Scientists Developed a Tool to Reveal Who's at Risk of Burnout, and It's Free | Hacker News Reader

Scientists Developed a Tool to Reveal Who's at Risk of Burnout, and It's Free

sciencealert.com

94 pointsRafelMri82 comments

What's the application of all this?

I'm definitely burned out, but my boss doesn't care, there's no way I can get a better job in this market (even if I had the energy to practice leetcode problems to prepare for interviews), and I'm not rich enough to just stop working. Therapy, exercise, and medication are only enough to allow me to keep going in this bad situation.

I'd really like to talk to you in private if you don't mind - I've just become interested in mental health recently and I think that I need the advice of someone who is decidedly _not_ a professional. I'd love to hear from you if you don't mind. My Gmail username is the same as my HN username. Thanks!

organise with others, form a union

That's not an option in my case. There's only a handful of us left who aren't offshore contractors and many of my co-workers would turn me in to management the moment they heard me talking about a union.

Yeah I like how society so “sincerely” talks about fixing problems with therapy and exercise when the main problem in most people’s lives is the requirement that they work hard day in and day out. As a society we have no solution to this problem so we invent various ways to “fix” the problem without talking about the source. I realize people have to work, I just wish society would actually talk about the elephant in the room.

It’s not society, it’s a capitalism problem. The harder you work, the richer and more powerful those above become, they will resist anything that goes against this cycle, such as you working less.

Other financial systems had their other incentives to work yourself to death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakhanovite_movement

> I realize people have to work

Do they really, though? As a culture, we've invented so many BS jobs and so many silly corporate culture ways of filling at least 8 hours 5 days a week almost every week a year whether it is useful to us or not out of some puritan-based pseudo-religion that tells us that "work" is good for the "soul" and anyone who doesn't "work" is evil and undeserving of god's/society's love. The 40 hour work week was chosen because it is right near the cutoff of people's exhaustion level, not that it has anything real to do with productivity or usefulness to ourselves and our society.

If we are going to talk about elephants in the room: why can't we find more time to open room for hobbies and personal/family time? Why do we have to work so much? Why are we focused so much on corporate profit and greed? What good are we really doing for ourselves and our society with our current forced work culture?

Me personally? I am concerned about dying of a preventable disease in my middle to old age and without work, there is no insurance. With no insurance, presumably I would be left to die by a harsh, uncaring society.

So I think your question might be reversed: what good is society doing for us, by forcing us to amass wealth because we are scared of being discarded to die early?

The answer, of course, is that society accomplished by way of this blackmail the ability to deliver many plastic electronic consumer goods that would not otherwise be available.

Among other things, there is that ugly presumption that health insurance has to be tied to your employer. This is an interesting and almost peculiarly American viewpoint, because that's the status quo we frogs were slowly boiled in across decades and generations until few remember there's an option to jump out, that it isn't a "day spa" and we're all likely to die of this problem. Why should this be a concern of our employer and how much they think our "work" is worth? Why have we allowed this "blackmail" to rot all around us and settle into feeling so normal? Why do people that don't "work" deserve to die of preventable diseases? What makes them so undeserving/undesirable of health? Why are health insurers for-profit companies seeking so much greed and wealth at the expense of actual public health?

Is this the society we really want to live in where we are all (yes, even Billionaires) three bad months away from homelessness and six bad months away from dying of something preventable?

I assume that "the ability to deliver many plastic electronic consumer goods that would not otherwise be available" is a joke in the face of that existential terror, but I cannot tell any more on sites like HN.

I guess the fear is if we don’t work hard, a country will regress. We certainly have many examples of countries around the world that have very low productivity and corresponding widespread hunger, sickness, violence and crime etc. It’s a hard balance to maintain, between being productive and recreation, but some European countries are able to tentatively pull it off (atleast for now when the long tail of colonialism or oil wealth is still bringing in enough money).

That sounds like a correlation/causation mixup to me. The way economists define "productivity" is in part based on the growth of wealth. Poor countries are not poor because they have low productivity: they have low productivity because they are poor.

