As an employee you should have your eyes open about this but it’s not necessarily the case that they should be avoided at all costs. Properly used, time at one of these companies can change the trajectory of your career. Depending on where you are in life that can be worth it.
Having a time boxed plan makes it more likely you can survive the experience with your health and sanity intact.
Remember as critical as everything seems it’s no longer your problem once you move on. Sure, moving on to your next job might seem to be leaving them in a lurch, but lack of redundancy isn’t your problem.
PS: The best thing you can do for your teammates in that situation is convince them to find a better job.
Outlets for this already exist in the form of Glassdoor but much like every other review service once it reaches scales the usefulness of the reviews falls precipitously.
You also open yourself up to libel claims. Assuming your canceling actually works I would not be surprised if the company spent significant effort to take you to court and financially ruin you. Even more so if the accusations aren't entirely true (perhaps it's just one division and not the entire company).
Instead, it's probably more useful to _train_ people to notice these things and ascertain the risks. Burnout can often be worth it if the net-gain-after-burnout improves your prospects to advance in your field, confers a pedigree, or any other number of small things. Returning to the finance example this is certainly why people risk it. At the end of the day, in the US at least, a little over half of the states in the union are right-to-work. This is the safety valve for companies who deliberately churn employees - just leave. Ideally after you've already lined up a new gig in your field.
For mid-career professionals, you should be able to tell this from your second or third degree network on LinkedIn or similar. For students, you should be suspicious of any company that’s hiring a lot of fresh grads unless they are gigantic (in which case, consult the alumni whisper network).
https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/cerner-layoffs-part-of-...
Here is example of the culture: https://www.bizcominthenews.com/files/cerner-1.pdf
Patterson is infamous for an email[7] scolding managers for not coming to work before 8 am and leaving before 5 pm, now a prominent example used when discussing email netiquette. On the day that the email was posted to Yahoo!, the company's market cap fell by over 22%[8] from a high of US$1.5 billion.[9]
[7] "BBC News - AMERICAS - Boss's e-mail bites back". BBC. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009.
[8] ..
[9] Flynn, Nancy; Kahn, Randolph (2003). E-mail Rules: A Business Guide to Managing Policies, Security, and Legal Issues for E-mail and Digital Communication. AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. p. 45. ISBN 9780814471883. netiquette.
The fresh grads case is a good point. The one company I left fairly quickly was almost entirely powered by intern/junior labor. Seniors left quickly due to a combination of bad management, low advancement opportunities, and constantly having to re-train people. This, I think, is worth looking out for.
That is one thing we are going to be writing extensively about regarding remote jobs in the coming years.
Lucasfilm tried to recruit me once-- which would have been my dream job-- but couldn't match what I was being paid in Orange County. The recruiter actually tried to convince me my housing costs would be less in the bay area. I had family in the bay area and they all confirmed that Lucas was a notorious abusive employer.
I had a similar thing with Dreamworks-- they best offer they could make was 25k less than I was making at the time.
I once joined a team that had 40% sustained turnover for the 5 years I stayed on. I only stayed because they basically golden handcuffed me.
Despite interviewing with 6-7 different individuals 1-on-1, only 2 of them were actually future team mates.
By the time I joined, I discovered that on my team of 5: - manager had joined weeks before interviewing me, replacing the long time team lead who had been fired - 2 guys were being fired & I was to take on their responsibilities along with the other guy they just hired (who was a flake, so I took on 2 jobs within 3 months) - I was the first person to sit in-office, the rest were remote, this meant a disproportionate support burden went to me immediately despite being new and not knowing the platform
It was also the first place I ever worked where it was normal for people to get fired in their first year. Not sure how you ask about that in an interview though, lol.
There is a way, actually.
One of the things you want to ask when joining a non-tiny company is about the overall retention figures. Average/median tenure is a good start, especially coupled with a question on what the company does with their exit interview data. You could also ask for a rough bucketing on the tenure: how many people stay beyond 1y/3y/5y.
It's going to be a rare company who can (or will) share even semi-accurate figures, but you should be able to get a decent grip on the fractions. Also, if those in the company who are supposed to know this are evasive about the question, that's a red flag all on its own right.
