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Comment by BossingAround | Hacker News Reader

After being the top performer for ~3 years, I started getting calls to the stickiest, most stressful situations that came up, because "I can handle it" (typically true). I managed to burn out within 6 months after that. I find that good performance is commonly rewarded with a) more work, and b) more stressful work.

I don't know how one overcomes burnout to be honest. I tried for another year when I got promoted, set boundaries, refused stressful work, etc. Then, I just became apathetic and cynical towards my work.

I'm now in the process of changing companies. I have no idea if that helps the burnout, but I know I can't continue in my current position, even if it actually became quite low-stakes "rest and vest" kind of a position after talking to the leadership about my struggles. The damage has been done, and I could not repair it.

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IME it help but also doesn't. Part of the problem with burnout is internal. Removing unrealistic external expectations with a fresh job does help a lot, however there are still the expectations coming from the inside.

Read "the theory of the leisure class".

this http://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/theoryleisureclass.pdf ?

Stressful work is ok if it either

A) Increases your skill somehow B) Gets you awarded a higher compensation

But most stressful work you encounter doesn't do either.

I find most stressful work caused mostly by poor long term planning, bad legacy code, or a poor work environment.

IMO there are rarely ever stressful situations, that are not somehow the fault of those managing a project. They can occur, and then they are due to totally unforseeable outside influences.

But most influences (be it internal or external) that can make projects stressful are totally predictable and there should already be strategies how to deal with them in an unstressful manner in the drawer somewhere.

What you can find more often is shops that don't even manage to organize qhat should be an ordinary, boring, slow day in an unstressful manner. And the worst thing is that they gain nothing by that. Some seem to be even proud of how stressed things are (they confuse stress with productivity).

I am feeling all the things you describe as well. Like you, I am also looking out but damn, the tech market is pretty grim, at least at where I am right now.

I applied to 4 positions, got invited to an interview for 1 of those, and got that job. Might have been lucky.

I'm losing all of my unvested RSUs but I expected that the new job won't be able to match that. I do think that you have to reduce your TC expectation in this market.

I'm considering flipping houses these days. Something about manual labour on various kinds (wood, wall, metal) helps me get into flow.

Did you enjoy solving hard situations at first at all ?

good luck for your next steps, hope you find a chill and joyful spot

I enjoy solving hard problems.

Hard situations? Depends on the deadline and the stakes. It can be rewarding (as in, you truly make a difference and the business sees that) but I don't aim to be a director so it's not something I'd like to do on a daily basis.

Funny thing is, in my experience, hard situations rarely require deep technical thinking, so I feel like my skills are worse off (which didn't really help with my burnout).

I see, you kinda got nothing dealing with tense shit it seems. Like having to deal with too many leaks too late in a way ?

Losing skills is one of the most painful feeling I got to feel in the recent years. The idea of jumping is regular but you never know if the next one will be better ..

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