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Comment by rnoorda | Hacker News Reader

A discussion on burnout here[0] last year called burnout "a kind of unrequited love." I don't know that it's a perfect metaphor, but it's changed the way I approach my attitude and commitment to work. This article touches on that idea under "Prevent Ineffectiveness." The times I've felt most burnt out aren't always when I'm working the hardest, but when I'm working the hardest without getting enough in return. When working on a project I am passionate about or I control, I can work much harder without burnout creeping in.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28307721

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6-12 months into any job I have had you see it is political, and as a developer you I am the pawn in the game.

The developer is default assumed naive regardless if decades of experience.

Mansplained, cut short, restricted freedom and the constant ticking of some clock that is measuring how fast you can pump out the puzzle solutions.

So I am over it. I avoid burnout by having a simple goal: to be paid every month by someone. I have lost the enthusiasm for the work. I do the work. But I don’t have ideas in the shower anymore.

There are just too few people-oriented leaders in the space and those that are are hamstring by the next level up anyway.

The good thing is it is continuously motivation to build a side business.

I don't know the exact quote but it goes something like - there is no human issue that is not a political one.

One thing that helps me is knowing that as the person actually building it I have the power/final say. You can say no to features or build the features you believe are more important. It’s the pms job to convince you that their priorities are worth it.

I like that power dynamic. Because developers tend to be more “eager to please”.

It really takes a mindset that the business owners trust and confide in technical people rather than seeing them as a paid service to be “karen-ed” (obviously in the modern, ultra polite, we are cool people kinda way) because “customer is right”.

> When working on a project I am passionate about or I control, I can work much harder without burnout creeping in.

For me it was the opposite. I found that comment about burnout as unrequited love after burning out badly this year. I realized that I had been giving my whole soul to this project, loving it like a child, only to recently realize that the company didn't feel the same way towards me.

I've been doing a lot better in the last month because I've been able to refocus my love and passion on my family and keep work where it belongs: a way to provide for my family, nothing more. I still get my work done, but I'm less emotionally invested, and I've been much healthier because of that.

That's a good clarification- passion is good for my own projects, not things run by anyone else. I recently had a similar thing at work, at it's rough. I'm trying to invest less in work as well. But if it's my own project, that no one else can cancel, that's where the passion comes in.

My experience is the same. Working hard but always disappointing results. Powerless to instigate what I saw as solutions.

In reflection much of this was due to my agreeable personality and lack of experience. Pushing back is an important skill to learn.

This is actually predicted by the COR developmental model presented in the article. The terminology might be a bit wonky, but the basic idea is that ‘loss’ produces a stress response. In other words, if you passionately pursue a project, only to have management kill the project a year or so later, you’re going to feel ‘loss’ (wonkily defined) and be at risk for burnout past a certain loss threshold.

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