Burnout Comes in Three Varieties
psychologicalscience.org
psychologicalscience.org
The reality is that you can burnout in any of these ways whether or not you're a corporate monkey or a start-up monkey. Substitute vending machines and water coolers for fancy free-for-all-cafes and foosball tables, and many start-ups have similar WORK demands of their employees. In other words, no matter how fun the culture, it can't forever mask the fact that you're working toward someone else's vision and mission.
I once thought this would be very different in a company of 50 vs 50,000. But even in start-ups, we suffer from an over-emphasis on specialized activities (for efficiency and scale). This creates jobs that lack ownership of the big picture, and therefore may create short term excitement (if the work or team is interesting), but does not equate to long term passion and fulfillment.
As a founder with an idea, part of the reason that I don't want to join an existing effort is because I want to build an organization that challenges this model. Is there a way to better distribute ownership of the vision to everyone in the company so that instead of having a bunch of employees working toward your vision, you have a bunch of entrepreneurs collaborating to define that vision? That in my mind is a major part of avoiding burnout.
The secondary piece is helping people realize that work/life balance is always necessary. As a founder, I spent one month subscribing to the Valley norm that I should just work constantly. Mentally I was fine, but physically I pinched a nerve (or something) and all kinds of horror happened. Yet this cultural attitude of fast fast fast is so prevalent, I think we should also do more to encourage people to adopt some "slow" principles.
#1 cause: lack of a mature organization. No clarity, no process, no structure, constant uncertainty and bosses that clearly have no idea what the fuck they are doing.
Collective ownership, treating employees like entrepreneurs even though they are very different people with a different mindset and different coping mechanisms is not just misguided, it's downright destructive.
Employees are not entrepreneurs, they have a different mindset and different coping mechanisms. They can handle the uncertainty of a starting company that may very well fail, they can handle long hours, but they need certainty about the nature of their job, what is expected of them and their coworkers. Not having that structure makes them extremely vulnerable to any kind of stress, stress that a startup job is guaranteed to have.
It frankly pisses me off how badly employees at startups are treated by not recognizing their needs as employees. No amount of toys, free snacks and other gimmicks will compensate for that.
If all younger workers realized this and acted collectively, the impact would be immense. Instead, SV is overrun with temporarily-embarrassed entrepreneurs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/silicon-valleys-y...
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117088/silicons-valleys-b...
Does anyone have strategies on how to deal with this? I took a vacation but came back surprisingly still lacking motivation. I exercise and enjoy it, but after the exercise high I'm back to the same mental state. It's a complete 180-degree shift in mindset from where I was just 40 days ago.
1. Find and work with someone who genuinely cares about your work to give you honest but compassionate feedback.*
2. Hire someone to do the work for you. This way we give a monetary figure to our torpor. Now there's a hard price for the lack of interest in completing work but the work still gets done. And that's the only thing to get us out of our misery - finished work!
- * (I'm not suggesting that one should avoid folks who offer brutal yet honest feedback - no - just saying avoid the patently negative discouraging or jealous feedback. Even though you rationally conclude that envious and obviously unfounded negative feedback does not need to discourage you, they still do!)
For me, I'm trying to change consumerism...it's a hell of a BHAG, but by pursuing this vision that I genuinely care about, I may have short-term periods of exhaustion instead of excitement, but I'm guaranteeing longer-term reserves of motivation.
Burnout is a broken narrative.
Everyone has ups and downs, and everyone expects that. We persevere, however, because we believe, however irrationally, that it will work out in the end.
Burnout is believing that no, it probably won't.
The way that someone stops believing this is very reasonable---they take risks with the assurance that it will work out ("low salary, but look at the equity! Keep working!"), and then it doesn't (company shuts down). Or perhaps "we promise this is the last crunch" --- and it never is.
Don't confuse this with a lack of trust. Healthy people who don't trust their employers leave and start a company/work for someone else. Burnout is when you don't see a happy ending anywhere.
