I am burning out
medium.com
medium.com
We live in an economy where if you're not putting in those extra unpaid hours you're not considered an asset to your employer and you will be disposed of. An economy where 17 old kids can not only flip burgers, they can code and code for a hell of a lot cheaper/are more willing to sleep at work to meet a deadline.
Burning out is when you go to work, come home to freelance, go to work 7 days of the week with inconsistent hours, not getting to spend time with your family, not getting to go to the farmers markets or watch movies with your wife. It's going to bed at 2am working and waking at 6am to go to work, it's feeling like you're constantly working, constantly checking emails all for the same salary.
If your work is comprised of open source, you at least have a way out. Me? I have no way out. I work on my personal projects in between freelancing and my actual job hoping that maybe, just maybe, all of this stress, finishing work at 10pm, having to come in for weekends without being paid extra and work will mean something one day. Hoping that all of this effort will mean that one day I too, can hire multiple people to do the work currently I as one person am doing.
You don't sound burnt out, you sound bitter that nobody is using your work, that's entitlement, not feeling like you're so deep in work you have no way out which is being burnt out. I am sorry to sound so aggressive and angry, but I am burning out and there's nothing I can do about it.
Whoa.
She wants you, not "nice things". Neglecting her in order to make money to buy her things is a Very Bad Idea, because you've made yourself fungible
Plus, she does have expensive taste...
Stop working unpaid overtime. If that gets you fired, so be it, but it's better than working yourself to death.
Your family would rather be poor than not be able to spend time with you
Assuming you're a decent developer you can get another job easily. If you seriously can't afford to not work 18 hours a day for a few weeks, then consider bankruptcy.
I don't contest what you say, but getting out of these life situations isn't as easy as you put it either. There's more to it than meets the eye, it's a little more involved than "people should get off their seats and make life changes" and so, the best thing would be to show some human empathy to these people.
It needs to be said and heard more often. So, thanks for writing it.
> I’m hurt you didn’t use my journal tool.
> I’m hurt (so few of) you use my plugin loading library.
This is entitlement, not burn-out.
Sure, that's not healthy, but it's also somewhat human nature: we want to be wanted.
And yes, when we are not (either by people not using our libraries, not being able to find a romantic partner, etc.) it hurts. And yes, it could cause burn-out.
So, I disagree that it's "entitlement", or even if it is, I feel it's something a lot of us can understand even outside of programming.
We all want to be wanted. Those that don't are usually quite impressive people.
Sometimes it does hurt- mainly when you explain why what you're doing is better (or at least attempt to in objective terms) and someone still uses "the big thing". As an ops guy for a big startup, even though I get that it still kinda sucks.
But if it's causing you to feel burnt out you're taking this too seriously.
> Releasing FOSS is generally at least partially ego-driven: we want to write something that people use and love and talk about.
I think this is self regulating. Those projects rarely take off, because there's not enough motivation to be awesome.
The projects that get traction are the ones the author HAS to build to see if it'll even work.
Then start off with something people are already using and improve that rather than to re-invent the wheel in some interesting way and then to be disappointed when nobody uses your particular wheel.
That's a bit like giving tips on how to cook a healthy meal to an anorexic who tells you she's really having trouble eating enough.
Yes, we're technically correct. No, it's not really helping anyone.
Put another way, I'd say that even a spoiled rich valley girl who tries too hard to be the light of the party at too many social events can suffer from a valid burnout.
I don't have as much sympathy for her as I would for the guy that burns himself out trying to earn enough money to fund his daughter's cancer treatment, but that's another matter entirely ;)
But telling people to just stick to established open source projects and be content with small contributions is not the solution either: first this would probably not be an interesting activity for those people and second participating in a successful OS project is by no means a protection from this kind of rejection or other kinds of grief. The "solution" here is clearly to "suck it up and move on", but I see how that can be difficult.
I'm afraid the only real advice to give here would be for developers not to get too invested in their pet projects because, like startups, most of them will never be of any interest to anyone. To all the people who are currently doing such projects, I'd say: keep doing it as long as it's fun, but not a second longer. Learn to let go.
This person clearly went on beyond that point.
