Burning out and quitting | Hacker News Reader

Burning out and quitting

mayakaczorowski.com

921 pointsczottmann346 comments

This is a powerful piece that resonates with my own experience. I went through a period of severe burnout that took me a couple years to recover from. One of my later insights was that burnout doesn't merely entail working too much (although that's certainly part of it); burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited love."

So many of us go above and beyond for our companies/projects/teams/whatever. The author here describes overcommitting at work. We might have the best of intentions, but at some point, we don't see the returns we yearned for and start to question what all this self-sacrificial giving is for. That is when burnout really sets in. I've had friends burn out while working for hostile or indifferent managers, startups that are trending the wrong direction, companies that engage in illegal or unethical behavior, etc.

A second insight was that burnout can play a positive role in our lives. It's like a circuit breaker that trips to protect us from a damaging situation. When we feel burnout coming on, it's a warning to pay attention to an important misalignment in our lives.

This has been my experience. I have simply learned to look for emotional fulfillment and creative output elsewhere in my life and am far happier for it. I find I’m actually a lot better at my job when I have some distance from it. It allows me to connect with people — even at work — on a human level because I don’t particularly care about my actual work and basically forget about it as soon as I stand up from my desk.

This reminds me of some advice I got from a grad student as an undergrad -- "It's important to not care TOO much when doing research. Most things don't work out the way you expect and you'll always be disappointed or even biased when you are looking at your data."

Time is difficult, but I'm primarily unable to find the energy outside work for anything emotionally fulfilling or creative. I think this is why people are so motivated to find fulfillment in their work. Any time I have tried, my sleep, my work, and my life in general suffers, and I'm soon frustrated by the limited progress I can make.

A good day's work can be so draining as to leave me literally depressed. A good day, mind you - not hard, not bad, not stressful - just one where I am completely focused on work for 7-8 hours. Maybe it's me, maybe it's the nature of coding for a living.

Well, I can't honestly say this is a panacea (or that it is in any way something that would work for you), since I'm struggling currently myself. But here's something I've been doing and I think has helped some:

I make it a point to go on a backpacking trip once per month (Not saying it has to be camping, although there are special benefits to spending time in the wild).

This is a hard commitment that I've made with myself. I do it whether I feel like it or not. Usually, I don't, but end up happy I did it anyway. I've posed this to my friends and family as my monthly "therapy session", because it is, and because that frames it more correctly than saying "I'm just farting around".

You can carve out a day or two for your therapy every month, even if it doesn't seem that way before you start. It might not be much, but it isn't nothing.

For me, being out in the wild, away from society (especially cell phones, the internet, and the media), is an important component.

Sounds like "Shinrin-Yoku" -- very effective IMO. Thanks for sharing your strategy!

I don't think I've ever been able to be completely focussed on work for 7-8 hours. I can plod away on routine work all day long but it seems I only ever have three hours worth of intense thinking in me. Trying to push past that always creates more problems than it solves.

I’ve seen it in the field as pouring your heart and soul into something and it did love you back but the supreme goal was achieved so it’s difficult to continue. You’re just sort of detached from it all since you got to the top of the mountain and there’s nowhere to go but down. There just isn’t the space to continue doing it like it was and it burns you out. You can only look back on that moment there were love streams.

_ “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”_

I guess you’re right though in that in the end it will never love you back. The wheel must continue to turn.

I’m surprised by how hard it’s become to motivate myself to learn anything new - I used to read about and experiment with new technology pretty much all the time. Now I can barely work up the strength to learn something new even if it’s actually something that I’m working with.

What about non-technology? I recently started learning guitar and it gives me the same buzz I remember getting from learning Rails a decade ago.

Maybe that's what I need - for now I'm focused on getting my kids into college, but maybe if I can distract myself with something else for a while I'll get back into focus.

> burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited love."

So much this. If you are putting in too much effort into something at work just because you care about it, this is a recipe for disaster.

If you're putting in extra work to learn valuable transferrable skills, that's fine - if that's the tradeoff you want to make.

But if you're just working your ass off for no reason, you're setting yourself up for a major let down.

Yeah it's surprising how little control you end up with once you burn out. I got there and thought I could will myself through it. I was not even keeping up with my timesheeting, it took so much will power just to get through a day.

I learnt you have to take holidays, you can't sustain long hours for months at a time and if management is focusing in a different direction than your team it's time to leave.

For me, I realized though that you do have control. The solution is counterintuitive, though. If I am at risk of burnout I slow down a bit, but I don't outright quit. I also queue up labor that will derive small tangible, almost guaranteed wins. Although programmers seem to burn out a lot (probably because there are almost no limits to how much effort you can put in... There's always more code to be pushed, after all), programmers uniquely have the tools to reschedule small tasks (e.g. refactoring, writing those tests you've put off) that can create small emotional "success hits", sometimes even with primary stimuli (green passing tests dots). These can serve to reassociate effort with reward.

Conversely, taking a vacation immediately after burning out is likely the worst thing you can do, because it associates not-effort with reward. Typically I like to drop in a timing-non-negotiable vacation far enough in the future to dissociate from the burnout, e.g. 2mo.

Anyways, it's been many years since I have had a full-on burnout. (I have had project burnouts though, where I refuse to continue working on a given thing and pivot to something else with a more favorable seeming reward schedule).

I think this thread gets to the heart of why engineers seem to have a more difficult relationship with performance management than most disciplines.

When management gives opaque or “unjust” performance reviews, it can almost directly trigger burnout in tech. Similarly if the process is not perceived as transparent engineers can simply feel like they are hitting a brick wall.

Given the high turnover rate in tech I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s even worth having a performance management process. Unless someone has straight up stopped working for a prolonged period, it’s unlikely that they will stay with the company long anyway.

Interesting you mention these causes, they’re the topic of this interview currently on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28308970

It helps a lot to think your management knows what it's doing. If you're stressing out on the latest likely "swing and a miss" feature that you think they picked using a dart board and ransom-note cutouts from magazines, you can end up burnt out for a good long time.

This is precisely why I cringe anytime ANY executive/HR person in a company refers to the team as a "family"

No, areyou going to fucking fire Uncle Joe for being too drunk at thanksgiving and cut him off from the family will and make him sign a non-familial-secrets-disclosure promise?

Fuck that. You are not a family. HR is NEVER your friend.

I was once offered ~8K to non-disparage a company upon leaving. Yeah - no thanks.

Since I assume you did not accept. Care to tell us what company :) ?

nah, im over it...

but at the time I sent their CEO regular emails asking if he was still a douchebag.

this would be especially funny if you were the only person at the company who knew how to set up filtering on the Exchange server.

Funilly enough I could have pulled this off, but didnt...

Although my fav Exchange story was at Lockheed:

We sent an email 'on behalf of' the Head of Council (the top corp Lawyer) for our division, to our entire group.

"Come by my office for Coffee and Doughnuts!"

Droves showed up to his office asking for coffee and doughnuts.

On April Fools Day.

I had to sign on a non-disparagement agreement once. HR was like "don't worry! you're not in trouble!! please sign this for our legal dept." I'm there wondering to myself, how can I possibly be in trouble? I had just quit...

I've you had just quit, why did you have to sign a non-disparagrmeny agreement? Did they threaten you with bad referrences or blacklisting or something?

I was young and naive. They made me think they wouldn’t pay out my left over PTO pay unless I signed.

> I was once offered ~8K to non-disparage a company upon leaving.

Should've countered with 50k, see what they said.

It's more like a disfunctional family, where the parents rent the kids services to perverts and beat them up while gaslighting them...

Yep. I was recently asked by an interviewer what burnout means to me. I said it's a function of energy and reward. High energy expenditure paired with high reward is just rewarding work. It's when there's high expenditure with low reward that causes burnout.

Ah, this is on point. I've been struggling with this for years after having put so much energy in to try and put good work into a major website, only to be totally fucked over by ignorant managers and subsequently internalize this feeling of "why would I ever fucking put extra energy into any work again"

People who haven't experienced this are just lucky. They've been rewarded well for their energy, or they had an early stake, or they just never put much energy in because they were in a space where they could be productive. They've never been fired on their way up. They've never had to rely on savings for an entire year and have to battle algo challenges just to get a phone call while dealing with zero motivation for even writing code.

The reward, for me, also has to be more than just money. I get paid well, but when the work isn't intrinsically rewarding, I still risk burnout. That's why the highest paid engineers in the world still burn out.

(And then there's the guilt of "wow, what is wrong with me, I'm getting paid a bunch of money to do something I'm good at, why am I losing my mind?", but that thought process doesn't help much.)

Your simple explanation is a thought I hope to remember forever as it's immediately applicable and doesn't require further elaborations.

I agree with this.

I have been basically, retired, for the last four years.

I’ve worked harder than I have in many years; all self-directed projects. I’ve been crafting a single iOS app, for the last ten months, and there’s months more to go.

It’s been wonderful.

May I ask how do you pay for yourself for many years to do so?

I spent my entire working life, living frugally, and carefully investing. I avoided personal debt, as well as frivolous expenses, drove old cars, lived in small apartments and houses, and practiced good fiscal hygiene. I saved and invested 25% - 40% of my income. Basically, the old-fashioned stuff that everyone laughs at, these days.

I'm not rich, but I'm OK.

I didn’t actually want to retire; I was forced into it, by the ageism in SV. I would not have taken the leap, left to my own devices, so I guess I should be grateful to the bigots.

It was totally worth it. I am done with having my work destroyed by others. I write the code I want to write, in the way that I want, and -quelle surprise- it works!

Huh. Turns out I knew what I was doing, all along. I just had to remove myself from situations where someone else was the gatekeeper on my methodology. My dream has been to be in the position where I can chart my own course[0], and experiment with the methodologies that I have been developing (but never allowed to implement), for years.

[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...

Very well said. A form of unrequited love, and also something which can be positive. I've lived this.

> burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited love."

I authored this comment but can't go back to edit. Given that this sentiment appeared to resonate with HN, I just want to add that I write extensively on this theme in my book "Eating Glass." I just put the chapter titled "Burnout" up for free: https://markdjacobsen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/eg-samp...

Thank you.

Thank you for sharing, great read

Looks like a profoundly insightful book. Will pick it up!

This almost exactly sums up the major issue of the times I've been burnt out. Combination of high passion for the project and a toxic, hostile or unsafe/unsupportive environment.

Continuing the figure of "unrequited love", idealization plays a role - a simple misperception or distortion of what the state of affairs actually is. It's no coincidence that a "romance" used to refer to fantasy tales of adventure, like Treasure Island.

OTOH some seemingly impossible things couldn't have happened without a "vision". So... tilt away.

>"I've had friends burn out while working for hostile or indifferent managers, startups that are trending the wrong direction, companies that engage in illegal or unethical behavior, etc."

I thought this was a good insight, that there are more causes of burnout than simply working too many hours. Thanks for sharing.

I think this conception of burnout rings true for me also after living the best part of a decade in a non-immigration accepting society. Sometime ones executive functioning just wont show up, and you lose the send of how to get more of what you want and less of what you don't want.

I think too many people ( ones who did not have kids) threw themselves into work since Covid started.

Companies squeezed every ounce of productivity possible from employees.

I imagine most people who had never worked remotely pre-covid did not understand that you need to clearly demarcate you work and personal life when WFH.

Everyone was just thrust into this. And companies took advantage of the market uncertainty to basically exploit folks.

Shame on them and now the workers are retaliating by quitting en-masse, demanding they be treated better.

It's a paradigm shift with some of the power back in the hand of employees.

> I think too many people ( ones who did not have kids) threw themselves into work since Covid started.

Heh, even the ones with children.

I agree with the end effect, but I question the intent on companies side. It feels like Hanlon's razer should be applied "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".

My experience is companies/leaders are just other overworked people who fell into the same trap and allowed their employees to fall into the same trap, and a reckoning (increased attrition) is on the horizon.

Related concept of Upadana

"Upādāna is a Sanskrit and Pali word that means "fuel, material cause, substrate that is the source and means for keeping an active process energized".[1][2] It is also an important Buddhist concept referring to "attachment, clinging, grasping".[3] It is considered to be the result of taṇhā (craving), and is part of the dukkha (suffering, pain) doctrine in Buddhism."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up%C4%81d%C4%81na

This person understands what actual burnout is. You get really seriously fried, like 'can't function in any sense' fried. The references to 'you have to decide what we'll watch on netflix because I literally cannot choose a thing' rang very true to me.

I generally needed more than a couple months but less than a year, and the removal of whatever it was that I'd burnt myself to a crisp trying to control. Over my lifetime that's been everything from overcoming homelessness, starting a business, transitioning the business to Patreon, trying to have a relationship: it's been a lifelong process of learning that I can't have things (even very desirable things) just by pushing harder to earn them. Quite often I just have to give up and not have the thing.

The more I learn that, the less I'm riding the edge of burnout.

I'm glad you are doing better. I think the author here does understand what burnout is, and was able to notice the symptoms a lot earlier. It shouldn't get to the point of not even being able to decide what to watch on Netflix. Burnout happens, and I think conditions less serious than yours can still be called burnout.

Again, really happy you are ok. I hope you are working in an environment that is healthy, and that you are able to prevent burning out again.

I think you saw a "doesn't" that wasn't there in the opening line: "This person understands what actual burnout is." The Netflix reference was from the original post.

You are right!

Thank you :) a number of things helped. Sadly, one of them was the death of my parents (but they were cared for and respected right to the end, and my darker take on their expectations can't hurt them now), and another was cutting ties with some family members.

Another thing that helped was Patreon, honestly, and I'll tell you specifically why: formerly I was making products sold commercially. This produced a lot of pressure to have 'hit' products, and a lot of fear when the ideas weren't coming, or when the idea wasn't selling. Going open source and Patreon-supported changed that to a more distributed system that was less bursty: didn't make as much peak money by a factor of three or more, but it was far FAR more predictable.

The increasing stability of this has been a huge help. I believe if society instantiated a basic income, that too would help many people avoid burnout, and remain productive, for the same reasons. Over-pressure is real, and damages productivity.

Have you written anything about your experience in "Going open source and Patreon-supported"? Most of the examples I've come across seem to be receiving trivial amounts.

Respect for needing only a few months.

I got burned out so bad a few year back (2015-my fist and only time) I was not able to focus on anything for almost 14 months.

Still feels surreal thinking about it. Had parts for rebuild my rack and everything in it and was not able to gather my thought to set anything up. I failed to install even a basic ubuntu server in 1-2 tries.

Apart from tending to the flowers in the garden, cutting grass and cooking... I was good for nothing. Watching a movie? Autoplay on youtube was it. Just sit there until 2AM watching <random>. Shopping for groceries? good joke. Sleeping? I was dreaming I'm in the office half the time. I had a flipping server chasing me down the rail track a few times because it didn't like the transcoding settings. Eh. Not pleasant but I'm counting it as a lesson in life.

I digress. What I'm trying to say is that I envy people that can get out of it so fast.

> ...I was dreaming I'm in the office half the time. I had a flipping server chasing me down the rail track a few times because it didn't like the transcoding settings.

That sounds like a full on PTSD! Hope you're feeling better since and the "bad chi" got purged from your internal storage, so to speak.

