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The Reality of Developer Burnout

340 points by kenneth_reitz 10y ago

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coldcode 10y ago
If you are developing software as a life, you don't have one; if on the other hand you are developing software for fun, you are having it; if you are just developing software for money; leave it at work. It's hard to be buried 100% in software and realize the rest of life is more important.
- pc86 10y ago
  The best thing I ever did for my professional life was acquiring new interests that had nothing to do with software but were still intellectually and/or physically stimulating. Weightlifting is cheap, has proven physical and psychological benefits, and is eventually fun (sucks for the first few weeks/months though). I just recently starting taking lessons to get a private pilot's license. GA is expensive (relatively - anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it) but it's no more dangerous than riding a motorcycle and is a fairly rare skill. And it has the added benefit of being pretty mentally taxing as I am still very new to it.
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    What is GA?
    - Humdeee 10y ago
      General aviation I imagine.
      - bioapparatus 10y ago
        Makes a lot more sense to read it that way. Auto-pilot (...I guess I just did that) caused me to read it as Google Analytics.
        WalterSear 10y ago
        That's expensive, but it's also pretty dangerous :)
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  - klausa 10y ago
    Not everyone on HN earns SV money. Best of luck in becoming a pilot!
    - tybit 10y ago
      And not every hobby is as expensive as training to be a pilot.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it's cheap. I know it's not, and statistically is prohibitively expensive for ~half of America. What I meant was if it's a priority, you can do it without huge lifestyle sacrifices provided you make a minimum of $40-45k/yr depending on your COL. Obviously if you have a mortgage and two kids and make $50k it's probably not the best idea. If you're a single 22 year old making $45k and you live in a cheap studio? You can do it without breaking the bank.
  - nunez 10y ago
    > anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it LOL come on now. It costs $5-10k to get a private pilot's license which requires at least 40 hours of flying time. Most schools will recommend that you do at least 2 hours per week, which usually comes out to $200-$400. (It's easy to forget things.) Shit's expensive.
    - galdosdi 10y ago
      Eh, it's a matter of priorities. By "can afford" I'm sure the OP meant "it's even an option at all" not "it's so cheap it does not require any real tradeoffs" What percentage of USA residents would you say have spent $7k to $12k or more on a car, when only $2k is necessary to get you around safely? But yeah, it's expensive, and someone earning more can afford to do it if they're merely interested in it, as opposed to having to be obsessed enough to make major sacrifices to afford it That said, I have a friend who _is_ a (graduate) student and flies. He bought a gyrocopter for a couple thousand dollars, uses some license class that required minimal/no training but limits the weight of the aircraft severely (ultralight or experimental or something like that, sorry, not sure) and has ultimately spent relatively quite little over time on the hobby. Where there's a will there's (often but admittedly not always!) a way, but that doesn't mean it's not a way requiring sacrifices and tradeoffs
    - pc86 10y ago
      Industry average seems to about $12k (but that's from my flight school which obviously has an incentive to make the assumed cost just a little higher than it need be). galdosdi is 100% correct that I didn't mean it's cheap. I meant if it's something you really want to do, you can afford it without selling your car or living in a hovel.
      - nunez 10y ago
        Fair points. I agree!
  - manish_gill 10y ago
    > (relatively - anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it) I know you mean well but this is the epitome of living in a bubble. :)
    - pc86 10y ago
      Yes that didn't come off the way I meant it. See sibling comments here :)
  - tom_wilde 10y ago
    I strongly recommend running as a burnout cure...
bioapparatus 10y ago
Not sure how I should feel about this, reading a post about no longer reading posts, while I should be writing code.
Humdeee 10y ago
I've been burned out twice. The first and deeper of the two was right after I graduated years ago. It made the whole process of going straight into the workforce bittersweet, as I was mentally not ready to muster the energy to endure the rigors of professional development on-boarding for a new grad. I managed, but no where near at a potential I could of been. A brutal semester of final projects and endless nights had left me somewhat poisoned, so to speak. It caused the recuperation of my mental and physical state to be much longer (over a year) than if I took a 2-3 week vacation like I should have done, I imagine. I've always taken this as a likely scenario for a new grad when being brought on within a company. The second, like the author, was when I was gung-ho into a new technology and went at personal projects endlessly for a solid 12 months before I came up for air and took a breather, with similar but more superficial effects than the first burnout. I regret these mistakes, and I've learned the hard way to do work in moderation. However, I am not an entrepreneur for these very reasons, and I simply don't want that lifestyle for the long-term. I'm hoping my health will thank me 30 years from now.
- poikniok 10y ago
  You know the one about entering the workforce hits home for me, I feel like this is about to happen to me, but I feel sort of powerless to stop it.
  - paloaltokid 10y ago
    Talk to your manager - let them know. The first thing you should learn upon entering the workforce is the power of communication. Most people want their employees to do well, because it helps them.
  - Jach 10y ago
