Burn-out, daunting work, overstretched, and it's just too much
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I came back from work and now I actually feel great.
But I literally did nothing on that time off. I just watched TV, hit the gym, slept.
You can recover/avoid from burnout if people at your job are willing to work with you to change the situation. The big issue is most people in a work relationship are not even capable of changing work patterns. They dont have the management skill to do it, and will have the conversation, but continue down the same path. Thats when you leave.
If only watching the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation series was part of the onboarding process. If you watch this show through a lens of how it applies back to real life and team dynamics it's as close as you can get to guaranteeing success.
And I guess he was right? I did have the power to change in that situation.
But it made asking for help kind of pointless.
I was already blaming myself.
This is turning into a pity party.
Eh.
It seems like your boss maybe didn't hear or properly understand you reaching out for help. It was a brave thing to do, since it shows vulnerability.
But don't be too harsh on your boss either (maybe! I don't know the full situation). I don't know the full situation, but it is possible that when you asked for help maybe he felt like you're complaining about him. So he got defensive. I know that sounds a bit immature, but everyone's a bit immature sometimes.
Also, instead of framing it as pity, think of it as having compassion and understanding for yourself instead. I know it's hard to reframe it if you have a long habit of negative self talk, though (been there done that, and I still sometimes end up there accidentally sometimes)
I had a pretty bad attitude and had trouble focusing on work. I thought it was depression, and that's probably a factor of it, but having been unemployed for the last three months now, I think I was just going through a really bad case of burnout. I didn't really want to do anything productive, I just felt bad, and as a result I was missing deadlines and not doing terribly well, and eventually they decided to let me go. They told me it was budget cuts, but I think that might have been more of a catalyst than a cause, and this was depressing because by all accounts this was the best job I'd ever had.
If anyone's reading this, take burnout (and depression) seriously. I lost a great job because I didn't.
[1] I'm reasonably confident you could figure out which company I'm talking about with some searching, but I politely ask that you don't post it here if you do.
EDIT:
Out of curiosity, and feel free to not answer if this is too personal...what was the health issue?
I would absolutely agree that folks should take burnout (and depression) seriously.
However, please stop blaming yourself entirely for the burnout. It's OK to take some responsibility for not being productive, of course -- any good person would do that in your shoes! But it's your manager's responsibility to give you a productive work environment. If they don't directly contribute output, that's effectively their only responsibility.
So keep in mind that you don't exist in a vacuum, and your boss could almost certainly tell that something was wrong... so unless you are very, very, very good at hiding burnout and depression symptoms, they knew what was going on and didn't fix it. Maybe your problems were too significant for a manager to meaningfully deal with (they're not a psychologist, after all), but if they didn't try to help, that's on them. Not you.
If you happen to record your conversations, take it to a pro and they can tell by the tone of the voice of your manager if they were saying the right things but actually instilling learned helplessness or other such tricks.
I mean, these things happen, I'm a little annoyed at myself but I just gotta keep moving forward.
I didn't get fired, but it became impossible to solve issues, as every single (legitimate, I swear) complaint or request from me was chalked up to "you're depressed".
But your point still stands 100%: it's not on the employee to solve all work-related burnout-inducing issues.
This relates to what happened where I was working, and cynicism crept in.
what was so great about this job? since you likely departed from a big tech company I assume the compensation was most or all of the reasons you thought it was great. you probably wouldn’t get burnt out doing something at a great job imo.
Maybe I’m just frustrated and looking back with rose colored glasses.
I appreciate the kind words though!
If not, what would have to change for you to go back?
- you can't change the organization, only your own behavior (just assume it, you don't have to agree)
- the behavioral issues you reported were what caused the company to part ways with you
- those behavioral issues were caused by burnout
I would also try and spot the early signs of burnout sooner and tell my manager so that he could work with me before anything get too bad and before I start missing deadlines.
Because each of us has different experiences and perspective, we all explore a different part of the solution space. Of course we think what we're doing is important, that's why we do it.
The big problem is that we all deserve to live a good life, even if only some of us are lucky enough to find these difficult to find solutions.