I'm over it man. Thank you very much.

I wish I could say I got over it on my own with sheer will but it was thanks to my wife. She pulled me back bit by bit.

As for bad qi... Most of it gone. My biggest regret is that my wife had to go through keeping the house toghether on her own while all of this was happening.

P.S. I do apppologise if my thought are a bit messy. That whole aspect of my life is somewhat blurry and only remember some part of it. Looking back it's like watching a bad movie that you can only remember a few really bad scenes from. What I remember very well is that sense of helplessness. I don't wish that to anyone.

Got burn out too. I've incredible hard time to have my brain to function properly even after 1.5 years of no work. Non functioning brain means (at 45 years old):

- you understand new concepts (in my case maths) very slowly (that is about 10x times slower than before)

- you memorize very slowly (I can reliably compare myself to 22 years old students, I need about 5 times more time to memorize a course than them; and I was a very good student at their age).

- anything even remotely stressful is tough. Remotely stressful = plan something to do the week end; cook a new recipe (I'm a good cook and I used to love cooking); do paperwork; listen to the kids for more than 15 minutes;...

So burn out is (as said by many) a completely different thing than "exhausted". Burn out means : your brain is fucked up for a very long period of time.

The hardest part for me is to think about the future. I just can't. And that generates a lot of anxiety... And that adds to the very bad shape...

This hits too close to home.

I used to be able to learn new tech quickly, bang out tons of work, and be able to context switch / multi-task with ease.

I can't bring myself to do my taxes. I feel it's only a matter of time until I get fired. I try hard to get back into work, but my brain just won't let me. I'll then spend more time in front of the computer to try and catch up which just makes it worse. Doing any type of work is like pulling teeth just to get started. Don't know what I'm going to do. The worst part is I get angry about it.

Get some help. You'll be heard and possibly understood. You'll realize you're not alone which helps to feel a bit less bad about it. You'll learn to live with the situation (because, in my case, that's the only way out). You'll sure change a little bit too, just like I am changing. You'll make bad choices again too, it happens.

Adaptation is our better weapon, but it takes an awful lot of time... But get some help 'cos, well, it helps. And hopefully, we'll recover at some point, in a not too distant future...

Reading this I'm wondering if I simply lack the willpower to get that burned out. When I start getting miserable and overloaded for a while, I tend to "burn out" in smaller ways and for shorter periods. Maybe I'll just become less productive for a few days or wake up with a massive headache and have to take the day off. I'm not particularly proud of these things but now I wonder if the alternative is worse.

I would call that a blessing in disguise. From my experience the alternative is indeed worse.

It’s much better that your pressure valve opens at a lower pressure and forces you to take some time to care for yourself. Rather than letting the pressure build until you break and then not much can be done but wait for the slow process of healing to rebuild you.

I feel that, I’m not a lazy slug by any stretch but my company seems to be fine with me and other devs working 40-45h per week. I still get the stress, frustration and weeks of listlessness, then I read these articles about 80h weeks and feel even worse.

I don't think it's really a matter of willpower. I experienced multiple burnouts because depression was not an option: I was the black sheep of a demanding and successful family which demanded that I play that role for them, but also demanded that I accept I was really a genius capable of anything, and therefore morally at fault for not achieving everything. I was the chosen one… who'd gone terribly wrong.

As such, I was twisted enough that years of therapy was in order, but really could not let go. To me, five minutes not fretting about how I was going to think up brilliant things and conquer the world, was five unacceptable minutes of being horribly lazy. That's not willpower, that's serious mental illness.

Burnout is just more evidence that serious mental illness is NOT good for you or your productivity. More pressure, past some indefinable point, does not make you more productive.

Any healthy person will rebel, balk, drag their feet and call it whatever (no skin off my nose if you call it burnout). A sufficiently mentally ill person will not be able to rebel, or balk, and will HATE themselves passionately for any moment of feet-dragging, and so they will push harder even while they are miserable… but pay a heavier cost.

Think of it as mental rhabdo (for crossfit fans). Because you are so unhealthy you don't respect any of your own limits, you drive your mental muscles into severe organic collapse and end up flooded with poison, and substantially weaker than you were, for a considerable time. It's not failure of will or collapse of attitude, you manage to mentally break yourself until you don't work and can't think or function.

Bad news. Willpower won't get you there because willpower doesn't automatically mean self-destruction. 'burning out' in smaller ways is MUCH healthier and better in every respect.

When I was in my 20s I feel like I bounced back from burnout in about 6 weeks. At 36 it feels like it's taking quite a bit longer than that. The pandemic certainly hasn't helped.

This is a good opportunity to point out (to everyone, not just this parent comment) that there is a lot of overlap between burnout and depression.

It's a common mistake for people to think that because they can identify the cause of their current state (work-induced burnout from a bad job, for example) that their symptoms can't be from depression. That's not true. They're not mutually exclusive. In fact, they overlap heavily both in symptoms and possible treatments.

The good news is that many of the techniques designed to address depression, such as CBT, self-guided therapy, exercises, and so on, translate quite effectively to helping with burnout, too. In fact, a burned-out person can pick up a CBT book or sign up with a therapist and drop right into helpful exercises to begin restoring a sense of agency, rebuilding autonomy, unlearning negative thought patterns, and other things that contribute to getting stuck in burnout.

Agreed. Burnout and depression may overlap. In my case, they did not. I’ve been burned out. I’ve been depressed. Burned out is better :) If you think you might be depressed, get some help.

Joking aside, for me the therapy is the same for either. I need to selfishly attend to my own agenda for a while, and build something just because. My workshop is my therapy zone. YMMV.

> My workshop is my therapy zone.

Hell yes, I bought like $3k worth of woodworking tools and supplies over the course of 2020 and that was my therapy. And the only actual project I finished is a janky dining table that’s too small for our 3 person family XD

Yeah I agree. I always thought burnout and depression were the same thing. How I’ve previously (maybe incorrectly) differentiated is:

Disclaimer: Trying to be concise, I understand depression is a spectrum, different for everyone, and a lot more complex than these few words.

Depression: You’re basically fried and can’t make decisions in any/all “verticals” (i.e. self-love, romance, professional, etc) not even to leave the house.

Burnout / Heartbroken: A subset of depression for a specific vertical in life. Burnout is a depression from a profession, but you still enjoy/can go on dates or hang out with friends. Heartbroken is a depression from romance, but you still enjoy/can work to distract yourself, take up a hobby, etc.

Um... nah. Anytime I've been in burnout serious enough to need more than a few months of recovery, everything was gone. Dates, no way, friends? No friends, just work. I don't understand this perspective of 'burnout, but can still enjoy'. A defining characteristic of it in my experience is that you get stuck in very mindless, reactive pursuits like doom-scrolling or video-watching, but you're not enjoying any of it, and you can't hang out with anyone because if you did you're harping on about the way you're stuck and still trying to fix work things, or you're griping about how burnt out you feel: the topic is all-encompassing.

This correlates with the folks who are in burnout before they're reduced to total unfunctionality, because that's the part they're experiencing as they circle the drain: they're not unfunctional, but they can't go on dates or hang out with friends or enjoy anything because they're obsessed with what's happening to them, unable to let go.

I guess the reformulation of it would be, if you're very unhappy with work but you still enjoy dates and friends and other things, and you're also able to do that work effectively but you're just hating it, that's not burnout. Seems like the danger point/red flag is how stuck you are to that work. Being able to decompress with other things is a sign that you're not too stuck to the thing, and it's a good sign that will save you. Being not able to enjoy is like depression and affects all things. Struggling harder and harder with a thing to the point that you're not able to enjoy, but you can't let go and have to keep increasing the pressure… that's leaning more towards burnout or at the very least what will get you into burnout.

A quick and dirty way to distinguish between work/stress fatigue and depression would be simply if you don't recover even when removed from work for a significant period of time.

What does CBT stand for in this context?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

Thanks for asking that question, I had sort of assumed the parent meant Compulsory Basic Training. i.e. those horrid multiple choice training sessions that HR departments love so much.

Wow I was even further off than that.

Bit of a follow-up: by 'this person' I DO mean the article author, I'm not pointing thumbs at myself and saying 'this guy, am I right?" :D

Holy shit.

Genuinely curious: if one is listening to their authentic inner voice, would they ever do this to themself?

Nope.

A healthy personality doesn't do this. (though that does also mean… a healthy personality doesn't end up being the biggest winner, gold-medal holder, best at what they do)

If your inner voice is that you MUST win or die trying, that's probably not the authentic inner voice, which is more naive, child or animal like, and won't understand why if it's hurting it shouldn't pull back from the flame. I do wonder whether there are guys (typically but not always guys) whose hormonal dissatisfaction and brain chemistry are so biased towards being unable to rest or go along, that they're set up to burn themselves out just following their natural drives and organic sense of what's fitting.

If so, that would count as a condition like ADHD where the brain chemistry is naturally serving as an obstacle, and the authentic inner voice needs a bit of guidance to better serve the overall person. Just because our deepest selves react a certain way doesn't always make it right.

For me, I've started feeling like I'm close to burnout. But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option.

Could I actually take months off recovering? No. I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before.

Which brings me to my main point: I don't see an option where the work ever actually truly ends. There's always more. Always things I need to be doing. And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding.

Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

Yeah I feel the same way. I work a stressful job that pays really well. If I leave, its unlikely I can land a job that pays the same. I just dont have the energy for leetcode. I am considering taking FMLA time off, which can be three months of unpaid time off. Just need a note from the doctor. I think three months is about enough to cure mildly bad burnout.

Of course work will not be happy with me, but I have to lookout for myself. They have to honor my position upon return, the question being that my future on the team would be compromised.

A more sinister idea is to take FMLA and leetcode full time for three months, then land a new role. Its kind of unethical, but life is so short.

Are you sure you can't reach out to your network and get in the side-door of a company without leetcoding? If you have advocates on the inside sometimes you can skip all the rigamarole.

Not quite, there are roles I could get. But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience. But again, I am quite burned out, so in some ways its in their favor to put me through a rigorous interview process.

Leetcode often filters out burned out employees

> But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience.

Then do something else! There is a world beyond unicorns and FAANG companies.

How much money is that worth to you?

I own a house with a very comfortable mortgage payment less than a twenty minute drive or a 40 minute train ride from downtown Boston. I work from home on interesting problems and I have a great dog.

So not a whole lot.

There are better ways to live than sucking down cash to be miserable. You can't take it with you.

Not if you want that level of comp

(Sorry if you were already aware and are saying more along the lines of "money isn't everything", but I wanted to make the point)

Agreed. If you're burned out, consider moving to a lower cost of living area (assuming SFBA or similar is your current situation) and take a lower paying job. The stress of FAANG/startupville doesn't make sense for a lot of people.

This is good advice for a lot of people but a lot of us have a family and cant get passed the idea of uprooting them for ourselves. I am absolutely fried but I cant pull my kids out of school and my wife away from her family. So I just trudge on to the bitter end.

You might be eligible for paid short-term disability leave with the doctor's note.

Also, interviewing and quitting after leave isn't unethical. Do it, take care of yourself.

Have you tried talking about this with your manager? Jumping straight to FMLA is making a lot of assumptions about the company and what they might be willing to do to retain you.

As an example: my SO was dealing with a lot of stress due to health reasons and tried to use FMLA. Her company let her do the paperwork, but ultimately let her take off 3 weeks of paid leave that didn’t count against her PTO. That gave her some room to breathe, but she started crashing again a few months later and tried to hand in her resignation. Welp. Her company is now giving her 6 months of paid leave with no hard obligation to return to work, just a request to be courteous and let them know if she’s not coming back so they can stop paying her.

If the first time that your manager is hearing about your situation is also your request to start taking FMLA immediately or else resign, your manager isn't going to be able to do much for you (and probably won't want to either, given the tough situation you will be putting them in on short notice.)

IMO our industry should really start considering sabbaticals as the next standardized perk. I think they would do a lot to prevent burnout and retain top performers.

+1 to sabbaticals. We had to end someone's employment and rehire them because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave.

You said: "because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave" I heard: because [support function] didn't listen to business.

Whether the support function is IT support, IT Security, HR they should not be allowed to simply say "No.".

If business wants to do a thing, then they should be saying "Well, this is how we can achieve that, the benefits and costs are these..."

IMO sabbaticals should totally not be introduced.

I know they sound awesome. But why do some companies introduce them? What are you suggesting introducing them for? To combat burnout. I.e. hopefully shortly before someone really burns out or most probably after they burned out already and need recovery they can go on a sabbatical.

How about not doing 80 hour weeks in the first place? How about not using arbitrary deadlines and throwing a fit over minor delays or changes to the plan? How about not doing all the crazy preventable things and pawing it off on other people.

I know, might be too much to ask so to speak but I really wish that more people would just not take this abuse instead of asking for a sabbatical to recover from the abuse.

Anyway, my $0.02.

I worked at a big technology company earlier this century which had sabbaticals at the 5 year mark. It ended the program because too many people would quit at the end of the sabbatical.

>too many people would quit at the end of the sabbatical

Not surprised. I assume that during the sabbatical, without the burden of the constant rat race, employees had time to reflect on what was bothering them about their job and practice interviewing without the daily work stress, allowing them to secure better jobs later.

I know a lot of people who hate their current job but the daily grind is so stressful, they don't have the energy to practice and interview at other places during the work week so they're more or less stuck in a place they hate.

I'm suggesting them as a way to give people longer breaks from work than can be afforded on 3-5 weeks of annual PTO, as a way for a business to retain talent that would otherwise leave.

Offering sabbaticals and maintaining good work life balance are not mutually exclusive. We should be able to have both.

I quit my job in February in part because my employer would not offer me a sabbatical. Had they offered me a sabbatical, I would likely be returning to work around now. The business would benefit from my seniority and established relationships within the company. Instead I'm out here finding new ways of making money and supporting myself - which is good for me perhaps, but not good for the business that I left.

Tell your manager you’re burned out and concerned for your mental health and you might just be allowed to take a paid leave, on which you can leetcode or catch up on TV. I know several people who did this and even one who quit immediately on return.

> don't see an option where the work ever actually truly ends. There's always more. Always things I need to be doing. And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding.

There's always another possibility: you might die. And then what would happen to the poor work?

I'm not worried about the work.

But my family, who needs my financial support, would be in a much much worse position.

In that case I highly suggest you stop what you're doing and buy $1-3M of term life insurance, depending on various factors.

I'm completely serious.

I do have that, actually. I'd very much like to not rely on that, though :)

My post you're responding to was a little dramatic and really just a response to the idea that I cared about whether the actual work gets done. I just care about my family.

What ins. company are you with, also interested...

This note about vacation is something I can relate too. Vacation never refreshes me. Going back to work after vacation feels so good.

That’s kind of a sad statement. Your company doesn’t really care about you personally…if they could replace you with someone better and cheaper, they would. Why should you care so much about them? Why care more about a job than your own life?

I don’t care about the company. I’m just saying that I find vacations to be very stressful and work (regardless of where I am working) to be relaxing in comparison.

