Programming Burnout | Hacker News Reader

Programming Burnout

tsk.bearblog.dev

78 pointsmemorable46 comments

The stories we often see about burnout in tech are interesting. There’s a lot about burning out of programming etc, the hours. Of course, long hours will eventually burn you out in most any profession. Less commonly discussed, it seems like most people I know actually burn out from bureaucracy. It’s far more exhausting and demotivating to not make forward progress and waste time in meetings all day. Of course, it should go without saying that some meetings are necessary.

Formal meetings are rarely necessary (IMHO). I have been in less than 10 meetings the last 10 years. However quick informal discussions with subject matter experts are really useful.

Amen to that. I'm gonna rant a bit about my experience, strategy, and opinions on the cult of bad managers.

The cult of talentless MBAs, man. Took something as well meaning as XP/Agile and turned it into a way to formalize having no plan and offloading it to developers then bitching when the result isn't what they had in mind. Actually though they never really had anything in mind, they just thought they did and someone told them this method is a great way to get results after you poorly explain a hunch you have based on some crap that you saw some other company is doing.

Meetings should never be more than an hour, anyone who doesn't want to be there should be allowed to leave whenever they want. If they are required to present something then they should be allowed to show up just for that if they think that's a better use of their time. The person booking it should send an itinerary with the meeting and outline what will be discussed in 5, 10, 15 minute blocks. If anything goes more than a couple minutes over, that means the person who put the meeting together didn't understand the scope and it needs to be addressed again later and move on. Meetings are not the time to ideate at hostages. The end of the meeting should have 15 minutes for general discussion that anyone can skip. But this is critical to always block for because we all work remotely and if you don't make this a habit, problems brew because all interaction becomes transactional. The more people that are required to be in a meeting, the shorter it should be and likely the less useful it was ever going to be. If the meeting is just broadcast and not a dialog, then go make a wiki page, screencast, or just send everyone a voice memo and pretend like you did a good meeting.

This is my recipe for meetings that I've developed over 20 years of software development in the trenches as well as product management and working as CTO in a couple startups. I believe in these principles so much that I'd be happy if it was carved in my tombstone. The thing that tanks projects is trust between collaborators and people cargo culting what it means to be a manager. Meetings without care destroy trust. Also, the job of a manager isn't to be a puppet master, it is to talk to the people you are working with about what interests them the most and find the tasks that best fit their interests. Create pipelines for communication that work with all stakeholders so people can easily communicate the need to spend extra time on something hard or just walk away from something that doesn't work for them. As a manager I see my job as being the janitor. I sweep the floors. I clean up hard coded environment variables. I run and rerun and rerun the stack and look for kruft and inefficiencies, I do a repetitive meditation on removing frustrations and packaging work tools so anyone who wants to do anything with the code base can easily touch and manipulate any part of it with very little effort completely on their own computer.

I have only worked with a couple managers that sort of do parts of the things I'm saying up here. As I started codifying and applying the above rules I started to be able to not only turn projects around but overdeliver in less time with happier people.

EDIT: Also, shout out to Karl Wiegers Software Development 3rd Edition[0] and it's companion book Visual Models for Software Requirements[1]. Those books coupled with really learning to ask about peoples interests and needs and listen to not just what they are saying but watching to see if they are engaged changed my life and I think I've made more than a few working experiences better for everyone involved and I hope that's something I'm remembered for.

Also Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication[2]. As a sarcastic pedant person on the autistic spectrum, finding his audio book on NVC helped me be a better listener and problem solver and not create unnecessary problems just by using my words in dumb and glib ways in the wrong setting. I mean, I still do that, but now I'm aware when it's unhelpful and do it much less.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Software-Requirements-Developer-Best-...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Software-Requirements-Develope...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication

I gather from your blog that you are 14 and are not a professional yet (get paid to write code etc..)

What I believe you are missing to be able to execute on your project is order. Going from "idea" to "writing code" sounds like you expect things to magically fall into place and code to flow to your screen..

Here's what I advise you to try when ever you have an idea-

1. think your idea through to some practical outcome (web pages, CMD output etc..)

2. write user stories to describe what the user of your product should be doing (Google "how to write user stories"..)

