhaps non-obvious to people who haven't fully considered what goes in to making a successful and financially stable bakery. I wasn't trying to argue that building an operating system is less stressful than a bakery, but I WAS trying to establish that there's plenty of mental stress to go around (in addition to the physical stress of being on your feet and moving around all day) when it comes to working in a bakery.

I only worked at a satellite bakery[1], not the bread making part, which is not taxing mentally after 20 days. For the rest I honestly cannot speak.

[1] sandwich preparation, finishing touches for cakes, closer to a starbucks.

Ah, okay. My experience was with an independent bakery doing both retail and commercial production; that is, we would bake mix, proof, and bake bread/pastries in house for direct sale to the public, and additionally provide bread and pastries to local restaurants for resale.

I worked there for almost but not quite two years, and by the end I was managing the bread dough for all the mixes (moving things in and out of the proofer and fridge as necessary to make sure they were ready to bake at the right time), mixing all the specialty breads (multi-grain loaf, rye breads, holiday breads, basically everything but the sandwich bread, french bread, hot dog buns, and pizza dough), handling 95 percent of the actual baking, plus I was the person who kept track of the pastry stock, produced and baked pastries, and did the final prep work (frosting the brownies and cakes, etc).

Pardon the slight arrogance, but isn't most of this a technical problem that can either be solved mechanically or you end up knowing by heart after a few months ?

When it all goes smoothly, it's a technical problem that can be solved mechanically or with a schedule that you know by heart after a few months.

If you're curious, please don't hesitate to ask me how often things went smoothly.

Aight, forgive me for asking, I just never encountered this, most of the restaurant I worked at where more industrial than a bakery.

No worries (: It's hard to express how much of the mental stress comes from stuff going wrong. It can be exhausting to have to reassess the plan and come up with a new solution that will still get everything baked in a timely manner while making sure that nothing is over or under proofed, five or six times a day, every day.

I would say that baking the bread is the easy part. Dealing with customers, managing employees, getting to the bakery at 3am EVERY DAY, and dealing with other business bureaucracy is the mentally taxing component.

Each of us have wildly varying experiences it seems. The madness of tech projects made me feel so helplessly alone. Probably because it involves my own brain and soul rather than a production job, where I can just go, do my task brainlessly, clean and leave everything behind to enjoy the my free time. And customers / colleagues interactions felt nowhere near problematic. It wasn't a special crowd either, a blend of rich tourists and lots of working class at rush hours.

ps: I am not saying thta being the customer interface is easy. Just not in bakeries and some other kinds. My mother was a post office clerk, it was famous for the angered waiting line venting violently on the powerless employees, sometimes physically. I never had to deal with this in the food serving business.

I'm sure IBM couldn't set up a single profitable bakery.

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