I'm sorry to hear that you're close to burning out. Having a family definitely complicates the situation. I imagine it's much harder to fly with the wind when you're helping carry others.

If your work is remote, perhaps a change of scenery might suffice? I've been working from Albania, and with timezones, that basically means I get to go to the beach in the morning, then start work at 2PM-10:30PM.

Much of the battle is learning how to assert some control over your life. Burnout comes with significant learned helplessness - A feeling that you don't have any control over your life because previous attempts to take control have failed.

The trick is to un-learn that helplessness by retraining yourself with small steps in the right direction. Jumping straight into hours of Leetcode grinding isn't a good small step. Setting a goal to solve 2 Leetcode problems per week is a good first step. Or even better, maybe skip the Leetcode and start pinging your network for any job openings. Not every job requires Leetcode practice.

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

Time to force some control over your workload. Does your manager try to shame you into not taking vacation? Or do they expect you to accomplish the same work whether your on vacation or not? Time to push back.

If you're burned out and thinking of quitting anyway, what's the worst that can happen? As it turns out, you're not actually going to get fired quickly at most any company for simply limiting your workload to something reasonable. There's a hiring crunch right now and they'd have to replace you with someone else. Then you'd just get another job, which is what you wanted anyway. Time to start setting some boundaries, leading with expectations instead of waiting for them to be applied to you, and forcing some vacation time into your schedule. No one is going to make vacation happen for you, so get it done.

Meanwhile, it's time to find another company. I agree that quitting isn't a great idea if it can be avoided. I've seen enough people quit due to burnout and/or depression, only to spiral further into burnout/depression in the ensuing loneliness and financial stresses. Better to switch to a new job where people actually enjoy working together.

> Not every job requires Leetcode practice.

In The Netherlands, most jobs don't.

Isn't it pretty much everywhere doesn't require leetcode, except the US?

UK, Aus, and NZ definitely don't unless its with some American company.

All the well paying companies in London require it, including finance and startups.

Well paying vs normal paying. I am simply happy to have a job. I feel people are too focused on a well paid job when it comes to the whole leetcode thing. I get it, but there are normal paying jobs, so you don’t have to do it.

I'm in London, can you name these companies? I'm earning 150k GBP a year at the moment (average senior/lead as I understand is about 80 or 90?), and have interviewed at a bunch of other companies with the same level. Interviews I get are all about experience, and coding problems that are related to software engineering and not computer science.

>But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option.

Once you hit full burnout, you'll realize that you don't really have a choice, unfortunately. You will have to stop. Whether that means quitting depends on your situation but, in any case, you won't be able to continue on your current path.

>And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding.

This is the trap that pushes us into burnout. By definition, it happens when we get to a place where we're making enough that retirement (or other financial goal) becomes an option on some timeline we think we can stomach. Then, we worry that the cost of improving upon our current situation (or even replicating it) is too high. So, we settle into a game of essentially trying to outlast the misery. In reality, our quality of life is so miserable that it's simply not worth it. We recognize the problem, but we convince ourselves that we don't have a choice.

But, the premise itself is an illusion. There are always other options, some of which are far less costly than we imagine (and certainly less costly than destroying ourselves). It sometimes takes walking away from the burnout situation to recognize our full option-set, so we get stuck in a loop, the confinement and stress of which adds to our burnout.

One way out is to simply say to yourself, "I can no longer live this way" and intenralize that it's really not an option to continue. You will then be able to see new opportunities for change, as well as assign the proper cost to making those changes. In other words, you'll start to gain the perspective you need to move forward.

To underscore this, there's a specific meaning to 'you will have to stop', and it isn't 'you will choose to not work as hard, you will lose motivation'.

You will BREAK. You will be unable to think. The think no work. You no work. Not be fix thing today. Or tormorwo. blah.

Plenty of people in this HN post who are flirting with this. It's a natural outcome of motivation so strong that you'll push yourself to the limit, without flinching or weakening. I don't know where everyone else gets that. Childhood stuff? Social conditioning? Most people don't have it that bad. Most companies aren't SV unicorns.

Success on the grand scale, rides on the back of people like this. Some of them don't break, and some do. If you do, you will break. Not your will, not your motivation… your MIND breaks and you can't think. And then it's the months or years of down-time. You burned out.

>You will BREAK. You will be unable to think.

Exactly. This is 100% what I'm referring to. It's not that you'll just be exhausted and perhaps less efficient, but be able to power through it. That's kind of the pre-burnout stage where you can dial it down and still manage. I think people who've never experienced full burnout think this is what it is.

But, burnout is beyond that. Your brain just won't function--won't obey--and there's no willing your way through it. If you can, then by definition it's probably not burnout.

While burnout seems to manifest as what we'd think of as a mental state, there's very much a physiological component to it.

Elsewhere in this HN post I've seen people absolutely on track for this and showing all the danger signs. I think for some folks the ability to do the job is literally the last thing to go, and the defining characteristic there is that they cannot and will not dial it down, plus they're mad at anybody who thinks they should, and increasingly distrustful of anyone who thinks they're good enough.

I'll suggest that, historically, this is part of burnout and their brains are already not functioning/obeying, but it's because they're in the process of doubling down on the motivational state that will end up breaking them beyond functioning. Nobody wrecks themselves just because they're such Pepsi achievers, so I'd have to count that 'charge harder at the brick wall when it starts to hurt' as equally part of the burnout syndrome. Otherwise, people would stop :)

Same here. I joined a company pre-IPO several years ago and even though though Wall-street just punished us (hint hint) I'm still making close to 1m per year due to stock appreciation vs when I joined.

Unfortunately I'm not worth getting paid that much, so my statement isn't a humble brag or anything, it's a realistic observation that my role + work isn't special and I shouldn't be making this amount. With rest/vest I will likely never get this high of a salary + equity package again.

In that sense I feel like I'm currently at my maximum earning potential even though I'm a mid-level engineer. Plus going back to leetcoding? Pfft.

Similar situation here. With full honesty, if they worked me 18hr/day, I'd just have to put up with it until vesting is complete.

Thankfully, most public companies don't seem to have management that will look at your vesting schedule and try to abuse you maximally. I'm really not sure why, they probably should be doing that.

I know a capitalist when I see one!

I suppose so, but reluctantly.

My actual choices are to labor aggressively in the hopes of some day entering the investor class that doesn't need to labor for survival, or to do less labor and hope socialism builds me a safety net before I run out of funds.

If there's another option, I'd like to hear it, but I'm already pretty far down the capitalist route.

Also, the pandemic has really shattered any illusion that we could all work together to achieve any sort of universal good, which probably makes capitalism a better bet.

If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit and sell. Then invest this in a diversified portfolio (I'm assuming you have a few million by that time) that pays dividends.

Take a regular job. Try the best you can to find a nice position so you don't need to hop too much but basically the point is to find a good company that you can have fun at and still feel valuable. And if they try bullshit you don't care because you have all those dividends and you probably don't even need most of the salary.

To me at that point the salary and steady CV would be reassurance against bad stock performance. The dividends are reassurance that I have to take absolutely zero abuse at work and can even use that to make life better for the rest of the employees by being able to speak the truth from a position of financial security. The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon (sure, take a year for traveling the world or whatever but chances are you won't make it through a full year at a time anyway. Maybe contracting is best, schedule wise.

> If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit

That's pretty much the plan, but you lose me after that.

> The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon

The purpose of every life decision that I've made so far is to avoid ever having to work a job again again. I don't understand how anyone can "have fun" or "feel valuable" due to employment. Nobody would be there unless they were being paid for it, because all those coworkers were not there before they started getting paid (excluding interns, but that's also an oppressive dynamic).

The only data point I have is that school sucked while I was there. People told me I would miss it so much when I got older. They were very wrong. School sucked and was a huge waste of time. College was also a huge waste of time. I don't miss any of it at all.

The only thing that makes my career not a waste of time is that it will provide for a future where I can pursue my own interests without threat of hunger and homelessness.

I recognize that my position is considered extreme, and I'd like to be convinced otherwise. The only argument I ever hear is "oh you'll be so bored, you'll see, you'll come back" and it doesn't make any sense to me.

If I make it through a few more years of this, I'll find the answer and report back :)

I have exactly the same reasoning. Except I’m not paid a million a year. I can’t fathom how people would miss work and feel empty without it.

I get what you are trying to say. I feel like it might be such a strong feeling because of how bad it really is working where you currently work.

I personally do not miss school at all either. I miss some parts of university for sure. And not _just_ the party parts ;)

As for work, I have phases and those seem to corroborate what "people say" about missing work. What I mean is that on a vacation for example, if it's long enough, I sometimes want to "do" stuff again instead of just being on vacation. And I don't mean I want to be back at work work specifically but yes I do get "bored". If you think about it, why do the billionaire sons and daughters throw parties all the time and such? Probably not because they have a fulfilling life otherwise.

Now when I say vacation, I don't have slack on my phone, I do not check work email and everyone knows they can call me if things get dire but nobody has ever done so. I know this is in stark contrast to some other folks on here that worked 4 hours per day on their "vacation".

Personally I want to make a difference in how people work. Both now and also if I had millions of dollars. So both now and in that case I would want to provide a good work environment and get rid of things like BS deadlines, "do this by EOD or else" and such stuff. With millions in the bank I could be much much more frank than I already am. Of course I'd take much longer vacations and work less.

My current workplace is actually pretty good in many aspects as to the fun at work part and it is fulfilling to build stuff that lots of people use. Our stack for the most part is awesome as is the dev experience (best I've had so far but maybe there are better ones I just don't know yet). Of course there are parts I hate and that a few million in the bank would totally turn the tables on vis a vis 'fix this BS or I leave'.

YMMV but yes please do report back :)

> And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before.

Would that really be so bad? If software dev is burning you out then why try a different career and a cheaper lifestyle. Or simply a lower-pressure job and a cheaper lifestyle (there are plenty of companies that don't do leetcode interviews).

> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before.

The former is untrue, in my experience.

The latter is worth it.

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

Work somewhere humane and this really, truly isn't an issue. It isn't. There is sustainable work out there, and you do take a haircut to do it, but it's far from unlivable.

Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year. I could have made several. But--would I be happier? No.

> Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year.

This isn't helpful. I thought HN would understand more than most, but a lot don't seem to.

It's more like--great I make a ton of money. now that you're here, try to keep it going.

Taking a pay cut (which would be significant my comp is ~FAANG level), feels like gambling. Is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to gamble that my new lower paying job is less stressful?

There are some success stories, but do we hear of people who left their high paying jobs only to be just as stressed in their new positions?

I personally left my FAANG role behind for a role that had way more of what I wanted to do (coding) and way less of what I hated (paperwork), and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.

I think it's important to keep in mind "signal bias" -- I'm never on other social media, and I'm only on HN every weekday over my breakfast and morning coffee. I don't spend time building my brand or writing blog posts or shouting from the rooftops about how great my life is because I'm trying hard to stay busy actually enjoying how great my life is. In my experience, there really are a lot of folks who've made similar decisions, it's just that part of managing your life is also giving up on trying to convince strangers that you're awesome.

> part of managing your life is also giving up on trying to convince strangers that you're awesome.

Amen. I find that it’s easiest to just focus on being awesome and let others figure it out on their own. Some won’t—oh well!

> let others figure it out

I think that's what the GP is trying to avoid. Not caring whether others figure it out

> Is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to gamble that my new lower paying job is less stressful?

Worth it in what sense? You sound like you're trying to do a statistical and financially logical risk analysis. If you have burnout, that's just not an option. It sucks, but simply trying to do that math and somehow compare it to non-financial things that are important would probably take the help of a trained therapist.

So the answer is just going to vary.

If you are not on a path to burnout, who cares if the job is objectively stressful? Maybe you enjoy that environment and that's fine, in that context a logical financial analysis makes sense. Plenty of people are extremely happy and extremely successful in stressful high paying jobs, plenty of other people would happily make much less money if it means they get to spend more time with family, mentor, work for a non-profit they care about, do pro-bono work, switch fields, ... the list is long. People's motivations are complicated and I assume yours are too, or if they are not now that they are likely to become different as time goes on.

If you are on a path to burnout, the amount the job pays matters a lot less. Certainly if you can lose hundreds of thousands of dollars of theoretical future income the answer is comically obvious -- yes, it is worth it to find something more sustainable. I've never made half a FAANG salary when compared to people with similar experience and education at those places, and would still give up half my salary to avoid it. But I also don't think it's obvious whether you are on a path to burnout, you could try engaging a therapist to help make sure that you are tracking your feelings at regular intervals to see the derivative, but often it's even harder to see from the inside than it is from the outside (by which I mean friends/family more than work colleagues).

That said, money in the bank vastly reduces the stress that contributes to burnout, no question. Future earnings, not so much. Those are in the future, and imply that you will even be capable of continuing in the role you're in that long.

A serious analysis of future financial rewards and career options is a thing that is almost beside the point when you're actually dealing with burnout. Uncertainty about careers is more of a professional coach thing, if I had a professional coach suggest to me that I should do a back of the envelope calculation of how much money I stand to gain if I merely push myself to work for another year and then burn out I am walking out the door by the time they finish the sentence. It's just the wrong type of advice for the issue at hand.

I apologize that you find it unhelpful. But for me it is true, and I feel that it's worth saying--I have left at this point probably over a million dollars on the table to prioritize enjoying my life and I don't regret it in the least and the overwhelming majority of software developers making The Big Bucks probably can too if they want to prioritize something other than pulling a high score.

> It's more like--great I make a ton of money. now that you're here, try to keep it going.

Why? Like-so--in the long run, we're all dead. But, unlike many, many working folks in this country and in the world, we are pretty privileged to be able to enjoy a very comfortable life in this industry without worrying that we defer The Good Stuff so far that if we get hit by a bus tomorrow we'll never have had it.

Like, I've been there, I've asked myself if twice my total compensation in a pressure cooker would make me happier, and I realized it wouldn't. Maybe you're different. But you also sound pretty unhappy about it, and I just came in from playing fetch with my dog and I'm neither worried about retirement nor about what sort of a shitshow tomorrow will be.

YMMV.

> There are some success stories, but do we hear of people who left their high paying jobs only to be just as stressed in their new positions?

I'm sure that happens. But the whole point is preparation, isn't it? I've picked most of my jobs pretty carefully and after pretty long interview processes (my current one was a quick process because I've never vibed with a place like I do here, but that's an outlier). It means you're interviewing companies as much as you're being interviewed, but that's just fine.

I keep a little more in the e-fund than maybe my coworkers do, because there's always the chance that it takes a little longer to find that job. But it's never been a problem for me.

> Why? Like-so--in the long run, we're all dead.

I can retire in 10-15 years, or retire in like 35 years.

I think a lot of people are missing this. 10-15 years of grinding and I'm free.

Do I want to work until I'm 65, when I have the option not to? Hell no.

> Do I want to work until I'm 65

What else are you going to do? If every form of “work” you encounter is just a means to an end, then I guess I can understand. But don’t underestimate how much you might change personally in 10-15 years, and how much enjoyment you might find in the future forms of work you engage with.

It's not an all or nothing option. You can work part time. Ideal for me would be 2 to 3 days a week.