3. try to come up with something equivalent to a mock-up using any means that you feel comfortable with (pen&paper any of the latest wireframe / mockup apps out there) - don't worry about visual aspect - just make sure it delivers on the user stories

4. having seen the "big picture" take one user story and start from there..

Feel free to write here if you have any questions on any of these..

what the author lacks is not organizational skills but personality

in reality he’d still fail a project even if he had a plan laid out completely

the reason of his failure is lack of discipline, and possibly skills to achieve the said goal

his to patience bar is low

the solution would be to look for real motivation and initially work only on areas you’re more interested in and leave the other ones for later

quitting only makes you a quitter

if you quit you will be same as anybody else with no skills to offer, no projects to display

do you wanna grow as a person or keep finding excuses (code don’t work = i quit programming for life)?

maybe you need a reminder how far you made it so far: you have a nice-looking personal blog, projects on GitHub, you reached HN front-page

why give up when you can put little more effort and be where you want to be?

anyways, wish the author well

Maybe each of us reading into this with our own bias, we’re seeing ourselves and what makes us stuck, there is no single answer that applies to everyone

i went through a period of exactly what author was describing

what i learned is that the projects aren’t at fault for this

if you lose motivation as quickly it doesn’t matter whether you’re building a JS web app or Mars Rover

maybe his expectations were too high and he need to find a right reason to why keep working on projects instead of why giving up on projects

maybe he has emotional issues and needs to see psychologist

people write that he is 14y old and that he is doing something wrong, thats why he is "burned out". I am 41 and have been a dev for over 20 years and I am also burned out... I still code professionally because thats the only thing I know but if I had a chance I would do something else. Nothing programming related. I am fed up with it. I used to be addicted to coding, I used to have side projects and coded all day long.. But today, it is just a pain in the ass. I switched my employer lately and it is even worse because I have to learn all new stuff. I thought it will be exciting, it was at first but now after few weeks it is all boring and I can't see it anymore.

44, same situation. this is not burnout. things will get even worse. you are just waking up and soon you will see things for what they really are. it’s not pretty. good luck.

Could you please elaborate? I too am in a similar situation where I used to love programming embedded stuff for almost 16+ years and now I lost interest in all these things.

Not sure what is happening. I had come out of some very bad days in personal life some years back and now I just chill with no interest.

I’m not the person you replied to but I can give you my (web dev ~7 years experience) take.

I have been having a super hard time believing the technology I produce is even good for society. Most companies I have coded for is an “excel with workflows and auditing” that costs well over $100k/yr. Combine that with what social media & smartphones seem to be doing to mental health I don’t really go to bed enjoying the fact that I’m part of an industry causing more problems than solutions.

That’s my 2c. I would be interested to hear your side of things coming from the embedded perspective

I had a maker mindset during my childhood and in my college days. I was so into core digital and analog electronics and a lot of tinkering with Linux. I had some good and interesting time in my career in patches where I was doing embedded medical devices for 12 years wearing multiple hats. I had major personal projects and a lot of interesting stuff in the pipeline which I was excited to tackle.

After some personal family issues, things started declining rapidly as I was attacked from all sides emotionally and my very character was under the lens and being questioned. In the meantime I decided to change my company and all my personal projects were kept on hold prepping for the leetcode dance. Now getting back to what I was doing is becoming very difficult and I just don't have any interest in learning the never ending stream of new things to do even the most simple and basic of tasks.

Coupled with all this the horrible closed source mess of present embedded devices, terrible tools and also corporate nonsense and stupid colleagues really has me burnt out. I sometimes miss the days that my medical electronics would make a lot of difference to the end user. Now all I do is enable wireless connectivity for my customers who produce bullshit lifestyle gadgets in the name of IoT. Most of my colleagues are least interested and curious in anything.

It is also becoming very difficult to stay in a company for more than 2 years because of loss of interest coupled with hikes not matching rapid inflation. No meaningful work and relationships can be made with such rapid changes in life.

(Sorry for the rant. Going through some tough times.)

I can totally relate to this. Going through something similar. I guess any personal life emotional burnouts can make us see day to day problem solving at computers as too huge a task. Difficult people at work or managers make it worse by questioning you and your work further instead of showing any empathy. In that case if you switch, starting to learn lots of new things becomes challenging as well. I guess thats also a kind of emotional burnout. All the best trying to take care of it with work.