    It's much easier to back away and recharge when you're close to the edge than after you've already fallen off. So you should try and stop falling off if you can. Take a real break after you graduate, if you can, it'll help. Otherwise consider if you can last a few months at a new gig, that ought to supply you with enough savings to take the same amount of time off if not more and then look for a new gig. I was excited to start working properly after school, regardless of what I worked on, it would be something that mattered enough that I'd be paid for it instead of paying myself. I started interviewing mostly after graduation and while it was stressful (must find a job soon to pay bills, and start paying student loans) I landed one after not too long. I was fortunate that my start date wasn't until a month after acceptance so I was able to chill for that whole month and really unwind after the stress of years of school. Looking back I was telling people during interviews that I was basically available to start "immediately" (because I wanted more money immediately) but I really should have pushed for at least a few weeks lead time before starting in all cases instead of lucking into it. I recently came back from a 2 week vacation of just chilling, it's lifted a lot of work stress that has been accumulating. But some times I've entertained myself with calculations about how long I could go financially if I quit tomorrow. I even did that at the start more for fun than stress relief, since suddenly every two weeks you're getting a paycheck that covers 3-6 months of expenses if you keep your college lifestyle. It doesn't take long to save up for a year of goofing off and then a couple months of runway to find a job after that.
zoeysaurusrex 10y ago
> Not only that, but I found myself censoring my own private thought processes, in the silent comfort of my own home, because of the public opinion of people I follow on Twitter. I deleted my Twitter account because of this. I realized it was an empty echo chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. I've determined that the key for me is to limit the inputs. My inputs now are a few cultivated social sites (this one, one or two tech sites), books, and podcasts. In my opinion, feeding my mind properly has lessened my feelings of burnout. If you have the choice to feed your brain digital junk food, don't be too alarmed when it starts taking of too much space, like fat.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I've been much happier since quitting the Twitter/Medium bubble. I've limited my HN time as well.
  - wmccullough 10y ago
    I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.
    - aaron-lebo 10y ago
      As someone who is feeling more and more contrarian lately in my comments here and regretting it, I think it's because after a decade of HN, everything starts to the look the same. Everybody is trying to sell a framework, a startup, a language, or their own personal brand and it turns into a big circlejerk of everyone patting themselves on the back because they've got some secret knowledge. Sometimes it doesn't seem like any real learning is going on as nothing is scientific or rigorous or anything more than an anecdote. You start to wonder how different some of this stuff is than hundreds of religions that have long since died. This is a larger issue with developer burnout I suspect. You master one thing and there's someone standing on the corner saying..."well, actually, I've got something better" and there's a very real anxiety in that evaluation process. Does object-oriented programming suck? Are functional languages the future? Do you really want an SPA? Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Is Bitcoin worth getting in on? etc etc You will interact with some of the most brilliant people on HN, and most of them are friendly and mean well, but without actual disagreement nothing interesting gets said. ...that wasn't intentionally contrarian.
matmo 10y ago
The worst part for me was going from being a "rockstar developer" on the team to having to explain why I suddenly can't meet the overly ambitious deadlines handed down from above due to anxiety, depression, panic attacks and extreme insomnia.
- bhalp1 10y ago
  I feel you, man.
- edblarney 10y ago
  Wait till you hit 35 and you have an actual life and you can absolutely still jump through flaming hoops but you just don't care as much. It's one thing to 'step back a little' - it's another thing to have people who've been coding for for only 18 months, but willing to work 14-hour days and lick the testes of the bosses move into 'status' position, because in the most short-sighted version of a project, they can actually developed something resembling code a little bit faster. Sorry for the crude metaphor. :) One option is to find an enclave that is not a fast-paced startup. Do you know how many big dumb companies out there are starving for actual talent? A lot! If you don't mind working with mediocre people and moving slowly, you can find a job in 'not hot' industries where the pace is not so fast. You might feel a little numb though :)
  - divbit 10y ago
    >You might feel a little numb though :) Isn't that exactly what hobbies and fun side projects are for though?
paulcole 10y ago
> It happens to everyone that writes code all day long More like "It happens to everyone." I know this is a developer-focused site, but this isn't a problem unique to people in software. An old joke, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar."
- gogopuppygogo 10y ago
  Obviously you've never heard of Tim Harris. This guy inspires me to always find a way to love what I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6He0FWoFj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6He0FWoFj0 Wish everyone was as happy as Tim.
  - rubicon33 10y ago
    Aw man, that made my day, thanks for sharing it. I think we could all be a little happier, if we just tried. I'm not saying curing depression or burnout is as trivial as just trying to... But, you can certainly choose to be a notch happier than you are at this moment. Just one notch today, and try for another notch tomorrow. We can start by appreciating what we have.
    - kovek 10y ago
      I learned recently that if I list a few things I am grateful for, I will instantly feel happier. It seems like it works for others as well.
      - myblake 10y ago
        I'm pretty sure there's research to back this up.
      - Retra 10y ago
        Are you grateful for anything that doesn't make you happier? It sounds like you're saying that thinking about things that make you happy makes you happy, and that this is something you just learned somehow.
Animats 10y ago
This is not developer burnout. This is Twitter burnout. "So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter" he writes, which apparently fixed his problem. That has nothing to do with development.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  On the contrary; in this case, Twitter is a symptom. Instead, the problem is bubble-based news. The platform could've been something else, like Facebook, or RSS.
