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Ac actual academic career is the WORST in terms of burn-out. I was writing paper reviews at 4am. People I know who are professors board planes with a pile of papers to read or review. Midnight meetings to discuss conference organization. Add in the pressure of publish or perish.

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I second that academia can be terrible for burnout. In an experimental subject, experiments that can take months to prepare can fail for reasons that you can't do much about, and all you can do is start over.

I used to describe this feeling to my wife as if sometimes someone would come along from time to time and wipe your hard drive.

Even though my current job can be a grind, at least we rarely have to just throw away work.

I sometimes tell my team that writing software is about learning what to write and how to write it, not the actual artifacts. So throwing code out is not bad, it is just part of the process of learning.

I said "throw away work". Throwing away code is fine!

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