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Comment by alphamale619 | Hacker News Reader

"burnout stems from the extremely abstract nature of the modern economy."

That is incorrect. According to research, burnout steams not from the work, but from the pressure to complete the work, and the consequences of not completing the work.

Almost every job in the private sector is "At-will" employment. Meaning you can be fired for any work related reason. Not finishing an assignment? Poor performance? etc, you are at risk of being fired.

That pressure to constantly perform under pressure is what causes burnout. You baking is not a pressure packed job, you are following a simple procedure that requires little to no thinking at all.

If you were threatened or worked "under the gun"at the bakery, I gurantee you would burnout.

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> That is incorrect. According to research

Don't say something is black and white incorrect when your evidence is "research".

> According to research, burnout steams not from the work, but from the pressure to complete the work, and the consequences of not completing the work.

> You baking is not a pressure packed job, you are following a simple procedure that requires little to no thinking at all.

What? A job that "requires little to no thinking at all" can nonetheless include a strong pressure to perform or get fired, which is what you say causes burnout.

He says so in his last paragraph.

I disagree with that on a personal experience, and I have read plenty of research from suggesting that while pressure is part of the equation it isn’t necessarily corporate pressure. It is more often related to lack of purpose, lack of guidance, personal conflict with a superior.

All these can go un-identified, stress accumulates, productivity decreases, and that’s when corporate pressure can kick in.

In my case there was no corporate pressure, although there was clear decrease in performance.

As soon as I figured out (actually a LICSW, over the phone and one face-to-face visit) that I was doing a burnout, I was able to get back on my feet make a plan and I liked my job and my environment again.

This was a few years ago, and now I’m feeling going down a bit, and I blame the lack of direction, lack on continuity, lack of a mission. I could literally stop doing any meaningful work for a year before anyone would acknowledge any form of poor performance.

I am obviously not going this route, I have a plan, but corporate pressure isn’t what is triggering me, the lack thereof might be

People are getting burned out in Sweden too and it is very difficult to fire people here.

But you can apply pressure on your workers in other ways even if you cannot easily fire them...

Not at all, there's plenty of burnout in countries without at-will employment.

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