It is not burnout, he has never experienced the true stress of being a programmer by trade and the associated red tape, financial dependency and requirement to perform no matter how you feel

If anything, what he has is just youth, a developing brain, lack of dopamine by internet addiction, hormones and maybe ADD

Calling this burnout is a shameful insult to the mental hell that is real burnout

It's boring because it's become a rote task. You still have to slog through learning some new stuff and solving the problems at hand, but it's not like some huge path of discovery. And you know what the end result is gonna look like.

Guess you gotta think of those metalsmith workers from a couple hundred years ago. Very technically skilled, but sometimes they probably produced the same pieces hundreds of times. Just to live a good life.

Same here, 39 being in the industry for 14 years. I think this feeling come from the fact that everything around us moving so fast. Old days you can set for months only using Turbo pascal IDE manual without the needs for internet at all. Now literally every few days new technology popups and we are trying to be up to date and we got overwhelmed.I remembered I was trying to learn the new Javascript era and it's zillion frameworks but I couldn't. I think it's better to focus on only one thing and find a side hobby away from the technology.

I agree with most of your sentiments but would argue it’s better to focus on only “one thing at a time” than exclusively “only one thing”. But that’s personal preference and I certainly admire individuals who are able to “focus only on one thing”.

I too have the same feeling. For me it was Turbo C and later Redhat Linux with its manual and website dump of text files of machine internals for learning to boot up things and program hardware.

Now it is a complete mess of APIs and frameworks with the core hidden deep. It gets so hard to start anything due to this and the interest evaporates very fast.

This is not burnout, this is simply bad planning.

Oh, I'd love to visit Thailand! I put my shoes on, grab my coat, and just as I'm about to leave my house it strikes me how far it actually is and how much planning I need to do to get there, before I even start

You don't know emotional state of the author to rule out burnout. I personally had similar problems for last two years and I'm sure this has nothing to do with planning and everything with my emotional reactions towards writing code and using computer to solve problems in general.

Eh, if you were really motivated to go you'd open up your phone to see the next flights or call an uber to take you to the airport - even without a plan. The motivation fades as quickly as it is sparked during burnout. Most people who like to code will continue to code indifferent to the challenges ahead.

There is much more involved in building a product than coding. Similarly, there is much more involved in travelling than sitting in a vehicle.

This is a pretty narrow minded interpretation, that dismisses the entire idea of burnout.

I have many ideas and a lot that I could complete in a day, but I share the problem of the author. Beyond opening the IDE, all motivation seeps out of me with a strong aversion to actually programming.

That’s what I call burnout.

If one experiences burnout at 14 yo it's quite serious issue or something completely different.

Normally people can experience burnout after years/decades of work, not in their teens with hobbies.

> This is not burnout, this is simply bad planning.

This is not helpful, this is simply Besserwisser nonsense.

As someone that's traveled a fair amount it doesn't really take all that much planning to travel. Buy a ticket, book a hotel, show up. Like many things it seems scary at first but once you've done it a few times it turns out it's pretty easy and it gets easier all the time.

Thailand, at least Bangkok, has public transportation. Now-a-days you likely have a smartphone. If it's unlocked, get a sim at the airport for < $20 usually. You can find your way all over much more trivially in 2022 than 2002 or 1982 etc... Take cabs or use Grab if you want. I haven't used Grab in Thailand but I did in Kuala Lumpur and it made getting around so trivial (also used public transportation in Kuala Lumpur which is pretty good too)

Thailand in particular is also relatively cheap. No idea what flights cost right now but high-end hotels can be as cheap as $120-$150 a night and that's top end. Plenty of places for $25 a night. (vs say SF, NYC, London where low-end is $350 a night)

There is a good amount of pathologizing done here in good faith. Mostly reflecting their own experiences onto this person.

If I was this person I would consider getting a therapist, even if it takes time to find one that jives well with you. I found a great one and it has opened doors I did not know existed.

Usually when you tell someone to get a therapist, they won’t. Especially if they are young. So I will provide alternatives with less start-up.

Watch HealthyGamerGG. Dr. Tracey Marks is great if you want to learn more about various psychiatric things. Exercise/socializing/going outside/healthy diet are superpowers for programmers.