Your work make you take the test and then when it is determined you're burned out you'll be randomly selected for a layoff.

> there's no way I can get a better job in this market (even if I had the energy to practice leetcode problems to prepare for interviews), and I'm not rich enough to just stop working.

I had almost this same problem. I just got a "worse" job but for a cause I believe in. I took a big pay cut but I'm a happier person.

> "Previously, we have not had a detailed enough measurement tool for use in both the field of practice and research that identifies workers who are at risk of burnout," says psychologist Leon De Beer, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Have they never heard of the Maslach Burnout Inventory? The MBI measures burnout as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) and in the ICD-11.

It has been around for 35 years, and it is considered the gold standard for measuring burnout.

More details here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6194874/

Edit: Indeed, they have heard of the MBI. It is mentioned in the paper itself: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.12996

In fact, one of the key hypotheses they explore is how their BAT compares to the MBI. So why in the world would its lead author be saying that it's the first of its kind?

I wager the lead guy made no such statement, this is the accuracy of journalism.

So the journalist falsified a direct quote?

"Improved". For "engagement".

I've been interviewed by the press multiple times, with direct quotes that I never uttered. Friends and associates too. Journalism is a joke, seriously.

Former journalist here, so I may be biased, but I think a lot of people think of "the press" as if it's one thing, when in reality there is a vast, vast spectrum of quality across different news outlets. Unfortunately, as with other negative stereotypes, a few bad impressions is all it takes for some people to attribute those stereotypes to the whole group. But having spent time behind the scenes, I would say that most people who make journalism their profession really do try very hard to be accurate, especially when it comes to quoting people. Mistakes happen, yes, but aside from some bottom-feeders who don't care about accuracy as long as it sells, most of the journalists I know see theirs as a public-service profession. Certainly they're not in it for the money.

What happens when the “few bad apples” get all of the traction and all of their news spreads vs good journalists who get very small readership? You end up with all perceived journalism being bad and the good being so diluted by the bad that their impact isn’t ever felt. I believe this is where we are headed if we aren’t already there now.

I don't believe the failure of journalism is journalists' fault. It's their owners driving revenues, and their editors obeying orders. I know a few journalists at various stages of their career, and they are worked, run hard, not paid, and discarded at every turn.

Case in point how revenues drive journalism to failure: Trump was never qualified as a candidate for POTUS, but his candidacy was good for news revenues. And here we are, with the fallout of that desire for revenues over journalistic integrity: on the brink of a destroyed democracy, and 1 of two political parties largely populated by insane illogical and desperate.

"The science news cycle" :

https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

I understand it to say that it’s new because it identifies people at risk of burnout ahead of time.

The description of MBI sounds like it’s used for diagnosis of people who are already burned out?

I wonder if it allows minority reports...

From the paper introduction, about the limitations of existing methods:

> However, over the last few decades burnout measures have been shown to have some limitations, including differences in the conceptualization of burnout being measured (exhaustion-only or multidimensional [e.g., including cynicism, professional efficacy]; see Guseva-Canu et al., 2021 and Schaufeli, 2021), the prescribed factor structure, which remains unclear (three-factor vs. two-factor; e.g., Worley, Vassar, Wheeler, & Barnes, 2008), the apparent divergent role of professional efficacy (e.g., De Beer & Bianchi, 2019), and the inability of these measures to provide a global burnout score as is ideally required when measuring a syndrome (Schaufeli, Desart & De Witte, 2020).

What they decided to do and what is novel about it follows right after:

> Due to these afore-mentioned limitations, Schaufeli, Desart, and De Witte (2020) endeavored to create a new instrument, the Burnout Assessment Tool (BAT). The development of the BAT is unique in that, unlike the development of other burnout measures, both inductive and deductive approaches were used to decide on the final list of items included in the survey. The specific inductive approach employed by Schaufeli and colleagues is uncommon, because the Dutch authorities acknowledge burnout as an occupational disease, and therefore experts who have experience working with (and categorizing) these patients could be interviewed.

It doesn't mean it's enough for you to think it's novel but at least that's why they think it is.

