How to Burn Out Programming

That'd be pretty close to the top of my list.

A quick 2-3 mile jog around the neighborhood can help get me out of work-related funks. (I work at a home office, though, so it's easier for me to say "fuck it" and go do something sweaty in the middle of the day...)

My theory is that, since the only real item on your jogging to-do list is to put one foot in front of the other, your brain is freed up a bit to wander. Which is helped by the light stimulus of the changing environment around you. And this brain wandering helps shake out cobwebs and generally make you feel like a free individual again.

And, of course, it gives you an energy boost, which helps with the simple exhaustion side of things.

How to Burn Out Programming:

1) Do it too much for too long while being under stress. The same way you burn out doing anything.

2) See #1

I do agree with some of the points laid out in the post, but disagree with #2 and #4.

#2 ("Have a negative attitude toward everything") is a bad thing for team morale and should be avoided but I don't believe it has anything to do with burnout.

#4 ("Switch jobs often") assumes a very idealized world. The vast majority of jobs are nothing like PhD programs and you have very little freedom to dig deep into a problem unless the problem directly involves revenue generation. I've had to quit a couple of jobs due to the fact that staying there maintaining the same old code base without really expanding functionality or otherwise flexing my "programming muscles" would have been what resulted in my burnout. Part of my issue with this one might be the lack of definition for "often". Obviously if you are switching jobs every 6 months to a year that's not great, but the reality of many modern software companies is that keeping good developers engaged with their job 3-5 or so years in requires very enlightened management, which is rare now.

#4 also assumes that as developers it is naturally our goal to become managers and directors. Personally I have zero interest in doing either of those jobs. And I don't think good developers really have to try that hard to prove themselves at new jobs, in my experience it is pretty obvious to other good developers pretty quickly when someone else is good.

Also definitely don't exercise and always eat at your desk.

The reality is that software is very complex and so are the humans thinking it up; if they want working stuff in the end, things are done when they are done. And they cost a lot and you are going to not like your the code you wrote after you wrote it and there might be better tools etc. Who cares? Only you unfortunately and if you let that go you'll have happy clients and you'll be happy yourself.

Er, no.

Let's look at the reasons he offers.

"Growing in the company (developer -> manager -> director)" Yes. You can become master and commander of how to get along and make a good impression on one bunch of people. Or you can learn from many. Guess which one is going to help you once the company lays you off.

"Gaining an expertise in a specific area. Considering it takes 4-6 years for a PhD student to get their PhD, that's a lot of time you need for learnin." You become an expert in a technical field by using some piece of tech in many different situations. In the vast majority of job-related situations, whatever situation you've got, you've got. It ain't changing.

"You are having to start from scratch often. If you are a good developer, you have to "prove" yourself (people listen to you) all over again." Starting from scratch, proving your worth, is a good thing. We don't want people who think they can rest on their laurels. Every now and then kick yourself in the ass to see if you can still hack it -- before life does it for you.

A more interesting blog entry would be "How to work past burn-out" That is, okay, fine, you've reached the end of your rope. You care about nothing, you're cranky all the time, you're lethargic, and you're bitter. How do you get up tomorrow morning and be happy while doing a good job without losing your livelihood? Because that's where a lot of people are, not making lists of things to do to avoid burnout.

Tips that don't address the root cause are fine but think about the mechanism.

If you work in a slow beauacratic environment with no stress, no accountability, no change and no challenge then you really do start to notice all of the same symptoms.

Anyone else getting sick of this false dichotomy of "long hours" and "having a life"? What am I going to do with that life, visit new restaurants / collect stamps / try new variations of yoga / go out to bars? Alright the last one ain't so bad.

Seriously, if someone's in their 20s and want to work/program away while they build their career, just shut up and let them. Maybe that's what they actually want to do over anything else. I know, it must suck for you family guys / slower guys - let's face it, it's more competition because there are people willing to do what you are not: forgo more leisure activities and personal relationships. The point is, however, that this is not a sacrifice for some people, but a preference.

But burnout is not due to "not having a life", it's due to ignoring your physiology. It's due to "eating like a programmer", doing these stupid all-night "hackathons", not exercising, not sleeping, and generally being a moron with your health. I will also add that to avoid burnout, take care of your psyche. Don't skip that 30 min coffee to catch-up with an old friend if it will make you happy, for example. Social isolation creates physiological consequences as well, which can contribute to burnout - but again, this isn't true for everyone, and there's a wide spectrum of acceptable values which many like to ignore.

Lie 1. The technology doesn't matter. All languages sucks and are turing complete anyways. Who cares if it's in perl or enterprise java? Does my happiness really depend on writing python?

