The burnout nearly vanished during this time and only recently has started to reappear and I have a much better understanding now of what causes burnout for me specifically.
The truth is though it’s a broken system. In my opinion even a startup should be able to make it on 40 hours. If they have to put in insane hours for just a slim chance to survive, it’s an indication that there isn’t really fair competition and that the market is too skewed towards existing players.
I count checking emails, work instant communications, and working through bureaucracy (paperwork flows) as work, not just hands on keyboard working on software solutions.
Also in my experience there are people who focus on only work at work, and they usually drag others into performing their job function.
In all modesty, I feel I can be a 10X or 100X on such, but it’s hard to let go and end up thinking about work constantly after hours too.
But when the task is to update documentation or fix a random test pipeline failure on a Legacy product, the energy doesn’t come so easily…