It’s these people I think about when reading the weekly threads here on developer burn out.
Humans are inherently fragile beings with almost no redundant parts. If I fry your brain with long hours and politically hostile work environment and drive you to depression; vs. I fry your brain with long hours in physically exhausting environments. The results are the same - your brain is fried. One type of hostile work environment is not necessarily better or worse than another type of hostile work environment.
the same time, if you have a good support group and work hard strenuous hours (like rig workers) the physical isn't that bad because you have the bouyant comfort of comraderie. but if you are in an office stuck next to someone whose values you cannot stand and clash with yours, and whose boss demands and harasses you all the time but you are stuck working paycheck to paycheck because of medical bills or something.....that's a reason to want a factory job for some.
Having worked for a couple of years as a commercial electrician, I would choose that in a heartbeat over “knowledge work”… if they paid the same.
I suspect that there are many definitions of the term "burnout" being used by different people, making communication difficult.
Don't go there.
Specially the American culture has this idiotic thing where people are so afraid to called a failure or to be someone who quits. That's probably doing more damage than anything to yourselfs.
I digress, but I think the US has a healthier attitude towards failure. Maybe I am wrong of course: I never lived there.
When a company goes bankrupt it can bring down with it smaller providers and self employed workers. If you only lose venture capital, that is not so bad as it is part of the risk/reward. Why anyone would like to do business with an entrepreneur that uses bankruptcy to move on? I guess that in-advance payments could be a solution.
Bankruptcy is a last resort mechanism. It makes sense to let people move on when, without bad intention, they just failed a business. To make mistakes is human. But to abuse the privilege betting in high risk business and letting others pay for it seems immoral and not long-term sustainable for the economy.
High risk businesses have a cost. Trying multiple of them and expecting others to swallow looses they did not caused sounds to me like abusing the system meant to get you out of genuine failure.
This is not treating it as a last resort, this is "you rely on repeated bankruptcy" as a part of strategy. So they go into high risk business with expectation that someone else will pay if that fails. (Which is ok in only speculators loose money, but not ok if they end up not paying suppliers, sub-contractors etc for services.)
> Judges and lawyers here push you to keep going and avoid bankruptcy at all cost, but that seriously makes no sense in many cases which can be outside your control.
This is judges and lawyers treating bankruptcy as a last resort.
Judges and lawyers probably do that very close to the extent that that is actually a requirement of the bankruptcy laws, which are intended as a last resort.