Lie 2. The technology does matter. If I'm working on a Social-Mobile-Location startup using python with free reign over technology I'll be in developer bliss right? Wait, maybe if it's all go and protocol buffers I'll be giddy with joy. Frankly the difference between new and old technology is usually the choosing between decades old tech and decades old tech. (Oh, you're using epoll/select/kqueue? The 1980's called, they want their tech back) (Javascript? The 1990's called, it's for you) Heaven forbid you go talk to startup folks with your 90's programming language called Java.

Lie 3. (From PHB) "while long term overtime doesn't scale, it's a great tool to boost productivity in the short term during crunch time, after all a startup is defined as a way to cram 10 years of life experience into one"

So here's what I believe to be the truth, for me, so far.

1. Burn out takes longer than you'd ever imagine to recover from. After a certain point you just don't care if the fire alarm is going off and the building's burning down because it's always burning down. Once you leave that situation/job, it's hard to shake that mentality.

2. New technologies, platforms, and protocols are fun. Learning is fun. I don't mind writing my own libraries because it helps scratch that itch of always wanting to know how things work just one level deeper.

3. People matter exponentially more than anything else. It's not just working with smart people. I've worked with lots of smart people with the emotional IQ of a poorly trained Rottweiler. The best engineers I've ever worked with are usually people who've made the decision that engineering is not the most important thing in their life. They've also discovered Lie #2 and so are a little bit less dogmatic. "Oh you want to send binary encoded messages over UDP to collect statistics, I remember when we did that with ASN1. Here's a nickel kid, go get yourself a real protocol".

I've had lots of great jobs where I had a great time and learned a lot, but at every single one, leaving was one of my best decisions there. Now that I'm a freelancer, I switch a lot more, and I notice a comparable increase in the rate at which I'm learning and growing.

This makes me cringe. If you're a developer, it's your manager's job to assign tasks which can be completed on a reasonable schedule, and to adjust stakeholder expectations if they don't turn out to be achievable on time. If you're facing an impossible deadline, that means that your boss hasn't done their job. It's not your responsibility to dig them out.

And if you do pull through and somehow finish on time, all you've conveyed to your manager is that the status quo is working. You've demonstrated that they can move up deadlines in order to get more work out of you without paying you for it. If your team is understaffed, they can save money by leaving it understaffed. Soft deadlines (the boss has a meeting on Thursday and it would be a feather in their cap to have a feature working by then) turn into hard deadlines when they learn that developers don't push back.

This is true, but the other extreme is also true - being too loyal, stuck in a soul sucking boring job dominated by internal fights and politics, can also lead to burnout. Sometimes it gets tough to find work you enjoy doing.

> "5. Work long hours, ignore your life"

This should be the number one reason for burnout. I think it happens most often with young developers in their twenties that don't have a family to get back to at the end of the day. Personally I now have a wife and a 3 year old son and I'm always happy to return home at the end of the day or to engage in various activities over the weekend. And because I do that, I enjoy most Mondays.

Of course, we are software developers, we like what we do, many times we want to work outside regular hours. But personally I have a general rule that I always apply -> I never work overtime or on weekends, unless I'm in the mood for it or if there's an extreme emergency. Therefore, I never cared when some manager or client told me that the deadline is probably going to be late, so maybe we should pull longer hours. When asked, I always say "No, sorry". My overtime is for things that bring me pleasure - implementing a cool feature that I wanted, or learning something new, or implementing something reusable and pushing it on GitHub ... you know, works of love.

There's a tremendous difference between working overtime because you're in the mood for it versus because you have to.

Also missing from the list:

> "6. Be dishonest, never ask for help

I've decided some time ago that I should always be honest with my colleagues, managers or clients. In my language we've got an expression that more or less means wasting time - "rubbing the mint". Sometimes I rub the mint - and in scrums and daily meetings, I now feel no shame in admitting that the other day I did basically nothing. I also recognize when I'm having problems, like when I'm not understanding a concept well enough or when I can't find the root cause of a problem and do ask for help ... though, because of the ego-tripping or other reasons, this is something that's often difficult to do.

It does help being honest and nobody is bothered when you admit that you were lazy the other day or that you're having problems, because everybody have the same issues in their job, even if they don't admit it.

Being honest and recognizing your own flaws helps with not feeling guilty. If you're lying to your peers that you got work done, that you're close to solving the problem, etc... that's accumulating debt that you have to pay in the days that follow and it can lead to a snowball effect.

MacLeod’s Loser layer had me puzzled for a long time, because I was interpreting it in cultural terms: the kind of person you call a “loser.” While some may be losers in that sense too, they are primarily losers in the economic sense: those who have, for various reasons, made (or been forced to make) a bad economic bargain. They’ve given up some potential for long-term economic liberty (as capitalists) for short-term economic stability. Traded freedom for a paycheck in short. They actually produce, but are not compensated in proportion to the value they create (since their compensation is set by Sociopaths operating under conditions of serious moral hazard). They mortgage their lives away, and hope to die before their money runs out.

