Fast forward to the second year, I got a new manager who turned the office politics to 11, put people in positions that they were absolutely not fit for and in general made a huge mess out of everything, ignoring the advice and suggestions of the team while doing it while continuously reminding us engineers of our low place in the picking order. If there was a way to rank managers this guy would be in the bottom 5%, I've worked with about 30 managers (in one way or another) in my career so this was bound to happen at some point.
However, I was totally not prepared for the effect it had on me. Within months I was reduced to someone who was frustrated 24/7, unable to do even the most basic task, I was sleeping poorly and my physical health was suffering. It took an enormous amount of energy just to sit through online meetings without lashing out, the rest of the team was feeling the same so you can imagine what kind of environment it was. I was lucky to get a new job very quickly and after getting out of that toxic environment I was my old self again in mere weeks.
I can totally imagine how burnout can be modeled as learned helplessness. If, I, as young, healthy guy can be reduced to a wreck, in months, in a toxic environment, I can only start to imagine what people have to go through that don't have the luxury of switching jobs quickly (for whatever reason).
Always remember that it's jsut a job, and that your manager's opinion - outside of that org - is no more important than anyone else's opinion in the world.
In the United States, your job is very closely tied to your livelihood due to high rents, few social support structures, health insurance often tied to your job, etc.
There's a model of thinking taught in schools and universities that teaches individuals to defer helplessly to their superiors, to be subservient to a fault and respect hierarchies as sacrosanct. When someone abuses that hierarchy, one either has to unlearn their programming, or assume the burden of the imposition of value on their psyche.
Has there been a time or place where this isn't the case?
To quote Karl Marx "He who does not work does not eat."
Overall I think there’s a decent compromise to be found there. I am happy for the society to ensure that as many people as possible have a guaranteed bare minimum to survive, which provides opportunities to find better. If some people are content with surviving, well. More power to them. They are not in big enough numbers to matter anyway (the sums involved are dwarfed by companies’ tax fraud).
your survival being predicated upon engaging in state-enforced financial exploitation by a capitalist and being separated from the value of your own labor
isnt quite the same as
engaging in activities deaigned to produced a beneficial outcome to the self and society at a point in the future
Some countries (Germany, Switzerland, maybe others) will pay employment insurance even if you quit of your own accord and lower the elimination period if you had reasons to do so (as certified by a MD)
That was Lenin who wrote that, although it was originally from the Bible.
There's nothing worse than a clueless political manager.
I had this happen too - this is so important to understand - your performance is hugely affected by the environment. This is super depressing, causes so much self hatw and angst
If you find yourself in that position, you have to chabge team or company asap
If a manager find thia has happened, I dont know what you do
More reason to have small teams, cut out middle management, hire good developers, and trust them to make decisions. Being a code monkey is a recipe for burnout.
Being a code monkey who thinks it's their job to be responsible for the company is hard. In that case, I agree with you. Such a code monkey needs to put themselves in a position of power somehow.
> Being a code monkey is fine if one embraces that position with its economic and ambition consequences.
It's perfectly fine. It can also lead to burnout.
This sounds more like manager incompetence than being a code monkey. But embracing code monkey-ism could help as I imagine it involves just doing tasks at one's own pace and putting up strong emotional boundaries to mismanagement. Can constant meetings or bikeshedding really hurt someone who's just looking to run out the clock?
P.S. I'm talking about choosing to be a code monkey as a philosophy, a choice. Not as a skill level that I'd call "beginner". Some people call beginners code monkeys, I am not a fan of that.
Or it could be two or more competent managers coming into conflict. Or incompetent ones. It is not that rare l - if you recognise the situation, you can pick a side, but if you dont know what to do, you could be viewed badly by all participants
Well, that is until the senior engineers or managers burnout from being "responsible" for keeping product from crashing, performance issues, and/or technical debt but without authority to change things! QED
In other words, you can burn out at a job that's 12 hours a week and not burn out at a job that's 60 hours a week. It depends heavily on the nature of the work. Whenever people talk about feeling 'burnt out' purely due to how many hours they work I am always sceptical and suspect the root cause is actually different (note that I actually think our work week is too long even at 40 hours, I think too many hours of work are unhealthy for other reasons). In this sense I'd distinguish 'exhaustion' from 'burnout'. The former can turn into the latter but often does not but the root cause of exhaustion is exertion whereas this is not the case for burnout. They can converge, of course, the ultimate result may be severe depression in either case, but it's still worth distinguishing.
In my opinion burnout is actually more of a natural phenomenon, which is the mind simply needing to do something totally different and perhaps more meaningful. I believe it is also due to the unnatural tendency for people to work in the same or similar field of expertise for far too long, which is simply not natural especially for highly intellectual fields.
Like you said, "Burnout is like when you don't want to do something anymore". Isn't that what learned helplessness is, with a 'something' that's life-scoped instead of work-scoped?
Strong disagree. Scientists burn out harder than programmers and what they do is arguably more "meaningful", at least to the individual scientist. Actually I think burnout is often triggered by moral injury, which starts by having a personal investment in the narrative of your objective
The book "Lab Rats" explains this phenomenon very well. In fact, apparently, the way you make a rat depressed in a lab study is to constantly change small aspects of its environment, preventing it from ever feeling stable and comfortable. I wonder if the upheaval in modern social life resulting from things like the rapid changes brought on by capitalism and information technology are a contributor to this widespread feeling.
I will never buy a Tesla, with that big screen controlling everything, which the true owners of the vehicle keep on reprogramming from afar! At least you can count on an older car to keep on functioning in the same way you're used to, from one day to the next.