The Tsunami of Burnout Few See | Hacker News Reader

The Tsunami of Burnout Few See

charleshughsmith.blogspot.com

577 pointsdxs342 comments

I've burnt out. It was horrible. I am doing much better now!

The trick is to not care enough about your job to get hurt but not care so little that you could short-term be hurt.

In many places if you get hurt/burnt out on the job the upper seats are looking for any reason to curb stomp you. There's no reason to give a company your all unless you have an actual stake in it or they are there to hold you up when you're dragging. I've worked at multiple places where influential people died, yes dead, below average life expectancy, - on the job - and corporate did everything they could to not even pay out on their legal obligations (life insurance, D&D). In some cases employees joked or snickered about the person who died later on - in meetings.

In tech. I've found that you're not on your own but you are at the mercy of who is in charge of your schedule and rates your performance. If you lose trust in that person your best option is to leave as quickly as possible. Otherwise they will do what they can to destroy you for as much 'profit' as they can claim. Being clear. It is not about realized gains, it could even be at great detriment to a company. It is about short-term line item claimable gains. "We got 4 good months out of her...", "they were terminal and now they will be working somewhere better for them...", "he really wasn't closing as many tickets as the rest of the team...", "they weren't helping as many team members as the rest of the team...", "we never needed someone with an advanced degree...", etc.

Check in with yourself regularly. Know the signs of burn out. The company you work for does not depend on any person caring about you in the slightest.

> The trick is to not care enough about your job to get hurt but not care so little that you could short-term be hurt.

I'm here, but it just seems like a temporary fix. I can't imagine doing this for the rest of my life, but I need money and health insurance. What's the alternative, what did you end up doing?

I don't have all the answers. I don't even know your situation. For me, I am still in tech. Like everyone else, my family needs the money. Once in a while I do something that satisfies me personally as well as the company I work for. rt Alternatives? Well, I think anything you can start up on your own where you have the autonomy and can dictate your hours/balance would be your medium term goal. I'm working towards mine, but I think its different for everyone. Contract working, consultant working, small personal business with a reduced hours main stream 9-5.

My assumption is people like us, we care a lot, we are smart, we are capable, and when we get stuck in corporate swamps our inner candle starts to go out. We just need to find ways to spend less time in the swamp.

Do that while your mind figures out how to make money work for you.

Everything is temporary, even you. You only need enough money for you to live from your 401k/rented houses/investments.

Also, be on the lookout for new opportunities.

And if you are a bit masochistic just try to work on something boring. Helps with "not caring enough, I'm just the computer equivalent of a payroll accountant, pay me and you'll get your payrolls on time".

> Everything is temporary, even you.

Glad to see some good old Buddhism philosophy at work. I am much happy now once I start thinking the same

There’s a lot of different ways to be miserable in this world but one in particular that seems to hit a lot of people in our industry is not knowing what you want.

So many people followed a path laid out by others for so long—-study hard, do extracurriculars, go to a good college, study hard again, do internships, get a job with a prestigious company, work towards promo.

At some point, generally in late 20s but can be before or after, many such people realize that they have if not everything they ever dreamed of then at least a lot of what they worked towards. But they still aren’t happy because in all those years they never figured out what kind of people they actually were—what it is that would make them happy.

We all need money, but do you need that much money? If yes, then ok. Try to think about what you need the money for in the next stupid meeting about story points. But if no, then you have options.

I think it's not as simple as thinking: there is this one kind of person you are and it's a constant and you need to figure out who that is and how to be that person to be happy.

People change a lot. There's no golden idol person in my future that would make me happy if only I could break free and become that person. That person changes constantly.

I think we are unhappy because we've been fed a lie that that person is just over the horizon and you're not living your full life properly unless you become that person. The problem is that that person changes constantly. It's always out of reach and who's to say you will be happy once you get to that point?

A change in mindset is the cure. But a change in mindset does not cause economies to scale, shareholders to get value and cause the wheels of industry to move. We are always arriving for something we think will save us.

What gets me more is the constant narrative of the pursuit of happiness as the end goal, which drives people into painting the perfect future in their imagination where their relationships have zero friction, they enjoy every day in the office, etc.

Because you just can't think "what would make me happy" without involving people who aren't even around in the present moment. In fact, if somehow someone manages to come up with a way to satisfy happiness by ignoring their environment then that person deserves my sympathy, because the goal is not to be "happy no matter what goes around you": That requires detachment.

At work it is clear. 25% growth per year or we are all out of work. What more do you need, we are all in the same boat from the CEO on down.

We used to run companies and share stock. Now private equity hands out money and goals and if the goals aren't met your company that is doing great and turning 15% per year evaporates on the next recap.

I'm not out of work just because one company goes under, though

If you have to grow 25% every year just to stay afloat, I hate to break it to you but your business model is shit

I think he's saying they have to grow 25% per year to please their PE overlords.

Ah. Well then yeah, I think it’s safe to say the business model of PE wealth extraction is broken. That or businesses that need to take on PE funding are probably not very sound.

PE is what happens when a company dies - PE is how the carcass of the company rots.

Private equity is not happy with 15% because they can get that by parking their money in a REIT. They are shooting for the moon, period. Once you take their money their is no backing out. It's to the moon or close up shop.

What REITs have 15% return? That seems improbable.

Individual self-reliance and coping only goes so far. I think OP's thesis is that this is a larger cultural issue of capitalism increasingly squeezing every once of joy out of people's lives, and demanding more labour from fewer people under dehumanizing conditions.

From a Marxist perspective I think we're seeing the synthesis of deeply individualistic capitalist culture, and the renewed awareness of class consciousness and workers rights. In the past these kind of conflicts have led to the 5 day work week, The New Deal, etc. But the same conditiona can also lead to far-right authoritarianism.

Love seeing this kind of analysis on HN of all places. At least today we can hope that our understanding of history will lead to people being less electorally friendly to the fascist right than they were the first time around.

The trend among men, sadly, is a flight from higher education. It used to be a status symbol, but since more women are entering STEM fields men are increasingly looking for alternative credentials like bootcamps. This is a common phenomenon in many fields across time, where men flee "feminized" work and it becomes less prestigious.

A side effect of higher education becoming "low status" is that men are going to vocational schools that don't teach "useless" topics like philosophy or history. Which makes them more vulnerable to radicalization.

Interesting.

> men are going to vocational schools that don't teach "useless" topics like philosophy or history

And to be clear this includes prestigious nationally-ranked “tech” schools, right? Possibly even those with lip service to a liberal arts education where one can actually be excused from “distribution requirement” courses based on their high school experience. (Oh, you support that? Well… maybe I did too, but I sure didn’t understand the connections. Maybe a class would have helped.)

I'm not sure if I understand your point, but the point is there's a kind of credentialing treadmill where once women get into a particular field or class of institution it loses prestige and men flee to alternatives which become more prestigious. An example is undergrad biology becoming predominantly women and being seem as the "easiest" STEM major.

I think if you see a majority-female CS class graduating from Stanford it is a sign that VCs and other power brokers will begin weighting that credential less.

This is complementary to the anti-intellectualism that's already baked into fascism. Rich people like Peter Thiel have already started paying people to "not go to school" as an anti-intellectual backlash against inclusion and diversity.

Can you get a good job with only a 1st degree in biology? I doubt it.

I may be cynical but I don't think men flee fields were women manage to enter. I do see this trend though. But I rather see it as men moving to the next cool thing, leaving the leftovers of their no longer prestigious / downward trending field for women to finally enter, who may see it as a victory without realizing the goalpost has yet again shifted on them/carpet has been pulled from under their feet already.

Much like women no longer qualified as gamers for playing the same games that men grew up with (point n click, puzzle games...) because men flocked to newer genres since (actions/shooter) Bit of a dated caricature but fitting imho.

If men wanted to keep women out, it is easily managed, case in point programming was seen as secretarial work until men decided it made good money and they should appropriate it.

(Fully expecting to be downvoted for saying this)

My observation is completely the opposite. Higher education is the source of today's youth radicalization. Harvard, Columbia, UPenn are all ground zeros of radicalization that we as society going to suffer from for decades.

What kind of radicalization do you mean? The kind that tries to violently overthrow the government after an election they don't like?

The same leftist university students that brought Islamic revolution to Iran and cultural revolution to China. It all starts with universities. Today's protesting students from Columbia are tomorrow's political elite and mark my words, Germany's 30s will look like a walk in a park comparing to what will be in US.

And regarding your Idaho farmers and other nutters with horns on the head, they are too irrelevant and dumb to cause anything serious even in large numbers.

Yet people with lower education were (again) more likely to vote for the most radical president in the US history.

Social media and its propagandists are the source of modern radicalization, together with failure of neoliberalism to produce growth that benefits the little guy. The university far leftist radical and rural Trump voter have lots in common in hating the status quo. They just blame different things, often the wrong ones like migrants or white privilege.

Everyone not in the billionaire club should hate neoliberalism.

Who is so fragile that they care about the gender of their coworker? This isn’t oil rigs or combat roles, where brute strength has legitimate value.

This is a proven trend that's happened in multiple fields. It's not about the gender of your individual coworkers, it's about the relative prestige of a field. When women become more prevalent the credential or field becomes less valued and men flee.

Either I’m dramatically misunderstanding, or others are. I’m asking, why does women entering a field make it less prestigious? Who are these snowflake men that can’t fathom working alongside women?

Have you been paying attention to the sort of people who have been grabbing all the power in this country of late? Those people.

Discrimination and disparities have self-reinforcing loops. There is a gender pay gap. This is a very complex problem with multiple causes and effects: sexism, maternity leave, married couples making the rational economic decision that the lower earning spouse looks after the kids at home, etc. A person looks at a field, sees that it's lower pay and prestige, and sees that it's filled with women. If they are more sexist than average they draw the conclusion that women's work is worth less and justify discrimination's effects as caused by innate differences. Even if they are less sexist than average they are concerned that other people's sexism has demonetized that line of work. Thus the rational move is often to also perpetuate the disparity by avoiding the "pink collar" job, or not care that a high end job has features unfriendly to women. Advantage begets advantage. The inverse is also true.

Jobs, gender, salary level for a given job, gender roles, and whether child care is considered "work" are all social constructs.

I had some mandatory philosophy at STEM university. It utterly failed to evoke any intellectual curiosity, perhaps even inoculated us against trying to get interested. And don't let me start on history education.

I do agree with you. People need to band up with one another and work this out together. In the mean time though, most people are already in a situation where its far too late unless they can shake their situation and start new somewhere else.

I think anyone who has turned on the news in the last 9 years, what technologies and companies are trending, can predict which way things are going to go. Again though, we all need to come together for that too...

> Individual self-reliance and coping only goes so far. I think OP's thesis is that this is a larger cultural issue of capitalism increasingly squeezing every once of joy out of people's lives, and demanding more labour from fewer people under dehumanizing conditions.

Yes. The US lost the general pattern of an 8 hour day, a 40 hour week, time and a half for overtime, and employment duration measured in decades. Most people can handle that.

Most people cannot handle 996 work, "clopeners"[1], and "side hustles" for long.

That's really it. The US just needs to get back to what were normal labor practices from the 1950s to the 1970s.

The key item here is paid overtime at a higher rate. That makes it uneconomic to have people at work too long. It's cheaper to hire an additional person.

"Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will." - Knights of Labor, 1888.

[1] https://calchamberalert.com/2023/04/14/clopening-schedules-g...

It is insane that 8 hours of work per day was considered a reasonable target, back when they didn’t have modern automation. Where did we go wrong? Feels like somewhere we switched from just trying to do the work that needed to be done, to trying figure out a way to generate enough work so that we’ll be needed.

This is the point of dialectical materialism - before the 8 hour workweek there was an even longer work day with worse conditions. The people born into those circumstances struggled against capitalists (in the sense of people who have capital) to make 8 hour workdays the norm. The next generation was born with 8 hour workdays being standard, and capital pushed back and squeezed in other areas where labour wasn't resisting. Capital has now squeezed so hard that labour is organizing again and realizing they need to fight to retain any of their rights.

Teen Vogue had a good article on this back in 2022.[1] Similar to the OP here, but better written.

[1] https://www.teenvogue.com/story/work-culture-america

> Feels like somewhere we switched from just trying to do the work that needed to be done, to trying figure out a way to generate enough work so that we’ll be needed.

Modern economy is set on the premise that there's always some way to make money, meaning there's always more work that could be done (regardless of whether that work is actually useful).

I think it's worse than that; people need to be kept busy and on their toes at all times, lest they start thinking.

It's not just thought, but also effort. If you have downtime you have time to organize and advocate for yourself. If you have savings you can withhold labour. The ideal conditions for capitalists are that every worker has the bare minimum to be alive and if they miss work they don't receive that minimum.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop."

A lot of big cities have youth programs out of fear kids will otherwise join gangs. As an adult if you have a big mortgage payment or rent is high you must hustle. Some of this rat race is optional. Advertisers tell us making yet another purchase will solve your problem(s) or insecurity. Ironically if everyone lived modestly that would trigger a recession.

> "Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest and eight hours for what you will." - Knights of Labor, 1888.

There's another failure mode of modernity, that makes this quote a sleight of hand: commute. Commute takes another hour or three out of the "rest" and "what you will" sets.

Also, for families, that was eight hours of paid work from one parent, not both...

In 1888, the mothers and any kids old enough to help had essentially full-time jobs with the housework. And mandatory education stopped much younger than today, IIRC from 10 to 14 depending on the country (assuming they had mandatory education at all, which some didn't), so they had more time than you may expect for helping with the household.