Maybe candidates can start asking for a company's "resume"?
This happened to me at the last job, and I've commented something similar once: the interview experience and the first couple of month experiences were so different I've got no qualms saying it straight up: I felt lied to.
On top of joining a team that felt completely bootstrapped and thrown together for my arrival and included ZERO engineers with domain knowledge or familiarity on the system they had just been pulled off of systems they'd built and maintained for the last several years to this new team I was hired into, two people left within the first two months, another got fired due to ongoing and apparently continued behavioral issues, and a third appeared on my team out of nowhere. Got pulled into a zoom call one day "So and so works for you now" and that was it.
All of this after an interview process where I was assured: "these guys have been working on this since inception".
The place was absolutely bonkers compared to the interview, and I thought I had done a pretty decent job peeling the layers of filibustering answers when I would inquire about things like turnover, team sizes, promotions and firings, open positions/how long they'd been open et al. Or at least the recruiter I worked with leading up to getting an offer letter was more than forthcoming and transparent about this stuff....
...except THAT person ended up quitting two weeks before I did.
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Your plans to get out quick may run into economic epicycles and then your clever plan ain’t so clever.
The most insidious thing they did was delay the green card application as much as they could, and just drag things out on purpose. Since I am Albanian/European, I could get it faster as my country is not on the per country cap that Indian and Chinese applicants are. They knew it, as they kept dragging out the first stages of the applications on everything. It was mental abuse.
By 2011, the economy was recovering, and I did switch, but I had to redo all the green card application stuff again.
The employee should just be able to do the process themselves, and handle it the papers with their own lawyer.
It is clear that the H1B is setup to maximize the benefits to large corps, and not necessary the american economy/people.
For me, it’s very easy for me to get attached because I care about some combination of the problem and the team. I’ve had some major wins improving things in those cases, but I’ve also had some major losses. And it’s very difficult for me to recognize burnout symptoms until they’re severe enough to require extensive recovery time.
Sure, the idea of timeboxing could be useful, but I could also just let that slide given my motivation to improve things. In the end, it’s not worth it to me anymore to put myself in that situation.
How?
Some game companies that have only really young workers below senior management and explain this by saying older people don't get what they are doing. They say it quietly, and indirectly because it opens them up to discrimination lawsuits. But what it really means is experienced people aren't putting up with something about the company.. the hours, the management, something. And unfortunately this does not really seem to be an impediment to their success.
I'd love to work there but I struggle to justify the burnout that will result i'm not 20 anymore.
I know that realistically, I'm probably going to find a different job at some point, but it's always been a natural progression and not a planned movement.
I've never started a job thinking "I'm going to work here for X years, and then quit (for Y reason)". I've also never started a job expecting to work there for the rest of my career, although I would be happy if it was a good job and I did.
I might end up quitting my current job after a year or two, I might be here 10 years, maybe I'll leave in a casket. I don't have a set date for when I'll quit.
My father has had the same job for over 40 years. He's had different roles (originally a telecommunications rigger, now a network engineer) and worked for different companies (buyouts etc.), but he's never actually had to apply for a new job. He's enjoyed his work and had a good career.
I guess there's not many jobs like that these days though.
And it’s not as if my work wasn’t valued, I had just been given a rather significant raise a couple months earlier. As far as I could tell, they were happy to throw money at extracting every bit of value out of me until I was completely empty.
(Edit to add) It’s also why I roll my eyes so hard at most of the standard suite of job interview questions. When there is a known and obvious correct answer, all it does is filter out candidates who are too honest to lie, too stupid to know you’re supposed to lie, and candidates who cannot confidently sell a lie.
It's actually really hard (mentally) to do this if you don't already have a shitton of savings in the bank that you're not worried about paying rent, and aren't worried about getting a new job. For a lot of people it's harder than it sounds. But yes, gap years would be amazing.