I'm not sure it's possible to simultaneously believe "in the future, I will be deliriously happy," and be depressed.
For the last two years I thought that maybe, just maybe, it was because I suck at coding and my work troubles are a symptom of me not being really into programming. And then, few months ago, I stared a completely pointless side project. Back came to me the passion and productivity. I can get more done in 1h for my side project that in 8h at my job. Through the last few months I gradually regained the faith in my own programming skills. I realized that I do indeed know how to code; it's that I just can't force myself to work on stuff I don't give a fuck about.
I'd love to know what to do about this. I understand that it's easier to work on your own idea than on someone else's. But having like order of magnitude differences in productivity between my job and hobby project... this just feels wrong.
</mind-dump> </drunk-posting>
1. A cardio workout. (Came highly recommended by a dear client of mine, and indeed significantly increases the amount of energy I feel during the day. Does not solve procrastination by itself, but helps with that sleepiness.)
2. Pair programming. (This is a true deal breaker. Maybe we're just not created for solo work, and that's it?)
3. Eating less, and less carbs in particular. (I've been diagnosed with insulin insensibility, and it really shows; I usually get very sleepy after eating.)
4. Doing work you can be proud of, way before the deadline. Not always possible, but when it is, it can keep me going for a bit. Relax, take those extra few hours to make the code clean, polished and well-documented.
In my case (and perhaps in yours as well), it's not really about work being boring or not. I had a very exciting side-project of mine, which is now selling on the Mac App Store for great profit, but I started to procrastinate on it after a few months as well.
Feel free to email me to talk some more.
AD 1. I recently went through a physical therapy after a knee accident and I noticed a difference in my energy levels and mood in that period of time, during which I had about 1h of exercise every day. So I think it might be a good idea for me to try and include some workout into daily schedule.
AD 2. Could you elaborate a bit more? I tried it once or twice, and I don't really feel it. I usually think out the things before coding them, and I'm having a hard time coordinating that with other person for anything that's even slightly complex.
AD 3. Been on ketogenic diet last year, didn't notice much of a difference in terms of productivity (but I did lose the weight I wanted).
A few things that I've found helpful are:
1. Expand horizontally. I've been designing for a while, and it's always a breath of fresh air when I can go design something (in the browser of course, but front-end dev requires so little thought that I barely notice) without restraint. I also enjoy writing, when I can find the time.
2. Experiment with radically different paradigms. I've been diving into Elixir lately, which has been a lot of fun. Still looking for a nail to hit with the Erlang/Elixir hammer, but I've enjoyed building the few toy programs I've worked on to get familiar with the language.
3. Accept the Sex & Cash theory. Hugh MacLeod writes about it in this blog post: http://gapingvoid.com/2004/03/25/the-sex-cash-theory/ Basically, the idea is that you have to internalize that there are things you do for fun, outside of work (sex) and things you do support those things (cash). The cash doesn't have to be enjoyable. By all means, seek opportunities to have fun with the cash side of the equation, but don't get hung up on it: spend your brain cycles enjoying the sex.
Also think about finding some hobbies. I know that's a tough one, but that's how it gets sometimes. You need to focus energy elsewhere.
I'm near this point right now. I won't get a promotion unless higher ups quit. I'm in a bit of a rut at home. Gotta shake it up.
BTW thanks, I really hope this is not a depression. And good luck.
I worked for about 6 years in the industry, but I got thoroughly bored in every single job. Either the work was too boring, or I finished it too quickly, or a combination. I never lasted more than a year or two in any job.
For the last 14 years I've been running my own business, which is a lot better (more interesting work, less stress, etc.) However I will admit that I got quite lucky in building a niche product that people wanted to pay money for.
If I had to get a 'proper' job again, I think I would be in the same position as you - there just aren't that many interesting and fulfilling software jobs out there. I would probably consider doing something completely different, like driving taxis, being a commercial pilot, or manual labour.