There were mechanical washing machines and vaccum cleaners back then, even before electricity, but even that was all harder work than now.

There was a magic period of time after electric-powered washing machines became ubiquitous, but before the market adjusted to women entering the labor force, when you could sustain a home on a single income, and women (and then men, too!) actually had a choice between staying at home to care for house & kids, and having a career. Alas, now the choice is gone, and everyone has to have a job. Sucks for the kids, as now both parents need to go to work, whether they want it or not.

The work was harder but people also didn't wash their shirts after wearing it a single day/time. Machines increased expectations, resulting in workload to remain comparable, since more of it needs doing.

If it wasn’t for wasting an additional 2 hours a day on commute…

Australia just made wage theft a criminal offense.[1] Maximum penalty for employers is 10 years in jail. Became effective January 1, 2025.

This is going to be interesting.

[1] https://www.employmentlawhandbook.com.au/bulletin/new-laws-c...

>> I think OP's thesis is that this is a larger cultural issue of capitalism increasingly squeezing every once of joy out of people's lives, and demanding more labour from fewer people under dehumanizing conditions.

Let's have a look at China, or the former communist countries (soviet union etc). All people in those communist regimes are slaved, being under surveillance and often suppressed (except the regime, of course), with the government being the suppressor (as opposed to greedy companies). History is full of evidence, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R504_Kolyma_Highway

Thinking capitalism is the culprit is naive. Power will find its way. Legal regulations of working hours, holidays, health insurance as well as unions work very well for most modern western countries. In many countries there's a constant fight between unions and companies. That is a good way to balance power. No need to bring back cruel communist regimes.

I've tried the "don't care too much or too little" dance, and it's only a temporary fix, at least for me. It's really hard to walk that tightrope.

I just watch this monthly, it helps

https://youtu.be/UFqz5xkgRbs

I watched through some of this. This all seems very wise and well-informed. However the answer given is to spend a lot of energy attempting to work the system in fairly subtle ways to get the outcome you want - that the organization will accept your well-intentioned contributions to their functioning and eventual profit. All it takes is one or two people in the right place that don't share the same goal or are just really not that good to turn that into an exercise in futility.

541 views, on an 8 years old video. How many of those are you responsible for? Anyway I put it on my watch later list, thanks!

I just watched this — pretty good talk, thanks for linking it.

>> but you are at the mercy of who is in charge

Once you realize that that person is an idiot or is against you it kills you psychologically because you realize you are in a dead end.

Hi definitely not a G Man.

Personally, idiots are fine as long as they listen to their team-mates when it matters. Maybe that means they aren't idiots... Anyway, adversarial bosses and extremely poorly managed projects are the issue for me. That is a dead-end with possible health issues and career [Vio]ing sprinkled on-top. There's no helping it either. Digging harder just keeps the murderer's [Psy]hes cleaner. That's the trap I see a lot of people fall into.

It's like impedance matching.

>> and rates your performance

I think in practice it is much more complicated than that. While org charts largely a tree, the influence graph is often very different. It isn't like the immediate manager can just fire anyone they feel like without consequences in most orgs.

Yea but your immediate manager can easily set a person up for complete failure and broadcast only the failings. I've seen it happen to different people on many occasions. Basically the old "balance these 12 things 1 of them, the 1 you drop will end up being me and my buddy bosses most important item and the other 11 are worthless". Or "no need to attend that meeting" and if you don't show oh boy strike one. Positions of influence are super easy to game.

It depends to the extent that the org chart == influence graph.

The trick is to stay out of product meetings and not actually care how cool and interesting and useful the product can or will be. Only give feedback to your inner circle (manager, peers) when asked about it. Most importantly, enjoy the tasks assigned to you however dull or basic they may be after you mastered them. Be proud of your work.

EDIT: These are things to do together if you have no agency at a company to change it. If you need help getting agency, work with your manager to get data to back up your arguments.

This is so hard! It leads to poor products/the loudest voice wins. Rarely is there a coherent long-term vision. Even at the benefit of the single participant/employee

I would argue you’re still caring too much. If you can abstract your care into another project either at the company or in your personal time the crappy product won’t matter. If you have to speak against someone, get data to back yourself up. Or get the loud mouth hooked on data and solve it that way.

I've found some combination of agency, upside, and interesting problems to solve are the recipe for not burning out.

Not working for a jerk manager / at a company with bad culture helps, but is not sufficient. I've burned out in a "nice culture" company faster than a "cutthroat culture" company because the nice guys didn't allow much agency.

"enjoy the tasks assigned to you however dull or basic they may be after you mastered them. Be proud of your work."

Ohhh, this is freakin hard to me. Bunch of users are complaining about feature not working properly in our Enterprise product, but it's not impactful enough to fix, because those users are not going to complain to their CEO/COO about broken feature in our product, because they themselves might be labeled as COMPLAINER and eventually kicked out.

What's impactful? Of course new shiny AI-powered green button, it's so amazing, project created by a super talented story teller engineer and who is good at selling it to leadership. Does it impact metrics? Yes, of course, those metrics are also crafted specifically for that feature. (more time user spends on that page, more impactful. Is it? maybe users are confused or can't find what they're looking for? Can you tell it to leadership? Ohh they approved this metric and project, are you against VP+ leadership's decisions?)

And we wonder, why do we have double digit customer churn rate.

> And we wonder, why do we have double digit customer churn rate.

What is the employee churn rate?

double digit as well :)

If this is hard then you’re ignoring the rest of my comment for one sentence. These need to happen together as each piece supports the other one. Stop caring about what your companies crappy product could be if you have no agency to change it.

> The trick is to...

It's hard to do any one of those, let alone more or all, when you're approaching burnout.

> - stay out of product meetings

I started to avoid product meetings. Still burned out.

> - not actually care how cool and interesting and useful the product can or will be

I started to not care how cool or interesting or useful the product can or will be. Still burned out.

> - Only give feedback to your inner circle (manager, peers) when asked about it

I started to only give feedback to my inner circle. That was even more painful, and still burned out.

> - enjoy the tasks assigned to you however dull or basic they may be after you mastered them

I could never enjoy tasks assigned to me when they're dull and basic things I've mastered.

> - Be proud of your work.

As for being proud of my work... well I'm always proud of my work. I still burned out. I don't want to even touch the things I'm proud of.

Everyone's story of burnout is uniquely different. There's no single magic bullet that works for everyone.

You neglected two of my suggestions.

> I could never enjoy tasks assigned to me when they're dull and basic things I've mastered.

If you do need more interesting work and can’t shift teams then find a new job. You will eventually find yourself needing to do the same again after you’ve mastered the new challenge. Keep it up and you will run out of leaps. However if you want to exist in a place for a while you need to accept that not every project, task, idea will be exciting work. Once you accept this, it also opens up doorways with what else you can do with your time. Since you have a mastered skill set, these menial tasks should not be weighing you down to free yourself from the drudgery of work.

> As for being proud of my work... well I'm always proud of my work. I still burned out. I don't want to even touch the things I'm proud of.

You should always be critical of past mistakes and look to correct but you should always put your best effort forward. That is what pride in work means. You shouldn’t have to admire every piece of work you deliver as a masterpiece, which is what I assume you mean by wanting to touch it. You should always carry a positive mindset about your work and not treat each success and failure in your life as some sort of definitive legacy. Invite in and operate under best intentions.

A lot of my advice is about how it works in harmony, not some quick instant burnout solution. Resting is important as well (breaks, vacations).

Anecdotally I was recently hired at a company that is in dire straights. This weighed on me heavily for the first six months, eventually they shrunk my team. However I cannot afford to get burned out. So the only options are to extract as much of the burden from me by being a cog in a bullshit factory or find a new job in a psychotic job market.

Not sure why you got flagged.

This is good advice, work is not a one size fits all solution for self actualization. Most workers just want to fill their requirements and do something meaningful to them with the rest of their time.

I especially like your point about enjoying the fruits of mastery of a task.

> Not sure why you got flagged.

They replied to the one that told them their magic advice didn’t actually help them (and they still burned out) with some variety of “That had nothing to do with my advice, you just did it wrong.”

That’s… not cool.

I didn’t say they did it wrong. The commenter tossed out two pieces of my advice as not relevant and I wanted to reinforce that all the advice was linked. Not a pick-3 three, toss two situation. What is not cool is having some sort of animosity or negative reaction because I chose to reinforce the ideas.

Someone who is not willing to listen or reconsider will easily be susceptible to burn out again. Especially to advice only intended to help not criticize.

Be proud of your work.

I was just thinking the other day that all of the code I've written for companies is now dead and gone. I wrote some really elegant, interesting stuff at a few companies and now it's only a memory in my head.

I should've gone into civil engineering.

That’s okay, the only person that cares about your legacy of code is you. Be proud that you’re capable of the work, not that you have a commit history when no one is asking for that.

I've gradually come to a similar conclusion. The only antidote is to make sure the work you're most proud of are all open source. It's most likely going to be code you wrote in your spare time.

My GitHub has a few pieces of code that I'm really proud of. And some companies actually ask for code I'm proud of as part of the interview process, so I have that ready and it helps.

Buildings fall down eventually, too.

Worth remembering we write code to create human value. Somewhere, in some way, your elegant code actually ran and did a thing that led some number of humans to be enabled or understand or somehow be affected by it.

Personally, I find this aspect of the work somewhat profound.

My graveyard of projects and dreams stretches out behind me and I feel saddened to know that these articles representing portions of my life never achieved what I had hoped for them.

However, I've come to view my work like a mandala or some representation of our mortality itself; our works and our lives are temporary.

We can make the most of the brief moment that we have – whether that be through work or through parenting or through base jumping – whatever that may be for each of us, or we can choose to do nothing with that moment, knowing that it's ephemeral and will be gone soon anyway.

I choose to try making each day's the best code I have ever written; I want it to be "beautiful" and maintainable in spite of knowing that it will be refactored, deleted or decommissioned at some point.

Amen to this. Of the biggest frustrations I've had in my career, at the top of the list is working with engineers who do not take pride in their craft. I'm amazed at the number of people that just dial it in or make minimal effort. Perhaps some of these people are burned-out, but surely not all.

My goal was to get whatever I was working on not just "done", but "done-done". To a state where, if I walked away, it could live on in a working manner and be easily maintained by someone else. That meant having good test coverage, up-to-date documentation, instructions on how to get started with the repo, notes on dependencies, etc. Sometimes that someone else is future me, six months or six years later.

I experienced burnout early in my career, in the dot-com era, and it became especially acute when then the bubble burst. All those long hours (mostly) for naught.

The best times were at companies where everyone was all-in and we each had each-others back. Rare, but amazing when it happens. These were all at startups.

It’s ironic that the absolute shittiest code I’ve ever written right when I came out of university, has been and still is powering a bunch of company websites for 15 years.

My oldest code still in production is 20 years old.

Work for non tech companies if you want it to last. Some industrial code is even older - my company has just removed some devices that requires a floppy disk to update

For what it's worth, I've found success in not getting burned out by literally doing the opposite of this (save for the being proud of my work part).

Sure, I’m not saying being involved isn’t a great way to live your working life. However not being involved is a great way to avoid burnout by reducing stress factors.

That's funny I usually think the opposite. I derive no satisfaction from writing software for dubious ends. Understanding product value and/or helping to determine priorities makes things feel more tangible. Maybe better to say that you should find your own happy place.

The problem is you can control the first but not the latter. You can control doing quality technical work. You cant really control whether what you do has much value (the market decides that, not you)

How not caring is a solution when actually it is one of the symptoms

Not caring combined with low effort is one of the systems. Not caring with good effort is not. Be proud of your work and you won’t become disassociated.

Not caring doesn’t mean checking-out it means being satisfied with your paycheck and not needing more than the limitations if your job.

> It is about short-term line item claimable gains. "We got 4 good months out of her...", "they were terminal and now they will be working somewhere better for them...", "he really wasn't closing as many tickets as the rest of the team...", "they weren't helping as many team members as the rest of the team...", "we never needed someone with an advanced degree...", etc.

This resonates with me. The org chart cares about headcount - it doesn't matter to them who fills the count. Only plausible heads who could pass some random interview. The upper bosses don't see you as human, only as chess pieces to move around to fit a narrative.

If the narrative against you shifts to the negative, there are many ways to justify your exit. They don't care if you die, or your children go hungry, or you lose your house or healthcare. What they care about is narratives that justify their own existence in the org chart. They don't even care about the services or products they build. It is just about their own existence. Every other effort be damned.

Reader, now that you are aware that they don't care about anything - and certainly not about you - it is really up to you to secure yourself financially, physically, emotionally and preserve your time. If they come at you with reviews or other BS, you should consider your time is up, safeguard yourself, and sabotage them if you can.

This is fair. Remember that you are playing with the same rules as them. If they can't care about engineering, you sure as hell don't need to. If they care about politics, you sure as hell play it with them.

Take it as a toxic game but secure your life - as far away from corporate toxicity as possible.

There are tons of companies that don't even produce things anymore, all they do is buy and sell other companies as a "portfolio". Really weird to think about!

Let me advise against sabotage. There's a saying about seeking revenge and digging two graves. The truth is, this whole thing is unsustainable, and will collapse on it's own. No one actually has to do anything to sabotage something like this.

I recommend instead to "document" and "socialize". The people who operate this way are sloppy, greedy, and think they are invincible. Don't do anything to convince them they are though. They are always, and I mean always, fucking up. Spread the good word of your documented and likely illegal treatment to a pro-bono employment lawyer before or after a likely illegal lay-off and get a severance as a settlement avoiding court entirely (if you wish).