  - rdavl 10y ago
    Platform has nothing to do with it. If you keep reading unrealistic marketing stories and believe what they say... well you are the problem... A lot of people read the same things, should we all burn out?
    - Fnoord 10y ago
      > A lot of people read the same things, should we all burn out? Eventually? Would everyone burn out at an equivalent speed? I don't know the answer to your question. I do wonder if it has to do with being closed or open minded. The difference of a person enjoying being in a bubble, and one who wants to think outside of the box. Also, there are platforms where people gather who think outside of the box. However at some point they become so popular, that the status quo of the masses takes over. (Reddit seems an excellent example of this.) To me, it seems akin to the principles of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
- lukaszkups 10y ago
  IMHO not exactly. I feel the same and decreased list of following people couple times. Couple days ago I've thought about switch to HackerNews & Publish only mode because I feel like everybody around has great life, skills, projects and work for awesome companies. There's too many successful stories around that sometimes can cause depression more than stories about failures. It's a bit hard to explain properly in single HN comment. I'll try to blog about it during the weekend. If You're interested - follow me on twitter (@lukaszkups), cheers!
teabee89 10y ago
It was an interesting read but the solution reminds me of pyramidal "scams" (of course the scam part is where the analogy breaks): the way you avoid burn out, is by delegating it to others and once they too get burned out they have to delegate too. Or they quit and you have to find someone else or let the project die. I'm not disagreeing nor judging, just sharing the thought.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  In a reasonable setup, going from 1 dev to 3 devs will alleviate the workload. A more apt analogy would be with a load balancer.
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walrus1066 10y ago
I think the key is to not put pressure on yourself, and don't allow other people to do so. One person can only do so much, you can't make a baby in 5 months. Work a stable amount each day, on tasks in descending order of priority. I never work past 6 pm, and never work on weekends. If a deadline isn't met, it's the fault of the people that set the deadline.
- twothamendment 10y ago
  You are right on. I learned a long time ago there is always more work and it always needs to be done last week. I work hard, but there is only so much a person can do. I'll put in extra time, but only when it really counts. Some deadlines were meant to be blown by and when you quit stressing yourself over things that are out of your control and focus on what you can do - life is better.
  - walrus1066 10y ago
    True true. With deadlines, if they're unrealistic, you've just got to compromise and either a) reduce the scope b) fail to meet the deadline c) compromise the quality by frantically hacking things together over long nights and weekends. Always go for option a), if you can't extend or get rid of the deadline.
alexmingoia 10y ago
I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110% instead of 70% at your job accomplishes little but making things harder for yourself. A software engineer doesn't get more money giving 110%, and if they work to finish something quicker they're just rewarded with more work. Often engineers (being human) will want to do a good job, give 110% on an important project, and when its over and their pay and work hours are exactly the same, they get angry with themselves for giving 110% instead of the bare minimum. They have this "I just wasted a month of my life because I'm a fool" feeling that completely zaps their motivation to do anything.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  > I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical Since programming is mental and not physical....yes?
  - alexmingoia 10y ago
    No, I mean that burnout is not caused by physical things like lack of sleep, improper diet, lack of exercise, etc.
    - dnautics 10y ago
      yeah! It's amazing how much people give fixing these things as a remedy for burnout, and yet (in my anecdata) it never works. One common advice is taking an unplanned vacation, but tha can be even worse, because it reinforces your brain's burnout by rewarding the burnout feedback cycle at a meta-level.
- diegorbaquero 10y ago
  It is starts psychologically, but psychological problems can then turn into physical illnesses. A burnout can be stressful and slowly consume you life away with stress and anxiety until you hit rock bottom.
madmax108 10y ago
A lot of my friends working in the industry have limited interest in coding (or computer science), but look at it solely as a job... something that guarantees decent financial freedom to pursue other goals. For me, it's the opposite. Since I first played Super Mario on the NES and wrote my first line of C a decade ago, I've wanted to have a career with computers. But that means I never get to switch off. If I'm not working on something cool at work (and no, I'm not in a dead end job... In fact love my job and team), then I'm at home trying to code something awesome (Was just setting up a DCGAN when I saw this post). I have no financial worries and should technically be living the good life, but I always feel that if one day all computers in the world shut down abruptly, I have absolutely nothing to do... for work OR for fun. And when I got close to burning out a year ago, the hardest thing was to find something to do. The route back involved calling people I hadn't spoken to in years, Reading (and smelling) a dozen books, Quizzing and quite a bit of travel. It was hard at first, but since getting back, has provided a much clearer view of life! So please, plug off for a bit. Don't wait till you start hating yourself/your life. Life is about so much more. :)
rdavl 10y ago