If you're in a full-time job, consider doing contracting. Depending on what country you live in, it can be very lucrative and easy to find short-term work. The UK has lots of opportunities, Canada and the US less so. Unfortunately most of the work is pretty boring, but at least you only have to do it for a while before moving on.
Also consider taking a lower salary but working in a more fulfilling environment. Maybe working for a non-profit or something along those lines.
Or going to the other end of the scale, consider working for google. You get an incredible salary and work on fascinating projects.
There is a tremendous waste of many talented developers, intellectually.
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Taking time off often lets me appreciate my work for the benefits it provides (association with friendly coworkers, the challenge of meeting goals, the recognition of effort taken) after I've had a chance to spend that time off on myself or family.
Anything in excess can be toxic, even if convince yourself you can handle or prefer it (addiction?).
For better or for worse, capitalism is alienating; It disregards human value and replaces it with the economic value of labor. Pretending that that isn't the case, that labor in service of another for wages is the proper and normal condition of human beings, will help no one either adapt to this unnatural set of conditions or understand how to work at a societal level to ameliorate it.
I don't think I fall under any category mentioned in the article, I will furnish myself with a new category: "burnout by feeling terrorised".
From my experience reporting these incidents to an outside authority is pointless, the usual response is "well everyone has problems at work". Do not give them a soundbite of what insults/threats you have endured, you might spend the night in a prison cell.
From the article:
> Treatments that include emotion regulation, increased cognitive flexibility, and mindfulness may help ward off burnout in susceptible individuals, suggests the research team led by Jesus Montero Marin of the University of Zaragoza in Spain.
After being released from this job, the only thing I diagnosed about myself was: "I try too hard to be understanding and sympathetic of others". If you find yourself in this situation, my treatment would be: if the tactics of your enemy are more effective than yours, copy and adapt them to make your swords sharper.
If you start copying the enemy's tactics, they have a way of making it look like you started it. Ultimately they are hypocrites who manage their public image to look good while they themselves do the exact opposite. If they're putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours calls, then they'll accuse you of doing it. If they're bullying you, they'll very quickly and loudly call you the bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're monitoring you closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it on them. They'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own harassment as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of their own, the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at first. Because of the legal situation they made sure you were in, your only choice was to walk away. You don't just decide to copy and adapt their tactics one day - the enemy have spent their entire lives honing their own skills in hypocrisy, bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money.
Not merely copy, copy then adapt. I think they were not aware of the hypocrisy, merely highlighting it is often enough to stop people in their tracks.
> If they're putting bugs in the code to generate money-making after-hours calls, then they'll accuse you of doing it.
It wasn't a software house, it was an optometrist. They were passing off another optometrist's varifocals as their own. If they were caught, it would be impossible to accuse me of doing it. I worked in the front office dealing with paperwork, I am not optically trained (it's equivalent to studying medicine) and I was not involved in purchases, only sales.
> If they're bullying you, they'll very quickly and loudly call you the bully if you reciprocate in any way. Although they're monitoring you closely, they'll soon notice and single you out if you try it on them.
Who said I was going to resort to bullying, I'm referring to implicit blackmail, level out the field. Suggest the possibility via suitable questions and rhetoric, but never mention it directly. Regarding any kind of monitoring, the higher ups weren't monitoring the workplace effectively, which is partly why this kind of behaviour occurred. The surfacing section at the back of the building was highly inefficient and the problem was rarely discussed, let alone addressed. There were several people who didn't do any work at all, that's mental inefficiency. I was once asked to keep quiet regarding some of my co-workers drinking beer on site. The higher ups would smoke cigarettes inside the building, again asked to keep quiet (smoking indoors at work was banned in Britain the previous year, and the place was stocked with gallons of methanol and white spirit, BOOM).
> They'll then present the publicly visible aspects of their own harassment as a proportional response to yours, hiding the full extent of their own, the fact they started it, and how tolerant you were of them at first.