Socialize with others you trust in your industry about the treatment at the companies that operate this way. Be weary of slander, that's what documentations helps with. Word travels fast. In the old days this was how people dealt with societal outcasts. With the internet, this is easier than ever.

That said, I can't control what someone decides to do but I will share. One of the "worst" things you can do at a company like this is be really nice to people inside and outside your team, and do your job within your means. It drives the creatures up a wall. Sometimes after you leave even if not by your own volition, others will follow suite by their own accord.

I burned out bad running a startup and shutting it down during Covid. I managed to recover since then.

There are lots of causal factors leading to burnout. It’s basically a long term energy imbalance along multiple dimensions.

One of those dimensions is attentional fatigue caused by our messy digital environment:

https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back

But there are other factors that feed into it: physical, emotional, social.

I highly recommend attention span by Gloria Mark, The Power of Engagement by Jim Loehr, and for those who want to change their life, Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg.

> The trick is to not care enough about your job to get hurt but not care so little that you could short-term be hurt.

It really depends on your personal psychology. After I burnt out in a demanding role that I adopted as a big part of my identity, I joined a new company vowing to not take work as seriously (I remember telling myself, "if excess effort isn't rewarded, the optimal strategy is to maximize compensation, minimize necessary effort, and eliminate excess effort").

After a few months of recovery and ruminating on why I still felt so bad (plus therapy), I learned a few things about myself:

1. I feel like garbage when I'm half-assing something at work or not giving my all -- especially when the people around me are putting in the work.

2. When I am giving my all and I feel like I'm not being recognized, I begin to lose motivation and burn out. Simple tasks become very laborious. This is a gradual, months-long process that is difficult to recognize is happening.

3. When I start to burn out, I am forced by my mind and body to half-ass things, which makes me more demotivated, which exacerbates the burnout.

Putting these insights into action, I've so far been able to keep burnout at bay by finding roles where I can give work my all, receive recognition, and be surrounded by others who are putting in similar effort. This doesn't mean blindly trusting the company or destroying my work-life balance -- I believe that "recognition for hard work" includes proactively protecting hard workers from their workaholic tendencies and giving them the flexibility to take breaks. I'm lucky to work with really great people where I frequently pass along responsibilities or take work from others to avoid over-stressing any one person and enable things like multi-week vacations. I have no idea how I will change my approach if I lose this workplace dynamic or pick up more forcing functions on my workday (e.g. having kids) in the future, but it's working pretty well for me right now.

All of this is to say: for me, the low-trust "do the bare minimum to stay employed" approach didn't actually help me get out of burnout into fulfillment -- What helped was finding a work situation where I could give my all and not feel taken advantage of. People are wired differently, so I want to caution against a one-size-fits-all approach.

What industry did you find this unicorn job in? I feel exactly as you described in your list.

+1, very curious. I yearn for the working environment the parent comment describes.

Can it only exist in medium and small companies?

The only thing I can think of (and this is purely speculative, though I’ve interviewed at one and enjoyed the experience; didn’t move forward due to relocation concerns) is a quant trading firm.

Pardon the apparently naive question: are those places not filled with the most horrible vultures on the planet? That is what I would think but it seems like I am horribly wrong.

Could you elaborate some more, please?

I’ve never worked at one, but I interviewed at HRT. The interviewers were all quite kind, and more importantly to me, they asked difficult questions relevant to the role. Specifically, the role was for DBs, and the questions (beyond “can you do some basic coding”) were all low-level RDBMS or Linux. I hate Leetcode, doubly so when I will never, ever be using those skills on the job.

Given that those places are also doing stuff like writing their own network stack to reduce latency, I get the impression that they know their shit.

    > are those places not filled with the most horrible vultures on the planet?

Why do you think this?

On the contrary, I believe this is a misinformation widely spread by non-technical people about their grit. They actually do some really interesting(definition may differ from yours) work and paces are very sane.

However, given their pay and other contractual limitations, it can be very attractive and fiercely competitive to land a job unless you are really good. Hence the the fake “vultures” rumor to gate keep.

P.S. Worked at one briefly and figured that I will become unemployable in regular market soon if I ever plan to leave… and not work in this industry anymore.

Why would you be unemployable?

I found it in a corner of my $MEGACORP, but TBF, my corner is a former startup that was acquired and retained a lot of the brains.

It can only exist in high margin companies. The trick is to find business environments with some 'slack' in the funding, because that slack tends to propagate. I have made a career out of finding environments with high slack and avoiding environments with low slack.

Just curious… How do you find out there is slack before actually getting the job?

One hint might be found in yearly financial reports. It depends a bit on the country if you can access those reports from non-publicly traded companies. Are they debt-heavy, or do they have enough free cash flow? What if all customers disappear the next day, can the business continue for an extended period of time?

Is that indicator of slack though?

Do you have any actual script, as in, exact questions to ask during interview, so that executives and/or techies would answer clearly whether their company has financial slack?

Revenue or profits per employee is a good start.

By slack do you mean high margin or high revenue per employee or something similar? Or a large war chest/lots of runway?

Definitely, large war chest and lots of runway always helps. Also high margin may be good or bad but high revenue per employee(i.e. consulting firms in government, defense, finance, energy etc. sectors) are the most human friendly places to work at.

relevant:

Slack, by Tom DeMarco https://www.amazon.com/Slack-Getting-Burnout-Busywork-Effici...

I work at a ~100 person tech consulting firm[1], although I joined when we were closer to 30. They actually found me through HN!

We mostly design and build data/devops/mlops/cyber platforms for big banks and other finserv companies - lots of Databricks, AWS, and GCP services.

[1] https://bit.ly/4j5cC5T (I'll expire the link in a few days for privacy reasons)

Any reason a lot of the Rearc jobs are outsourced to India?

What is wrong with that?

Takes away jobs from Americans and exploits cheap Indian labor.

Another way to phrase that: it allows Americans to focus on jobs where they add most value, leading to a higher standard of living for both Indians and Americans. You should read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage (and so should Trump)

I don’t really care about the standard of living in India. It is of no concern for me. And the only reason I am commenting is because the linked company is what was brought up. You would be able to find other examples.

But, these positions are easily done by a highly skilled American workforce: Cloud Engineers, Lead Cloud Engineers, Cybersecurity Engineers. That’s what is being advertised.

Read the link: outsourcing results in an improved standard of living in America. Even if Americans are capable of doing those jobs themselves. It’s counterintuitive, I know.

TLDR but i searched the linked page for america and the only mention is a theory, no proof:

"In 1930 Austrian-American economist Gottfried Haberler detached the doctrine of comparative advantage from Ricardo's labor theory of value and provided a modern opportunity cost formulation. Haberler's reformulation of comparative advantage revolutionized the theory of international trade and laid the conceptual groundwork of modern trade theories."

I did read the link and my beef is not with outsourcing in general. Many articles I found say that new roles in areas such as AI, cloud computing, and advanced manufacturing often emerge, providing Americans with more lucrative opportunities in cutting-edge fields. This is the counterintuitive part because Rearc is outsourcing highly skilled jobs that should be done by Americans if we follow the outsourcing is better logic. See my point?

If the jobs are being outsourced then the American company doing the outsourcing apparently saves money. Whether that money eventually ends up in the pocket of the people you want (e.g. workers versus shareholders) is a different debate, but in theory it should also mean there are other higher paying jobs in the labour market in the US otherwise salaries would drop to match the outsourced ones.

That’s some serious mental gymnastics

Sure, if you think about it, layoffs are actually good for employees career growth and the chocolate ration went up to 20 grammes per week.

Yours has got to be one of the best comments that I've ever read on hacker news.

> for me, the low-trust "do the bare minimum to stay employed" approach didn't actually help me get out of burnout into fulfillment -- What helped was finding a work situation where I could give my all and not feel taken advantage of

What you just described (so vividly) is meaning, and (likely) "flow" too. Meaning must be there for everyone, in their efforts; the need for meaning is universal. (We can call it intrinsic motivation too.)

Some say that you can find meaning outside of work, and then can mostly ignore work; and it's also said (correctly I guess) that "psychological richness" (closely related to resilience) is important: drawing meaning & satisfaction from multiple sources.

Sure, but I have a practical problem with that: if you need to work 8 hrs/day to cover your family's needs, you don't have time, energy, or opportunity left to find meaning elsewhere.

And, as others have repeatedly said it here, if you are a full time employee making quite beyond your (family's) needs, and think about decreasing your working time (giving up excess money, but regaining much needed time & freedom), that is what is strictly forbidden by the runners of the Village of Happy People. You will find effectively no jobs that let you work (say) 5 hours per day, for 62.5% of your original salary. That way, you'd just not be a good slave, a good cog in the machine. Society is engineered such that you must not have free time.

Therefore the only practical option is to find (or create) work that provides meaning for you intrinsically. I see no other option. You can be an employee or run your own business, the same applies. And, unfortunately, this is unattainable for most of society.

You can't expect 62.5% for 5/8 hours, you have other costs to them for benefits etc.

I think it’s assumed that in a society that would allow for such things benefits wouldn’t be handled at the level of the employer.

Quite the opposite. Employees under 28 hours a week don’t have to be provided health benefits at all, and typically aren’t in industries like retail that mostly employ front line workers on a part time basis.

Part time help is cheap.

Those might not be proportial, disregarding fixed costs, on some places those costs/deductions are usually based on a percentage of the given salary or hours worked (Not so in the US, as I'm given to understan)

I was so surprised when I realized stat holidays were paid as a % of the previous 30 days salary in canada.

Productivity per hour increases though, so it compensates.

I could see it going down if you do something like more work or work like hobbies in the other time instead of more leisure.

That is entirely independent of working shorter hours though.

I'm a contractor because I work remotely for a foreign company, and they denied me paid holidays with this argument. The cost of vacation is proportional to worked hours. There's a lot of questionable math in HR land though.

I could see maybe the argument against this because of paid accounts in remote systems: google suite, office 365, bamboo, github, etc. compared to reduced use, but they set those up anyway for other people in the company who don't use them (non-devs, etc) and I don't believe the cost per user is significant.

Do you mean tax costs? AFAIK typically country requirements for benefits are proportional to time worked, so part timers don't get all the benefits. Which benefits are you talking about specifically?

I appreciate the kind words!

The second part of your post is something I've thought about a lot. There are a lot of incentives driving business operators to try to get the most out of the fewest number of employees possible:

- Less communication overhead due to fewer people

- Constant availability (less need to pre-plan meetings, etc to match everyone's hours)

- Less complexity WRT HR, payroll, taxes

- Employees still have to pay for full healthcare, so the employer either provides this or pays a 1099 salary premium (the US's terrible approach of tying health insurance coverage to your employer rears its ugly head yet again)

- Fewer SaaS seats to pay for

Some of these are more solvable than others, and allowing more people to work part-time in tech is definitely swimming upstream, but I do wish more businesses would try.

Sahil Lavingia (Gumroad) is one person leaning into this approach with great success: https://sahillavingia.com/work

Health insurance coverage is not tied to an employer. Being able to pay for health insurance premiums with pre tax income is tied to an employer.

The benefit to the (large) employer is that it makes it harder for their employees to compare competing employment offers, and adds a little more friction to an employee who might be considering switching jobs.

The administrative costs of implementing benefits so that pre tax money can be used to pay for them also serve as a barrier to entry for smaller employers (helping large employers), since these costs cannot be amortized over a large number of employees.

But beside all that,

> There are a lot of incentives driving business operators to try to get the most out of the fewest number of employees possible:

It’s just cheaper, in all ways, to have fewer employees. Less people to trust, less people an employer is liable for, less hiring/terminating costs. The cost of burnout is clearly not a significant factor considering the lack of success of businesses full of part time employees.

> You will find effectively no jobs that let you work (say) 5 hours per day, for 62.5% of your original salary.

Not in the US anyway. It’s exceedingly common in the Netherlands to work 32 or even 24 hours a week.

Huh, in tech companies?

Yah, France as well. My boss was at 30h / week.

Switzerland too. It's pretty common for parents to work 80% or 60%.

Is that typically shorter days or fewer days?

Fewer days.

It's not only common you can in many instances force your employer to lower your hours and keep you on.

Absolutely. Totally normal in the Netherlands. I do this (28 hours). My wife too (32 hours). We've got a kid to raise and a house to look after. We earn more than we need, so why work more hours?

That’s awesome. I chose Japan as my place to live, but NL was a close second. I’ll have to think about it again next time I move.

Wow, amazing. Super progressive.

As I believe Deadpool said in the most recent Deadpool and Wolverine movie - ‘The Dutch are never going to the moon, but damn do they know how to live.’

Belgium and Germany too.

Think I'm starting to see why so many people immigrate to Europe. European labor laws and lifestyles are so reasonable. No wonder American life expectancy is so bad.

> What you just described (so vividly) is meaning

In line with Victor Frankl’s book “Man’s Search for Meaning”, which explores (among other things) why some Holocaust survivors thrived and some didn’t. Frankl himself was a survivor.

My favorite quote from one of my favorite books, Anathem by Neal Stephenson (copied from GoodReads):

"Thousands of years ago, the work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them. People who couldn't live without story had been driven into the concents or into jobs like Yul's. All others had to look somewhere outside of work for a feeling that they were part of a story, which I guessed was why Sæculars were so concerned with sports, and with religion. How else could you see yourself as part of an adventure? Something with a beginning, middle, and end in which you played a significant part? We avout had it ready-made because we were a part of this project of learning new things. Even if it didn't always move fast enough for people like Jesry, it did move. You could tell where you were and what you were doing in that story."