If you don't like it fire me i value my sanity more then i do your unreasonable deadline.

P.S. I never bother to impress anybody I do what i do for myself it that's impressive to you great if not that's ok too.

One of the great things about Cisco (my current employer) is that there's a really strong technical career path that doesn't force engineers into the management hierarchy. I hope that this becomes more common at tech companies as time goes on.

As someone's manager I want them to know that these things are NOT roads to "success." Not everyone though has the makeup or fortitude to tell their boss no, and bosses who take advantage of that are a real problem. What is worse is someone who was so talented and now they are worthless because they can't find any motivation to do anything. Its like being so sore from exercising that you can't walk, and if you can't walk you can't work the lactic acid out of your muscles and you're going to be incapacitated for a lot longer.

This did something for me. I'm recovering from a dark place. I recently joined codepen and as superficial and lame as it sounds, every "like" and "view" is like a dose of anti-depressant :) http://codepen.io/sakri/popular

> Growing in the company (developer -> manager -> director)

I recently realized that I really don't want to be a manager or director. Nor do I have the interest in becoming the consultant or startup route. For me, the coolest to do is to contribute to open source projects, lean programming languages/Linux Kernel/Bioinformatics/ML etc. for fun; I'd love to find the right balance of doing either menial work or mindless web dev work without being too taxing to fund my own personal interests; and am willing to be basically work at an livable income (40K in a big metro).

Recently a gentleman mentioned on a thread that he is doing indie game development while working at a Target warehouse. I'd love to hear people who are have gone down this route or have the same mindset. Do you guys work say half a year doing consulting and half a year on your own stuff? Or do you guys work at a menial job and work on your free mental capacities after work. Or do you work at a menial web dev job or at a company that offers "summer hours" (4 day 10-hour weeks) or flex-time and work on cool stuff after work. Would love to hear some of your thoughts and journey should you have gone down this path.

People who pretend to think that you can simply willfully infuse yourself with positivity annoy me.

Negativity is how individuals react to certain environments. You can change some features in the environment and fix that, but simply demanding everyone to be positive is stupid. It's essentially a demand for suffering in silence.

I personally go through burnout cycles where I have to take a break for a few days or (rarely) a few weeks. Most of the programming though that causes this is programming I do for my own business, not for someone else (i.e. it's not commissioned work). Part of the reason is that this has to fit between paid work, and part of the reason is that these projects are far more interesting and engrossing.

One of the things that does end up on both lists is the idea of pushing the project to the expense of everything else in your consciousness. That leads to thinking only about the project and ignoring one's own life (because even when you are not working, you are planning to work).

Great read, thanks for sharing!

Different persons have different ways to balance those conflicting needs. You have to learn what you can sustain and try to not go too far.

How not to burn out doing X:

1. Don't obsess over X

2. Stay positive!

3. Learn new things, experiment

4. Maintain a healthy life outside X (i.e dont obsess)

Spelling mistake, it should be "our job is to find faults..."

Oh the irony.

First, if you expect every job to last 5+ years, you'll often make suboptimal choices when it comes to balancing your own needs vs. the stated corporate objectives. Mistakes #1 (single-project myopia) and #5 (long hours, to the detriment of the rest of one's life) occur when people lose the ability to look outside their own jobs. If you have it in your mind that you absolutely must stay with a company for the next 10 years, you're much more likely to make those sorts of mistakes.

It's ideal that you get a good job and it lasts 5+ years, but you have to go to work with the understanding that the world might change on you in an instant.

What you need to do is focus always on your career. Try to kick out as much of your work to the open-source world as you can. Network before you need it. You need to play so that if you lose your job tomorrow, you'll be OK. Because you just might. It can happen to anyone at any time. If you plan your career properly, though, the next job will be a step up. It's when you're constantly moving around with no progress-- spending 6 months out of each year "on-boarding" into parochial corporate knowledge instead of career-advancing general knowledge-- that you'll burn out.

Leaving a job stupidly is a mistake. If you're learning a lot and something mildly annoys you, quitting in a huff is the wrong way to go. When you get something good, hold on to it for as long as it lasts. But don't throw good time after bad, either, because that will lead to burnout just as quickly.

The truth on all of these is that there are tradeoffs. Is it a good idea to work long hours? If a month-long burst of 80-hour effort will buy you career advancement that'd otherwise take 2 years, then suck it up and work. If it's just going to get you more grunt work (which is usually the case) then blow it off. Similarly, with job tenure, I think the poker player's maxim-- be very selective, and very aggressive-- applies. Fold losing hands early, but when you have cards (i.e. a job that's doing a lot for your career) then play it hard.