> Burnout is, unfortunately, a very real phenomena in software development These people sound like they are bomb technicians not software developers... > "I'd rather do anything else than this right now" — even though writing software is one of your favorite activities in the world. So? Does this mean you have burnt out? How does this compare to jobs like algorithmic trading or mission critical software? Burning out over stress of writing a web site? I call BS on all these burn out blog posts. You have other problems in your life that make you depress, coding might be little part of it but I don't see what levels of stress can you be under while doing mostly non interesting jobs.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  You are calling bullshit based some vague feelings of "job difficulty"? Do you have a robust mental model of the day to day experiences of these people who you are calling bullshit on? If not, I would be careful with your words. It can come off as fairly snide, ignorant, and callous.
  - rdavl 10y ago
    I am saying depression is caused by large variety of factors and not just coding, if you have personal problems you will burnt out cos of them, and that will affect your coding, you can't blame software development for that. Also unless you are doing really stressful work what is it that makes you burn out? Maybe you have other interests? Not wanting to code all day every day does not mean you have burnt out. Also the words "burnt out" sounds like one those buzz words people come up to feel like more special snow flakes... What are examples of this in other professions that put tons of stress on you? Compare that to writing code in cozy office...
    - dwaltrip 10y ago
      > Also unless you are doing really stressful work what is it that makes you burn out? I think you are making too many assumptions about what kind of work and what work environments are stressful for different people. Could the term "burn out" be abused? Of course, it's something that is difficult for others to verify. That fact doesn't make it less real for those actually experiencing it.
cossatot 10y ago
One of the amazing things about software that we all write is how well it integrates with many other aspects of life, particularly (though without a doubt not exclusively) intellectual pursuits. This is, of course, why it pays what it does: Software for software's sake pays about like math for math's sake, with the same people paying. But unfortunately it seems that despite the deep integration with other facets of work and life, most professional developers seem to basically write code 80-100% of their time (including associated activities like meetings etc.). Far fewer developers are also domain experts (or at least domain enthusiasts) and spend, say, 30-50% of their time coding and the remainder working within the domain or on integration. I wonder if this separation between the coders and the domains contributes to burnout. Maybe it's more economically efficient (specialization and all that) and we all like our abstractions. But having a lack of meaningful contexts to switch to, i.e. eating ice cream for every meal for lack of broccoli, can't be great. Directly gaining the benefit of the software should also help with perspective, motivation and an appreciation of the work invested. But maybe it's too hard to find people who can fill what are effectively 2(+) roles in given field? In what areas other than science/engineering do people actually do this?
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- aoeu345 10y ago
  I really can't make sense of this post. Perhaps you should re-read it and try to type it out in a more fluid manner.
- blablabla123 10y ago
  I see what you mean and I'm thinking about that as well. In there startup world there is this "focus mantra". So everybody things that everyone should work as focussed as possible. Somehow this is highly efficient for some time but on the long-run I'm sure it strongly contributes to burn-out or some kind of bore-out.
SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
I solve developer burnout by playing videos games and paying for hookers. Alcohol only causes more depression.
- justinclift 10y ago
  Not sure "solve" is the right term there. ;)
  - lukaszkups 10y ago
    yeah, not sure about hookers, because I've never met any (and I think it actually CAN cause depression in some way IMHO), but playing games can help - especially multiplayer ones.
    - SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
      > not sure about hookers, because I've never met any WHAT? 2017 and you haven't met or saw a hooker in your life? you are kidding right? well if you want to meet some without leaving your room you could just search escorts in your area, it's pretty much the same as an a hooker just more expensive, don't be afraid to try! just remember to paid them after not before.
  - SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
    "stress releasing" is more accurate
gardarh 10y ago
A few years back I had a short interaction with Kenneth Reitz. I sent an email about some issue in requests and got a reply within a minute telling me that the issue had been fixed in a release published a few hours prior. Considering how hugely popular requests is I imagine my message was just one of so many he answered on day to day basis and he did all this without really needing to do any of it. I guess I understand how he and other people in similar situations get tired of it all after a while. For whatever its worth requests is an amazing project and has made my life easier in my personal and professional hacking.
foota 10y ago
Last spring we had a few developers leave from my student development team at my university and I had to do 30 hour weeks on top of school in order to finish our projects. My summer internship was a much needed break but even now it's hard to go back to work.
cjbenedikt 10y ago
Interesting subject. When WWII was over women in the UK and Europe who had lost their husbands often had to rebuild their homes, look after their children and had to put food on the table each day. All that after having lived/suffered through 6 years of war. However, none ever mentioned burnout except perhaps when referring to their homes...just saying
- MrLeap 10y ago
  This is a provocative piece of information, but I think there's some truth in it. When I burned hard out at my last job, I resigned and decided to take some time off. Writing code felt disgusting. I had a timeline when I was going to get back in to work and the hope was that I'd be good. Welp, the one month I gave myself turned in to two, and that turned into three and I still felt just like garbage. I normally work as hard as anyone and yet the inertia to write even the simplest code was insane. My cat got sick and was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the vet trips and treatment obliterated my savings. Within _two_ days of this starting I found the mental blocks removed. This is fortunate because I was starting to get pretty scared I'd end up homeless and starve to death. Necessity caused by crisis seems to have cured my burnout. I've paid the rent on GARBAGE upwork jobs, most of them have paid minimum wage or worse while looking for full time work. All my clients have given me 5 stars and, while it's not fun, rewarding work, it's necessary and I can do it. I can say with 100% honesty that I physically could not have done it back in September when I was flush with cash and still reeling from my last work experience.