Some people need to have their "story", otherwise they end up miserable, regretting their wasted lives.

If someone’s ‘story’ improves in notability, attractiveness, attention grabbingness, etc… wouldn’t someone else’s ‘story’ have to decrease in the same?

As human attention is finite. Or is it suggesting that the ‘story’ can somehow qualitatively improve, without limit, while actually occupying less physical time?

"Stories" are not a finite resource. In the book, Yul tortured his friends (and whoever was the audience) with his adventures and was a rather poor listener himself, but for Jesry and other avout (monks-scientists) it was always mutual – discussing their research, sharing findings, seeking out help, etc.

Your story is something intrinsic; you can decide how you want to share it with others.

Sharing requires actual time…? Certainly more than zero.

Totally agree with this.

The thing is, there are at least four major factors that lead to the energy depletion of burnout:

- physical (i'm unhealthy, don't sleep, eat or exercise well)

- mental (i'm distracted and interrupted constantly or don't let my brain rest)

- emotional (i work in a culture of terror with people who trigger me)

- meaning - (i simply don't care about what i'm doing and neither do my colleagues)

all of these are necessary, and none are sufficient. most orgs and people are breaking along more than one of these dimensions, and the co-morbidity makes it hard to diagnose the cause of burnout.

I tottaly agree with this sentiment. Still looking for the right balance, but half assing things for me doesn't result in feeling better.

Finding the unicorn job isn't the right thing to predicate your happiness on. One thing I like the idea of and am just starting to try is reminding myself why I'm doing the job. What are my bigger goals that it is contributing towards? I know we all know this at some level, but I think it can help to remind ourselves there is a purpose/meaning to why we do our jobs, even if we don't intrinsically get meaning from them.

I can't remember where I read this idea... but somewhere recently.

Does not help when the answer is "to not starve and not lose your house for missing three mortgage payments, stupid" though.

I am here to periodically remind HN that no, not all programmers here are millionaires who only work not to get bored.

There is a middle ground where you’re not at risk of missing next month’s mortgage payment, but downshifting or changing careers might mean you take a lot longer to reach retirement (or “financial independence” if you don’t like the word retirement).

There absolutely is this middle ground, agreed. But personally, I've been very stupid with money. I let my passion for technology and the illusion that I will always be in high demand get the better of me and I am currently paying heavy interest, so to speak, in ruined health, both physical and mental, and having to look for a job in tough market with age discrimination sprinkled on top.

Oh well.

That's rough. Hope you find the job you need soon.

I wish money management was taught in schools. My family didn't have money so how were they supposed to teach me about compound interests. And those growing up in money may not realize its value...

Thanks. I wish would-be parents had psychological evaluation at least. My mother and father were 95% inept to be parents. They did the very bare minimum and then one of them died and the other was, shall we put it softly, just a drag for 22 years until she died less than two months ago as well.

Pain inside does make one do stupid crap. Definitely applies to me. Now I am trying to heal and be more rational with money at least. The rest will follow more or less automatically; removing stress is itself healing.

Let me try to be more clear, I don't half ass. I just take a 10 minute walk when I get stressed. I take 10 minutes to think through something without touching my keyboard even though the keyboard monitor is monitoring. Once I'm past 8 and a half hours I turn off my computer almost regardless of the circumstances. In certain emergencies I won't, but most of the time that meeting actually is not more important than eating dinner with my family and getting bullet points the next morning.

I hope this helps explain more what I meant by what I was saying. I'm not saying "become terrible at your job and produce poor quality". I am saying, "deliver good enough quality within your means". If your boss says "your current code is good enough for the demo", ship the damn thing as is, don't go rushing to add more features and retesting everything until 4AM.

If a deadline really is too short, say it is too short early on. Keep working, but don't put on a cape and deliver because someone said they wanted something they can't have without causing you to lose sleep for two weeks. People die from stuff like that, it is not worth it.

>... keyboard monitor is monitoring

I would say get out as fast as possible.

That would be part of the medium term plan. Have to hang on as long as I can for now though.

I've learnt this lesson the hard way recently.

I dislike my projects failing and missing deadlines. So in addition to pushing back against unrealistic expectations, I caught other people's dropped balls and filled the gaps of un-backfilled roles. On top of that when there was down times, instead of resting, I took on fun side projects that had higher impact for my employer than the work actually assigned to me.

They got me with praise and guilt tripping, until last year, all the little "do this one more thing", "can you ship it 1 day earlier" had turned into me delivering by myself as much work as the rest of my team on ~20h weeks (because the other 20h I was unable to function due to burnout). We're siloed into different projects so I never realized I was doing 5x the work rather than 20% extra until a new reporting tool visible to each other was used...

So this year, I'm not doing side projects, fixing other people's messes or doing other people's work. I've told my manager and he's bringing an extra person to the team. I'll do my work and I'll do it well but I'm a contractor paid half what my FTE counterparts are, and it's not like there is a path to promotion so I'm not going to compromise my health anymore to do the work of 4 extra people for free. Not in any future job.

Point is, check your workload and if you're doing more than what you're paid for: that's where you can take back the time to find meaning in different things. It's not slacking if you're delivering a day's worth of work in a day, no matter how much HR BS tries to guilt trip you into thinking that.

My takeaway from your comment is that you should not be an employee; you should be a business owner. That way you can give your all and feel great about it because it will also (hopefully) lead to better and directly measurable outcomes.

Yes, this is correct. This is my eventual end goal, and a lot of my career so far has revolved around obtaining the skills, connections, and runway money I need to make that leap.

Not necessarily. I'm similar to OP in that I get depressed if I'm not doing my best, but I also have a family with young kids. There's no good way for me to get from where I am to business owner—either I'd be risking my family's livelihood on something uncertain or I'd be working in my free time to build a stable business instead of spending time with them.

The compromise I've arrived at is that I give it my all during a very strict time box. I work remotely, so at 9am I start work, I take an hour for lunch, and I check out at 5. With no commute that leaves just over half my workweek waking hours for my family.

During working hours I do it all—I perform my job very well and am lucky enough to be in a place where it's recognized in very measurable ways (promotions, autonomy, and recognition). But I don't give my employer extra time.

Thanks for the insightful comment. I have tried no less than 30 separate approaches for... a bunch of stuff really... and nothing worked.

The only thing that actually seems to net me results these days is indeed extremely strict, zero excuses unless the nukes are flying, time-boxing.

Reassuring to see that it works for somebody else as well. Thank you.

Thanks for writing about your experiences. I went through the same series of realizations as you over the past few years.

> What helped was finding a work situation where I could give my all and not feel taken advantage of.

I have this in bursts during the off-season and that's where I feel like I'm most productive and useful. But the off-season is getting shorter and shorter and I'm compelled to find something else.

I share your psychology.. sadly I never found a place with high drive people (colleagues or hierarchy), for a while I did hard tasks for their own sake but after a while this difference in mindset across the company has diffused in me and I'm ground to a near halt (you know when the simple thought of opening a source file makes you sick to your stomach).

Did you find that job through a friend or by interviewing ? if so did you find ways to filter low drive teams ? I sometime mention I seek high speed but I don't think I can trust HR on this.

Wow. How I long to be in the position you are! I got burnt out, and then learnt to emotionally detach myself from my work so that I don’t get hurt by things that are beyond my control.

But I sorely miss not being 100% dedicated. What I do for work has always been a big part of my identity. And half-assing something feels like not being true to myself.

> And half-assing something feels like not being true to myself.

Been there many times, but I found that it’s best to aim for good enough, given the resources and constraints, than 100% all the time. I’m a recovering perfectionist, so it’s not always easy to reach that balance, but I try it anyways. When I do not, my anxiety kicks in, and I’m forced to slow down.. I use to be able to ignore it (the anxiety) and keep pushing, but not anymore..

I think there's a paradox, that if you give too much to your employer, you burn out and then can give them nothing. Therefore, one should give the correct level of engagement , its not disengagement, but, being engaged enough to do the job well while still having a life outside work eg with family and friends. Its possible to work somewhere where your colleagues appear more dedicated than you, for example if they work the weekend and you don't. That doesn't mean you're less committed to your job, in fact it could mean you are more committed, because you know that working weekends is pointless as it leads to extra bugs thus being overall less efficient. In summary, work hard and diligently, while taking necessary breaks, getting required exercise and sleep, recovering properly if ill at ay time, and not working silly hours. so... a bit like a typical European ;)

Europe has great employee protection but it is not always this panacea either everywhere.

When I worked in Paris, I started at 10 am (to avoid rush hour on the subway), but rarely left before 7 or 8 (instead of 6) and it wasn't uncommon for me to stay until 11pm. I was "cadre" which means you need to deliver on tasks but get no overtime pay with the idea that workload is realistic but flexible: finish early and you're done, run late it's on you to deal with it. Needless to say the balance often tilted one way and not in my favor.

One reason was the culture at that company was to take many coffee breaks, long lunches, go for drinks after work and return to the office after etc. That means the days were pleasant and relaxed most of the time, but you made up for it by spending more time at work. I actually enjoyed it at the time, but I don't think I'd do now.

This was quite typical in my experience. Other companies would pay for overtime but only if you worked after 9pm (because 6 to 9 is for dinner). They'd cater pizzas during that time and folks would end their day at 9, and do just the 3h unpaid overtime while eating pizza in front of their pc.

Just saying, Europe has some great labor laws, but it's not all roses and rainbows either. Employers may still try to exploit you as much as they can within those laws (and sometimes by breaking it, I think lawsuits against employers (aux prudhommes) are a lot more common and employees win them quite often.)

> It is not about realized gains, it could even be at great detriment to a company. It is about short-term line item claimable gains.

It's not even about that.

People need to realize that inflicting suffering on those "under" someone is one of the main motivators of human behavior.

It's innate and it exists because the abuser get tremendous benefits, including health-wise.

I see what you mean, but I disagree that this is an innate trait in human beings. I believe it is sometimes socialized, poor understanding of zero-sum games, etc.

Often-times its just garden variety psychopathy, narcissism, and other dark personality traits. For those people its definitely innate. Unfortunately psychopaths pathologically do everything they can to position themselves into seats like management/leadership. It's kind of a tricky situation for other-wise mentally well people.

> The trick is to not care enough about your job to get hurt but not care so little that you could short-term be hurt.

Unfortunately this situation isn't able to be earnestly evaluated in the US without enormous effort to reform labor law. (Or if it is earnestly evaluated it obviously biases the needs of the employer rather than the entity that matters.)

I'm currently recovering from burnout and the trick of not caring just does not work for me. This is my 2nd burnout and even though I learned that trick among other things from the 1st, it just does not work because I think it's a problem that stems from my personality. I care too much about various things that are related to my work.

Same, I am in my 40s and so far have never found a way to not care. I am simply that kind of person and I have screamed and raged against it many times, still couldn't change. If I stop caring I'll become somebody else entirely; it will profoundly change everything I do in every venue of life, intimate life / marriage included.

I just can't see it ever changing.

But, as people love to say, everyone eventually gets to their own level of incompetence. This is definitely mine. I want to be able to segment my not caring and I am trying various things; nothing so far works but some measures have netted very small results -- like being dead-tired and suffering from 3 separate heavy health conditions, for example. If that can be counted as "a measure that works", that is. :D

I have the same issue, but I’ve found that the trick is for me work on things I care about, even if that’s not necessarily the main goal of the organisation. Just find things that have enough overlap that nobody in leadership can say you’re not working towards useful goals.

I’m not sure how replicable it is in a different org though, and I’m not likely to leave to find out xD

distancing oneself from work (not caring) is a symptom of burnout, symptoms are a coping mechanism but that doesn't mean they're a cure... sure a fever helps fight illness but a caugh might just spread it. Personnally, I can't not care either but i also don't think it is a solution. For me not caring actually makes things worse because it is disempowering.

> The trick is to not care enough about your job to get hurt but not care so little that you could short-term be hurt.

how to balance that with the fact that you wanted more than just waking up for a paycheck by working in this field ? being passive and bored (reminds me that bore-out exists too) is not how i envision a happy life

It is so depriving to interview for new position the very same way with the very same narratives after three positions you don't really care about. Yes, I am a serial no-caring person now into three of my recent jobs after the initial months of inflated and intentional self blinding positivism pulled over my mind to numb it from fear of growing futileness. Previous two was left before even havin a new place, now I have children and it is so desperate economic reasoning stuck in a hopeless and unreliable situation that the demotivation is closing on unbearable poisoning my private life (this is what I want to show to my children?). I am trying to convince my wife (and in fact myself too) of working for myself instead. Different risky, but just different, not more. Staying is also risky. I am at the mercy of a disliked and faceless organization. People come and go, we were just aquired by an investor aiming at squeezing out more money, yes, not the product or activity is in the focus but pure money, the rest is secondary, whatever is fine as long the income grows, need to feed now the advisors and investors and lawyers and bankers in addition of the current organization, and in a shorten timeframe because there are clear goals about income for the next 5 years. About the income, the faith of the product is a secondary, indirect/dependent matter. People want their money back very soon, plus more. I can become an obstacle in any minute when they figure out they need no R&D for income in the next 5 years, just like with VMWare and Broadcom and similars. I find myself in a situation like shown in this The Economist article [1] with no hope finding better, as the others I am actively interviewing are already went through the same or going through the same currently:

"Identify a mature business, ideally one that is critical for customers. Buy it at a decent price. Cut it to the bone by reducing the workforce, eliminating less lucrative products and slashing research-and-development budgets. Jack up prices for captive clients. Harvest the cash. Fork lots of it out to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, which big tech tends to shun. Take what is left and repeat."