How? Where? I don't see anyone offering part time work that pays worth a damn and certainly nothing with healthcare.

You could do contract / freelance work. You’d have to pay healthcare yourself.

Part time? Like, really actually part time? Once you factor in all the time finding paying clients?

Probably not. I've had some projects that went on for months, about 20 hours/week. Not recently though.

YMMV, but when I was a consultant (which was great in my twenties, I worked three days a week) I mostly partnered with local consultancies who needed specialists in particular fields for this or that. A little staff aug in there too, but again for specialty stuff. They took about a 30% vig all-in-all off the top and they kept me full-up on work as much as I'd wanted.

>What else are you going to do?

Like, live?

Or do you believe if you don't passionately "change the world" by working at some BS startup/FAANG you don't really live?

Perhaps consider career downsizing. Work 3 days a week and minimize lifestyle costs.

You can be free in 15 years but you'll never be able to buy back your youth.

You do sound like you're courting burnout. My question would be, to what extent do you HAVE TO. What people are missing (it seems) is that they're not serious, because they don't understand that you HAVE TO, that any other course of action is pretty much impossible.

There's your danger sign, right there. It's not even the realistic plausibility of shifting down a gear (and for what? dooming yourself to never be able to run top speed again, who's to say you won't keep doing that, shifting down over and over to no avail, and then be working some shit job at 80 years old, just as miserable, never able to escape?)

Did I just do your mental voice there?

It's not even the realistic plausibility. It's THAT MENTAL VOICE and the pressure you're putting on, allowing no wavering from the path. I put it to you that it's possible that mental voice is unhealthy and not a reality thing. 'Cos that's the one I had, which is why I can do it on command. But I learned I wasn't being reality-based.

I'm 33 right now. If I want to, I'll have the ability to functionally retire (which really means "maybe go do a startup, or consult for companies that interest me", granted, I like what I do) by 50. Because I make spectacularly good money for this country and because I'm moderately careful with my money. And if I drop dead tomorrow? There are things I'll wish I'll have finished, and things that I'll wish that I'd done, but a lot fewer than if I'd locked myself in a closet in my twenties and thirties to "grind".

You're talking about "grinding"--you get that that's grinding your psyche and your personality too, right? I'm going to be very blunt with you: do you think, with the attitude you're expressing, do you think you will be a person people want to be around once you're "free"? Because dude. You sound miserable.

The journey can be worth it if you can pace yourself. But you've decided destination uber alles, it sounds like, so I can only wish you good luck.

>I think a lot of people are missing this. 10-15 years of grinding and I'm free.

One might also die in a couple of years from the big C, heart, covid, even a car accident...

So, those 10-15 years might never even arrive...

My guess is that you could retire earlier on a faang compensation.

I agree completely. I left at least $200k in RSUs 2 jobs ago because the general atmosphere. At some point I could barely get out of bed the depression was so intense. The day I quit I was literally involuntarily laughing on the way out. Only after did I realize how dark I had become. It’s really not worth it.

There are a huge number of engineering jobs paying less than FAANG level, and some that are paying near that, where it is not nearly as bad as you've described.

Personally those jobs still burn me out / depress me because I hate the industry and the job. But I can't imagine working somewhere that I felt I couldnt take a vacation.

I make 240k total comp and I work about 5 hours a day remotely on average. I'm still thinking about quitting to do contracts and work less than half the year. I figure if I can make atleast 100 an hour I will be fine. I am fine living like a cheap bastard and don't have a family.

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

This struck a chord with me. I recently had a “vacation” where I still had to participate in and do work on an RFP and then be in the RFP presentation itself. I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. In addition, when I got back (officially), I was expected to simply “catch up” with the work I couldn’t do during the week I was off. It was actually one of the most stressful vacations I had ever been on because I was torn between trying to relax and spend time with my family and the duty to my job. I justified it by saying to myself that I was at least having some fun, but it actually ended up being worse than if I hadn’t taken vacation at all.

You need to quit this job. As soon as you possibly can. Start working on it right away.

This is not a job for humans.

You do not have a "duty to your job". Employers love it when they can get their workers to think that way because it raises the threshold amount they can overwork and over-stress you before you've had enough and quit. You have to protect your personal time and your mental and emotional health. (I have had to learn this lesson a couple of times in 40+ years as a software dev.)

> I recently had a “vacation” [...] I ended up working 3-4 hours every day.

You got used by your employer.

They owe you comp time equal to the length of your "vacation". You deserve that and should not hesitate to ask for it.

I work with a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months. There have been days she has just broken down. She is finally on a 2 week vacation and she has had to work every day of the vacation so far. It is insane. We work at a unicorn startup.

> a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months

She sounds dedicated but hardly "great". In my mind great employees don't need to spend 100 hours working any week, let alone 7 months in a row. That's a death march. There's only 168 hours in a week.

If someone has had to work every day it hardly sounds like a vacation, what sort of arrangement is in place that would have someone put up with something like this?

Oh, you could take months off to recover or even quit outright. You could forego the leet code BS entirely. Take a much lower paying job. I think what you mean is you aren't willing to deal with whatever consequences you think taking time for yourself might have. I'll tell you what if I know anything it's that you do need a different job if taking vacation, "puts you farther behind". At the very least a different state of mind. Mark Twain said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.” Soak on that for a second. You aren't special or different than anyone else in most regards. Those feelings - anxiety, being trapped, burned out, disconnected... That's your brain telling you what you're doing isn't working. It feels awful. So what if you do take a lower paying job but you actually enjoy it? What if you end up taking a higher paying job and you enjoy it? What if you quit and spend your life pursuing your passions, and make it to retirement with 0 in the bank but your family loves and respects you so much they're happy to help out? Neither of us actually knows what would happen if you decided to do something for yourself, but if you truly aren't happy that's the only course of action that makes sense. Your life can only realistically get better if you try to make it better.

You get one chance to live your life, then it's suddenly over. One chance. Do you really want to squander an opportunity like this because you think something worse might happen when you retire decades from now? I don't think someone with the worldview you just described will ever have enough to retire.

I truly hope you do something that makes you happy tonight, even if it's something small.

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

I didn't realize this until somewhat recently. The reason I don't take time off isn't because I don't want time off, or because I'm saving it for something better (like many of my colleagues seem to be). I don't take time off because deadlines don't care about time off and all it does is make the time surrounding it worse.

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

Terrible way to look at it. The saying “recharge your batteries” is pretty appropriate here, you’re making an investment that when you return you’ll be more productive in the long run.

And further behind…further behind what exactly? Some artificial deadline or some arbitrary release date? That’s not your problem, if management doesn’t factor in people’s vacations that’s on them. Push back a little, get a backbone, and say “no”.

Might be time to cultivate a source of meaning in life that has nothing to do with your work. Volunteering and religion are two timeless sources for this.

This is where Digital Sunsets and using time techniques (Pomodro, getting things done) come in. It won’t fix burnout but does allow you to pace yourself. After that long unplugged vacations work wonders.

> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on

I hate this so much. I spent three months leetcoding and doing mock interviews to pass the interview and get hired into a FAANG company. After deciding to leave the company after a few years, I went straight into interviewing instead of doing prep first thinking it would be a breeze. I bombed. I could tell from my interviewer's faces that they were questioning the validity of my resume due to how badly I was doing.

I eventually went on to get hired by another company that asked me to solve a small problem prior to the interview and discuss my approach, which went very well. I couldn't bring myself to go practice whiteboarding binary search again.

I am right there. Been burned out for years. But I just cannot see a way to get out of the rut. Sorry man.

>... Vacation doesn't help.

It's true that there are always things that need to be done. But vacation does help. A lot. It works on people by the same principle as the burn-out does, as long as we allow ourselves to be drawn in, redirecting and focusing our strong attention onto the vacation context and details.

Does a vacation solve the latent issues in the office? Unlikely. But it can give a stronger chance at finding courage to move on to better pastures with less of a collateral damage or personal injury in the process.

Vacation helps, so does the personal/sick-time. A culture of banking (or shaming for taking) the PTO is outright traumatizing and usually a good indicator of an unhealthy team/organization.

Better to take the time off before you have to take the time off, which will almost certainly happen.

I burnt out at my last job in March of 2020, and that savings I was building up to hopefully one day retire is gone, and that's as a person with no true dependants, minimal bills, and a very frugal lifestyle. I haven't found work since. I took 1 step forward, and 1 step back. This was also true of the previous time I burnt out in 2016; I didn't end up finding work again before I lost my apartment and had to live out of my car for a long time.

Know the warning signs. Leave/change jobs before you destroy your career like I apparently have.

> No. I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on.

Then you won't be (thoroughly) burnt-out. One of the hallmark sign of burnout is cynicism and lack of motivation. You won't want to open leetcode, and you won't care if you never, ever wrote another line of code for the rest of your life. You will be done. You get to this stage when you're slightly burnt out and push yourself over the edge, such as by leetcoding. Giving your mind time to recover is the only way to recover from a burnout - if you're still able to put in work or leetcode, you're not burnt out.

I've always had slow days where I didn't want to work. Just give a call that today is one of those days. At most places I worked this was understood and respected. The other places I didn't work at for long.

Sometimes I feel stuck in the morass of legacy apps we're looking after. Then I remind myself how things were when I started here. How we've invested to improve things. That I'm digging around in shit because that's where the work is.

At times I just watch the blinkenlights for a while. With bits flowing and data transformed in quiet concert. Orchestrated by us to serve our fellow humans. I might even read some code that hasn't failed in a year. Sweet comfort to know it's there, working as intended.

Then I grab the shovel again with renewed urgency. Make some red commits. Get them merged.

Such a delight to find prose that shines like a shimmering pearl in a mass of muddy water undistinguished from the silt. We are in dearth of writing that finds beauty in things often thought mundane.

A big factor for burnout, at least for me, is the never ending treadmill that is Agile. There are zillions of different things people call Agile, but the core of nearly all of them is the never ending series of Sprints (side note: I hate that the industry has settled on two week sprints, they make them so unbearable, 1 month is the best sprint, imo). I like a lot of the thing Agile thinking has brought to the toolbox, and before Agile there was a lot of horror and suffering, but what I do miss from that primordial time was when you finished a project you could stop and think and breath for a while. For a few days, even several weeks. Just stop and tinker and think about what you had just done, and what you want to do. When you actually train for running and other athletic activities, and you actually sprint, there is a recovery period where you let your body regain and recover from the effort. It improves performance and it improves your training.

We either need a recovery period built into Agile, or, my preference, get rid of Sprints. Actually, keep sprints around but turn them into a more fitting analogy. Infrequent periods where you focus and work harder on something. "Ok, it feels like we don't have traction on project X, let's do a two week sprint where we push aside all other concerns, cancel all meetings, and just focus on the project."

Right now it feels like I haven't had time to stop and think for 18+ months, it doesn't help to have my family sitting in the house with me full time. No quiet periods, no reflecting periods of recovery.

This is exactly the source of my frustration as well. I'm naturally inclined towards iterative development, frequent steering, and interacting with the people that will actually use the stuff that I'm building. I believe in those aspects of the agile mindset.

What has worn me down over the past few years is the constant refrain that we are "behind" and "don't have time" for a lot of things that appear to me to be essential. We've been in a mode where we don't really have time to explore options. And once we've made a decision, we rarely revisit it even as information changes.

I don't think this has anything to do with agile per se. One could argue that it's Scrum's fault, but even then I don't think you can lay the blame directly there. The point of sprints is to create frequent steering points. As new information comes up, let's make sure that we're still pursuing the correct course. But sprints can easily be misunderstood to be frequent deadlines that must be hit. There's some value there, but I think that misses the mark somewhat.

I think a lot of it stems from a conflict of personality styles. From what I've seen, some people like the treadmill - it gives them direction, purpose, and energy. But for somebody like me, that treadmill is more of a grindstone.

I do think I'm experiencing burn out, but I don't see myself quitting. It's weird.

I feel fine when I have to:

- refactor code

- create some new application code from scratch

- fix some business logic bug

I feel anxiety (and I experience burn out symptoms) when I have to:

- deal with any k8s issue

- incorporate any third-party library like oauth2-proxy

- run some migration in a big table

I don't like "infrastructure" topics, but as a "senior" software engineer I don't have a choice. I love dealing only with application code (e.g., classes, interfaces, modules, business logic, tests, etc.)

Man this resonates with me.

Do you feel like you don't like the infrastructure side of things because it's harder to debug problems while being under immense pressure since this usually happens when production is on fire?

Developing code isn't easy but if it's code you've written, you at least always know the problem is with your code or maybe a library you're using. It feels like between Googling and looking at source code or examples there's always going to be an answer. Plus it's a private struggle because this usually only happens in uncommitted code on your dev box while you're working through developing the feature.

With infrastructure issues, it's like you're fully exposed because your site might be down and non-technical people (business higher ups) are being directly affected, and if you're the person responsible for this it all comes back to you.

Plus Kubernetes is Kubernetes. I'm not a veteran with it yet but on a local test cluster I still sometimes run into problems where I end up deleting the cluster and making a new one because after idling for 10 days everything stopped working. That strategy is simply not going to work in production. I'm hoping that's due to kind[0] bugging out and it won't happen on a cloud hosted provider. I'll be deploying a real production workload for a very non-trivial project in the near future.

[0]: https://kind.sigs.k8s.io/

Why would it not be an option?

I am not an SRE but I do know that we are actually able to just throw away our k8s cluster and it will be recreated from scratch.

In fact our dev environments work the same and I literally did this a couple if days ago because I had a similar problem to what you are describing. Throwing it away and letting it reinitialize from scratch fixed it.

You don't _want_ to do that in prod for sure. But it's a great thing to have in your back pocket, if it's tested well (disclaimer: I have no idea if and when they last tried this for prod ;))

> I have no idea if and when they last tried this for prod ;)

Famous last words :)

I've been through burnout before. A few times. Not fun. Alas, I never had the luxury of being able to take time off (it turns out that children like eating food). So, while I can sympathize, I also can't sympathize since I had to work through it (usually by changing employers).

Out of curiosity, how long did it take you before you felt like you were back to your "normal" self?

I'm currently in the same position, and like the author of this blog, started my "burnout" recognition (followed by recovery) around end of November 2020 (first time experiencing burn out). I've since switched employers, and although I'm still way better than before, I don't feel my normal, creative, resilient and excited self. Minor set backs feel like the end of the world. I'm now having to battle with imposter syndrome, and I'm not sure whether this is part of the journey.

If you don't feel imposter syndrome on a new job, you're probably doing it wrong. :-)

I don't know how long it usually take to fully recover. I've found that a new job changes things around enough that I feel better so I can at least function again. Normalcy comes sometime later.

burnout counterpoint: If you are totally relaxed at a job and never feel imposter-syndrome, only work 20% of time, ... burnout probably won't happen.

Not OP, but it took me maybe a couple of years.

I kept telling me I was _close to being burnout_. It took me probably 6 months to realise how bad it had gotten and that I was actually in a really bad spot.

I was wondering about the parenting angle. How do you work through burnout when quitting is not an option?

If it's literally food on the table at risk, your finances are stretched way too thin and you should solve that separately. And living on the edge like this is probably a big contributor to burnout/stress.