The trick, as you say, is learning to let go. Accept that you'll have other ideas, and maybe one of them will gain more traction. In the course of a long career, maybe even one of those old projects will come back to life because of a shifting context or because working on other things inspired that one extra twist that makes it ten times more valuable. Setting something aside is not the same as throwing it away, and every good developer I know has dozens of ideas that they've set aside. You never know which one will be useful again some day.
Everybody is entitled to be recognized and respected.
Your comment made me angry that you missed so clearly the likelihood of this person being in a fragile situation. Hey, I have Aspergers too you know, there is no excuse to tell other people how they think they feel. It makes them feel ignored and under recognized. Basic human dignity: you recognize the efforts of others.
I'd say recognition for minor things is the lifeblood of society without money. Everybody is entitled to recognition.
And if you write FOSS just to hear the roar of the appreciative crowd then that is your problem all long. Remember the adage to "scratch an itch" whether OR NOT anyone else finds it useful.
Is everyone who believes that correct? Certainly not, but that's not the point. The point is that sometimes it's about idealism, not ego. People like Jacques might deny others the privilege of reinventing the wheel (even as they gained their own notoriety by exercising that privilege themselves) but that's really how every superior alternative has to start. Linux, HTML/HTTP, every database (SQL or otherwise) of the last twenty years, Hadoop - all are or contain reinvented wheels, and IMO at least one of those suffers by comparison to "reinvented" alternatives. The literal wheel itself has been reinvented a couple of times, from rolling logs to axles and bearings and differentials and aerodynamic shapes designed in wind tunnels.
One man's reinvention is another's creative destruction, and it often has nothing to do with ego. It's not entitlement to feel pain from banging your mind against some mad buggers' walls.
Because it's better. That belief might be incorrect the vast majority of the time and/or in this specific case, but I for one am reluctant to quash that kind of enthusiasm. It's the fuel of progress, even if some (most?) of it is wasted. The disappointment and frustration of seeing "inferior" alternatives prevail are inseparable from the drive to create a better one. It's not about "owing" anything. For many people, it's about wanting to make the (technical) world a better place, being thwarted, and seeing the community as a whole diminished as a result.
Maybe some people don't feel that kind of passion themselves. Maybe they think emotion and idealism have no place in computing, though if that were the case I doubt we'd see so many flame wars. Maybe they've never had an idea worth getting that attached to, though I doubt that's a common factor in a forum for entrepreneurs. Maybe some people are in it for the ego boost themselves, and can't imagine others being in it for another reason. Whatever the explanation, the fact remains that some people do get invested in an idea for reasons besides ego, and it's good for them to do so.
Community, documentation are other metrics that matter a lot when choosing an open source solution.
If it weren't for that then everybody would be using Haskell or Clojure, those are so much better (at least, so I keep hearing) and yet the reality is different.
Beside the point. If your goal is to "beat" others (revealing choice of words) and either make more money or gain more recognition then sure, but not every piece of software is motivated by those goals. Somebody has to make the "better" even if they're not the ones to benefit, and many are fine with that. That's particularly true in open source.
Assuming a particular motivation for the OP, and then insulting them based on that assumption, is just wrong. In fact, I think some might even see it as hitting someone when they're down - i.e. bullying. People who've gained some prominence in the community should try to do better.
If your motivation is to improve the world the world does not owe you anything.
I would suggest to OP to try to find a job where he is encouraged to release things he builds for that product FOSS, so that even if he doesn't find success in the popularity of it, hell, at least it means a lot at his day job and he has some skrill to show for it.
Did you not just pretty much describe the perfect weekend? I'm not sure you're burning out, I think you're realising what life is really about.
I totally understand Calvin.
"कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते संगोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥"
(You have the right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the actions. Do not let the fruit be the purpose of your actions, and therefore you won’t be attached to not doing your duty.)
Nowadays we have github, anyone can link to your Yet-Another-Something library written in javascript and boom, at least you have one user. But in the past there was nothing like that. We'd have to pray for someone to find the download link in our sourceforge project, get to download and compile it.
At the end of the day, however, you have a job, a wife and a son. Unknown people using your open-source software should be the least of your concerns.
>> At the end of the day, however, you have a job, a wife and a son. Unknown people using your open-source software should be the least of your concerns.
