Comment by LaurensBER | Hacker News Reader

Comment by LaurensBER | Hacker News Reader

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I spend most of my 15 year career working at startups I've worked long evenings, weekends, dealt with stress, tense situations (both commercial and social) and deadlines and never had any symptoms of burnout. I switched to a large enterprise company and enjoyed the relaxed pace for a year. The first 6 months took some adjustment but I quickly figured out that getting things done in a large company just required a bit of a different skill set. Sometimes it took weeks to get a simple configuration changed but when I finally talked to the guy I learned that he had 5 kids, three of them who were sick, instantly made me realize that my frustration about the pace was uncalled for.

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).

> 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

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

I have been through the same. No burnout in startups, then a period of boreout in a large company, then a political manager, then depression, and then resigning. Although my company did retain me in the end.

There's nothing worse than a clueless political manager.

> 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.

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.

It's hard to get out of that mindset, especially as a young new hire.

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.

To summarize, an abusive manager pays your rent and keeps you from dying. The only way to win this game is to be self-sufficient enough to walk away.

pledge fealty to a different lord

> in the United States, your job is very closely tied to your livelihood

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."

The safety net of (primarily European) certain countries is definitely easier to live with when losing a job. In theory you can probably continue indefinitely on some of those welfare payments, although for many people that leads to another kind of burnout (boreout?) again.

It’s also really not comfortable. I am sure you could live on it indefinitely as a kind of ascetic performance but people who actually need that to survive are usually very keen on getting other sources of income. Some of it undeclared and evading taxes, but that’s another problem.

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).

the issue is conflating work/livelyhood/job which arent always synonyms.

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

Yes, many countries that aren’t the US provide health insurance regardless of your employment status.

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)

> He who does not work does not eat

That was Lenin who wrote that, although it was originally from the Bible.

Welcome to America - compete or starve.

This is a rationalization, and while objectively correct and likely helpful to some degree, it ignores the emotional reality of the situation.

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