But to try to answer your question: I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help. Like a bank or just a local place that needs more I.T. type of help than amazing startup code. I tend to doubt this would work though.

Maybe work for a non-profit with a mission that aligns with your values? This is where I would lean.

I have just quit a dev job at a corporate philanthropy whose mission "aligns with my values." It was more aimless, more cryptic, less meaningful, less "real," and less obviously impactful than any other dev job I've had. Every day was just a long, drawn-out feeling of "why bother."

Corporate philanthropy triggers my BS detector a bit though. Do you think a non-profit would be different? Like, say, ASPCA or UNICEF instead of the Exxon-Mobil Climate Taskforce or whatever corporate philanthropy means (I actually do not know, could you elaborate?).

I was working at a philanthropic org funded by one of the Bay Area tech giants. The org was focused on science research and advocacy. But being neither a scientist nor activist, I was very far removed from whatever it is that our org did. My job was keeping the proverbial lights on. The combination of uninteresting work and being really peripheral within the org finally did me in.

Common pitfall. It doesn't matter how interesting the company is if you're not actually working on the interesting stuff!

A number of years ago, the finest dev I personally know hit peak burnout. He quit his job, went to truck driving school, and became a long-haul truck driver.

He did that for five years or so, and is now a dev again.

He said that it was a great decision. The work was different enough that it let the dev parts of his mind rest, but had enough similarities that it stayed interesting enough for a while.

He also said that he was completely surprised by how many truck drivers he met who used to be devs. I'm not sure if that speaks to software development or truck driving, but there seems to be an overlap there.

In any case, I do think that a viable option to being unemployed is to take up a job that exercises different muscles than your current position does for a while. It worked for one person, anyway.

> I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help.

I had a similar thought and so I left startup world to go and work for a government software department.

3 years in, I can definitively say that it’s just a different twist on the same shit sandwich.

The people I work with are incredibly bad at what they do, they’ve been there for 5–20 years, and the pressure doesn’t come from investor wanting growth at all cost but rather from clueless managers, PMs, and other stakeholders who insist on velocity at the expense of quality. Our software is very poorly written (think the daily wtf level of quality), has no thought put into architecture, most don’t even know how to write a unit test, but we are pushed to fix bugs and add features faster and faster because “its just a button, why would it take so long”(tm). Never mind that adding the button requires us to modify half a dozen packages and break the backend because of the senseless architecture.

Anyway, I’m ranting. The point is that this kind of company tends to attract lifers who suck at their job. It’s stressful and it sucks as well, but for different reasons than your typical high pressure startup.

But at least I can stop working at 5:00pm on the dot and no one will tell me anything. Same after 40:00h a week, I just shut off the computer until the next Monday. So there is that.

Nature seems to flip a switch in parents—the profound responsibility of raising a child is its own source of perseverance.

"quitting is not an option" is one of the best definitions of burnout that I've ever seen.

I took about 4 months off a few years ago and it was great, but I always had the nagging feeling of, "you're cash is getting lower."

I'm saving up to do it again in a few years.

Just go into power save mode. Ramen noodles and shots at home before meeting friends at the bar.

I was in power save mode, but I had a mortgage, car payment and had to pay family health insurance, so I had a high cost of living. It was still well worth it. People with the stress of high obligations and families really need the break, but they are the least likely to be able to afford it.

I'm torn between feeling that I too am dealing with some degree of burnout and thinking that I just simply haven't been taking care of myself. A series of sluggish days leads to a pileup of work, the pile seems to grow exponentially with no end in sight, and my workplace is rather dysfunctional and lacking of a clear vision. It feels like burnout, because even if I am productive and aspects of the work are interesting, it doesn't feel like progress is being made. Motivation goes down even when productivity is good.

But I'm also staying up too late. I have poor sleep hygiene. I'm on screens until well after midnight, and a significant amount of that time is spent reading "news" - not consciously reading to stay abreast of what's happening in the world, but habitually clicking and clicking and clicking. I can't really blame my job for the need to work late, because I seem to take hours to really get on a roll in the morning, and the work demands necessarily shift into the late evening after the kids go to bed. It's a vicious cycle. I'm working, e-mailing and Slacking on weekends when I don't need to be, and I'm not maintaining clear boundaries at all. Personal relationships are suffering as well.

So though I kind of relate to the burnout narrative, to really frame it as such seems like a cop-out for me. Working from home is a tremendous privilege, and doing so in a functional way requires a lot of discipline. Maybe the regular hours, commute and confines of cubicle or office walls make it a lot easier to maintain that discipline.

Hearing all these anecdotes compels me to try and figure this out. Somehow I don't think taking time off will be the answer...

I'm at the end result of your situation now. I wish I'd gotten out from under it so much sooner.

The death spiral really kicks off when you start losing efficiency (as you've described) and as a result there's always more work on your plate than you have the capacity to do.

There's a paradox: the usual solution if you have extra work is to just push through it with some extra effort; once it's done you could theoretically go back to the usual routine. But your current predicament is because you've been working extra hard for too long already. You just go backwards if you try it.

I've spent weeks and weeks trying to "catch up" on my current project - and the previous two projects - working after my kid has gone to bed, working again first thing in the morning, working weekends - it only gets worse if you keep doing it and you wind up with worse results (I've just now blown past a deadline myself). Trust me. My mental and physical health is fucking shot, I've got skin rashes, putting on weight and I've been giving too much parenting work to my wife... I'm probably going to be mentally fucked for weeks now.

The solution is to reduce the workload. Drop some of the spinning plates, tell your boss you can't do XYZ in the allotted time, or just straight up quit.

Reminds me of "learned helplessness" [0]:

"In humans, learned helplessness is related to the concept of self-efficacy; the individual's belief in their innate ability to achieve goals. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation."

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Reminds me of how I thought about other people's mental health before I burnt out and kept pushing for several years. Good luck.

I think relating burnout to learned helplessness registered as dismissive to you - it definitely isn't. Depressive helplessness/burnout/learned helplessness all have a lot in common; GP was apparently just making that connection. They probably share some very similar biological mechanisms.

Point of relating it to learned helplessness is that companies may structure their work, or assignments, or team structure, or culture, expectations etc in ways where employees feel nothing is getting accomplished, they have no autonomy, workload stacks up, and eventually they feel nothing they do can make the situation better.

They are not setup such that applying more effort causes workload or problems to get smaller, or where progress is made. They learn that the situation is helpless.

Now there's some fuzziness around whether this realization is maybe the end of the struggle for some, where they stop burning themselves out and just give up. But they would need options; quitting or having alternative employment to go somewhere else. If not, they'll be in a bad spot.

The "learned helplessness" rings true to me. Burnout for has usually occurred to me after making many attempts to get past major inefficiencies. Work continues, but despite many attempts, remains a terrible slow inefficient slog. Far below my potential.

Eventually I just become unable to work. Extreme mental fatigue even after good rest or even long vacation breaks.

I am happy to say I got free of the situational factors that were never going to get better and am very happy and productive now.

One things that amazes me, how truly dumb I am when depressed vs. happily creatively challenged. Anyone meeting me in these two states would have very different impressions of my abilities, potential, work ethic, etc.

Same for me. When I'm excited and motivated, feeling positive, I'm an unstoppable force and my brain works better than I realize it can. When I'm depressed, I will barely engage. I'll forget everything I'm doing. I'll have no executive function. Solving similar problems to those I have in the past seems insurmountable. Knowing this, and having no power over it in the moment, makes it a lot worse.

Like the tide slowly lapping away at your feet, the symptoms of burnout aren’t noticeable until you’re already waist deep, and then you can keep swimming, until suddenly your brain says, no thanks.

I think that’s the worst part, the fact that this burnout process is happening to you, and regardless of your mental ability, you can’t outwork it, or outwill it, or outwish it.

But personally I see it as your brain providing you a health and safety moment - there is danger in your current approach, and the circuit breaker has been tripped.

I'm in the depths of this, have been since March (this last time).

I now spend most of my time fighting a pitched battle with myself, in order make baby steps in the direction of work. But, I get stuck when it's time to actually submit a resume or contact a hiring manager. My biggest sticking point right now is preparing a convincing story for the interviewers. I'm just not ready to bullshit strangers about lofty 'career goals' or how excited I am to be a part of their 'company's growth journey'.

Taking time off has helped, but it's also run its course: I've done this so many times now, I can no longer convince myself that next job won't lead me back here.

Would it work to tell them you needed some time away from work to treat some serious health issues, and that you are doing better and are ready to get back into the swing of things?

IMO burnout is a serious health issue.

Also, I don’t think career goals have to be “lofty”. Showing up every day and doing good work should be enough in a healthy work environment.

Ah, I'm not worried about explaining any gap in my resume: I'm having trouble putting on my interview face.

Career goals do have to be lofty during interviews, just like the company you are applying with has to be destined for certain and boundless success, and the interviewer wise, profound and physically attractive. :)

Seriously though, job interviews are inherently processes of competitive elimination. A lack of enthusiasm, or of clear professional goals that involve the role involved, are significant red flags.

I'm at a loss as to how to overcome this: I've had too much difficulty to truly believe that work environments can be healthy, or how to hide this from interviewers.

OR, or, you could fail, or be not as good :D

This is a form of game theory, and I'm not joking. I find it helpful, specifically helpful against burnout.

Develop enough credentials that you've got stuff in your resume, that you ARE damn good in the areas that you 'click' with, and get some of that out there.

Then, DON'T be lofty. Maybe make the occasional lofty statement, but be self-deprecating, laugh, make fun of yourself in a way that seems incongruous. Admit that you're actually quite good, then undermine it. Call yourself out that you're a silly bozo, but you mean well, and have some good moments :)

If you're dealing with nothing but bozos who have to be snow-jobbed, this won't work but you don't want to go with them anyway: they're doomed, and they don't understand the real world.

If you're dealing with wiser people (so long as you're not too annoying about it) they'll cut you some slack but suspect that you protest too much. You must be really good to 'dress down' so ostentatiously!

If you're dealing with people way below your level, they just think you're being too humble and worship you all the more, because you seem to be capable of miracles and are clearly just not understanding how amazing you are. And then they throw money :D

It's all social engineering. Needing to be lofty is a trap. Beware the expectation of being lofty, it's not actually a great strategy :)

I can relate to all of these feelings, and yet I’ve got a huge feeling of guilt associated as well. I’m feeling so burned out. I have no motivation at work. I’m drinking more than I like. I often don’t feel like doing anything on my days off. I don’t have the energy to change my situation.

And yet I’m getting great performance reviews at work. I work remotely, of course, and quit at 3pm most days. My burnout is almost the opposite of what’s common: I feel awful that I’m being rewarded and praised for what to me is very little effort. And I’ve got handcuffs. I just got a decent retention bonus as well as a new stock grant with a 1 year cliff for total comp that rivals FAANG but SO LITTLE EFFORT.

I want so badly to quit. I want a few months to just reset and figure out what’s next. I’ve got the savings to. But I’m making so much money and have handcuffs until next summer that it’s insane too. So instead I continue a job that I don’t hate, but instead feel guilty in how little I accomplish, and no pride in what I do. And pin it all on a plan to quit next summer. I just hope I can make it until then.

Anyone relate?

This isn't burnout, you can still think. (edit: see followup comments!) This is the equally valid problem of frustration, alienation, existential meaninglessness. You could end up snapping, but it wouldn't be 'burning out', it'd be freaking out.

Which is just as bad: take care of yourself. It sounds like you're hitting bottom in some kind of distress. Burnout isn't the only bad thing that can happen to a person. It sounds like you need more meaning from what is a very sick situation.

I'm feeling like I didn't explain myself, if I'm getting downvotes and told "it's not burnout." I'm definitely not effective at work, and my accolades are based on the fact I've been here 4 years and have historically been very productive, and that I think most of management around me is also burned out, and not accurately evaluating my performance. Regardless, I am not getting a lot of work done, and am feeling a tremendous amount of guilt around it, and am feeling very depressed and burned out. The downvotes are really hurting me; is it really not possible to be completely burnt out yet have your company not realize it yet? Honestly I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop and one day have a tough conversation… and feel I've just earned enough goodwill to get the benefit of the doubt for a little too long.

I didn't downvote (and wouldn't, not for what you'd said) and that's a little more perspective. I would say maybe. The trick is, if you're having no trouble going through the motions, and those around you aren't registering a problem (are you being really sharp with them, more abusive than usual?) and you know you're doing great but it's not worthwhile, that's different.

BUT. But but but.

You said you think management is not accurately evaluating your performance. RED FLAG and yes, for specifically burnout on the way.

Let me pitch another scenario. You can still think. Your management is still entirely happy with your productivity, which hasn't faltered at all. But, to YOU, it's not nearly enough. You're overwhelmed with guilt and you just can't ramp it up to what you 'should' be doing, and to you you're ineffective, and they haven't spotted it yet, and it's just a matter of time or maybe they're just totally incompetent and have no sense of what's really needed?

BINGO. I apologize. You've filled in some blanks. That describes a kind of burnout very accurately.

You're experiencing what actor Gary Burghoff experienced when he went into burnout playing 'Radar O'Reilly' on MASH, a hit TV show. His performance did not, in fact, fail, even at the end of his stint. Instead, he drove himself harder and harder and began to be more demanding of his co-workers and employers, and it's this fate you're at risk of experiencing. And it absolutely is burnout: Gary Burghoff is on record about it and how it cost him this role.

Thank you for filling in more of the blanks, and good luck. It's tricky when you're driving yourself onwards and holding it together but you're imposing your own impossibly rising standards on others. Have some upvotes, you stuck with it and got your message through despite some initial confusion :)

The author seems unaware that their problem isn’t burnout. That’s a symptom. Their problem is a failure to set boundaries. Without boundaries they’ll just hit the wall again. Over and over.

Very astute comment

I would like to set boundaries. Like working 4 days a week, 10 out of 12 month a year. But most employers have a different idea of how much I should work.

This is a very findable arrangement at most Fortune 500 companies.

You’re technically working 5 days , but really just work 4. With 7 weeks vacation [combine corporate holidays with 5 weeks personal PTO or those unlimited pto places] and a couple weeks of just turning in prior work it’s not hard.

For an employer to find an employee that aligns with their values (at least 8-5, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year) is easy.

For an employee to find an employer that aligns with values like above is a very diffuclt thing to do. It will take years of hard work, interviews, trials, etc. etc.

Without a doubt it will change your life for the better and will likely have as big an impact as other "big rocks" in your life (house, partner, kids).

That means it's very worthwhile putting in the effort.

Yeah and then there are people on H1B who has to work the same job 7 years or they're deported in 60 days.

Absolutely, it sucks, but that is the system they've decided to use, for what is likely a long-long term net gain compared to not coming in.

They should spend years 6 and 7 looking for better prospects, and move to greener pastures as soon as they possibly can.

I personally immigrated to a new country and was locked in for 4 years at a job that demanded more and more of my time and life energy. Leaving was one of the most long-term positive things I've ever done, and the 4 years was worth it.

Again, it's going to take years, and be hard work. And it's going to be worth it.