profalseidol 10y ago
If we all just listen to Epicurus. And of course, Marx too.
kaffee 10y ago
> So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. Every single person. I stopped paying attention to tech trends and reading hacker news. I went into publish-only mode. The "publish-only mode" is a great, pragmatic solution to this problem. We need some sort of revision to the Tao of the IETF: "Be conservative in what you send. If you have time and energy, be liberal in what you accept."
Perceptes 10y ago
I work in software and also run some pretty active open source projects, so I worry about this happening to me. I've felt somewhat burned out, or felt close to a more serious burn out, on a few occasions. What has helped me is to remind myself that ultimately I don't owe the open source community anything. I do it because I enjoy it, and want to create things for people to use. But if it's creating stress, I take some time off, spend a few weeks playing video games or spending more time with my partner, and that in turn reminds me that the world does not end when I stop programming for a few days. In other words, I haven't stopped, I've just slowed down, and participated in free time open source development with better moderation.
altitudinous 10y ago
This describes me well, today, right now. I have dev'd software my whole life, chucked it in to dev apps, have been successful, I _love_ developing apps but for the last 4 or 5 months I can't do it, sit and write code - I don't want to do anything to do with writing code. I can't stand that I have to sit in front of a keyboard to do anything these days - even research a non computer related activity! So this is a real thing and I'm happy that others experience it too. I interviewed for a casual customer service related role yesterday simply because there are no keyboards involved and I have the time!
freework 10y ago
Its much easier to avoid burnout when your projects are popular. Whats really hard is to avoid burnout when you put hundreds of hours of effort into a project that only you yourself uses.
LyalinDotCom 10y ago
am I the only one who read this and didn't really take anything new away? yeah social media, like anything else is not always a good thing. okay, sure... but i'm sorry developer burnout happens for a lot more reasons then stated in the write-up.
relics443 10y ago
TL;DR I experienced massive burnout after ridiculous working hours and a broken contract I experienced terrible burnout around a year ago that I'm still working to get over. I had taken a pay cut to join a startup with the promise (contractually) that I receive a raise to market value + bonus after 12 months. The latter 6 of those months were spent working 16 hour days ramping up to a massive launch. There were multiple times were I was in the office for 40 hours straight. Throughout this entire period I was locked in and producing top quality code. A few months after launch I approached my boss about the contractual raise + bonus. After blowing me off for a few weeks I had a meeting with the president and CEO where I was told that I would not be receiving either because I was not coming into the office by 10 AM. Not only that, but they told me they didn't appreciate the amount of work I put in, nor the fact that I had barely seen my family and friends in that the period because "no one asked you to do that." Mind you, our CTO had quit with 4 months to go until launch so I had taken some of his responsibilities, and I was the sole developer on Android, and one of two for the backend. All the while the feature requests kept pouring in. Within a week I was bedridden, and I stayed that way for the next 3 months. I've been slowly recovering since then, but I'm not sure I'll ever be the same again. I know I could've sued for the money, but it was the lack of even a basic appreciation that did me in. Some people have told me that I have no one to blame but myself. I sort of agree with them, however, I know that if I would've gotten my raise and bonus I would've been fine.
- RockyMcNuts 10y ago
  nah, you definitely have some other folks to blame, like the ones who reneged on contractual obligations. yikers. and there's a lot to unpack, but I'd definitely talk to a lawyer, and some kind of therapist/counselor. now go to http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/ http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/
  - relics443 10y ago
    I eventually got the money (a few months later), and they had enough decency to keep me on payroll while I was incapacitated. I believe they learned their lesson, and have made serious gestures to show that. But the damage is still done.
JTenerife 10y ago
I've had several periods in my career where I "felt" like I just couldn't get things done. Some weeks ago, I faced panic attacks and anxiety for the first time of my life due to unmanageable workload combine with nastiest politics going on a my workplace. This actually changed it for me. I still feel fear that I'm broken permanently. So, yes, another anecdote. Everyone just needs to really take care by managing themselfes. Working fixed hours only instead of trying to get features by the end of the day / week has done did it for me.
Terr_ 10y ago
Huh? This sound more like social media burnout than developer burnout. I expected something more like maintaining a big ball of mud or dealing with unrealistic expectations or struggling against the inertia of a large company.
zachrose 10y ago
Does the Gary Bernhardt quote about ice cream come from one of his talks or something? (I thought I'd seen them all.)
q-base 10y ago
In my experience a huge part of burnout also comes from deriving all your sense of identity from one source. If you only identity yourself as a developer then you will probably sooner or later start questioning whether what you do is all that meaningful. You will also be seriously exposed to criticism as questioning your abilities becomes questioning of your worth as a human being. You are also someones child, maybe a father or mother and only one step away from being a pianist, boardgamer, hiker, traveller or whatever. Identity diversification.