Imagine a world where you could YOLO into a Ph. D research position, and if you burnt out be able to have a bed, food, clean water and access to medical care. It’s not much but seems utopian compared to the world today.
That is a hypothesis.
So sure, someone needs to get up, so the hot water comes out of the wall, but it is not at all clear that it needs to be always the same guy grinding, while next door someone else is dying of boredom and watching netflix until he passes out. Give him a real chance to qualify and maybe he will be happy to do useful work. Remove the whip of existential threat and maybe he get up on his own again, because he wants to and not because he must.
Also there is so much energy spend on fighting for basic ressources, or fighting regulations, or other arbitary constraints, that in theory we could reduce the work needed by a lot.
But of course the question is - will society work at all, with the basic competition removed? Will it make population explode, until there are literally no ressources left to share? We don't know, but I am open to try out more experiments in that regard.
Unemployment is 3.5%
Because our society requires us to do SOMETHING so we make up large social structures to prove we have the right to exist.
A lot of people theorize about what's gonna happen if/when we reach very high levels of automation. Who's gonna consume things after the robots take most jobs? UBI is often the answer. I'm pro-UBI, but I'm also of the opinion that we should prepare/self-correct by collectively working much much less.
Or we can change our definition of what work is. There is work and there are (money paying) jobs.
The world is full of problems and full of work. Problems on the planet, problems on the mind, problems on the hearts.
And the universe is big and waiting, so I am really not afraid, that robots will steal me a purpose in life.
I have met quite some and zero who were happy with it.
Unfortunately this world you talk about doesn't exist anymore.
Now we live in the world where "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose".
I’ve long liked this Picard quote, even though it can be equally discouraging as it can be encouraging, depending on how it’s taken.
Social Security keeps almost 22.5 million people out of poverty, for example [1]. Minimum wage increases helps millions of workers at a time.
Startups are great to get rich and cash out, but not for the improvements we’re discussing at scale. Arguably, most startups have made things net worse (the gig economy, real estate price inflation, gambling on digital tokens, etc).
I’m tangentially fond of several parts of government including functions like the US Digital Service; maybe start there if you’re a technologist. Less policy and politicking, more code, but you’re still getting to wield the resources government has to offer.
[1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit...
People hear "if you want to win, go to university" so they do, and they still lose.
People hear "work long hours and make an impact at your job if you want to win" so they do and still lose.
Meanwhile the "winners" are more visible than ever. And you point at them and say "I'm doing all the things they are doing why am I not winning" and there are no real answers. Either you're missing something or winning/losing is down to being lucky enough to do all of the right things but also at the right time and right place.
This is a force that creates limits in different opportunities. The example that I use is "how many networking protocols does a company need?" At most, maybe, two. So, you get a limit of the number of people that understand protocols well.
This is a funny thing about university too in that you get a lot of exposure, but those ideas just kind of feed you a bit rather than something that you can use in a career. How many people are actually going to use their OS, DB, etc in real-life? Well, at full scale, not many.
We think it is important... or we think it is fun? I expect a lot of us are, for example, guilty for diving in and creating software (or whatever your craft is) that we think others will like/pay for, but don't actually ever stop to talk to people to see if that's the case because collecting data isn't nearly as enjoyable. Maybe you will get lucky and there will be interested parties aligning around your random guess. But more likely nobody will care and you'll go back to the drawing board to commit the same mistake again and again.
We don't reward hedonism, not even trying to solve any problem and avoiding the search for solutions. I haven't heard an argument why we should, why individuals not trying to contribute at all is desirable to a society.
This isn't just about burnout, it's about spreading yourself too thin.
This reminds me of a lot of the enthusiastic juniors I interview who want to tell me about their 10 different side projects, none of which got further than a quick proof of concept before they moved on to the next thing. If you hire them, guess what you're going to get? Someone who wants to build proof of concept work and then move on to the next thing as soon as it gets boring. The rest of the team doesn't want to spend their careers picking up the pieces after someone did the fun part and got bored.