Exactly! I'm currently going through this process. I'm just pointing out that "quit your job" is not always an option. Regardless of how burnt out I am, I'm still gonna show up to work tomorrow and do as much as I fucking can to do valuable things for the company. No I know this is a shitty way to waste away my life and 20s but I honestly don't know any better way to live.

An employee may over-commit and fail to maintain a clear delineation between work and private life regardless of their employer's demands. There is a lifestyle issue at play here.

If it's that simple why is burnout so topical now at month 17 of covid19?

I think it's actually: your boundaries needed to significantly change during the pandemic, and you didn't recognize that in time.

If covid19 had been eradicated in 6-9 months and we were globally back to normal, would burnout still be as much of a problem? I suspect it would not be.

Yes, we were forced into an unnatural, unexpected situation of remote work and social isolation. Remote work used to be a treat, something you did when you needed repairs done around the house. Now it's a Zoom-powered dystopian nightmare.

Unfortunately companies know that it's vastly cheaper to frame the narrative around blaming personal responsibility and the employee for "not being tough enough / being unskilled at negotiating / bad at managing their free time" than to change a toxic work culture that demands increasingly more out of fewer and fewer staff.

Exactly. I’ve been told to “toughen up” when being constantly undermined and 8 colleagues quit out of frustration. The “manager” who told me that also eventually quit out of burnout. Go figure.

I'm glad you figured it out out for them, then.

Thank you for sharing this. People's frank discussions of burnout in posts and comments over the years have helped me recognize the two major instances of burnout I've had over the last few years. Recognition doesn't let you snap out of it immediately, but it's a really good first step.

Burnout was probably a factor in my decision to take a 1-year sabbatical (as of June 2020, so I'm almost 3 months in).

> I never thought I’d take five months off, without being able to explain to a future employer what I was doing. It felt like too much.

I'm very specifically phrasing it as a sabbatical, to hedge against this worry. I think the general population has a vague idea that a sabbatical isn't wasted time. In reality this is probably time for me to recover from burnout, too. But since there seems to be stigma around "burnout" I'm avoiding the whole topic by phrasing it as a sabbatical. I have no guilt about this because I legitimately am taking time to build those things I've always wanted to build, study those things that I know I should study but never had time for, and all those other life things that I know I should prioritize but can never find the time/energy to do when I have a full-time job.

I did cheat a bit this month, though. I got an opportunity to do some contract work with a startup for 1-month (3 hours every day, 7 days a week). There may be an opportunity to work with them again in the coming months but for now I am definitely returning to my own projects starting in September. If you can find short-term gigs like that I'm finding that it's a nice balance. Kinda keeps one-foot in work world and keeps my marketable skills sharp, but then I can go off and do my own thing again.

I've heard a few people say that you need more than a few weeks to recover from burnout. I think there's a lot of wisdom to those statements. I think it takes a few months of completely disconnecting from work pressure. I doubt I'll need a year. I'll probably be itching to get back to a job before the year is up.

More on why I took a sabbatical: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue

Week-by-week updates if you're curious: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical

Early this year I came off a 2 1/2 year sabbatical. It might take a long time to recover. Depends on the person.

What did you do to fill your time in that 2 1/2 years? Did you get bored or find yourself wanting to return to productivity?

I got a few "Won't you get bored" or "I'd get bored" comments before I started my career break. I honestly don't understand it. I like software engineering (despite burning out), but there are so many other things in the world. I'm a year into my career break and I still don't get the "boredom" comments.

I've always been mystified by those sorts of comments as well. But perhaps I'm just fortunate. I have enough things that I want to do that I could easily fill a decade with them.

Count me in. It's baffling to me, I don't think I'd ever run out of interesting, fulfilling things to fill my free time with. Quite the opposite.

Some of that time I was bored. Really bored. I think that was a good thing and it helped me think deeply about a lot of things.

I mostly filled the time with traveling the world. I made it to all 7 continents, so I put that time to good use.

When COVID hit, that was too much. I was losing my mind from nothing to do. I started coding again, built an art website and newsletter.

Then I started studying and landed a job 6 months ago.

> I mostly filled the time with traveling the world. I made it to all 7 continents, so I put that time to good use.

That sounds pretty cool! What were some of the highlights or places you enjoyed?

What's the art website?

Read through much of the blog. Thanks for sharing. 3 months in seems pretty soon to start working again. Did you always have the itch to do contract work? During the sabbatical or otherwise?

I’m overwhelmed by choice, and simultaneously, tired of making choices, so the solution is just to… do nothing.

One angle to burnout that I have thought about (but never seen others discuss) is what I'll call "personal narrative management." It goes like this:

For most of human history, people had fairly straightforward narratives that they could rely upon when going through life. You were born into a certain community, had a certain societal role, lived your life, then went to [afterlife.] The list of potential options was pretty narrow, and the list of potential futures was likewise constrained within humanly-conceivable limits.

In the modern era, however, this has mostly evaporated. Nation states are too large to have a single cohesive metaphysical narrative. Traditional religious structures are fracturing without much to replace them. The media continually creates and destroys potential pasts and futures, creating anxiety and never relieving it. This is easy to see if you read articles from a year or two ago; many take the form of "If X happens, Y will happen, and then [horrible thing] Z will happen." Yet X never happens, was likely never going to happen, and in fact was mostly just a narrative created to generate clicks for ad revenue. Yet we, the readers, have been thrown through a narrative loop.

One approach to dealing with burnout could thus be "managing your personal narrative." Remove the choices that really don't make sense to you. Stop reading news stories that are opinion or projection based and just stick to descriptions of events. Make a career path that is based on stuff you enjoy doing and not on the predominant narrative is for a certain profession.

Going to be buried but I think I have been burned out for almost 3 years now. Started with working 80 / 90 hour weeks for 6? months. After that hours got better to maybe 50/60 hours a week for 18 months and then new job and back to 90 hour weeks for 4 months. First 2 years of that were in a terrible environment where everyone was stressed and feared being fired. I did not look for a new job because it was double the pay of my last job and I wanted to help set my family up and buy a house. I have trouble focusing on anything for longer than an hour. I have to work in heavy productivity periods of maybe 30 minutes, then I cant do anything for 2 hours. I get good reviews but the current job is pretty easy. I dont think I have really been happy in any aspect of my life for 2+ years. Which sucks, I don't even know what happy is right now, I just exist. Wish I could take a year off and just figure it out but financially not there. Very much burned out. Need to figure out a way to essentially strip everything away to 8 hours of work a day and then just relaxing and family.

> So many of us go above and beyond for our companies/projects/teams/whatever. The author here describes overcommitting at work. We might have the best of intentions, but at some point, we don't see the returns we yearned for and start to question what all this self-sacrificial giving is for. That is when burnout really sets in. I've had friends burn out while working for hostile or indifferent managers, startups that are trending the wrong direction, companies that engage in illegal or unethical behavior, etc.

This is me. Multiple times now. Each time I’ve joined a company, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the product and the tech. I’ve grown up to it, and then I get to a “but we could do better” point. I’m a high initiative/gullibile/naive person I think. And so then we “do better”. We go big(ish) and it’s awesome. I do so, because I can’t just do the 9-5 thing. I get into it. I want to put a ding in the small part of the universe that is that product. And 4 times now it’s been successful.

And then I wear out.

A big part of it is some combination of discovering the company and/or team mates just don’t get into it like I do. So I feel disenfranchised then (as do the few other peers that have collaborated in doing cool things). And so then I’ve been fortunate to find a new opportunity each time. As I keep track of what happens, the product runs for 5-10 more years being maintained by “don’t go the extra mile, don’t really get into it, do what the PM asks for, nothing more, nothing less” developers. And ultimately, the project/product caves. Layoffs and depressed salaries occur. Morale sucks. What was awesome and lively, like the stupid tree in that stupid giving tree book is just a sad stump surrounded by sad engineers. As I talk to these engineers, it’s never their fault. It’s always something external. They just don’t seem to realize that if you don’t keep the product thriving, it won’t keep supporting you.

Frankly I’m at another nexus like this again right now, and really struggling with what to do next. I’ve been shackled with both a very nice salary AND about as strong a guarantee as one can have that I can stay here doing whatever until I retire in 15-20 years. Ageism terrifies me.

> I’m a high initiative/gullibile/naive person I think. And so then we “do better”. We go big(ish) and it’s awesome. I do so, because I can’t just do the 9-5 thing. I get into it. I want to put a ding in the small part of the universe that is that product. And 4 times now it’s been successful.

I guess I'm being somewhat presumptuous but seems like with that energy/attitude, you might consider running your own business. You get to choose like minded people, put all you have into it and reap the benefits (and of course, shoulder a lot more risk as well but like minded co-founders can help with that + you have already seen success 4 times).

Many have suggested this to me. I’m pretty risk averse when it comes to “where does the next paycheck come from”. The idea of having a non-stable revenue stream just freaks me out.

I had my first experience with real burnout a few years ago. I took my first fully remote job at a completely dysfunctional company. It was a very frustrating experience.

Unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of taking time off like the author here. That is really the best option if you can manage it, but most people can't.

In my case, I quit my job and went somewhere I knew would be a bit easier, and looked forward to the office life again. Then the pandemic hit and I ended up fully remote, yet again. So it didn't really help at all (I really, really missed being around people). I spent a year and half basically just winging it. It's hard to talk about because I still feel pretty ashamed about my performance. Some days were just a matter of sheer willpower to force my brain to do anything at all.

I am slowly coming out of it finally and feeling a lot better. Swapping projects to something more interesting helped a lot. I'm still far from 100%, but getting there.

I feel like I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion for this, but let me try to articulate myself in such a way as to avoid it.

I’ve been burnt out. Pretty bad. Basically coasted at work for 3-4 months because I couldn’t even accomplish simple tasks. I finally pinpointed some stressors that were contributing and through time off, therapy, prayer, and a new job—found myself back in the saddle.

I was much more cynical about burnout before I experienced it. And then I was like, “Oh damn. This is real.”

However, I’m still really curious about the role of tech/software in this relatively new development in psychology.

Because I worked manual labor for several years before getting into tech and while I definitely had times where I was mentally not tuned in, or physically exhausted it was nothing like the actual burnout I, and so many others have experienced before.

It really makes me wonder what amount of burnout is simply running “the engine” (your brain?) too hot for too long?

These are just my musings however. Not saying burnout doesn’t exist, but I do feel like it’s not universal at all. Just my anecdata.

I've burnt myself out mentally with manual labor jobs. Treeplanting at max effort in an eighty day season. Took a week before I could have conversations longer than a sentence. The mental burn out from office work felt very similar but lasted longer, perhaps because I'm just older.

>In retrospect, this might not have been a burnout.

I'll venture to suggest that this was actually boreout. The symptoms are the same as burnout and it feels very similar while also being perplexing because you know the situation isn't high stress. If anything the opposite - You're not being challenged and are stuck in a purgatory of (what feels like) repetitious, pointless time wasting.

I've experienced burnout, and more recently experienced boreout, and what the author describes sounds a lot like the latter.

Has anyone found a successful path to rebuilding after having to have taken huge gaps off, either after burning out and being fired, or deciding to take the time off to recover?

I've burnt out, not realized I was burnt out early enough, and my productivity ground to zero, leading me to be fired before I locked in the decision to quit. As such, I've been out of work for over a year now (for the second or third time) and have ridiculous gaps on my resume as well as just being so behind in acing online technical tests, that I don't really see a path forward. I was recently turned down in the final technical stage for not linting my code during a HackerRank test, and after so much time investment and so many other failed interviews, it's like hiking up a muddy mountain in the rain. Answering the question "What are you most proud of from a previous project" is almost laughable.

“You decide what to watch on Netflix because I literally can’t.”

About all I've heard in response to suggesting ideas like these is that I'm an adult, so nobody is able to decide anything for me anymore.

I completely disagree. Depending on the importance of the decision, I would gladly relinquish some of my personal liberty if I absolutely needed to take my mind off of the crushing weight of choice for a while. On bad days, I've found myself unable to stop being stressed at constantly questioning if I'm making the wrong choices, even for the most insignificant things like sitting down and doing nothing for a few minutes.

Also, some of the most significant turning points in my life only came as a result of people insisting that they knew what was best for me over and over again, and if I hadn't listened to their advice then I would be far worse off than I am now.

Wow, I have not really been keeping track, but this post made me realize I'm now almost a year into my career break (and now about four months into my road trip of mostly camping). I can't say I ever worked extreme hours, but I definitely reached a tipping point. It's only recently that the idea of working again and having a stable place to live is starting to sound nice/exciting again.

I still have another 2.5 months planned on the road though and I'm still not sure what I want to do after. Finances have worked out much better than expected, so I kind of want to do international travel, but between covid concerns and concerns of being out of my field for so long, I've been a bit on the fence. On the other hand, I'm very unlikely to get rid of my apartment, downsize my belongings, and put the rest in storage ever again.

I'll add that one thing is for sure: it took a while, but I've slowly started to feel like my old self again -- or at least the self I want to be. I'm also infinitely more relaxed now when it comes to handling traditionally stressful events.

The best antidote to burnout is to do more of what you like. Of course you first need to have a passion. Good luck if you don't (drinking is not a passion)

De-prioritize whatever is boring or stressing you out and don't feel guilty about it. It will benefit everyone

I totally agree. Every time I felt burnt-out, I switched my focus on passionate precious things, succeeded with it, and puff, burn-out is gone... entirely

> The best antidote to burnout is to do more of what you like.

But what do you do when the burnout is so deep that you find no joy in anything, even things that used to excite you?

1. Do it anyway, but not a lot.

2. Focus on the fundamentals: health, exercise, sleep.

3. Give yourself permission to not work and also not be doing fun stuff.

4. Expect the process to take way longer than you have either the patience or expectation for it to.

5. Take baby steps towards fun stuff, and ultimately, towards not-fun stuff and work.

6. CBT/ACT based therapy and medication

Excellent, thank you. I'm doing 1 & 2. I need to work my way further down that list.

> To vastly oversimplify, there are two kinds of people I’ve talked to about burnout - those who get it, and those who don’t.

As someone who miraculously has never really experienced this level of burnout in his career, this is a great reminder to empathize and always keep in mind that you never know someone else's situation. That person you're having a Zoom call with to talk about Q4 priorities may be one stress trigger away from a total mental breakdown. A great reason to always be kind and thoughtful in your communications with your officemates, even if nothing appears outwardly wrong. Don't inadvertently be part of the problem.

As developers, I think we've all had similar experiences to greater or lesser degree. But also as developers, we generally earn enough to be able to take time off.

This is why when I read about single mothers working multiple jobs to raise their children, my admiration and respect run very deep. They just don't have any option to recover from burn-out.

This REALLY resonated with me. I know I am burnt out but hearing someone describe everything I am feeling so precisely and completely is crazy.

I burnt out around the same time (november) and realized at about the same time too (february). Between those stages I started to phone it in at work. I’d skip rote meetings, cancel things I didn’t feel like doing, and just not do things that I was _supposed_ to do but thought would go unnoticed. Lo and behold, I received a raise and a promotion. I feel like I am slacking but maybe the burnout is a difference in perception, or it’s relative as we’re all burning out together.