Why try hard if I will end up in the same ditch not trying hard?....

[1] https://www.economist.com/business/2024/12/19/meet-the-most-...

My theory on burnout is that it arises when the effort you put in doesn't have a meaningful impact because of misalignment or a lack of autonomy. It's like pushing on a lever but the gears are jammed. You're asked to push and push harder, but nobody in a position of power is willing to fix the damn gears.

I've worked harder than imaginable in my life on projects without burning out, because the work was incredibly fulfilling — and it fit well with my core beliefs, interests, values. And then I've burnt out from putting tons of unrecognized effort into projects where I lacked adequate leverage to change things.

People won't always look after you and burnout can be hard to recover from — harder than you might think. So take care of yourself — and never stop looking for work that aligns with your core values, interests, and the kind of life you want to build.

I’ve done some volunteering mentoring over the years. Burnout is on the rise, but not in the way I expected. The definition of burnout continues to expand as it becomes further embedded in common vernacular.

It was tough for us doing the mentoring because someone telling us they were experiencing burnout could have meant anything from a severe condition resulting from years of extreme effort against personal and professional headwinds, to the person who was simply bored at work and needed a long weekend with friends to recover.

I’m not trying to gatekeep, but rather point out that there is no longer a single definition of burnout. There are parallels to how conditions like Autism Spectrum Disorder are now being diagnosed in alarmingly high numbers, but when you look closer you realize that the common definition has been stretch far from the original narrow definition.

This creates some difficulty for people experiencing the deepest burnout. When their peers think “burnout” is just a word that means you’re kind of tired and bored in a way that can be easily fixed with a good vacation.

I’ve also noticed a growing trend of people with clear signs of depression mistaking it for burnout. These situations are very concerning for me because by now I’ve seen a lot of people quit their jobs due to “burnout” and then their symptoms get progressively worse, not better, because their real problems were not primarily the result of their job. This problem is becoming more common as “burnout” trends on social media and news headlines with empty advice. Your advice about being actively engaged in directing your own career toward something interesting is much better than the drivel that passes for burnout advice on social media and cheap news articles these days.

I'd like to see brain scans of burnt out people contrasted with those of people with PTSD.

With a more than fair share of both, I'm not sure that they're genuinely distinct phenomena.

I'd also be interested in how either/both tie in to depression.

Would you mind providing a source for the claim about ASS being diagnosed in alarmingly high numbers?

Also, at least in the DSM-5 the definition was actually narrowed recently.

There is none, because "alarmingly high" is a subjective metric, that can range from epsilon above 0% to epsilon below 100%, depending on who you ask.

Yeah, AFAIK burnout is pretty much defined as something that you cannot recover from (at a similar level of functioning as before), so "can be hard to recover from" sounds weird...

An increasing number of my colleagues are using burnout for entirely inappropriate reason like "I was so burnt out last year from all the travel and vacation planning". It is so disrespectful to those with actual burnout when the term is used to complain about how privileged one's life is.

Your theory matches up with how the WHO defines burn out:

https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupat...

Even when you are in charge and you find your work meaningful you can burn out. That is certainly how I went down that road...

My own conclusion about burnout is that it fundamentally comes down to who controls the agenda, and how much you invest in that agenda. I've been burned out. Many years ago, early in my career. My cure: I was in the lucky position that it was a good time to spend a year and half going back to school to knock off a graduate degree that simultaneously moved my career forward, gave me a total change of scenery, and gave me some break time between leaving the job and starting classes, time that I devoted 100% to hobbies and home improvement projects. And of course, an easy-to-tell story when reentering the job market.

So on the topic of agenda... if what you are working on is your own agenda, you don't burn out. You might change the agenda by redefining goals, but in the end, you are sailing your own ship. Not only do you not burn out, it is curative. It is when you absorb someone else's agenda and make it your own to an unhealthy extent that you burn out. Always be computing that dot product between your employer's agenda vector and your own agenda vector. Don't over-invest beyond that dot-product.

> Always be computing that dot product between your employer's agenda vector and your own agenda vector.

haha, great metaphor! I'll steal it! :)

This aligns with my experience. There's this GDC talk that really resinated with me about how side projects can help avoid burnout in the games industry: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zfJ9LLZQ9jo

It is counter intuitive that doing more unpaid work helps cope with doing paid work, but the whole premise iirc is that it is work you are in control of and that helps battle the lack of meaning and agency at work.

Of course this assumes you're not already too burnt out to even think about a side project.

Formatting aside, I enjoyed the article and the description of the “village of happy people”. As someone who has burned out twice myself and left tech (with great personal sacrifice), it really can feel like those who are not burning out are living in a bubble.

I’ve mostly let go of those feelings though. My conclusion after working outside of tech and rebuilding my life is that I just didn’t have the constitution to play the corporate game. More power to those who can though.

My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life.

I do similar work in my day job and consulting. I'm very fresh and optimistic during consulting hours, but dread going into the office. I'm genuinely burnt out and just don't give a flying fuck anymore, I don't sleep, and I've been more sick in the last month than ever in my life.

The only difference is that one comes with politics and one doesn't.

> My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life

Totally agree. It’s not the stress of doing something new and just trying to figure it all out that’s stressful. That’s actually fun. It’s the arbitrary adjusting of priorities and putting tasks in hold to start some harebrained idea that ultimately gets tossed or proves to not work out that becomes tiresome. Then shit rolls down hill and people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed and assigns blame to the dev rather than piss poor management.

No. I’m not bitter

Isn't politics any part of human activity where number of people involved is greater than a critical mass (of say 5) ? I think even the best run, successful orgs have their share of politics. I used to think politics as a bad thing, but now I have accepted that it is an inevitable part of work life and one needs to also learn how to navigate it atleast to the extent that doesn't affect one's well-being or doesn't make one feel that they are being shortchanged, not that I am always successful with it.

"Politics" are inevitable, but the stuff that the parent is describing is a particular type of politics that comes with hierarchical power (and possibly bad/immature leadership?)

General pattern is that certain people in the level(s) above you are fighting for influence to impress the levels above, and critically, are willing to use the levels below in order to achieve their personal goals (organizational goals are secondary, at best). Unless leadership is unusually adept at punishing the first signs of this behavior, it quickly becomes pathological. Every level gets infected, and before long your org has all of the backstabbing drama one might associate with an imperial court. In times of growth it's painful enough, but in times of limited resources, it's pure bloodsport.

There are people who can effectively detect and push back on the behavior, but they seem to be rare, and even more rarely make it into positions of influence. My theory is that it's so exhausting to be sensitive to the drama that you can only make it to the top if you combine it with a big dose of sociopathy. You also see it a lot at startups, because the founders are typically young, arrogant and have no experience managing anyone. By the time they realize they've hired a toxic exec layer, it's too late.

Even at a higher level what you are observing frequently use caused by politics (which admittedly frequently go hand in hand with incompetence or putting personal gain over company outcomes). Especially technical efforts frequently come under attack by product people who are in turn frequently under pressure my sales staff. Nobody along that line has the full picture and pushes for their issues to be solved which seem most urgent to them. Sometimes this business pressure results in correct decisions which still suck. An example might be interrupting a project or cutting corners to get a feature out to get a contract signed and make payroll. Two years later people wonder why the code is shit but the answer is that the company was struggling to survive and corners were cut left and right. Of course often it's just stupidity. I've seen cases where a PM would ask to get a unvetted pet project staffed ("all I need is two people for a week!!") outside of department planning cycles and later this was used in a write up with new leadership as an example of "engineering refusing to work with product".

> people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed

You know, from all the talk about agile one would think people would remember the one central value from the manifesto that gave the name for the thing...

Companies don't do agile, they just for some reason gaslight you into believing you're doing agile.

My company has fixed date releases with architecture proposals before a feature and predefined requirements for the whole release, but no no it's scrum because we have useless meetings every 2 weeks. I just don't understand why they care so much about pretending we're doing agile.

One thing that seems to reliably cause burnout is when a person with high flying ambition finds herself in an environment in which she feels stripped of agency.

It's not primarily about expending too much energy, but rather about expending energy in a way that appears futile relative to an ambitious standard set for oneself.

Just my personal observation, but dovetails well with the learned helplessness theory of depression.

Feels spot on

Such a good way of describing it. Thanks for this, and the comment above it.

This is absolutely it. I've never been able to control how much effort and personal investment I put into a project. If I'm working on something, I have to give it my all.

I used to get burnt out at work all the time, but that really hasn't been the case for the last 5 years. The biggest difference is that I'm I'm in charge now. When I say something is going to take X amount of time or that we have to do things in a certain way, management doesn't argue with me anymore. They just accept that is the way it is, because I'm the one in charge of this area of work.

I haven't changed. I still take too long to finish ostensibly "simple" things because I've nerd-sniped myself [0] into over-engineering things. What has changed is my relationship to the management class. They see me as one of them, now, and that confers a level of respect that is, frankly, enraging when you consider the lack of it in the obverse situation. But, I can make things my way and I can protect my team and that's enough.

[0] https://xkcd.com/356/

Same here. The word "bodies" is now bandied about with little regard for who is in the room. Everything is set in warp 11.

You do need to come into the place as a manager, though. The attitudes the other management have of you will be pinned to whatever their first impression of you was. So if you promoted into management, you'll still be treated with the same lack of respect as an individual contributor.

Tons of truth here.

And a lot of management bravado is from fear and ignorance of how the work is actually done and their ego gets in the way of curiosity.

So then there is a good chance you are not in favor when promoted in to their circle because they can feel threatened.

thank you. I feel a little less like a misunderstood snowflake today because of this.

Exactly this. When I can actually do some work, I feel pretty good. But that feels like 5% of my job sometimes.

I agree. For me it was not that the work was particularly difficult or unrewarding, but that I felt as if I did not have control over my schedule. Development/Product Management could, at the drop of a hat, say we have an emergency patch and now Operations needs to clear their evening schedule to get it done while the (likely higher paid) developers go home at a regular hour and get to do whatever they want.

What are you doing now? I am considering becoming a machinist.

Please reconsider. My son just completed training and he is now working full time on getting disability instead of getting a job. I can't really blame him.

You will get hurt and you will be tossed aside with great prejudice.

To be clear, this was a personal choice of your son and not because of an injury?

Personal choice but he was injured by chemical exposure that burned both of his hands and subsequently avoided other serious accidents involving high voltage in addition to witnessing 20yr employees getting booted (demoted) after injuries. Real industrial revolution, pre-workers rights shit. He was thrown out for asking for chemical labels to be reapplied to barrels and requesting PPE. Most people can't afford the luxury of making such a stink.

Sorry to hear that. I feel tossed aside due to my burnout and depression so I can relate on that front.

What's giving me burnout is work from home. I got much of my social needs met by working at work with people I liked. We'd talk. We'd go to lunch. We'd meet up after work and on weekends. We also collaborated at work. Designed things together.

Now, 40% of my time is alone in isolation, working at home. Collaboration and design work happen in documents at best and not in social conversation like it used it.

All of this is making work a chore, "for me". Instead of work being an opportunity to hang out with people I like it's just a list of things to do alone.

What gives people burnout changes per person. For me, Covid was the best thing that ever happened. My stress levels dropped like a rock. My self control went way up, and with it my ability to improve my life. I was doing the same work, but remote, and a whole lot of the things that made my life worse just instantly disappeared.

If you know you were getting all your social needs met at work, and now you don't, the companies that have moved back to the office should be a godsend for you. So why don't you just change jobs?

I feel like he's just describing the natural consequences of an over monopolized technology sector. None of these things are natural and instead of facing the problem directly, ironically, this author play acts his way through the solution.

I found it uncomfortable.

> this author play acts his way through the solution.

I thought it was a nice bit of irony. At work there's so much play-acting but all in a serious tone.

Meanwhile I saw this on HN jobs last week:

> The Culture: What It Means to Be a Thoughtful Warrior

> Working Norms: The Warrior’s Code of Conduct We don’t approach our work as just a job; we approach it as a mission. Delivering excellence at the highest level requires commitment, resilience, and an unshakable work ethic. To achieve this, we embrace working norms that ensure clarity, accountability, and growth—for both the individual and the team.

> 60 to 80-Hour Work Weeks: Our mission demands intensity. This isn’t about clocking hours; it’s about pursuing excellence with discipline and focus. We operate at high intensity to transform healthcare. Warriors are prepared to dedicate 60 to 80 hours per week to pushing boundaries

https://www.thoughtful.ai/blog/being-a-warrior-at-thoughtful...

they just want cheap h1b workers they can treat like slaves, that is all any of these capitalists want

.ai at their domain name emphasizes the grift factor IMO

> Join leading healthcare providers and: >>Collect more money, faster >>Higher capacity, less headcount >>Acquire and retain more patients

Yikes. Doctors like primary care providers are already considered by the experts who study these things to have too many patients. So… this platform makes it possible to make that problem _even worse_?

And people wonder why nobody (myself included) wants to work in healthcare anymore...

> 60 to 80-Hour Work Weeks

This is ridiculous, 34-39 hours (tops) is at the limit of a healthy work-life balance.

> This isn’t about clocking hours;

Translation: we are not going to properly compensate you for the extra effort we have as minimum requirement.

These grifters are looking for desperate slaves.

A few points in here reminded me of an essay on burnout that I loved a lot, called The Burnout Society.

