Comment by vfc1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vfc1 | Hacker News Reader

The bad news is that this will happen everywhere where you work for someone else, especially in large companies.

And this cannot be avoided while working as an employee, it's part of the system.

The good news is that there is one way to avoid this (the only way AFIK) is to start your own company, there you get to call all the shots for good or for bad.

It doesn't have to be a big company though, it can be just you and a laptop for starters.

Other than that, as an emotional coping mechanism and to preserve their mental sanity, people will simply become disengaged and cynical.

Take longer breaks and try to have a laugh with your colleagues to blow some pressure and make friends.

Also, because things work badly in those environments, there is a lot of blame deflection going on, which is one of the main causes of stress and burnout.

Again, part of the system, not much that you can do about it other than learning to deflect responsibilities to others.

Getting rid of the hot potato is a very important skill in these corporate settings.

Usually on a team, it's always the same people getting the short end of the stick. Try not to be one of them if you can, but often that's easier said than done.

Also, try to get promoted, you will get more responsibility and might even be able to fix some of these things, that's another positive attitude towards chaos that helps a lot of people cope with it.

I couldn't disagree more. I work for the government (in R&D) of all places (about as close as possible to the opposite of working for myself IMO) and I don't feel this at all. I have near-total control over my work environment. If I need something, all I have to do is articulate why I need it and I will get it or get a precise technical explanation of why I can't have it.

That's a very special setting, most enterprises aren't like that. For example, for material, you get a crap old PC where you can hardly run your IDE, where you can't install anything.

These days it's doable to at least get a second monitor. But for things such as an SSD drive? At least a couple of years ago it was nearly impossible.

The reason why burnout is frequent, is because in general in most places work conditions are bad and stressful. In my view the problem is the system and not the people.

Your professional setting seems like a good example of how it doesn't have to be like that.

So cynical.

First of all, we live in an imperfect world, so there always needs to be a search for balance. No company is perfect, and if it were, we'd be out of a job, so to speak. The balance needs to be that there are enough things going well enough, for you not to get burned down (burned out, pissed off). Enough of the "problems" must be challenges, and actionable, and still excite you to solve them. If this is not the case at your place, I see three possible outcomes:

1. You be cynical. For a miserably long time to come

2. This is not the right company. My experiences are very different. I get cynical about a thing or two, but on balance I love what I do. So look for a better workplace

3. You're not in the right line of work. No hard feelings. Go do something else, I beg you

It's not cynicism. It's acknowledging the reality of work in a lot of these environments as the root cause of these problems.

You will be stuck with an old slow PC trying to fix some issue until midnight, and that just takes a heavy toll on people.

As things can't work well, there is a lot of responsibility deflection going on, it would be naive to think otherwise.

Also, a lot of these posts in HN assume that the only way to live is to work as an employee for someone else, under similar conditions.

It's important to realize that there are other professional options available, which many people won't even consider.

For your option list, I've seen a lot of 1. As for 2, there are lot more bad companies than good ones, and you can't tell from the interview process and can't also change each 2 months.

As for 3, half the workforce would switch jobs then. The problem is not the people, it's the system.

I would add 4, do contract work and stay while the balance of the good things / bad things about the job make it worth it, then do something else after a year or two when it doesn't.

This relates to 2, sometimes a company is the right company in the beginning, but it's no longer the case later on. For example, I bet you won't work there forever.

> The good news is that there is one way to avoid this (the only way AFIK)

I managed to recover from a similar level of burnout/pissed-offedness by changing my domain of software development completely. I got out of high-stakes server-side software and into client-side mobile software. It took some effort to pivot, but in the end it was a great relief. In my experience, Apple's slow approval process is a much better problem to have than getting pinged at 3am for any reason.

Everything a new graduate could wish for ! /s

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