340 points by kenneth_reitz 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

If you are developing software as a life, you don't have one; if on the other hand you are developing software for fun, you are having it; if you are just developing software for money; leave it at work. It's hard to be buried 100% in software and realize the rest of life is more important.

pc86 10y ago
The best thing I ever did for my professional life was acquiring new interests that had nothing to do with software but were still intellectually and/or physically stimulating. Weightlifting is cheap, has proven physical and psychological benefits, and is eventually fun (sucks for the first few weeks/months though). I just recently starting taking lessons to get a private pilot's license. GA is expensive (relatively - anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it) but it's no more dangerous than riding a motorcycle and is a fairly rare skill. And it has the added benefit of being pretty mentally taxing as I am still very new to it.
- dexwiz 10y ago
  What is GA?
  - Humdeee 10y ago
    General aviation I imagine.
    - bioapparatus 10y ago
      Makes a lot more sense to read it that way. Auto-pilot (...I guess I just did that) caused me to read it as Google Analytics.
      - WalterSear 10y ago
        That's expensive, but it's also pretty dangerous :)
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- klausa 10y ago
  Not everyone on HN earns SV money. Best of luck in becoming a pilot!
  - tybit 10y ago
    And not every hobby is as expensive as training to be a pilot.
  - pc86 10y ago
    Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it's cheap. I know it's not, and statistically is prohibitively expensive for ~half of America. What I meant was if it's a priority, you can do it without huge lifestyle sacrifices provided you make a minimum of $40-45k/yr depending on your COL. Obviously if you have a mortgage and two kids and make $50k it's probably not the best idea. If you're a single 22 year old making $45k and you live in a cheap studio? You can do it without breaking the bank.
- nunez 10y ago
  > anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it LOL come on now. It costs $5-10k to get a private pilot's license which requires at least 40 hours of flying time. Most schools will recommend that you do at least 2 hours per week, which usually comes out to $200-$400. (It's easy to forget things.) Shit's expensive.
  - galdosdi 10y ago
    Eh, it's a matter of priorities. By "can afford" I'm sure the OP meant "it's even an option at all" not "it's so cheap it does not require any real tradeoffs" What percentage of USA residents would you say have spent $7k to $12k or more on a car, when only $2k is necessary to get you around safely? But yeah, it's expensive, and someone earning more can afford to do it if they're merely interested in it, as opposed to having to be obsessed enough to make major sacrifices to afford it That said, I have a friend who _is_ a (graduate) student and flies. He bought a gyrocopter for a couple thousand dollars, uses some license class that required minimal/no training but limits the weight of the aircraft severely (ultralight or experimental or something like that, sorry, not sure) and has ultimately spent relatively quite little over time on the hobby. Where there's a will there's (often but admittedly not always!) a way, but that doesn't mean it's not a way requiring sacrifices and tradeoffs
  - pc86 10y ago
    Industry average seems to about $12k (but that's from my flight school which obviously has an incentive to make the assumed cost just a little higher than it need be). galdosdi is 100% correct that I didn't mean it's cheap. I meant if it's something you really want to do, you can afford it without selling your car or living in a hovel.
    - nunez 10y ago
      Fair points. I agree!
- manish_gill 10y ago
  > (relatively - anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it) I know you mean well but this is the epitome of living in a bubble. :)
  - pc86 10y ago
    Yes that didn't come off the way I meant it. See sibling comments here :)
- tom_wilde 10y ago
  I strongly recommend running as a burnout cure...

bioapparatus 10y ago

Not sure how I should feel about this, reading a post about no longer reading posts, while I should be writing code.

Humdeee 10y ago

I've been burned out twice. The first and deeper of the two was right after I graduated years ago. It made the whole process of going straight into the workforce bittersweet, as I was mentally not ready to muster the energy to endure the rigors of professional development on-boarding for a new grad. I managed, but no where near at a potential I could of been. A brutal semester of final projects and endless nights had left me somewhat poisoned, so to speak. It caused the recuperation of my mental and physical state to be much longer (over a year) than if I took a 2-3 week vacation like I should have done, I imagine. I've always taken this as a likely scenario for a new grad when being brought on within a company. The second, like the author, was when I was gung-ho into a new technology and went at personal projects endlessly for a solid 12 months before I came up for air and took a breather, with similar but more superficial effects than the first burnout. I regret these mistakes, and I've learned the hard way to do work in moderation. However, I am not an entrepreneur for these very reasons, and I simply don't want that lifestyle for the long-term. I'm hoping my health will thank me 30 years from now.

poikniok 10y ago
You know the one about entering the workforce hits home for me, I feel like this is about to happen to me, but I feel sort of powerless to stop it.
- paloaltokid 10y ago
  Talk to your manager - let them know. The first thing you should learn upon entering the workforce is the power of communication. Most people want their employees to do well, because it helps them.
- Jach 10y ago
  It's much easier to back away and recharge when you're close to the edge than after you've already fallen off. So you should try and stop falling off if you can. Take a real break after you graduate, if you can, it'll help. Otherwise consider if you can last a few months at a new gig, that ought to supply you with enough savings to take the same amount of time off if not more and then look for a new gig. I was excited to start working properly after school, regardless of what I worked on, it would be something that mattered enough that I'd be paid for it instead of paying myself. I started interviewing mostly after graduation and while it was stressful (must find a job soon to pay bills, and start paying student loans) I landed one after not too long. I was fortunate that my start date wasn't until a month after acceptance so I was able to chill for that whole month and really unwind after the stress of years of school. Looking back I was telling people during interviews that I was basically available to start "immediately" (because I wanted more money immediately) but I really should have pushed for at least a few weeks lead time before starting in all cases instead of lucking into it. I recently came back from a 2 week vacation of just chilling, it's lifted a lot of work stress that has been accumulating. But some times I've entertained myself with calculations about how long I could go financially if I quit tomorrow. I even did that at the start more for fun than stress relief, since suddenly every two weeks you're getting a paycheck that covers 3-6 months of expenses if you keep your college lifestyle. It doesn't take long to save up for a year of goofing off and then a couple months of runway to find a job after that.

zoeysaurusrex 10y ago

> Not only that, but I found myself censoring my own private thought processes, in the silent comfort of my own home, because of the public opinion of people I follow on Twitter. I deleted my Twitter account because of this. I realized it was an empty echo chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete information and little to no proof. I've determined that the key for me is to limit the inputs. My inputs now are a few cultivated social sites (this one, one or two tech sites), books, and podcasts. In my opinion, feeding my mind properly has lessened my feelings of burnout. If you have the choice to feed your brain digital junk food, don't be too alarmed when it starts taking of too much space, like fat.