> The core narrative control is straightforward: 1) everything's great, and 2) if it's not great, it's going to be great.

> We're trained to tell ourselves we can do it, that sustained super-human effort is within everyone's reach, "just do it."

The author of The Burnout Society frames this as a sort of self-slavery, in which we are our own slave-drivers. His logic is actually quite compelling. Yet reassuring, perhaps surprisingly. He doesn't blame the individual, but the culture they live in. There are paths to salvation, and burnout isn't a final destination.

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+burnout+society

Better link https://www.sup.org/books/theory-and-philosophy/burnout-soci...

Best link? Maybe :) https://www.betterworldbooks.com/product/detail/the-burnout-...

Thank you. I was short on time and didn’t see a good result quickly enough

A) Totally agree. This is a great, very short book -- I highly recommend for anyone in this industry, regardless of philosophy experience. The author is Byung-Chul Han.

B) This is a great point to call out the author for a bit of a myopic view in the bits about "Burnout isn't well-studied or understood." Beyond the philosophy above, there's pages and pages of empirical articles, conferences, even books on the topic: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=burnout

This just comes across as a fallacy I see quite often in intellectual circles, and have surely been guilty of myself: "The problems in the world are caused because the people in charge are too dumb to see everything as clearly as I do; if I was in charge, it would be easy to decide what to focus our resources on!"

For anyone interested in this book, I recommend also reading "Non-Places: Introduction To An Anthropology Of Supermodernity" by Marc Augé. He lays out an interesting argument that the stress and the anxiety of the modern world is due to a collapse of distance — informatically, geographically, and temporally.

Simply put, the modern world feels bad because we're constantly engaging with information that we can't assimilate into a coherent model. In the past you could rely on simple and incorrect models of the world and generally be OK since your life was relatively local. Now, your life requires you to engage in a much larger sphere, one that is too large and changes too quickly to be understood.

PDF: https://monoskop.org/images/3/3c/Auge_Marc_Non-Places_Introd...

That's very interesting - it aligns to something I've felt for a long time about the way the internet and modern media has made it so people just know about so many more things in the world and thus feel like they need to care about them. It's "eat your veggies because some starving African child doesn't even have that" but applied to everything, and juiced by live footage of a child dying of starvation.

This also, I think, leads to detachment from local issues. Why should I look into who's on my city council when I'm hearing about the French government falling apart or the mayor of New York doing crimes? There's always something bigger, worse, more important to the world going on somewhere and there's nothing you can do about it, but also every part of you feels like you should do something.

Well said; I agree with you (and Augé). Another place I've seen this discussed is this fantastic blogpost on Scholar's Stage: https://scholars-stage.org/the-problem-isnt-the-merit-its-th...

In the post, Tanner Greer excerpts from Andrew Yang's book The War on Normal People — here's the relevant quote in full, but I recommend clicking through and reading the whole post:

    > In coming years it’s going to be even harder to forge a sense of common identity across different walks of life. A lot of people who now live in the bubble grew up in other parts of the country. They still visit their families for holidays and special occasions. They were brought up middle-class in normal suburbs like I was and retain a deep familiarity with the experiences of different types of people. They loved the mall, too.

    > In another generation this will become less and less true. There will be an army of slender, highly cultivated products of Mountain View and the Upper East Side and Bethesda heading to elite schools that has been groomed since birth in the most competitive and rarefied environments with very limited exposure to the rest of the country.

    > When I was growing up, there was something of an inverse relationship between being smart and being good-looking. The smart kids were bookish and awkward and the social kids were attractive and popular. Rarely were the two sets of qualities found together in the same people. The nerd camps I went to looked the part.

    > Today, thanks to assortative mating in a handful of cities, intellect, attractiveness, education, and wealth are all converging in the same families and neighborhoods. I look at my friends’ children, and many of them resemble unicorns: brilliant, beautiful, socially precocious creatures who have gotten the best of all possible resources since the day they were born. I imagine them in 10 or 15 years traveling to other parts of the country, and I know that they are going to feel like, and be received as, strangers in a strange land. They will have thriving online lives and not even remember a car that didn’t drive itself. They may feel they have nothing in common with the people before them. Their ties to the greater national fabric will be minimal. Their empathy and desire to subsidize and address the distress of the general public will likely be lower and lower.

I'm not sure I at all agree with that quote though. Most of what he's describing was equally true of the old landed aristocracy or other wealthy families of the past. It feels like someone who didn't grow up rich now being rich and going "Wow, rich people live differently" as if that's some revelation and not something that's been true for centuries.

Who does he think went to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Oxford and Cambridge before now? Those people felt as superior if not more superior to a random person in "normal america" than the current crop of new wealth. The Gettys and the Morgans were probably even more detached from the rest of the country than anyone is now and likely had more overt power over their lives than their modern equivalents.

I don't mean this as a defense of these people, just that "the elites don't have the best interests of the population at heart" is a complaint as old as civilization. I don't think Greer or Yang makes a compelling argument that the 2019 American moment is worse than even recent memory. Greer tries to make a point about how people had smaller goals in the past, and fought more for their local interests and prestige, something I'm both not sure I agree with and would love a citation for, and also looks past the fact that the major WASPy families did literally run the federal government for decades! Often to the detriment of states and regions they cared less about, which seems to be what he's claiming will be an issue with this new elite.

Thanks, just placed a hold on that book at my library!

Nice, I hope you get a lot out of it! I found much of his thinking familiar in isolation, but appreciated how he put it all together under the umbrella of burnout. It changed my perspective substantially and opened my mind quite a bit regarding how I treat myself.

I've personally burned out a couple of times. First was a Fintech startup back in 2011 or so. Second was at an aerospace startup that you've heard of.

In both cases, the unique factor was an extended period of time where I was the sole person who could some considerable piece of work that the business relied upon for day to day operations, which meant that I couldn't take effective breaks and I lived constantly on call and in the critical path.

I had to quit both jobs in order to both grant myself the space to not feel captive and also to show management that more than a single person was necessary to perform the tasks that I had been performing.

I've burned out once, but that was enough. I am working again but it's been more than 7 years and I'm not fully recovered. I'm very careful now not to paint myself into a corner (or let some manager do it for me) as I know I wouldn't survive the next time it happens. Also my ability to put crazy hours or handle stress has been permanently impaired. While I function normally, if stress is a glass that can take water until it starts to spill, my glass has permanently shrunk in size.

I keep less vital, less exciting positions and compliment the missing excitement or fulfillment with things from my personal life. I do miss those times when I had the complete overview and agency but it wasn't worth this.

Im just like that more than 10 years after my last burnout and I think I found a ballance to not let it ever wreck my life again. But it’s a very fragile ballance and there’s this everpresent subtext that it could happen again at any time. Im lucky that im paid hourly and overtime requires approval and is rareley approved.

Avoiding overtime helps but if the work conditions are conducive to burnout it can happen even to part time workers.

How much work it takes to protect the balance to avoid burnout can itself also contribute to burnout, say if you constantly have to fight getting overstaffed or repeatedly having to push back on being on call...

There’s something that’s been in the back of my mind for a while, and I think I haven’t acknowledged it due to shame. I believe that many people will relate, though.

As technology continues to automate more and more “mindless” work, knowledge workers are forced to actively think for a larger and larger portion of our work days, and with increasing intensity—and this is highly stressful. Of course, doing some thinking at work is enjoyable and fulfilling, but most people can’t put in 6+ hours of concentrated thinking five days a week for extended periods of time without burning out.

In the past, the educations we received were like investments in an autopilot mode that we could turn on for large portions of the work day. Some thinking has always been required for professionals, but there were also many situations which could be handled with minimal effortful thought, thanks to education. These situations are disappearing, and it’s literally tiring us out.

After reading your comment, my first instinct was to disagree but I think there is actually some truth to it. I find so much satisfaction in just doing rote work sometimes. Not all time, mind you but there’s a certain peaceful state when your’re mindfully and even effortlessly doing something over and over. Sort of like grinding in RPG games

Right, it’s a break. Actual thinking is like a physical activity, and we need breaks. In the past we had more frequent and longer breaks even if we were diligent, because we could leverage our knowledge. Increasingly we have to leverage our knowledge and actively think for almost the entire workday. I’m not sure that we can adapt to that the same way we’d adapt to jogging all day.

I think the difference is that knowledge + actively thinking is more akin to sprinting all day, jogging being more akin to just relying on knowledge.

That sounds about right to me.

I couldn't find a reference to the specific case study but there's definitely human factors/ergonomics research about this - one example was about a factory introduced task rotations which should increase meaning of work and therefor productivity and operator retention, but it resulted in increased absenteeism because operators could no longer let their minds wander like they used to during routine repetitive tasks and burned out quicker. The point of all these case studies was to not randomly change a work situation using generic best practices before understanding it because there's no one size fits all solution.

I once was showing the benefits of a new technology to check ISDN lines to an employee. She listened and then said, "Jean-Pierre I can work on whatever you ask me, but don't ask me to think".

In the same service, they worked routinely on a complex technology (SDH), then one day one employee asked me "Jean-Pierre, we are not trained on this technology, what is it really?". The baffling thing is that her colleagues had no problems working for many years on something they didn't understand at all.

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

Yes! I've found this to be true too.

Early in my programming career, work was a mix of repetitive, somewhat mindless tasks (implement this webpage, fix this bug, etc) and more intensive, thoughtful activities (figure out a better algorithm for something, help architect a solution for a problem).

I think this is healthy. We can't be "on" 100% of the time. And I'm convinced that during those times when we're doing mindless tasks, our brains are actually working in a different way that we're not conscious of. It's like how a solution will sometimes come to you in the shower.

I don't think increasing intensity of work is the single cause of burnout, but it's definitely a part of the equation, and one that's definitely overlooked.

the low thinking work still exists in housekeeping tasks but those are non promotable and seen as wasting time/skill... so people shy away from doing these. Those are also the things managers may tell you to delegate to manage an impossible workload, effectively removing downtime from you and leaving you with 40h of high effort/intensity work.

this post seems to mix some valid points and some completely bonkers unrelated things, like the assumption that somehow the US is in stagflation using a graph truncated at data from 2023. Not really explaining why stagflation would cause burnout anyway.

And while I agree with the idea that the society does not pay enough attention to burnout, the article offers no explanation of why he think it's a tsunami, beyond "three people I don't know quit suddenly" (sic).

The article says "everyday life is much harder now, and getting harder". That may be, but there's no proof this is causing more burnout.

One big trigger for burnout is if you cannot answer the question "why do I work?" any more. One of the big whys was that working hard allows you to buy a house/appartment which allows you to maintain your standard of living in retirement. But this isn't true any more due to the declining purchasing power of salaries. Why should I be stressed out in my job if this only allows me to rent an apartment that i have to give up as soon as I stop working?

I got two kids that will be going to college in about 5 years. My wife and I haves saved as best we could all their lives but it’s still a bill ranging from 250k to maybe a half million dollars coming due on top of all the other bills and retirement savings. For many, “burnout” is just not an option.

Not to be rude, but one divorce could wipe out all that you had saved. Then burnout might be a better option for your kids when it comes time to filling out FAFSA.

I'm knocking on wood. I don't want what happened to me to happen to you.

As another parent, that sounds like a frightening financial burden :( So, $125k-$250k for each child? Is that the going rate in USA now? for comparison , here in UK its gone up lots but 3 years at university would cost approx £30k in tuition, plus maybe £40k in living costs that could be largely avoided by staying at home and going to college locally. Which can be mostly borrowed, and paid back as an extra 9% in tax on earning above a certain amount after graduation. Even with these figures, my wife and I will still encourage our kids to look hard for decent apprenticeships, consider Open University, possibly work part-time and study part-time, to avoid having such a big debt, especially given cost of housing etc. Kinda wonder whether your figures make it worth going to college at all? 20 years ago I met an American who had 6 figure debt from law school and was doing a job at a law firm that she disliked in order to pay off the huge loan so that after that she could then do what she wanted which would pay much less....

Yeah, if I had kids I'd go back to france for studying costs: 175 euros per bachelor year; 250 euros per Master year; 618 euros per (public) engineering school year* ; 391 euros per Doctorate year... Cost of life depends on the city but you can get financial help with it if parents are low income, so there is no reason to burn out to pay for tuition there... it has other downsides mind you but education is still solid in 24-25.

I agree, and I suspect most people are just engaging with the title more than its actual contents. To me this reads as a bit perma-bear/conspiracy theory inspired. The article is lacking in pretty much any evidence to support its claims besides the FRED graph of disability claims.

Also I'm pretty sure that graph is showing almost the opposite of what they're saying it shows. The number of non-participants (of working age) in the US labor force has actually been very static since June 2020, following a sustained jump during early COVID: [0]. The number of participants has been increasing steadily since then: [1].

The graph [2] shows the number of people in the labor force with a disability so combined with graphs 0 and 1 I'm pretty sure it's showing that people with disabilities are participating more in the labor force and/or that more working people are getting diagnosed with conditions (like ADHD) that qualify as disabilities (if I had to guess, likely because of telemedicine taking off in 2020). It does not show non-participation in the labor force due to disability like they imply.

[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS15000000

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CLF16OV

[2] https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2024/disability8-23a.png

Yeah the stagflation section was so weird that it made me discount the rest of the essay...

You can't demonstrate stagflation with just the inflation time series. That only demonstrates inflation. You need another time series, or a compound metric of some kind, to demonstrate stagnation alongside inflation.

I don't think any period in my working lifetime has been one of stagflation. We have had stagnation without inflation, and inflation without stagnation, but not both at once.