Another thing I wish was more encouraged is part-time work. Working for a year at maybe 20 hours a week would probably pay all living expenses while you have plenty of space and time to recover and time to spend in the wilderness or beach or whatever strikes your fancy. Everyone seems to want to shovel you in as a full-time employee, and part-time seems to be looked down upon more than it should as a transition and recovery tool.
Burnout doesn't happen everywhere. It tends to happen when bad or inexperience people run projects.
If someone feels like there company is burning them out they probably are. Move on before it eats at you. You cannot change bad management.
Definitely.
I would also add that burnout at least for me is a function of ROI. In my experience, teams are willing to put in crazy hours if doing so regularly results in success and favorable outcomes for them. If you force teams to put in crazy hours and the effort results in failure more than a few times, it decimates morale and very quickly leads to burnout. If you're asking teams to give their all you had better be able to deliver.
You find yourself thinking “I was sure that would be good and worked hard, and it turned out not to be. Now I am sure my new project will be good, but how can I know it’s going to go differently”.
Having too much responsibility to early in one's career I think is a significant risk factor, especially combined with certain personality types. Moreso if you lack a strong professional network and/or mentorship. This situation is often correlated with clueless and/or ineffective and/or hostile management, which is it self an exacerbating factor.
I don't think it's the only cause, but it's probably a common one.
Building and shipping great software that goes on to have few or no users? Burnout.
Building widely used software but you come to believe it does more harm than good? Also burnout.
Avoiding it requires believing in the value of the things you have done; imo overwork can only speed up the process, but will not cause it if you believe in the rightness of what you are doing.
I tend to burnout when there's a conflict between expectations and requirements from management, and lack of agency to actually be as productive as I can be. Also when the work becomes very mundane, or I'm required to respond to customers quickly while trying to meet code related deadlines.
This last time it was most of that, but also I couldn't go to the gym, couldn't engage in my other leisure stuff, couldn't hang out with friends or at a coffee shop, or really do anything but wake up and write fucking react code, and a close friend died. So I just stopped being able to do that and gave up. Best pay I've ever had, don't know what I'm doing next, but I'm bored and almost broke.
With your employment history, you'll be very eager to please. You will say "Yes" and "No problem" to anything, which is not a problem, if it's actually not a problem. But this:
> when there's a conflict between expectations and requirements from management, and lack of agency to actually be as productive as I can be.
tells me it is a problem. Your quote is always true in any company. This will always happen. You will always burn out.
Here is what you do. You don't answer "No problem". You answer "Write down exactly what you want and a timeframe when you need it and I'll see if I can deliver". This will do two things:
-50% of your work will disappear. There are many middle managers who just go around delegating, thinking that is their job. In reality this is procrastination and they are useless. They will not even be able to write a spec sheet (look into how a good one looks and demand exactly that). These are the most idiotic projects in the company and now you will not be involved
-the projects that come with a spec sheet have self documenting ~code~ expectations. If you force people to write something down in a specific manner, most will realise their lunacy
Then you communicate. Don't hide anything. Tell everyone involved exactly the ups and downs (this is where lack of agency comes in and where it disappears with competent management. If it's incompetent you'll at least not feel responsible or shame) of the project. This isn't poker.
There. This might be too personal. This might be completely wrong. But please realise that it's you doing this to yourself.
> manager makes a huge and arbitrary change
This is a violation of agreed upon terms, though. Same as feature creep. Again, most managers are just looking for work theatre, rightfully afraid they'll be found out for the imposters they are.
This behavior is extremely demotivating. "why I couldn't motivate myself to write html." - maybe you are right and you can't write html under these circumstances?
Leave out the adhd, maybe customer support is just something you absolutely do not want to do, so where is the motivation supposed to come from?
There is probably a bottom tier of practitioners who are marginal, and their successes will be more randomly distributed due to fortunate or unfortunate circumstances. The unfortunate people in this group will be difficult to distinguish from the incapable-but-hanging-on-anyway.
That said, I suspect that there is also not that much difference between the symptoms of being burned out and of never having been capable in the first place. I also am not convinced that all burn-out is reversible. Even if you recover your full mental and emotional strength, the experience of deep burn-out can really change a person. You can never get back time that you lose.