Personally, if I'm reading an official company blog where the author is bragging about working on over a dozen different large projects simultaneously, I have zero interest in adopting the platform. It's almost guaranteed to be abandoned for the next fun idea, with features left unfinished. When I click on the "Pricing" page I'm given a placeholder that says it's free until the author gets around to building to billing part of the company.
I know the author wants to position themself as a "monastic code machine", but I think the biggest thing missing from this person's life is some diversity of activities. My recommendation: Put all but one of the projects on a clear, definitive pause. Focus on the business first. Then use your free time to get out, try new activities, and meet new people.
So many of the burnout stories I read online start with people who code all day at work and then come home and try to code all evening on side projects. That can be fun for a while, but if that's the entirety of your life you're going to burn out eventually. Get outside and do something else. You'll be more refreshed when you come back to these projects.
That is perfectly logical and doesn't invite judgment about his daily activities or "going outside" or whatever you are talking about
Yes, which is why I cited specific details from the post in my comment.
I also read some of his other posts which is where I gathered the “monastic code machine” and additional context.
Please don’t jump to conclusions about other people not reading the post when they’re clearly referring to details within.
HN has a guideline about this specifically https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
Calling him a clever name and espousing some unsolicited drivel... You don't sound like you are relating at all
The key is in presenting it within the right context. Doing a quick architecture exploration is indeed fun and insightful, but presenting that work as if it was a usable project would be misleading.
I think it's an unfair assessment. You can't compare what people do during their free time and what they do at work.
That being said, one of my brightest colleague is exactly like that. He seems to have a hard time finishing projects. It's always 90% done, poorly documented. Some other engineers are slower and less creative, but they deliver. In the end, everybody brings something to the table.
The core problem that I have is that I've realized that life has this rule: play stupid games, win stupid prizes. In my career, I've already demonstrated the capability to achieve. I'm a good cog, but for some stupid reason, I want some kind of something else. The best way to put it is legendary status.
I've realized many things as of late, and I'm focusing hard on the core project which is the new cloud because there I can have impact and I have the credibility to do it. The new runtime is neat in a myopic way, but it's not the way. The same is true for the web IDE and more. Many of the projects are done (like the network protocol) because I just have enough experience to focus on the right things (and the more depressing aspect there is the things I have to avoid doing because I created a patent for another company)
> My recommendation: Put all but one of the projects on a clear, definitive pause. Focus on the business first
This is what I'm doing except I'm focus on the core infrastructure such that I can invite people to use it. I intend to work with high school kids to build games and work on the rough edges. This focus on helping kids has been very focusing as I need a body of literature to throw at them to consume (in this case, Phaser.js tutorials) while I support them on the network end and gather feedback.
I am consistently frustrated that I don't have enough energy after work to spend time on my personal projects, so I wait for the weekend, at which point I just want to rest. Two-day weekends are not enough to balance life and work!
They'll never learn. And for any manager reading this, no, there is absolutely nothing special about your individual situation that means it wont work for you. Stop lying to yourself and your staff.
They gathered the data. They saw productivity was good.
Then they didn't adopt it full time
It makes my blood boil thinking about it.
It is similar with remote work. During covid it suddenly became possible. Productivity sometimes even increased, because people had fewer sick days (in open spaces viruses spread like wildfire). Now that covid is practically over, many companies are pushing people to return to the office. It does not matter if the team is international, so everyone only sees their colleagues on the screen. It is important for that screen to be located in the office, not at the place you choose.
Yes, life could be better, but it is not, for reasons that mostly do not make sense.
I think it's also just plain un-critical thinking, and ego. "The stats show one thing but I think that clearly cannot be true so I'm going to ignore them"
Or do you want a 4DWW with the same pay?
- move all projects to a monorepo. This is great because all projects are in one place, they become interconnected as some code will end up being a library for multiple ones. This ensures that even when I'm doing side-project "foo" some of the code or stuff will also end up improving "foo" or "bar".
- move the monorepo to github codespaces. The very last thing I want to do when I want to work on my side projects after some time is to remember how I had to setup everything, from ide, to the os, etc.