++10.
So is the author wallowing in pity or depression?
As a long time coder, most of my work is no longer in use. Many of my current internal projects at work are only in use by me or a small group of people, enough though they could help hundreds of others (clients, coworkers).
And code is never done. I have dozens of projects in various states of completeness. Even the code in production isn't "truly finished", but it works well enough and has passed review.
I'm going to work on a few other OSS projects that may never be seen by a handful of folks. That's fine. I don't want fame, I like solving problems and helping others.
Deciding to leave my computer at work and spend a few days without a computer at home, I've started reading again. I look forward to those free hours where I can be away from a computer and reading a book in bed.
Sometimes it's good to just take a break from the glowing box. I've got a general rule: If I have time to chat on irc, I have time to read a book and relax away from a computer.
So here's a small list of activities that have kept me semi-sane through the years: Body building, hiking, reading, gardening, ren fairs, martial arts, shooting sports, cooking, ham radio, traveling, writing, robotics, public service, building, boating and dinner parties.
Fix a bug in rails[1] or django[2] (Pretty sure I saw you're a python guy).
Fix some of the hilarious problems with Bower[3] (Saw some js too).
There's an entire world of awesome problems to solve. Go solve them.
[1]: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues [2]: https://github.com/django/django/issues [3]: https://github.com/twitter/bower/issues
The issue was reopened 5 weeks ago so hopefully it resolves well :/
rearrange life, priorities things you like to do. Fuck the other stuff. Say no to people, say no to "must do" things.
Stop coding, building whatever. Help your son, go traveling, read a fantasy book, whatever.
And this is how you avoid burning out and improve your life quality.
Some relatives of mine, in Europe, have taken sick days, up to six months from work stress. They were on verge of burning out. They still got income. Also, employee don't need to know, why are you sick. It is private matter between you and your doctor.
I find myself resentful of my company that got us into a death march project that ended months ago.
When I write code, I don't feel any of the passion that I used to feel.
I try to improve the quality of codebase, but always give up in the face of the poorly written mass of code we sell as a product.
I find it hard to care about the product.
I think I am burned out.
:-)
and a github account: https://github.com/ironfroggy
If he's an entrepreneur then it's even more dire than burnout. His business is most likely in trouble too.
Entrepreneurs have to walk a fine line between being local optimisers or opportunity creators. Unfortunately, many technical entrepreneurs find it comforting to hunker down and code within strict given parameters - often ignoring the bigger picture with questions like "is it worth it?". As long as geeks are given a problem to solve, they remain focused. This is deadly if you're the geek running your own business.
Heck, even if you're not an entrepreneur, it's always good to ask the "is it worth it" questions regularly.
Once I realized that, I stopped worrying and just decided to build stuff for me. And if anyone else wanted it, neat.
Burn-out is what happens when
a) you keep pushing yourself, you've approached your limits but want more so keep pushing further
b) you've been operating at your limit for a long time and something happens that multiplies the amount of effort required to get those results (downsizing, personal illness, illness in the family, hostile work atmosphere.)
In general it's about having reached your limits and not accepting them.
If you're afraid about your long term prospects ... it'll actually teach you to work smarter, not harder, possible making you orders of magnitude more efficient.
I was burned out/severely depressed at one point, and it's obvious that the author needs to talk to a professional about the way he's coping with stress and expectations. If you're feeling like the author of this blog post, you need to take a good look at your goals in life. I've experienced this myself, and it's a tough situation to be in. Seems like a lot of hacker types are blind to this.
[Edit: Bonus point about your remark about working smarter. I get better results now than when I pushed myself to the beaking point, while using what feels like half the effort. It took some years to get there, though].
But if you're building tools for yourself, and documenting for yourself, because you have an actual need for these things, then regardless of what others do with them, you'll be happy because you have tools that make your life easier.
Do the bare minimum for yourself that makes your life easier. If other people want to use it, then start building from there. But don't kill yourself trying to build stuff you think will stroke your ego. Programming is probably the worst tool you could use to solve that problem ;)
Like the other comment mentioned, go be with your family and find a hobby that you actually want to do and not worry about what some other random person does or does not do.
I can tell your grammar comprehension is starting to burn out already...