One colleague used to shout "FUCK OFF" at me on average three to four times a day, in front of a dozen witnesses. Not everybody at that place was a cunt, some of them were cool. Sometimes the phone was left off the hook, so his bad behaviour had been heard by the customers on several occasions. There is simply too much evidence lying around.
> You don't just decide to copy and adapt their tactics one day - the enemy have spent their entire lives honing their own skills in hypocrisy, bullying, whitewashing, and fleecing you of money.
In this case, the enemy was incredibly retarded. Another colleague once asked me to spell "claustrophobia" when she was sitting in front of a computer connected to the internet. One of the delivery men thought that the computer wasn't connected to the internet.
Oh, here's the best bit. I once saw a photograph of the marketing manager sporting black face paint, a wig and a garish looking poncho (he was dressed as a rasta, he looked fucking stupid), snorting cocaine. With hindsight, I wish I had just grabbed it and run to one of their customers down the road.
I see it as:
1. The complainer: sit down and negotiate a way that person can make a bigger impact that's measurable
2. The avoider: simply try to get this person to do something they are excited about
3. The worn-out individual: this person probably just needs a bit of regular recognition (and no overtime)
Personally, I find way more people in categories 1 and 2, though category 3 definitely happens in startup land where people work way too much and only see the mountain in front of them is never getting smaller.
Of course I'm being a bit of an armchair manager, but it seems like a fairly decent starting point.
Sounds like an advert peddling employee training sessions in stress management to employers who want to cover their arses legally while continuing to require their workers to, say, carry their mobile phones around at all times to field calls at, say, 3 in the morning to fix problems that wouldn't have happened if the bosses had invested more resources in making sure after-hours problems didn't happen in the first place.
Are there vocations that doesn't require constant deliberate self-improvement? I can understand casually reading up on books and papers to catch up once in a while, but the expectations imposed on developers to always solve problems, learn completely new tools, frameworks and languages seems undoable for me in the long run.
If it wasn't about exploitation then our society would shift towards "performance" based work and lower work hours per week with more free time for family, life, and happiness; but all regular people get when they are productive and efficient is more and more work because there is "always someone willing to work harder"...as the wealthy who employ those people who cause that dynamic tell us. The exploitation comes in the lack of limits and boundaries, our wealthy dealers keep telling us we should do more and try a different drug. It's a rather archetypal form of abuse, nothing is good enough and the bar keeps moving higher and higher and is always just out of reach, like that carrot leading a mule on a plow.
I suggest you might want to consider doing what most do, just enough not to get fired and spend all that energy you have to develop your freedom and liberty from the rat-race and maybe even do it in such a manner that allows you to offer that opportunity to others you employ.
Unfortunately, that is rather diametrically opposed to the interests of the YCombinator and VC symbiotic...parasitic???....relationship, but when you are beholden to someone else who draws 20 ... 30 ... 40 ... 50% of your efforts, gains, and profits.....you can never achieve freedom and liberty. There are frequently warnings of schemes that require you to pay or buy into something, what else are many ...most???... of these VC and incubator programs? Maybe slightly better versions? But they still promise you connections and entry into an otherwise closed community they helped build a fence around.
The relationship between a VC and an entrepreneur is symbiotic, not parasitic. The VC has collected extra cash he wants to risk to produce good returns on. The entrepreneur wants to build a business but does not have the funds to see it through the growth phase on his/her own. The two of you can get together to produce something that neither of you could have done individually. Each getting a slice of a pie that would not have existed if you had not worked together.
We just recently saw the owner of the Klippers expose that same relationship, just because something is on a far larger scale, does not mean that it is any less the same thing underlying it. Yes, _some_ founders get insanely wealthy, but the VCs get even wealthier because they have fine-tuned a formula of exploitation and manipulation. Yes, a lot of investments they make go bust, but that's why they take an arm and a leg and a pound of flesh while they're at it. They are essentially diversifying their investments, but they are also profiteering from a huge arbitrage opportunity. They are essentially trading in the inefficiencies of the market because that is risk they don't want to burden and don't really actually want to do any work to do due diligence to find the good investments. They are in the business of statistical investment..... the more money you throw at it, the higher the likelihood of hitting the bulls eye....simply based on statistical probability.