I don't want to sound too callous but for those with families the cure for burnout is the terror of putting those that depend on you for their livelihood on the street.

Suggesting taking a year off work because you're tired of your job is an incredibly privileged (to the point of offensive) thing to say.

I also have a family and don't have the luxury of taking a year off of work.

But I also think it's possible to recognize that someone else is in a different position with different life circumstances, and not be offended by them sharing their experience.

I don’t have children in part because I grew up with a single mom on tight finances. Having enough economic security and a decent childhood to willfully have children is also a privilege (I’m perhaps naively assuming abortion is legal.)

So you're saying that having a family offers you a shortcut for avoiding the worst of burnout? Sounds like both parties have different kinds of privilege, if that's the case.

It doesn't cause you to avoid it, just you realize suffering through it is better than getting divorced for lack of being able to support the family, and the ensuing child support judgement (for which there is debtor's prison if you can't keep up) that will be even more onerous to your finances than supporting a nuclear family.

Why does the outcome have to be divorce? People's situations vary a lot, maybe the wife actually has a job, for example. Maybe the family can claim benefits without having to divorce, too.

It doesn't have to.

But we have to look at what happens in reality. Financial turmoil is a leading cause of divorce. It is hard enough to pull yourself out of poverty, even harder with a child, even yet more difficult if you have a "dead-weight" partner no matter how much you love or care for them. The sad reality is a man who spirals into poverty is quite likely to lose his wife.

Also, it's a losing proposition to claim benifits while married. The government penalizes marriage in low income, benefits claiming couples [1]. And it's hard to look past the simple observation, born out by statistical analysis of divorce, that women simply choose to leave men who aren't able to provide.

"For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year would generally receive around $5,200 per year of food stamp benefits. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving benefits from Section 8 or public housing would receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed, but if she marries a man earning $20,000 per year, these benefits would be cut nearly in half. Both food stamps and housing programs provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separate and unmarried."

[1] https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/how-welfare-undermin...

The excerpt you cite concerns couples who choose to not marry in the first place, not people already married considering a divorce. In your example, the man brings 20000$ a year more to the household + 5500$ a year of welfare for the mother = 25500$. This is much more than the 11000$ a year the mother would get on her own. I hardly see how this example makes any sense

And you completely overlooked the beginning of the paragraph, regarding food stamps

Scenario A (Mom+ 2 kids): 15k + 5.2k(FS benefits) -> 20.2k for mom on her own, plus whatever unmarried dad provides on the side. I can tell you as someone with kids if mom doesn't work, the cost of children go to damn near zero especially if mom can garden and willing to find free entertainment for children.

Scenario B (Mom + Dad + 2 kids): 30k + 0(FS benefits) -> 15k/adult.

>This is much more than the 11000$ a year the mother would get on her own. I hardly see how this example makes any sense

Only if you consider section 8 benefits in a vacuum and not the other massive difference in benefits between one mom with no income and a a family with a working father making 20k, such as aforementioned foodstamps.

I'm not aware of any distinction made between having been previously married vs never married in these section 8 or foodstamp benefits

Your family will not be on the street. A wife will generally divorce before (or at least right after) she is on the street. Welfare will then provide benefits to her and the child.

What will happen is once the wife/kids goes on public benefits, that will initiate the child support order. The judge will create an "imputed income" for you, which is whatever he thinks you should be able to earn. If you were a high income office worker, that dictates your imputed income. You are absolutely fucked if you don't keep earning at that rate, even if the only way to do it is a soul crushing office job. You must make enough to pay about 1/3 of that post-tax all in child support, or you will be in violation of child support. A few months of failure to keep up results in a felony conviction, the revocation of your licenses, seizure of your property, revocation of your passport, and imprisonment. While CS order accrues in jail, the arrears will quickly become insurmountable, and you will never again have any economic chance in the United States. It will never discharge, even in bankruptcy, and debtor's prison will always be in the near horizon.

Well when you put it that way those TPS reports don't seem all that depressing.

Remind me again why anybody would want to willingly live in the U.S?

It's not nearly so simple as being "tired" of your job.

You obviously have zero idea what burnout is, or what it feels like to be in such a position.

I'd argue that you obviously have the incredible privilege of never having experienced burnout.

The reality is, burnout does not just affect the person. It affects people around them too - especially their family.

Of course, if it's impossible to take a break - then yes that's reality as well. But if it's possible to take a small risk, then it's also in the best interest of your family to make sure you're not burnt out.

This is pretty similar to my experience. I also left my last position in November. It was a combination of a doomed project, an unsympathetic replacement manager, the stress of isolation, and general anxiety about where my life was headed. I feel I've gone through some important and positive changes in terms of habits and attitude since leaving, and am ready to start something new. So far, though, no one has been willing to pick me over other candidates, despite supposedly high demand for my skills.

One of the most difficult thing about burnout is that it can be quite different for each person in the way it is expressed and it's hard to discern.

I was (and probably am to some extent) burnt out. The hardest thing was caused by the fact that I asked for help. Help to reduce my workload, help to have some kind of support, whatever.

What happened is that many if not all the people I knew always reacted with "Yeah, you'll be fine".

And this is because of two major things 1. I always solve problems. People expect me to do the same so when I ask for help, they don't consider this a threat. 2. People don't want to face pain: I was the only one in a team noticing that one of our teammates was on the edge of burnout. We don't want to face the pain because it's hard, because we don't know how to fix pain easily and sometimes we also can't fix pain.

In the end I decided to do something like Maya. Tell my story.

I documented myself for the burnout part, asked a friend that's expert on psycology and wrote a piece to help people understand how complex this topic is. (here it is in italian, for those who care: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/vogliamo-parlare-di-burnout-o...)

Result? Many people reached out and shared how much critical was this problem. We need to fix it and learn both how to see this in ourselves and in others, and how we can help them (and to me the fist key element is being able to face other people's pain and suffer with no fear)

I'm wishing you best of luck on your recovery. I also have a bit of unsolicited advice for those in a similar situation.

it's better to pace things. If I find myself working at 1am, I know I'm acting silly. My employer won't thank me for it either. They don't want maximum output. They want someone who is dependable also the next morning. If your life is nothing but work you are also bound to get depressed. Your employer doesn't want an unproductive worker so make sure to take at least an hour for yourself and eight in your bed. If seven hours of meetings are causing you not to work during business hours you should tell your manager man hours are being poured down the drain and the team is working at 10% of it's capacity even without vacations. I never had a manager who doesn't listen to such arguments. You will still be a somewhat disgruntled employee because if it was fun they'd have someone pay to do your work. But you won't experience any other symptoms.

Tired of 7 hours of Zoom a day

I'm amazed that anyone can take more than 3. I know some people including my own children and their teachers, were doing 4-5 hours per day, often back to back and day after day.

Is that even burnout? I think we're increasingly seeing the effects of months upon months of restrictions and lockdowns around the world. They tell us it's for our health but all around me I see people looking worse and seeming more stressed. Not everyone might deal with the restrictions as well as those who enjoy working from home. How much longer can they take it?

Yeah, it kinda surprises me how many people seem okay with the current state of never seeing people you work with in person. I don't know if they are just different than me or they don't talk about it, but I really miss seeing my coworkers even if its only for brief periods.

I volunteer locally to talk to people and balance all the remote time at my day job.

Pick any combination:

- They are different than you

- They don't talk about it (because saying you don't really care to see your co-workers is/was kinda taboo thing to say in office)

- They work in a different environment with different kind of co-workers

I can barely tolerate 3 a week. When I have 3 a day, I feel dead inside. I don't know how kids and teachers do it.

This hits home because I feel the same currently. My current work is not really challenging and I think I have a pretty easy life with a decent salary, but since a couple months ago I started feeling so tired. My work is uninteresting, I don’t feel fulfilled, I have no motivation. Worst is I stopped caring about everything. I don’t care if my performance is bad, I don’t care if progress is slow or my project suffers. I’m very detached, but I still think about work a lot.

Even in my private life I don’t want to do anything anymore.

I realized myself that I’ve been burning out a few weeks ago, but it was hard to accept because like I said, I don’t really have any crazy challenging things that eat me up. Do I “deserve” to burn out when I have an easy life and steady income during this pandemic.

Even harder is to bring it up with others because what’s the goal here? Do I want people to feel for me? Do I want special treatment? Will this damage my career?

Lots of stuff to think about.

Why quit your job? I think I've burned out, I'm currently working like 1-2 hours a day after taking 3 weeks off, some days more some days less. This is the benefit of full time work over being a contractor/entrepreneur etc.

Just a word of caution. I think anyone after reading this could believe they're burned out. A test I like to do to see if something is the case or not is imagine the opposite, what would I feel like if I wasn't burned out? Would I magically be 10x more productive? Have I ever been that much more productive in my life? Would I not want to watch Netflix without an end? Would I not want to sit on the couch and read about SolarWinds for 8 hours?

It's easy to walk away from articles like this being completely sure that you're burned out.

My experience: we were working long hours (until 2am) trying to solve problems which were unsolvable. The end goal could not be reached. Second to that, engineering is a rather thankless job. You get nearly no feedback that your work is helping someone or helping to achieve something (as opposed to say, a doctor where the feedback to your work is very direct and tangible). What I found is that burnout isn't a particular event or a moment in time, its rather like a scale where on one side are all of the bad things in your life and on the other are all the good things. The mind can take a lot of stress, but if the scale tips too far toward the bad side the entire balance gets thrown off. It took me around two years to get out of it, but what helped was to become hyper aware of everything in my life and if it was a net positive or net negative event, commitment or activity. I tried my best to cut out all of the negative (not my job, however). I like my boss, my colleagues and I enjoy what I do. It was a temporary phase that tipped the scale in the wrong direction but we managed to regain balance in the end. Its been around 4 years since then, I'm still in the same job (with a slightly different perspective) and totally fine now. My takeaway from all of it: make sure to look at other areas of your life to find the source/solution to your burnout. For example: sport, eating well, sleeping well, taking time to clear your mind (meditation, walking, sport, whatever works for you), social activities, activities with your partner/spouse, family. This is of course anecdotal and worked for me, may not apply to everyone.

If you're burnt out at a big company job where you have performed well up to that point for at least a few years, you may have more options than you think. You might ask for a leave of absence for a couple months. Even unpaid it'll probably end up being financially better than the alternatives, supposing that it's enough time for you to recover. Another option is to negotiate a separation. Don't just quit. Approach your HR professional and explain your situation and say you'd like to discuss next steps. Oftentimes in exchange for signing a general release you can convince them to sign off on a severance package. Assuming you're not at the director level or above, they will probably just plug some numbers into a spreadsheet and tell you a number. My understanding is that 1-2 weeks salary per year of service is pretty typical in SV at least. The advantage to this route is it keeps your employee file clean and you get a little cushion. Sometimes they'll also agree to not contest unemployment benefits.

If you really truly are burnt out, your alternative is to get PIPed and canned, so only forego the above if that's a better outcome for you. I'd advise against that route though, because it will damage your reputation and you may be ineligible for re-hire.

From a manager's perspective, I see this a lot, people who overcommit to their work, thinking that they are responsible for everything. I appreciate their efforts but that's never expected (and anyone who does is abusing you).

What I expect are sustainable and realistic expectations. Losing someone because they couldn't sustain 80+ hour work weeks is about as useful as someone who works 20 hour weeks.

I think it's still a fairly new phenomenon where white collar work often consists of sitting in front of a computer monitor all day. Not for leisure, but for work (something you possibly don't want to be doing to begin with).

For me, less screen time (for work, but also in general) and more time spent outside and/or in the presence of people I like has really made me a happier person.

I had that, turned out I had undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder (Asperger’s syndrome) and ADHD as a comorbidity. It’s a miracle I managed 20 years in software engineering.

Research on YouTube: Tony Atwood (Adult ASD) and Russell Barkley (ADHD). It should give you an insight into executive function issues that lead to depression / burnout.

Looking back though, a lot of things now make sense.

When you go to a regional Burning Man event, or a very long and intense festival of some kind, with someone you know and care about, it's not uncommon for that relationship to unravel and break down by the end of the festival.

At the beginning of 2021, I noticed that I wanted to break up with myself. I had become a shitty version of myself and I didn't want to keep seeing me. But I'm.... Me. What the hell went wrong? What changed?

By working from home, most every moment might be focused on work, purely because... I now literally lived inside my workplace. The work laptop's always there. Slack is on the phone. The same places I might relax, I also now work at. My attire has meshed. And most of the time, if I wasn't specifically doing something non-worky, I was still in work mode. I thought a lot about work problems. And without humans in front of me to talk to, I took work stuff more personally.

I also stopped going to the gym, my former "stress relief / therapy", because I did not find it safe. And when I did want to relax, usually it was with food; and, hey, might as well have a glass of wine to relax too. Maybe a movie. Whoops, was that three glasses? Is it time for bed already?

The reasons for the Playa breakups and Pandemic Burnout are surprisingly similar. They both come down to a radical, intense change of routine for an extended period of time. You become a new person living a chaotic life. Surprise: not everyone adapts well to that!

But another funny thing about both breakups: they tend to magnify the tiny annoying details of your life that you got by with before. Burning out can be a good thing if you can identify the parts of your life that just weren't working and change things for the better. But mostly you need to remember to forgive yourself and let go of what doesn't bring you joy. We have long lives, but there's no reward at the end of life for putting up with crap.

I work from home.

Six hours a day four days a week.

It gets into my dreams sometimes but otherwise I am strict on the hours.

Why does working from home mean working more, for so many?

And also, no one needs to have their work slack and email on their personal phone. Why would you do that to yourself??

Partly for when I'm on-call and don't want to carry around two phones. But mostly just because it was convenient... I can be more "free" / mobile / not at my desk, if I can answer from wherever I am. But it does seem to be more unhealthy than helpful.

I don't have the option to burnout and take a year off. Unemployment is very scary for me right now. Plus I tried to grow a few programming hobbies but never went far, so I'd be really bored if I quit. I think the maximum number of days that I can do nothing is around 7.

I don’t know what your full situation is, but if possible highly recommend you start taking steps to give yourself more options/breathing room

Start saving a cushion for yourself/your family. Start with a month, then try to get to 3-6. Might have to cut down on some things but those will be important discussions to have.

Try to find something else outside of work that you enjoy. I know this can be hard, as I didn’t have anything before either. I now have a small revenue generating side product which in many ways is just “more work”, but I’m passionate about it

Thanks. On my case it's less a financial issue than a lack of long term creative hobby issue.

I found it difficult to stick to any hobby for a couple of month and quit in the middle too easily. I kinda give up amd hope I can work till my death to avoid a boring retired life. It's impossible for me to grow a creative hobby.

I remember being so driven and hungry in my early career as a programmer. I worked long hours by my own volition. Weekends and even holidays. This lasted from my first job out of college until my early 30s. I remember the end very distinctly. I was at the office, slouched in my chair, staring off. I had been through a lot of product failures, but this was different. We had just retired a product whose success came just as fast as its decline. Many people quit or were let go. A feeling came over me suddenly of giving up, completely. It was uncanny.