> The article says "everyday life is much harder now, and getting harder". That may be, but there's no proof this is causing more burnout.

The definition of burnout is a professional ailment caused by work conditions (inappropriate workload, lack of recognition, lack of support). Whatever happens in everyday life is a different problem. You can struggle in life and not be burnt out by work and vice versa.

> Burnout isn't well-studied or understood. It didn't even have a name when I first burned out in the 1980s.

Check Wikipedia: “Staff Burnout: Job Stress in the Human Services” was published in 1980, and the Maslach Burnout Inventory was published in 1982.

> We don't bother collecting data on why people quit, or why people burn out, or what conditions eventually break them.

A quick search of academic literature shows this is not true.

And yet, the stakes feel so much higher and the problem more immediate

Maybe in academia, but I've never seen any kind of reflection or study in the workplace. Twice in my career I've witnessed an entire team rage quit on a manager at once. Twice! And I did not see management bother to investigate or reflect on what the problem was. In both cases the manager continued to not only be employed but rebuild their team as they saw fit.

Academia is where research happens.

Employers have no incentive to do research that would force them to spend more on employee wellness. I worked on enough team health surveys to know leadership has no interest in collecting feedback about the big known complaints that they aren't interested in addressing. They only want to hear about the small unimportant things that could help morale to cope with the big issues (unless they are forced to investigate serious workplace injuries, unsustainable churn/absenteeism or productivity issues)

That said employers/HR publish a lot of blog spam about how burnout is really due to employe's lack of self care.

First, I think mental problems discussed more than ever: Anxiety, autism, inability to focus and yes, burnout. The "only few see" simply isn't true.

Second, the article mixes in some adjacent topics, such as purchasing power. Why? I don't know, but it blows the amount of stuff the article would have to supplement way out of proportion, before even the core message (burnout) was discussed.

Third, I'm always amazed how many people think they are different. You're not. If you care for a family member (children, elderly, disabled..), commute 2400 miles and work 7 days a week, you will burn out. But it won't be a surprise to anyone but you.

What you need is sleep, friends and sports, same as any social animal inhabiting a very real, very physical body.

Fourth, I'm not sure what you want others to do. Instead of complaining about the suggestions, write down what you would have wanted.

Yeah, if this guy was working in the 1970s I'm not sure why he thinks he is supposed to miss the falling side of the wage parabola.

As other people have posted elsewhere in this, purchasing power and the economy is linked to the incentives that cause people to burn out. You keep pushing against the tide because you want that promotion or raise because costs go up over time. Or because you want to do something costly that you think will improve your life, such as having a child or moving somewhere or fixing an annoyance in your life.

Some people surely burn out because they're just obsessive, but many people, myself included, slide into it because "just 4 more months of this and I can afford X".

The opposite can also be true, you know it is a bad work situation and you are going to burn out but you can't afford to leave. Not that you want to stay, you don't even want that promotion anymore but that you can't go elsewhere. Besides, if alternative employers are equally bad anyway, you may as well burn out in a familiar place and not take on the extra stress of onboarding in a new role.

I burn out at a 6 figures flexible job, while my friends burn out at minimum wage jobs where they have to report bathroom breaks by the minute. How can I complain about my burnout-inducing work conditions?

> Burnout isn't well-studied or understood. It didn't even have a name when I first burned out in the 1980s. It's an amorphous topic because it covers such a wide range of human conditions and experiences.

I think this was labeled with the overused "nervous breakdown" in those times.

The concept of Ikigai is not well known in North America:

https://medium.com/@ikigai.consultancy/finding-ikigai-c1fc4c...

Where idealism and economics often change the balance of priorities over time for individuals. The fungible nature of the modern workforce has lead to a churn and burn culture for skilled labor at the board level.

People may land a position they worked for years structuring the opportunity, and only discover they fooled themselves into a career that makes them miserable.

People need to accept they will change careers around 5 times in the modern workforce. Also, the age of the middle class union factory worker having a 30 year career became a rarity in the 1980s.

My advice is to ensure one balances their own needs with the company needs, and abandon the illusion there is a perfect version of oneself in the future.

The "not caring" part is easy, as most projects get annoying after awhile. =3

I got burnt out at my last job working hard for them and my reward was being laid off and the whole team replaced. Fuck the rat race, we’re all killings ourselves and giving our lives so the rich can get richer.

This is what I learned in my career with couple of burnouts:

Look at the leadership

- do they brag about everything? Be a story teller, hard work and caring about product doesn't matter in such company. Try to get promoted faster by boasting your work publicly. Remember, in such companies people usually don't care about "fake" metrics you have created.

- do they try to dig deeper into problems and solve them? Enjoy working there, because if you can show them problems and offer your solutions, they will do their best to figure out which problem is most urgent to solve and help you. middle managers will inherit this behavior from upper management

> The Tsunami of Burnout Few See

Who in 2025 does NOT see the "tsunami of burnout"? It seems to me that everybody is talking about it since at least the stabilization (not "end") of the COVID pandemic.

I've only skimmed through the article, so apologies if I missed some important bit of info.

Employers generally refuse to openly discuss it with anyone who isn’t a retention risk, which made interviews unattended very weird when I would give perfectly honest answers to the candidate about “why is this position open?” (a question that most candidates don’t ask because they’re desperate for employment).

I have found that the psycho-social hazards model (popular in Australian workplaces) has had a real impact on my understanding of my own burnout.

There are a range of risk factors which, if realised in the workplace, result in an exponentially increased risk of harm to an employee. From my understanding, any workplace in which employees are routinely subjected to 2 of these hazards are required to develop and execute a plan to reduce the risks where practical.

The details of these risk factors may be found here: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safety-topic/managing-h...

What I learned from my burnout: “Hope is a zero-calorie meal”. You can keep going on hope and belief for a while, but eventually you need sustenance. And that’s physical and social: good food, natural settings, daylight, being part of a caring group and family/friends, social standing, etc..

I had a belief that I could work for hours in an unnatural room based on pure willpower. And I could for a while. But eventually, without real positive feedback, you collapse. And then your “willpower muscle” is exhausted. You can’t use it. It takes a long time, from small steps, to build that back.

> Those who haven't burned out / been broken have no way to understand the experience. They want to help, and suggest listening to soothing music, or taking a vacation to "recharge." They can't understand that to the person in the final stages of burnout, music is a distraction, and they have no more energy for a vacation than they have for work. Even planning a vacation is beyond their grasp, much less grinding through travel. They're too drained to enjoy anything that's proposed as "rejuvenating."

This is one of the most salient points to me.

When I was burnt out, I was a husk of a human being. I appeared to be a high-functioning, successful, positive-trajectory sort of guy. Inside I was quite literally dying.

Things that used to be fun, and I knew I liked, were almost painful. The energy it took to play with my kids and be happy with them was mentally and physically painful to spend. Activities like free diving which used to fill me with passion, wonder, energy, and joy became chores I actively avoided. I had endless excuses to do nothing but the absolute essentials. Keep the job, pay the bills, try to sleep, try to wake up, keep going.

I'm quite a bit better now. I opted for work which pays a lot less, but allows me to feel much more aligned with what I do, why I'm doing, who I do it with, etc. Had I not found that I think I'd still be better, but getting out of the work I was doing was a good way to expedite recovery.

Good luck to all of you experiencing this. You might have normalized it and begun to feel trapped, but I promise there's a real life you can enjoy on the other side of it.

This reminds me of the immense NPR story "Unfit for Work", from back in 2013ish, about the increasing number of Americans opting out of the workforce and instead relying on disability: https://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Has there ever been a followup to this reporting? I'd be really interested to understand if this trend is still happening, and if so, why.

The tsunami of burnout may be coming - but will it really matter to those creating it? We’re actively moving towards cheaper labor markets and replacing jobs with automation. It seems that the only way to get your piece of the pie in this market is if you find something that you can solve or do cheaper. Cheaper often means replacing and displacing current workers. Great benefit to the company and stockholders, not so much to society. Everything is driven by profit for those who already have more than they need.

>> The tsunami of burnout may be coming - but will it really matter to those creating it?

Companies used to be at the mercy of workers, we no longer are. The moment employees get out of line, work starts to shift to H1B workers who are too afraid to complain. If they start complaining, work then shifts to offshore resources. You can pay 1/3 of the wage and have 2 offshore workers and have contingencies.

The onshore workers see this and fall into line, especially H1Bs.

Work is sufficiently granular and microservice-ififed that you can swap people in and out. The vice keeps tightening.

You speak the truth. I work for a 100k employee multinational company and “we” just started entered the third phase- replacing US based employees with offshore alternatives. India and Brazil. I’m still waiting what’s coming next.

That only works in scenarios where competency is superfluous.

Very familiar story. I'm 9months into quitting my consulting career after 10 years. Relatively long hours, weekend work, and lots of travel. The first few years were great, lots of learning, lots of smart people to work with, smart leadership, interesting and even innovative work.

But then it just got boring AND exhausting. The leadership became uninspired and replaced by the classic sleazy sales persona, the work became mundane, and the constant 4-6month cycle of new clients began to overlap as I went higher up and managed more projects/focused more on sales.

I haven't figured out what I'm gonna do next, frankly the networking burned me out so much I am very averse to it. And ironically I became quite good at it (at least relative to where I started).

I'm booking my first intro chat with someone next week, and already my stomach is turning thinking about scheduling it. I thought I was ready but maybe not...at the same time, life ain't free.

Good luck. I hope whatever you do now is different enough that it won't burn you out in the same way.

I would suspect the physiological base of burnout is the depletion of mainly B vitamins in the brain. When you look at the Krebs cycle, the main energetic reaction in every cell, B vitamins play crucial role whether they act as catalysts of enzymes (B1, B2), provide electron transport (B2/B3 to FAD/NAD+) or are required by sub-processes of the cycle (B5, B7, B12). Being under constant stress is known to deplete B vitamins and at some point their lowered availability starts inhibiting higher cognitive tasks in favor of just survival. Diagnosing this is problematic as serum levels don't tell much about tissue levels.

Yes, it looks like he did miss out on the physiological parts of what might contribute to a burnout.

> All these experiences are viewed through the lens of the mental health industry which is blind to the systemic nature of stress and pressure, and so the "fixes" are medications (...), in other words, the symptoms, not the cause.

Oh, they know, but what else are they going to do? Therapists know that "you should quit your job" is useless advice for 90% of their patients. And so they'll treat the symptoms first to keep their patients from jumping off a bridge while working slowly towards fixing the root cause.

Not everyone is out to get you.

This really resonated with me:

> Even planning a vacation is beyond their grasp, much less grinding through travel. They're too drained to enjoy anything that's proposed as "rejuvenating."

You can't poison yourself 50 weeks out of the year then expect things to be fine because you took a two-week break.

I believe that burnout exists because of the dissonance between doing-what-you-want and doing-what-you-can. If you can't do what you want, then do what you can and come to some sensible accommodation between the two. If that's not possible, perhaps you can want something else, and do whatever that is. It is a conscious decision, and it's positive, at least in the sense that it's your decision. If you can't square the circle, you must pick either a square or a circle. It's just not possible to have both when they're so out of harmony. Don't be afraid to hit the eject button and reset your want/can compass.

> quitting is a last-ditch effort at self-preservation.

Can you imagine a red cross nurse suffering from burn out? She may work for food and her life may be hard by most standards, but what she does is in harmony with her true self, and this gives her energy and inner peace. A highly paid corporate worker, on the other hand, may do something that's against his principles, something that doesn't harmonize with his true self, and he has to forcefully take bits of energy from his soul and sell it. This is what drains him and leads to burnout.

While not usually applied to everyday white collar workers, you seem to be hinting at what is called "moral injury"

Typically associated with the military and with healthcare professionals who go into their fields with good intentions, but then have to sacrifice on those for various (typically capitalistic or even arbitrary) reasons.

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

My view on this is more metaphysical. We have that inner self in us, that is the source of all life, meaning and happiness, and there's our persona in which our inner self is only dimly manifested. The right cause makes our inner self manifest a bit more fully and that feels like an uplifting influx of energy in our persona. On the other hand, when our persona does something wrong or meaningless, it stops receiving that energy as our inner self withdraws attention awaiting better opportunities to invest itself.

Thank you for posting this. It manages to capture how I’m feeling quite well. It has made me realize I need to make some adjustments to my work and life.

Dream on. If you feel like making "same adjustments", save up for about 1 year vacation ASAP. You won't be able to do anything once it hits you.

The problem is, what do you do once you spend up all your savings on a 1 year vacation? You have to go back, eventually, and it will happen again. Plus, the job market is really tough (isn't it always?) and there are a lot of people out of work and looking for jobs, it doesn't always make sense to voluntarily join that cohort once all your money has been spent.

Thank you for this. It’s nice to feel not alone.

This resonated with me since his description of the situation exactly matches what I have been experiencing the past few months

Skimmed it. The constant switching from bold to not bold for some reason makes the article not feel genuine or some thing like that. Like an ad, my attention is constantly being redirected.

I hate this contant emphasizing with a burning passion; even some newspapers do it. It's like trying to hold a conversation with someone that shouts the important bits to your face.

https://pypi.org/project/html2text/ has --ignore-emphasis which drops bold and italics and cleanses this pest.

This seems like the inevitable result of optimizing for GDP instead of happiness index.

GDP is mega gamed anyway.

Both those indexes are complete frauds. Believe your eyes and your soul instead of some fake numbers from the rulers. Or at least believe your wallet, if you are more cynical than emotional.

Happiness is also problematic as it tends toward the shallow and unsatisfying.