- keep todos, documentation, notes, all in the monorepo. What did I have to do? `apps/foo/todo.md` or search in the project for "TODO:". No point into having docs on different services, they stay close to the project.
- write E2E and integration tests first, never unit test anything that doesn't really need to, implement in the end.
And that's it. Lowering a lot the entry barrier to contributing and getting back on projects was a huge step (I literally need codespaces to load). Then came creating an ecosystem around my projects thanks to the monorepo. I can now forget a project for months and come back to it with a small effort or checking back where I was.
I admit I will never write git in two days like Linus, I won't be releasing a hit game on Steam at any time, but I have fun with my projects, I learn a lot, and even though they move slowly they do move consistently in time.
Not saying you will release a banger OSS project this way or some killer application that will make you rich, that requires discipline and focus more than organizing a git repo and few tools, but you will build yourself a nice playground which at every iteration will make further experimentation or production have lower friction.
Potential benefits from having access to more tools would take too much of my limited time and energy from moving the applications further.
That being said, I use @microsoft/rush for my monorepos and I think that with a bit of tinkering it could easily support building external tools.
I wonder if it's a good idea. Some projects have nothing to do with each other. The toy compiler in Haskell isn't going to benefit from the experimental OS in C. On the other hand, the git history and branches will be harder to manage.
The tool chain I'm using is easy to install fortunately, and I can bootstrap it quickly. I've automated most of it to a single command line, and I can deploy in two commands (for sanity sake).
Ultimately he will learn a lot about himself and the problems he wants to solve, but can never finish them, since he will realize that he cannot do it all at once - the solutions that are available have already had thousands of man hours poured into them.
He will learn to prioritize and think more about conceptualization and pre planning, and how to leverage existing solutions more.
What I forgot was how hard it is to teach just one thing at a time, so I'm focusing on that one thing. I still believe in my end vision, but I need to bring others along for the ride.
Work is typically performed to achieve some end result. Either an outcome or a material gain.
Until relatively recently in human existence the work performed to derive the output was varied and specific to the desired outcome.
For example: I want to eat carrots. I plant carrots. I want a shed. I build a shed. etc.
Now all work passes through the same point. Perform professional duties. Collect money. Buy outcome.
I get that it's not efficient to do many of these things but from a human fulfillment perspective there's a lot to be gained by doing them yourself.
The Task: "Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor."
~ William Cowper
A website. A framework. A library.
Something to feel the magic again, of creating, without getting crushed alive.
Don't invest that much emotion in a job to feel the absence of magic. It won't be there by default.
I think it's urgent to change the working hours model. I want to engage with my kids while they care, I want to enjoy my mom's health while she is alive, and I don't want to wait for my vacations to only then do that.
It's the damn golden handcuffs man.
Like you, I know for a fact I'm not lazy. Not at all. I love working and dive into it enthusiastically. This is a consistent and effortless experience of mine, throughout my life. It's natural and rewarding to work hard.
What makes me seem lazy a lot of the time is that most jobs are just a few types of activity, focusing on just one or two major ends at a time, repeated over and fucking over for 40 hours week after week. Programming's fun, but it's not 40-hours-a-week-every-week-for-all-the-best-hours-of-5/7-days fun. Not one year after another after another. I fucking dread it and, sure, I slack off. Because it's literally an in-human thing to ask of people.
But, economics. So, we optimize. And here we are. Hooray.
[EDIT] Like, truly, most things I do specifically for pleasure stop being enjoyable well before the 40-hours-a-week mark. A particular kind of work might be outright fun, maybe even for 40 hours in a week, hell, maybe for 80 hours in a week, but by the second or third 40-hour week it's probably gonna be something I would much rather stop doing in favor of something else—even other work, ideally as different from what I've been doing as possible (been programming three weeks straight, need a break; got any firewood that needs splitting or square bales that need gathering?).
Anyway, its time for bed. Gotta be at work in 7 hours to carry on doing the same thing I've been doing for 9 years straight whilst pretending to love it.
Interestingly, some of my fondest memories are a kid were going to work with my parents.