I quit two months later and took a year off. Ever since then, burnout seems to come a lot quicker if I don't disconnect, and I don't think I ever recovered mentally. That was the peak, I guess.

I think that the drive of youth is very common. It's part of the main reason why so many companies prefer to hire the young: they can and will work insane hours and don't have enough experience to know what their time is really worth.

I graduated University in December, a semester early, with the intention of using that second semester off for traveling. Obviously, with COVID that didn’t happen so I instead decided to move my start date up at Big Tech Co. to February.

Now 9 months in I feel like I’m burnt out as well. For me it’s a combination of health issues but also the response to COVID. When restrictions lifted at the start of summer and everyone I knew got vaccines I mentally prepared for the end of the storm. And for a few weeks it looked like that. The summer was fun and I got to be social again and feel like the world was going back normal. Then a trip was cancelled overseas because of the Delta variant. And now restrictions are being put back in place and it’s just not clear what’s going to happen. The idea that things may never go back to pre-covid times and that when people are confronted with the possibility of covid being here to stay many of them argue that the status quo is ideal really depresses me. I cannot live in this world where I cannot see people’s faces and work is just zoom meeting after zoom meeting. It’s not just the light at the end of the tunnel that I crave, it’s seeing the light at all that i crave. I crave knowing this will come to an end.

I feel you on this 100 percent. Things will get better. The world will move on and people will eventually get back to doing normal human things. I know its depressing right now though, but hopefully it helps to know your not alone in your feelings on this.

Catch22 -

From the quoted CNN article: "...the generous pandemic-era unemployment benefits that have already ceased in multiple states will run out in September, which could affect the rate of hiring as well."

Part of the burnout (certainly not all, perhaps not even a majority) is the extra load working Americans are taking to offset the voluntarily unemployed.

Somehow, I suspect many states will extend these benefits beyond September until Congress & State legislatures can enact legislation that assigns benefits to those truly in need vs. electively unemployed... if that's even possible.

I don't think individual states will meaningfully extend benefits. Only the federal government can print money to pay for it.

> Part of the burnout (certainly not all, perhaps not even a majority) is the extra load working Americans are taking to offset the voluntarily unemployed.

This pattern matches against a common strategy the elite use to keep everyone else complacent - turn them on each other. Be careful with easy answers to hard problems.

> Part of the burnout (certainly not all, perhaps not even a majority) is the extra load working Americans are taking to offset the voluntarily unemployed.

Maybe better to focus on paid time off and sick leave. The companies can afford it, regardless of what they say..

This idea presumes a few things: 1. Tech workers are burning out due to 'extra load' because of staffing issues at companies. 2. The staffing and workload issues are due to tech workers being voluntarily unemployed.

The first is probably very true. But tech companies have always ran as bare thin of a crew that they could to meet output requirements, which is why you can find content on tech burnout all the way back to the dotcom era and probably before.

The second is, in my mind, untenable. The kinds of salaries that a tech worker makes is wildly different from the amount that unemployment covers. In my state unemployment would barely be half of my salary, and thats with the added covid benefits. I strongly, strongly doubt there is even a small fraction of people willing to take that kind of paycut in exchange for pure idling.

> I strongly, strongly doubt there is even a small fraction of people willing to take that kind of paycut in exchange for pure idling.

Me too. And the data from the states that have stopped the extra unemployment benefits appears to back this up. In the job market as a whole in those states, the percentage of people who were staying out of the job market because of extra unemployment benefits appears to be very small, judging by the fact that there wasn't a big rush to take jobs when the benefits ended.

There's more than just economics going on here.

I've been struggling with serious burnout for a long while now. I know I need to do something to fix it, but I've been at a loss as to what.

Maybe quitting my job and taking 6 months off would work...

I also feel the same. This was building up before the pandemic, though that only made it worse: feeling isolated at home, on horrible Zoom meetings for several hours a day, etc. I hit my "FIRE" number in 2018 and didn't have the guts to pull the plug and take some time off. I hope I do now.

I think there is a lot of potential crossover in many of the anecdotes described in comments that correlate with clinical depression.

I completely agree. Sure it might be work stress that caused the depression, but I suspect the author and others here are calling it burnout as it is more socially acceptable and palatable for them to accept.

And I mean this in the least judgemental way possible.

To be honest normally I would comment without reading the article but I'm half way reading this and I feel like I have to ask this now before finishing it:

What type of job expects you to be on Zoom meetings for 7 hours a day but still do what sounds like a 40 hour / week job in addition to that after hours?

That stood out to me too - I think it's either a gross exaggeration to make a point ('way too much'), or they're trying to replicate office atmosphere (I don't mean to make that sound like a good idea...) by running it constantly.

It’s either that or they have trouble saying “no” to meetings.

Looking at their about page, they were a senior director of product management at a major company (GitHub/Microsoft). The number of meetings is not surprising for that role.

What is a good definition of burn out? Or why are you burned out and not depressed? Or have anxiety?

'... but I am indeed experiencing the “exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of efficacy” that is its trademark.'

Well damn, I'm surprised they didn't put my picture next to that definition.

Yes yes yes. Work does not love you back. Scale your love. Allocate it in appropriate increments. Sell your attention _dearly_. And remember you have a life outside of work.

High performance requires high maintenance. If you are burnt out or have symptoms or even suspect, I strongly urge to get a team together to help. It's something you have to actively watch out for (at least for some people) and actively treat. Here are two data points: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28119229/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29057125/

> I strongly urge to get a team together to help.

As someone struggling with how to resolve my burnout, I'm eager for all suggestions. I don't understand this one, though.

What sort of team are you talking about? How can someone in the depths of burnout cope with having to assemble one? Who should be on it? What are their roles?

Sorry for the vagueness and your burnout. I'd look for a professional that specializes in burnout, barring that, a good physician would be the first place to start. There could be underlying health conditions you want to eliminate such as Hashimoto's thyroiditis or sub-clinical thyroid issues. You could have your cortisol levels tested to confirm your stress levels once underlying conditions are eliminated. From my personal research there's a lot of factors involved, stress the major trigger. It's serious and important enough you want to get a professional involved. Sending good energy your way.

Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it! And your advice is very good and well taken.

Sadly, there's a serious doctor shortage in my area. I've been looking for a primary care physician for almost a year now, and coming up dry. But I could find one tomorrow, who knows? In any case, that's an edge condition and doesn't take away from your kind advice.

Checking stress levels sounds very sensible. It might be kind of obvious, but burnout is blind denial of the obvious until you catastrophically break, so anything that'll help you get a clue is good.

I've had EMTs and a close friend order me to stop drinking Red Bulls on top of coffee, because the docs thought I was going to die on the spot. I refused to go to the hospital, I had work to do. I agreed to throw away all the Red Bulls, and did, and never went back to them. It took that: I knew I was wrecking myself, but of course it didn't matter.

I'm sure if they'd checked my cortisol levels it would've been 90% cortisol instead of blood. If something like that is leverage enough to get you to stop, check the cortisol levels! :)

I'm curious about burnout from a neurological perspective. Does anyone have any ideas on what is really going on inside the brain during burnout?

I'll bet there's a hell of a lot of cortisol and stress reactions. I wonder if there's organic damage. The analogy that comes to mind is rhabdo (for crossfit folks).

This, only it's not my job. My job is great.

This article hits hard. Especially the classification of confidants into the two categories of those who get it and those who don't. For example, don't mention that you're burned out to your parents if they're boomers. Chances are, they'll act as though it'll pass (also something the author mentions) or, worse, act as though you're just being lazy. That sort of reaction can actually make a person want to off themself.

And as hard as it’s going to be to hire talent, it’s going to be even harder to retain talent.

This does not square with so many organizations falling all over themselves to issue vaccine mandates. I suspect it's not true.

check

> If you have the financial ability to, don’t feel like you can’t quit your job. Your sanity is worth it.

Alternate phrasing: If you don't have the financial ability to stop working, you can't quit your job. Your sanity is not worth it.

> I needed to completely remove any feelings of pressure, or any external, and internal, obligations. “You decide what to watch on Netflix because I literally can’t.” I’ve eaten more takeout in the last few months, than the whole pandemic; I didn’t have the energy to shop for groceries, or cook. I desperately needed to enjoy things again - so I could remember what that was like - so I could get back to enjoying ‘productive’ things too. Remember that producing recovery, relaxation, or joy for yourself is still being productive.

There are loads of people that don't even bother with cooking or groceries or enjoying things or having a sense of productivity. A lot of us are busy doing the capitalism because capital is the only sensible way to escape labor and any disruption would be very costly.

What the author considers "burned out", most would consider just another day. It only becomes "burnout" when you're wealthy enough to consider converting your labor time into self-care time for some months.

Also, taking time off is probably not even good advice. If you've always been miserable with the employed lifestyle, you're probably going to be just as miserable when you are forced back to it. Maybe more so.

Plus you lose out on those months of earnings, which is not good because 4 months of pay now is way better than 4 months of pay in the future. Assuming, that the goal is to eventually not be forced to sell your time for money.

> My boyfriend told me to stop working. It wasn’t work, and it was great. I was learning something. Completing something. Doing something because I wanted to do it, not because it was the next urgent thing that needed to happen. It felt like work used to feel like. That’s what I’m looking forward to again.

I have no idea how someone whose career path is McKinsey->Google->GitHub could possibly have a great work experience where they're learning and building and following their personal interests because they wanted to do it and not because it was the next urgent thing to build.

Maybe I just really suck at working in tech, or PM jobs are way easier than engineering jobs, but everything feels very urgent for my employer while actually being a giant waste of time for me personally. I do it because of the compensation, which I invest, so eventually I won't have to do it anymore.

> What the author considers "burned out", most would consider just another day.

This statement is very much like saying "what one person considers 'depression' most would consider 'being sad'". Burnout is not what most people consider just another day. It isn't being overworked, harried, and under pressure.

> I was recently unemployed - fortunately, by choice

This just comes off as the equivalent of saying:

> I recently had to to fly somewhere - fortunately, by private jet

The privilege and wealth requisite to be able to do either of these things just make it unrelatable.

One is far more relatable than the other. You can be temporarily unemployed by choice with a few thousand in savings.

Yes, I was using exaggeration to get the point across that this is written from a position of privilege that many of us reading cannot afford.

I understand that not every tech job is paying SV wages. For a while I was earning 60k CAD and was still able to save up a good chunk of change. One thing to bear in mind is that if you voluntarily take a stint of unemployment you should probably see your expenses go down a fair bit as you'll have time to cook from scratch more often and will probably go off daily expenses like coffee.

Being able to voluntarily not work in your early twenties would be pretty spectacular - but once you start building a bit of a nest egg you should be able to afford short stints.

> For a while I was earning 60k CAD and was still able to save up a good chunk of change.

Also keep in mind that stateside, a giant portion of expenses you would have to take into account while unemployed are what you intend to do about health insurance.

I think most folks assume that people in their twenties will just go without dental/vision/pharma in the US and grab a cheapo bronze tier plan off the ACA unless they have a preexisting condition that requires some regular treatment.

I agree that the costs are higher in the US and it makes dealing with stress more difficult but... the US is a terrible place to be if absolutely anything is wrong with you - so assuming you could take a pleasant sabbatical there seems unwise. It'd almost certainly be cheaper to move overseas and pay whatever monthly fee the local government charges to temporarily enroll on their healthcare and it sucks - but, again, it's the US where healthcare is a stressful burden yall have to deal with - I was born there and emigrated and I've been quite happy myself.

But who actually cares? I don't understand the point of your objection. Are you saying that privileged people shouldn't talk to each other about their problems, because those conversations won't be relatable to people without those privileges? Should people who can walk never talk about walking because other people can't walk?

That being said, it's definitely better for poor people to become unemployed against their will, because then they can get unemployment.

Of course plenty of people reading it cannot afford that, but that doesn't make it "unrelatable" to the rest of the HN readership.

Lots of people in tech or programming fields can get paid >$80k per year. Spend some time at that salary, and be thrifty, and you can save up many thousands after a few years. Easily enough for a several-month cushion.

No, not everyone can do this.

But people here also write about their MacBook Pros, and many people can't afford those either. (Indeed, for the cost of a high-end MacBook Pro many people could afford to take a month or two off.)

That's hard to do in the US if you don't plan on CORBA. I'm not full time employed at the moment and randomly broke my ankle trying to skateboard for the first time.

The medical bills are 50k and counting. Thankfully my wife's insurance (she's working) fully covers this.

I cannot imagine taking time off without any health insurance and the cost of CORBA is itself one or two thousand every month for two people.

But if you're single and under 27 (where you can still fall back under your parents healthcare) things could be easier.

Was a healthcare.gov plan not an option? I don’t know how the coverage compares, but 1k-2k for 1-2 people seems like way more.

Well maybe I used it wrong. But it also seems to differ by state? The 1-2k/mo for two people was actually the quote I got through the NY exchange (which I think Healthcare.gov sent me to).

The CORBA cost was even higher.

Yeah, health coverage can be tricky. I'm unemployed ("on sabbatical") and bought my own plan through healthcare.gov for about $12/day.

They are very relatable to many around HN, which is tech-biased and therefore affluent in comparison to other groups. I also chose not to work for some time, so I relate very well. We don't always need to seek the poorest denominator. Well-off people have life experiences, too.

Unemployed by choice is an unfamiliar notion... but, on reflection, anyone with in-demand skills and sufficient savings does have that choice. Those two attributes should be quite common among this site's audience.

>Unemployed by choice is an unfamiliar notion... but, on reflection, anyone with in-demand skills and sufficient savings does have that choice.

Very right. But we need to remember the "Time" factor too (i.e. Ageing). I am in a peculiar place, due to circumstances which have left me no option but a single unfavourable one and it has been hard maintaining needed "in-demand skills" for a possible future career resurgence. So i am thankful that i worked like crazy when younger and saved up which is what is sustaining me now.

I dunno.

Firstly, the privilege call-out isn't very functional here. So what? People aren't allowed to relate their experiential pain?

Furthermore, at various stages of my life, I've taken 3 or 6 or 9 months off... all on my own, and either because I was living in a $300 apartment, or lived in a tent, or had just enough saved up for beans and my apartment. Not working for a while, because you've gotten just a few things sorted, isn't necessarily privilege or wealth -- sometimes it's actually poverty. Sometimes it's something else, and the story can still be listened to on its own merits.

Not equivalent, specially if you know what is like to suffer burnout.

The choice becomes "either I willingly quit, or suicide starts to become attractive".

Burnout is _strange_ because the person suffering reaches an unbearable state before the company complains about a lack of performance (to a point of firing them).

He saved up that money by working in a job that pays a lot but induces burnout. It's not really all that much of a privilege.

* She

She has her resume on her site. She was only unemployed for four months. While I'm sure a lot of people can't afford that, it's a lot easier in the more common dual earner households these days. It took me about 7 months after leaving the Army before I finally accepted a job offer, and my wife ended up unemployed for 5 months a few years later. Both of those were possible because we had each other.

Of course, I understand that is still a privilege many don't have, and this woman worked for McKinsey as her first job, so I'm sure she's making a lot more money than I am.

Plenty of working class folk take months off at a time.

If you work in the movie business, that's pretty much required.

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