Software Burnout Is for Real

I am a senior engineer and I have managed large professional organizations. I have experienced burnout and I learned how to manage my work-life balance to avoid it.

It is true that professional desk work like software, accounting, legal, writing proposals or CAD design can result in burnout. But I disagree with the comparison to blue collar work.

Blue collar workers can’t set their own schedules, they can’t take breaks as needed, they aren’t paid nearly as much, they are paid by the hour and their work is generally much more mechanically repetitive. Professionals do not work this way.

Professionals have many more options to control their work environment and schedules. And they generally have much more freedom of movement within their career path and within the industry.

But it is incumbent upon the professional desk worker to proactively build breaks and approaches (physical and mental) into their work routines. This is not taught in school, but it’s a necessary skill for professionals. It is possible to be successful professionally, to still have a life away from work and to avoid burnout.

Sometimes, the job demands, the managers or the work schedule may just not be a good fit. So the best fix is to move on and find another position.

There is much written about how to build a strategy to manage burnout on the Internet, for example:

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/avoiding-burnout.htm