This newfound fascination with steering completely clear of work until one is deep into their 20s is a big problem here. Not only does it result in things like the parental separation you allude to, it also means that the child isn't making money during their most important earning years, requiring even harder work and less play later in life to try and catch up.
And for what? More time at the babysitters? That does not seem like a win. It seems quite silly, really.
Sorry if I am misreading this but are you saying that the Teen years are the most important earning years for a person?
Working likely minimum wage jobs in highschool and post-secondary does not seem like that important an earning time to me. I would be interested in your reasoning.
And yes, with the time value of money, the sooner you can make it the better.
Not sure if this is a culture difference here or something but most people where I'm from (Canada) don't work alongside their parents doing anything valuable as a pre-teen, and it's illegal to employ people younger than 16. Even if they do, it's very unlikely anyone would seriously consider it valuable work experience and pay substantially more than minimum wage.
For most people being a teenager is absolutely the first job they will have and it will be minimum wage or near it.
Working as a teen was absolutely not my most valuable earning years. That money went towards my university degree to offset my student loans, not into savings accounts to maximize the time-based value of my money.
N=1 but I would wager my experience is more common here than what you describe.
"Working with your parents" doesn't make child labour any less child labour.
In short, it's illegal in order to protect children from abuse. And it's not just "think of the children" either. Children in the workflow are not on an equal footing with adults and are an easy target.
As for the specific legal carve outs that you mention, those are generally crafted to ensure that children are very protected in the workplace, putting serious limitations on what their employers are allowed to ask them to do, the amount of hours and such. It also makes sure the parents are involved as an advocate for the child because again the child is not really mature enough to be their own advocate.
Anyways, I think what you'll find is that many people who did work quite young don't actually think it was all that valuable. My girlfriend worked at a public library after school starting at 13. She enjoyed it but doesn't think it was that useful for her career. I started working in a call center at 14, and other than spending money it was kinda worthless to me.
The kinds of work that kids can do is severely limited. Even a decade of experience doing it is not going to put them further ahead than high school and university.
"An ambient angst pervades our society-there's a sense that somehow there's probably something we should be doing that we're not, which creates a tension for which there is no resolution and from which there is no rest."
It's super hard to cut scope. Knowing that the software you write has imperfections but needing to move on to building the next feature creates angst. Knowing there's a better solution but not having the time to implement it can drive you crazy. You need to learn how to let things go and make peace with it.
I don't see how any of the projects on this list are requirements for building an online board game.
I've been in the beginning phases of building the runtime and getting the editor to work when I realized that it is going to take much longer to do at the quality that I want. Worse yet, my own credibility of building beyond the infrastructure is shaky, and I could already see the mistakes pile up which means that fight is going to take much longer.
Now they’re saying we aren’t going to be able to use our own devices, and must use the company-issued computers that are running Windows. That makes no sense. Force me to use the least secure OS because “we need to beef up security”. I do mostly data science work that lends itself to not only a *nix OS but Linux specifically. There are things I use to complete my work that are Linux-only, so I wouldn’t even want a Mac.
I started job searching when this news dropped. Life is too short fellas. Life is too short. Make it harder to do my job, for no real reason beyond bureaucracy and politics, and I am out.
Windows has come a long way in the past 20 years, and it is definitely on par with regards to security (in general) as other operating systems. However, it also has the advantage of being able to be joined to a domain where Group Policies can be pushed. No other OS has a meaningful equivalent of Group Policy (no, Ansible, etc don’t do the same thing, and would require an enormous amount of effort to replicate what Group Policy does).
This post is talking about burn-out, and that definitely can cause negative emotions. But in your case, it sounds like you’re expecting to be treated as a special snowflake and they’re not having it. That would understandably cause negative emotions for you, but the underlying reason in your case is caused by a (probably) incorrect perception of yourself that you should get special treatment for some reason, and you’re having a tantrum because you’re not getting it.
Finally I started hobbies at home totally removed from what I did at work, knowing I would be bad at them. Knowing I could give up on them. Knowing there was no pressure to finish or be good at a thing helped me alleviate the pressure of work where I had to perform.
But thanks for sharing the experience.