It worked for a minute for me, but then at the end I got:

> Error: Specified target does not exist.

> Target: MI_7_second_order_zero_intercepts_predict.out

So maybe wait a bit until you make the effort of going through all the questions.

(Also note that it asks for your country at the end, and only has the limited list of options mentioned in the article.)

This

Server at the risk of burnout

Should have called itself

It's like a weather rock: if you are checking the tool, that confirms you are most likely burned out.

> Too Many Users: Sorry, but this application has exceeded its quota of concurrent users. Please try again later.

I don't understand why people pay a premium to host on Digital Ocean and provide such experiences to users.

I'd bet $1,000 that, with what they're paying Digital Ocean to return this message, they could have an 8-core server with at least 32 Gb of RAM on Hetzner, for instance, which could certainly accommodate at least 20x the traffic.

Digital Ocean is incredibly cheap, I pay $10 a month for a droplet with SSDs. The lowest tier is $4 a month.

https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing

>I'd bet $1,000 that, with what they're paying Digital Ocean to return this message, they could have an 8-core server with at least 32 Gb of RAM on Hetzner, for instance, which could certainly accommodate at least 20x the traffic.

I'll be expecting that check in the mail.

> I pay

You just showed up body, I ain't talking about you.

> I'll be expecting that check in the mail.

Please do so. And keep standing up. So you won't fall asleep and miss it.

People who didn't get the joke ...

hey, don't take it seriously!

lol

Just admit you were wrong.

I don't think this is a problem with Digital Ocean. Some googling makes me think this is a configuration issue with Shiny Server: https://github.com/rstudio/shiny-server/issues/326

https://www.shinyapps.io

Pricing page mentions something about 'active hours', and if you're on 'free' or 'starter' tier, no more users can use the app until next month. Their pricing page doesn't mention anything about 'concurrent' users, but that error message might just be a legacy holdover?

Just a static site, right? Slap it in AWS S3, optionally with Cloudfront. 50 cents a month for the Route 53. Free upto the limit. Pretty cheap beyond that. Probably under $20/yr even with some high traffic spikes for a site like the assessment.

App link: https://theburnout.app/

Slashdotted... HNed... something.

I suppose everyone here suspects themselves or is afraid of burnout.

Verbed. Hmm.

When I was a kid, there was an orange coloured drink called Tango, whose advertising used the tagline "You know when you've been Tangoed", often paired with slapstick (which led to some ads getting banned for fear of real-life imitations). HN is, memetically, "the orange site".

So, I propose the HN hug of death is known as "getting Tangoed".

Cool. I've been waiting for the blade runner emotion tests to start happening in the tech industry. This is going to be used for evil, I bet someone makes a jira plugin and then sets it to be then end of sprint, post retro personal review task. Which is scored and centrally kept and managed.

As someone who has experienced extreme burnout myself, it's not evil to want employees that won't have mental health issues...

Yes, but it will be implemented in evil ways, like threatening employees to improve their burnout score or you'll sack them - without reducing their workload, of course.

See "Bradford factor".

The evil part is when a company uses this to know exactly how much productivity to extract from an employee. We're close to becoming productivity batteries that are now easily swapped out.

Wouldn't it be good if managers had a hint to be more empathetic towards an employee that's going through a temporary bad mental state, instead of labeling "under-delivery" and throwing him onto a "PIP" process?

Wouldn't it be good if Israel and Hamas became best friends?

What's good and what's likely are not the same thing.

Have you done the research and found a statistically significant impossibility for any manager to feel empathy?

You can have an opinion that yes, but it's not an established fact. It seems to me a cynical view of the world.

*gestures at the couple hundred year old history of organized labor relations*

"Can an individual manager possibly feel empathy?" is, IMO, a red herring. "Do large corporations typically foster a culture where such empathy is rewarded and encouraged?" can be answered with a pretty strong "no".

Source?

Why is that evil?

Your boss can detect you are frustrated and burned out, or you have a terrible boss and your company doesn't care about you anyway.

This will only be used for evil.