Lots of comments here not even bothering to read the OP article on the true sources of burnout. Cute advice on how to cope with it but no thought on what systemic causes were. It’s like helping fellow miners cope with lung disease rather than think if there’s a better power source than hand mined coal.

I'm burned out currently so I chose a remote job for lower pay to allow me to reflect and recover... But unfortunately this job isn't as 'low stress' as I hoped and I don't seem to be getting out of this burned out state... I need to believe that the system has been fixed before I can recover from burnout. I'm not seeing any light at the end of the tunnel so AFAIK, my industry (Tech) is just a deep, dark cave... I don't want to go deeper in there only to end up meeting the beast at the bottom!

I'm thinking of changing industry away from tech sector but I wonder if every industry is like this or will become the same by the time I finish reskilling?

The only solution I see right now is to just not care about jobs or career. Just coast along, do the bare minimum to get paid, play internal politics... I hate the way I'm turning out and wasting all my skills and energy doing BS but it's the most efficient use of my time given the current state of things.

Based on the current situation, if I can preserve my sanity until retirement, that would be an achievement. That's what I'm aiming for at the moment... And the only way to achieve that is to be totally detached and apathetic towards anything career-related.

Working remote (especially if this is your first time) comes with its own set of stresses and challenges. It took me 1-2 years to adapt when I started. Some of the challenges may occur in any wfh position.

>>I wonder if every industry is like this

You can find out by asking people in other industries. Either ask your friends, or people at a general networking event. They'll be happy to talk about themselves and their challenges. No need to reskill in order to find out firsthand.

You're on the right path, despite it feeling bad. Good luck.

Thanks. I'm considering getting into cyber-security. It's disappointing because I much prefer building stuff than trying to break stuff but the way the tech industry is going, I think there is a lot more money to be made in finding problems than coming up with solutions. Nobody seems to be interested in preventing problems but everyone will gladly pay up to compensate for their neglect.

Is it possible that some of the reported cases of burn-out are actually long covid? 2.3% of U.S. adults have "activity-limiting long COVID" as of 2024.[1] It could certainly explain part of the uptick in applications for disability.

[1] https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/about-8-us-adults-have-e...

It is due to vaccine injuries. This has been studied and is known, but the topic is that people in "polite society" do not want to talk about it.

For more information, please see "Cause Unknown": The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 [1] by Ed Dowd. It argued convincingly.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Cause-Epidemic-Sudden-Childrens-Defen...

> We're experiencing stagflation, and it may well just be getting started. If history is any guide, costs can continue to rise for quite some time as the purchasing power of wages erodes and asset bubbles deflate. As noted in a previous post, depending on financial fentanyl to keep everything glued together is risky, because we can't tell if the dose is fatal until it's too late.

This is giving me permabear vibes. The US is not experiencing stagflation. Real (inflation adjusted) gdp per capita is growing at 2%. Inflation over the last year was 2.7% and gdp growth and the economy grew substantially faster than that.

> That the purchasing power of my wages in the 1970s as an apprentice carpenter exceeded almost all the rest of my decades of labor should ring alarm bells.

There it is. For what it's worth this probably is true to an extent (eg for certain kinds of goods and services), just like the growth of economy, but that's because relative incomes and relative costs have changed substantially since then. Some jobs' wages (software engineer) grew faster than inflation, others (a lot of entry level blue collar ones) didn't. Some costs (rent, healthcare) rose faster than average inflation, others (eg televisions) didn't.

FWIW the nominal topic of burnout is intriguing to me but I think this kind of perma-recession/perma-bear pop-econ, "what happened in 1971" stuff is really overplayed and crackpotty. There is no "narrative control machinery". I think it's very human to extrapolate individual malaise to society as a whole, and you see it all the time on the Internet, but most people don't perceive society the same way a deeply depressed or burnt out person does.

> This is giving me permabear vibes.

I’ve been reading Charles High Smith for at least 15 years. He’s definitely a permabear. Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Permabears do sometimes make good points but being permanent bears they're almost always wrong in aggregate, because they only ever have the same economic perspective, which happens to be the opposite of how things have played out (at least in the US) for almost one hundred years now.

To square that circle usually they have to turn to conspiracy theories, or dabble in economics just deep enough to skew it as unsustainable but not so deep that they understand how it actually works (see quantitative easing, FRB, "petrodollar", etc.).

Maybe (definitely) I've just spent too much time on the Internet because to me the whole "secret recession" stuff is just tired and wrong at this point. It's been over 15 years since the GFC. This kind of perspective feels stuck in the 2012 "ugh I got a college degree and now I work in a restaurant" Internet, when there have actually been several employment/growth booms since then.

> There is no "narrative control machinery".

You've worked at Microsoft and Google, and still say this? /smh

I've worked at a much smaller multi-national, and during their growth from ~6000 to ~23000, the internal spin-doctoring skyrocketed. Lying internally had become so important that they created new leadership positions for it.

> I think it's very human to extrapolate individual malaise to society as a whole [...] most people don't perceive society the same way a deeply depressed or burnt out person does

You're just confirming what the article says: "Those who haven't burned out / been broken have no way to understand the experience".

Meaninglessness at work is rampant. (Have you seen r/antiwork? or read David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs?) And society is wholly engineered to keep us busy, and to keep fleecing us, sheep.

The kind of job where you find enough meaning such that you deem society tolerable is the exception, not the norm.

Spin doctoring at a big corporate is very different from what the author is referring to, which sounds like a conspiracy theory that economists, their data, and influential business people are lying to us about the economy.

Even the biggest, richest companies that everybody wants to work for are clumsy and just generally awful at spin-doctoring. It's usually only a handful (like 5 or less) of people at the top doing it, it's usually obvious, and in the worst cases people generally reframe things and omit/hide data rather than tell blatant lies or commit actual fraud. You're right that I did see that up close, coming from real human beings.

That's why I find it laughably absurd to think that hundreds of rank-and-file economists and hundreds of thousands of analysts, government workers, investors, business owners, and politicians (on both sides) could deceptively pull off some smoke-and-mirrors charade for decades on the actual state of the economy. And even more absurd is that this scheme is unravelling because burnt out people are musing on the Internet about how much they hate their job and work in general, rather than actual economists/investors/analysts examining the numbers and finding a discrepancy.

I agree that unfulfilling work is rampant but this conspiratorial framing of "my job sucks" is just crazy. There is no secret puppetmaster engineering society to keep you working a bad job. Sometimes your job just sucks. And the people with influential positions in society are just trying to do their job (or the one they want next) and go home too, they're not hyper-competent double agents working night and day to make sure redditors don't get too close to uncovering it all.

I'm not completely certain where GP is coming from, but it's not lying if they believe their own bullshit.

And in my country you can't even take medical leave for burnout.

Which country is that? Is that common among countries?

.ro

In France expect at least one year before getting adult disabilities (AAH), and you can only ask after getting a medical diagnostic which can take as long.

But if you get AAH, you are reimbursed for the time between when you asked for it and the first payment. Yet that means probably living without any resources for one year or so.

It’s a feature. Less white collar workers are needed because of AI. Instead of trying to fit in where culture is designed for attrition, find out what humans need and build something you own, using AI if you have to.

AI is the same as any other hype cycle, and creating ML algorithms is boring monotonous work.

Neuromorphic computing on the other hand is very interesting, as it gets into ambiguous state resolution rather than layered weighting.

The idea AI could even replace a chickens cognitive performance in laughable. =3

>it gets into ambiguous state resolution I didn’t know that about neuromorphic computing. Do you have a link that says more?

It is a class of engineering that often focuses on biomimicry, neurology, and evolutionary biology in some projects.

I would recommend looking around at the various approaches. Some are less ridiculous than others, and don't need a power generation plant to run the devices.

Best of luck, =3

I have been through the same process recently on my job.I was so much frustrated that I just wanted to quit. I didn't even knew what will happen afterwards, you keep on trying your level best and yet seems nothing is going to work out for you. By luck my health went down because of fever. I had got a week break. Then I got fine. But these words the author mentioned are right in each sense.

Vulgarly unrelated to the subject — is anyone able to get a scrollbar to appear on this page on mobile? I kept reading and was completely unable to tell how long of a time commitment this read will be and whether I should continue or read it later.

How did we manage to lose perfectly good scrollbars in this race for colonization of mars and AI singularity?

Burnout is partially a 'new' thing because we have the luxury of actually feeling it. I imagine in older times people definitely were burnt out, but they didn't have the privilege of walking off that job, leaving during lunch, quitting spontaneously etc.

I'd like to throw an alternative perspective in here: in olden times it was a clearer us-vs-them. The peasants knew that the lord sucked and would support each other against him. The miners knew that management was awful. There would be that group support. Plus, they'd have more sources of meaning outside their jobs.

Today, everything is set up for workers to pretend like they're company owners (without real Shares or protection from the downsides of being an employee).

Today, the boss has less control over the physical body, but more control over the story that workers tell themselves.

The system rewards those who support it regardless what the system is. It does so by whatever means available.

Our system does measure useful deeds and rewards them ( which is great) but measurements have become the goal rather than that what we attempt to measure.

Looking at the hacker news posts from this source is making my blood pump

Even if we disagree, his takes offer decent fodder for discussion.

I am hesitant to believe anything I see from this website. The author shows no related qualifications (e.g. economics), and the economics here are heterodox. This post feels like mostly conspiracy theories ("the system is against us, the system is broken, they are controlling the narratives!"), which is all well and fine if it makes you feel better, but should not be taken as factual nor credible information.

By definition, they’re right, Madroeconomics and Unemployment calculations in particular specifically exclude quality of life concerns, centering around mathematical equations that are defined to promote cancerous growth (“in a rational economy, everyone tries to maximize their earnings”) while excluding concerns such as burnout. The author’s point is that it is forbidden to discuss these two concepts in the same breath, macroeconomics and burnout, even though they are intrinsically linked. The author’s point is well-demonstrated by various comments in our discussion: rather than considering the author’s lens and reinterpreting one’s worldview through it experimentally, I see several comments saying ‘don’t listen to anything they say’, ‘how can they make such an incomplete argument without a masters thesis of proof backing it’, and so on. Point to the author for that; “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.” is mysteriously and glaringly absent here, and they rather called it.

Thank you.

In fairness, economics is often ideological. Some of the most mainstream economists are controversial political figures. Krugman famously wrote opinion pieces for the NYT.

It's terribly sad to see people in the thread rationalising 'giving work all' and so on.

My advice is to start meeting other people and take up some activity that is more fun than work. If your local jurisdiction allows exploitation that makes this hard or impossible then you ought to flee this tyranny.

Could you link 3 the comments of people in this thread who are rationalizing “giving work all”?

Here's a few.

"What helped was finding a work situation where I could give my all and not feel taken advantage of."

"I tottaly agree with this sentiment. Still looking for the right balance, but half assing things for me doesn't result in feeling better.

"Finding the unicorn job isn't the right thing to predicate your happiness on. One thing I like the idea of and am just starting to try is reminding myself why I'm doing the job. What are my bigger goals that it is contributing towards? I know we all know this at some level, but I think it can help to remind ourselves there is a purpose/meaning to why we do our jobs, even if we don't intrinsically get meaning from them."

"My takeaway from your comment is that you should not be an employee; you should be a business owner. That way you can give your all and feel great about it because it will also (hopefully) lead to better and directly measurable outcomes."

"But I sorely miss not being 100% dedicated. What I do for work has always been a big part of my identity. And half-assing something feels like not being true to myself."

>the narrative control Happy Story is: it's your problem, not the system's problem

This is where I got off the bus. Yes, I agree there are problems. Yes, I agree that individuals are not problematic or wrong for finding institutions intolerable. However, it is a hard no from me on the conclusion. Personifying the "system" is misleading.

>We're trained to tell ourselves we can do it, that sustained super-human effort is within everyone's reach, "just do it." This is the core cheerleader narrative of the Village of Happy People: we can all overcome any obstacle if we just try harder. That the end-game of trying harder is collapse is taboo.

It is still a problem for individuals to solve. We all have to find our own solutions. Broken institutions need to be fixed by individuals or individuals need to find ways to work outside of the existing institutions. As changing larger institutions is a problem beyond my direct control, I've focused on doing my own thing.

The hard work of being an entrepreneur is one option. You don't have to frame it within the grandiose expectations of becoming fabulously wealthy. Simply living on your own terms and thriving outside of the institutions you dislike is a victory unto itself.

There's no magic bullet for the process. Hard work, creative approaches and dogged iteration will not fit into some, "one weird trick to get rich quick" paradigm. The expectation is misplaced. Get rich or be a "wage slave" are both false alternatives. You are sure to burnout if you frame your expectations around them.

Sure, we all burn-out, but if you want results, you have to pick yourself back up and go again. I'm not equipped to judge if this is "fair", but what are the alternatives? Quitting is a guaranteed way to fail. Necessity is the mother of invention.

The massive uptick in disabilities is due to vaccine injuries. This has been studied and is known, but the topic is such that people in "polite society" do not want to discuss it.

For more information, please see "Cause Unknown": The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022 [1] by Ed Dowd. It is argued convincingly.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Cause-Epidemic-Sudden-Childrens-Defen...

Likely one of the earthquakes in this tsunami is Twitter firing 80% of employees and then coming out of it financially better.

If Jason Fried did it, people would laugh it off as an outlier, but the richest man in the world did, and so he's a genius and every other CEO will try out the same magic idea and hope for the same improvement. This is... going to lead to a tsunami of some kind.

financially better? source?

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