sotojuan 10y ago
I've been much happier since quitting the Twitter/Medium bubble. I've limited my HN time as well.
- wmccullough 10y ago
  I find myself doing the same thing with HN. Most of the time I love it, but it seems once in awhile the contrarians come out to play, and meaningful discussions drop to zero.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    As someone who is feeling more and more contrarian lately in my comments here and regretting it, I think it's because after a decade of HN, everything starts to the look the same. Everybody is trying to sell a framework, a startup, a language, or their own personal brand and it turns into a big circlejerk of everyone patting themselves on the back because they've got some secret knowledge. Sometimes it doesn't seem like any real learning is going on as nothing is scientific or rigorous or anything more than an anecdote. You start to wonder how different some of this stuff is than hundreds of religions that have long since died. This is a larger issue with developer burnout I suspect. You master one thing and there's someone standing on the corner saying..."well, actually, I've got something better" and there's a very real anxiety in that evaluation process. Does object-oriented programming suck? Are functional languages the future? Do you really want an SPA? Should you replace your C codebase with Rust... or Go? Is Bitcoin worth getting in on? etc etc You will interact with some of the most brilliant people on HN, and most of them are friendly and mean well, but without actual disagreement nothing interesting gets said. ...that wasn't intentionally contrarian.

matmo 10y ago

The worst part for me was going from being a "rockstar developer" on the team to having to explain why I suddenly can't meet the overly ambitious deadlines handed down from above due to anxiety, depression, panic attacks and extreme insomnia.

bhalp1 10y ago
I feel you, man.
edblarney 10y ago
Wait till you hit 35 and you have an actual life and you can absolutely still jump through flaming hoops but you just don't care as much. It's one thing to 'step back a little' - it's another thing to have people who've been coding for for only 18 months, but willing to work 14-hour days and lick the testes of the bosses move into 'status' position, because in the most short-sighted version of a project, they can actually developed something resembling code a little bit faster. Sorry for the crude metaphor. :) One option is to find an enclave that is not a fast-paced startup. Do you know how many big dumb companies out there are starving for actual talent? A lot! If you don't mind working with mediocre people and moving slowly, you can find a job in 'not hot' industries where the pace is not so fast. You might feel a little numb though :)
- divbit 10y ago
  >You might feel a little numb though :) Isn't that exactly what hobbies and fun side projects are for though?

paulcole 10y ago

> It happens to everyone that writes code all day long More like "It happens to everyone." I know this is a developer-focused site, but this isn't a problem unique to people in software. An old joke, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar."

gogopuppygogo 10y ago
Obviously you've never heard of Tim Harris. This guy inspires me to always find a way to love what I do: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6He0FWoFj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6He0FWoFj0 Wish everyone was as happy as Tim.
- rubicon33 10y ago
  Aw man, that made my day, thanks for sharing it. I think we could all be a little happier, if we just tried. I'm not saying curing depression or burnout is as trivial as just trying to... But, you can certainly choose to be a notch happier than you are at this moment. Just one notch today, and try for another notch tomorrow. We can start by appreciating what we have.
  - kovek 10y ago
    I learned recently that if I list a few things I am grateful for, I will instantly feel happier. It seems like it works for others as well.
    - myblake 10y ago
      I'm pretty sure there's research to back this up.
    - Retra 10y ago
      Are you grateful for anything that doesn't make you happier? It sounds like you're saying that thinking about things that make you happy makes you happy, and that this is something you just learned somehow.

Animats 10y ago

This is not developer burnout. This is Twitter burnout. "So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter" he writes, which apparently fixed his problem. That has nothing to do with development.

Fnoord 10y ago
On the contrary; in this case, Twitter is a symptom. Instead, the problem is bubble-based news. The platform could've been something else, like Facebook, or RSS.
- rdavl 10y ago
  Platform has nothing to do with it. If you keep reading unrealistic marketing stories and believe what they say... well you are the problem... A lot of people read the same things, should we all burn out?
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    > A lot of people read the same things, should we all burn out? Eventually? Would everyone burn out at an equivalent speed? I don't know the answer to your question. I do wonder if it has to do with being closed or open minded. The difference of a person enjoying being in a bubble, and one who wants to think outside of the box. Also, there are platforms where people gather who think outside of the box. However at some point they become so popular, that the status quo of the masses takes over. (Reddit seems an excellent example of this.) To me, it seems akin to the principles of the Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ) [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
lukaszkups 10y ago
IMHO not exactly. I feel the same and decreased list of following people couple times. Couple days ago I've thought about switch to HackerNews & Publish only mode because I feel like everybody around has great life, skills, projects and work for awesome companies. There's too many successful stories around that sometimes can cause depression more than stories about failures. It's a bit hard to explain properly in single HN comment. I'll try to blog about it during the weekend. If You're interested - follow me on twitter (@lukaszkups), cheers!

teabee89 10y ago

It was an interesting read but the solution reminds me of pyramidal "scams" (of course the scam part is where the analogy breaks): the way you avoid burn out, is by delegating it to others and once they too get burned out they have to delegate too. Or they quit and you have to find someone else or let the project die. I'm not disagreeing nor judging, just sharing the thought.

scrollaway 10y ago
In a reasonable setup, going from 1 dev to 3 devs will alleviate the workload. A more apt analogy would be with a load balancer.
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walrus1066 10y ago