The evil part is forcing more Jira, sprints and retros on people who are burned out because of Jira, sprints and retros lol.

> it's not evil to want employees that won't have mental health issues...

Yes, it's a good tool to know when fire those employees that are approaching burnout and get some fresh meat.

Not all burnout is the fault of the employer but I'd be willing to bet a paycheck the majority of burnout is caused by your "reward" for hard work being more work and fewer resources as opposed to increased pay and/or advancement.

Hard not to see the pattern emerging here..."burnout the employee", "subject them to invasive monitoring", "fire them/force them out because they have mental health issues revealed by said invasive monitoring","hire a replacement at a lower salary".

Are there people who would bother looking for or taking a test like this if they weren't at risk of burnout?

We had a command line tool that did this when I was at uni, I think the Linux command you had to type was 'yes'.

We had that same burn-out measurement tool in HP-UX, SCO, and SunOS!

I scored

Specified target does not exist. Target: MI_7_second_order_zero_intercepts_predict.out

I'm not sure what that means.

(Though I just got straight 3's on my semi-annual work eval again combined with no negative feedback, which doesn't surprise me because my boss shot down my proposals and told me to do more lackluster won't-be-noticed refactor work, so though I don't feel burned out I'm definitely going to be looking for a new job)

Although I would love to have a quick, free, easy, reliable self-reported burnout assessment tool, 1) I doubt the results would surprise me that often and 2) burnout isn't the reason why people leave my company most of the time. Typically people leave my company because they're ambitious and driven and they're seeking faster growth elsewhere.

Doesn't go far enough upstream, in my opinion.

There are so many things people can do to increase their neurological energy to affect things like motivation and focus. Much higher leverage than an assessment that will lead to the plablum interventions of wellness teams.

The main url is over it's quota, but it also seems to be available here: https://burnoutassessmenttool.be/start_eng/

After going to the "Manual | Publication" page, the actual questions are a PDF.

English: https://burnoutassessmenttool.be/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/...

That doesn't have the "what to do with the results" piece though. :(

the app itself is experiencing burnout

Burnout test successful.

"Statistical norms and cut-off values for other countries are currently being developed."

So, currently I can see how burnt-out I am compared to Flemmish office workers. Maybe there I'm a burn-out husk, but compared to American offices I'm an average employee.

lol I’m not sure the tool itself is the point, at least for personal use — isn’t it relative? Based on the diagram the “tool” all these comments are clamoring for seems like a quiz about the demands of and resources for your work. Not exactly a Voight-Kampff test ;)

I don't understand psychological tests at all. People who want to believe they are at risk of burnout will answer questions in that direction. Isn't the whole field an obvious sham?

your comment is saying self diagnosis is impossible

He is saying it's highly likely to correlate with how you think you should score before you take the test.

Did you have a counter argument to offer or?

Perhaps having a burnout is highly correlated with thinking you have a burnout. Does that make any test for it a sham?

Does the test perhaps make sure that there is sufficient agreement on the definition of burnout? Perhaps it ensures that someone doesn't just say they are burnt out because someone in their life told them they might be? Perhaps it helps people realize they have a burnout because they didn't know the definition? Perhaps it provides those who don't have a burnout with confidence that they don't?

If you're filling out the test to learn more about yourself, why would you lie to yourself?

Well, it's the standard human behavior.

On the other hand, you have the possibility of not lying and getting an useful answer. The difficulty of doing that varies, and the more objective the questions, the easier it is.

Well I found something I score highly on - the MBI.

A=38, B= 27, C=18

I'm crushing it lol

Is there src of this somewhere, where we can self-host?

The website is called https://theburnout.app/ and its down.

It's throwing an error at the end. Also only saw around 5-6 options for country selection, none of which were applicable for me.

Mesothelioma ads were ubiquitous when I was growing up.

I wonder if there will be something similar for burnout once we can measure it.

Overall burnout: 4.9

Out of 10, right? Out of 10?

stares back intensely

> Too Many Users

> Sorry, but this application has exceeded its quota of concurrent users. Please try again later.

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