I think this is a commonplace now that it has been decades ago. Information, languages, tools, tutorials, etc. on programming are now much more abundant and accessible than it has ever been. We seem to be cramming in our heads a lot of this information with very little outlet for our own productivity. This "burnout" seems to be due to saturation of ideas but lack of enough creation. I start so many small projects, and abandon them in various degrees of completion (most in early stages), before I get distracted by other reading material. This creates a frustration loop that is vicious, unless you are aware of it and break the cycle somehow.

My advice is to step back from HN, reddit, blogs, tech announcements, and focus on one particular project that interests you. Code a little (even a few lines) every day to see progress. Even if you don't feel motivated just open the IDE and clean up some code, it'll feel good and you probably end up working on that new feature.

Sounds like your brain associates programming to be like a "chore".

Bad associations usually need time to unwind, stepping away may be the right choice. Good luck! :)

I'm not sure if the OP is the original author. It looks like the original author is only 14 years old. They may have picked up programming skills and possibly have higher IQ compared to their classmates or peers. It can often make it difficult to connect with others in the social circle. Programming was probably fun and intellectually challenging in the beginning but now the author might find it a boring. But with age, hopefully they'll understand that there are enough mysteries in the world to uncover and challenge their intellect. Good luck.

> They may have picked up programming skills and possibly have higher IQ compared to their classmates or peers.

IQ is not a method for measuring general intelligence, so there is no way to better assess the situation without perpetuating the myth that IQ is a method for measuring general intelligence

You're not wrong. But I don't think I claimed anywhere that IQ is a measure of general intelligence. Neither does it mean that people with higher IQ will necessarily be more successful. But being at the extreme ends of IQ spectrum can be a huge barrier to communication between two individuals.

agreed, you can have high IQ but still suck at everything and be lazy and unproductive

if i was given a choice between being smarter and being more persistent i would’ve choose the latter

piano lessons actually forced me to be persistent

For a 14 year-old, they seem very non-cringey, see e.g. this:

https://tsk.bearblog.dev/why-tsuki/

I am a bit impressed.

i started programming at age of 12 in school and got paid with 14 through my first internship

luckily for me the show never stopped and i don’t regret missing parties and not connecting to others

the difference between me and my peers today is that i can afford to do whatever whenever, because i don’t have to worry about money and for them this luxury was only available temporarily and they didn’t spent that time wisely to build useful set of skills (in their teens)

the only thing that changed for me is what i program and for who

but i kinda don’t get how programming can be boring when there’s so much you can do

> they didn’t spent that time wisely to build useful set of skills (in their teens)

I learnt how to program in my teens.

I attribute this to being of a particular mind that liked it. This was fortunate as it also happened later to be a highly marketable skill.

I don't attribute it as being vastly more conscientious or knowledgeable about potential future earning avenues than my peers.

Sounds a little like ADHD to me. Try tackling your ideas in different ways and don't be discouraged by abandoning projects either. You still learn from every time you attempt to tackle something.

Maybe your mind is distracted by your sub conscious the zeigarnik effect builds up the more stuff you leave unfinished until your totally fried by it and all concentration is gone. List literally everything work and personal and assign its very next action (check GTD style), I find a monthly task list is way more effective than a daily one. Single out the most important 1 action you want to get done for the day and focus on that only any after that is a bonus.

Feel the same way. Probably because I feel like my needs outside of programming aren't being met.

"Whenever I have an idea, I jump straight to my computer and start coding" sounds to me like you need to practice impulse control. Try reading a book (about anything really). How your body and mind react to doing something low-dopamine and offline will probably tell you a lot about how you can improve your concentration.

Also, abandoning an idea is no problem, there's plenty of them. But you need to know if it happened for the right reasons.

I like your ideas here, maybe raise the bar for what it takes to make you jump, and raise your ability to jump higher when that's what you want.

How can I understand what my reactions tell me?

I live and breathed programming as a teen and nothing was more important at that time. Being burnt out as a kid suggests deeper underlying issues.

There is another thread here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31407118

Someone should merge them.

Couldn't reach the article but it sounds interesting.

There's a game called "Burnout" now?

Sorry, my bad.

It must not be a game then, probably an entire app or a whole programming style even.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com