That is of course offset by various other revenue streams because the scale is not frequent enough to base it purely on statistical probability, but that is the core.
How was that cash collected? What is the VC collecting now?
He collected cash from the last batch of "entrepreneurs" and their teams who did all the work and wealth creation. He's doing it with the current guy, which will fund him doing it to the next guy. He's not collecting cash like picking apples from a tree. He's parasitically leeching off the working wealth creators, as are his heir LPs.
The pie is divided up in a certain way. Of course the VC side has it in their interest to tell some story of how deserving they are. Of anything I can think of, I can't think of anything that would motivate people to tell a BS story more than why their pie slice should be a certain size. Anyone who says that there is some omniscient, objective obviousness to some positive quality of VCs is obviously engaging in the most standard argument of all of partisans. We're not doing some repeatable experiment on some hypothesis that everyone has an interest in accepting. It's a zero-sum division of a pie, and if the VC can get over on people that he's so deserving, he wins the game. If we're talking about dividing the pie, everyone piping in with a comment has an agenda, whether hidden or not.
The academic, which is kind of a non-theistic monk. Tenure is impossible to get considering we produce about 10 PHDs for every tenure job opening, but adjunct work is no big deal. An acquaintance of mine got into teaching once he semi-retired.
The gentleman farmer, at least WRT not needing to do the work for the money, but doing it for fun. I had an uncle like that.
The aristocrat amateur scientist, basically the academic without an institution behind him. This is quite a challenge for a ChemENG but pretty easy for a CS guy or an amateur astronomer. I had another uncle like that, although his variety of landed gentry was more along the lines of "owned several gas stations" rather than owning a barony or dutchy.
The monk, modern version would be that psuedo-homeless guy who hangs out at the local makerspace all day. Basically a techie with a vow of poverty. This vaguely resembles my 20s.
When it comes to side projects and self improvement, you have to make more targeted decisions on what you want to spend you time on, but I actually found that to be a good thing. It's not as much of a big deal as you might think.
"learn completely new"
That is the primary mistake. There is no "completely new". If you think "completely new" exists, go ahead, try to disprove me, go retrocomputing some COBOL on MVS, or learn this decades LISP, or this months web framework, or ...
Not going to be spending ALL weekend working on your projects once the wife, kids, house all become a part of life. Or rephrased, maybe one of your projects is going to be soccer practice with the kids. And thats OK. (edited to add, I think you will also learn the meaning of "midnight engineering" although that might only be a EE term)
My lunch hour might be an hour long but I don't need more than 5 minutes. If I'm not exercising (I hike a lot) the remainder of my lunchtime is reading / experimenting / MOOC. Also for a couple decades I've read before sleeping, although I've been told over and over that it will ruin my back, neck, eyes, sleep, sex life, and posture, but so far so good.
I tend to agree with you, the language I know best is one thousand and one years older than me. (N.B. I am nearly 100001 years old).
Hmmmmmm, You mentioned COBOL, I can't remember the last time somebody mentioned the word COBOL on HN. Ooh, you made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
I don't think the exact varieties of stress really matter all that much. It's all just a matter of too much stress over time.
I think stress levels can be measured pretty well via biomarkers. Waking body temperature tracks cortisol and adrenalin (higher is better). Resting heart rate (higher is better) and heart rate variability are useful to track. I find when my waking temperature is below 97F it is clearly warning that I am burning out. If possible I might spend a day or two without leaving the couch or thinking about anything.
Athletes track this stuff and back off training accordingly to manage stress. I don't think work/career stress is essentially different from athletic training. It's just that so much white collar work stress is psychological and not obviously quantifiable.
Burnout is when working at a YC startup during YC feels like a vacation. When waking up at 10am and coding until 10pm feels like rest. That's burnout.
You do not fuck with burnout.