I think the key is to not put pressure on yourself, and don't allow other people to do so. One person can only do so much, you can't make a baby in 5 months. Work a stable amount each day, on tasks in descending order of priority. I never work past 6 pm, and never work on weekends. If a deadline isn't met, it's the fault of the people that set the deadline.

twothamendment 10y ago
You are right on. I learned a long time ago there is always more work and it always needs to be done last week. I work hard, but there is only so much a person can do. I'll put in extra time, but only when it really counts. Some deadlines were meant to be blown by and when you quit stressing yourself over things that are out of your control and focus on what you can do - life is better.
- walrus1066 10y ago
  True true. With deadlines, if they're unrealistic, you've just got to compromise and either a) reduce the scope b) fail to meet the deadline c) compromise the quality by frantically hacking things together over long nights and weekends. Always go for option a), if you can't extend or get rid of the deadline.

alexmingoia 10y ago

I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110% instead of 70% at your job accomplishes little but making things harder for yourself. A software engineer doesn't get more money giving 110%, and if they work to finish something quicker they're just rewarded with more work. Often engineers (being human) will want to do a good job, give 110% on an important project, and when its over and their pay and work hours are exactly the same, they get angry with themselves for giving 110% instead of the bare minimum. They have this "I just wasted a month of my life because I'm a fool" feeling that completely zaps their motivation to do anything.

paulddraper 10y ago
> I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical Since programming is mental and not physical....yes?
- alexmingoia 10y ago
  No, I mean that burnout is not caused by physical things like lack of sleep, improper diet, lack of exercise, etc.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    yeah! It's amazing how much people give fixing these things as a remedy for burnout, and yet (in my anecdata) it never works. One common advice is taking an unplanned vacation, but tha can be even worse, because it reinforces your brain's burnout by rewarding the burnout feedback cycle at a meta-level.
diegorbaquero 10y ago
It is starts psychologically, but psychological problems can then turn into physical illnesses. A burnout can be stressful and slowly consume you life away with stress and anxiety until you hit rock bottom.

madmax108 10y ago

A lot of my friends working in the industry have limited interest in coding (or computer science), but look at it solely as a job... something that guarantees decent financial freedom to pursue other goals. For me, it's the opposite. Since I first played Super Mario on the NES and wrote my first line of C a decade ago, I've wanted to have a career with computers. But that means I never get to switch off. If I'm not working on something cool at work (and no, I'm not in a dead end job... In fact love my job and team), then I'm at home trying to code something awesome (Was just setting up a DCGAN when I saw this post). I have no financial worries and should technically be living the good life, but I always feel that if one day all computers in the world shut down abruptly, I have absolutely nothing to do... for work OR for fun. And when I got close to burning out a year ago, the hardest thing was to find something to do. The route back involved calling people I hadn't spoken to in years, Reading (and smelling) a dozen books, Quizzing and quite a bit of travel. It was hard at first, but since getting back, has provided a much clearer view of life! So please, plug off for a bit. Don't wait till you start hating yourself/your life. Life is about so much more. :)

rdavl 10y ago

> Burnout is, unfortunately, a very real phenomena in software development These people sound like they are bomb technicians not software developers... > "I'd rather do anything else than this right now" — even though writing software is one of your favorite activities in the world. So? Does this mean you have burnt out? How does this compare to jobs like algorithmic trading or mission critical software? Burning out over stress of writing a web site? I call BS on all these burn out blog posts. You have other problems in your life that make you depress, coding might be little part of it but I don't see what levels of stress can you be under while doing mostly non interesting jobs.

dwaltrip 10y ago
You are calling bullshit based some vague feelings of "job difficulty"? Do you have a robust mental model of the day to day experiences of these people who you are calling bullshit on? If not, I would be careful with your words. It can come off as fairly snide, ignorant, and callous.
- rdavl 10y ago
  I am saying depression is caused by large variety of factors and not just coding, if you have personal problems you will burnt out cos of them, and that will affect your coding, you can't blame software development for that. Also unless you are doing really stressful work what is it that makes you burn out? Maybe you have other interests? Not wanting to code all day every day does not mean you have burnt out. Also the words "burnt out" sounds like one those buzz words people come up to feel like more special snow flakes... What are examples of this in other professions that put tons of stress on you? Compare that to writing code in cozy office...
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    > Also unless you are doing really stressful work what is it that makes you burn out? I think you are making too many assumptions about what kind of work and what work environments are stressful for different people. Could the term "burn out" be abused? Of course, it's something that is difficult for others to verify. That fact doesn't make it less real for those actually experiencing it.

cossatot 10y ago

One of the amazing things about software that we all write is how well it integrates with many other aspects of life, particularly (though without a doubt not exclusively) intellectual pursuits. This is, of course, why it pays what it does: Software for software's sake pays about like math for math's sake, with the same people paying. But unfortunately it seems that despite the deep integration with other facets of work and life, most professional developers seem to basically write code 80-100% of their time (including associated activities like meetings etc.). Far fewer developers are also domain experts (or at least domain enthusiasts) and spend, say, 30-50% of their time coding and the remainder working within the domain or on integration. I wonder if this separation between the coders and the domains contributes to burnout. Maybe it's more economically efficient (specialization and all that) and we all like our abstractions. But having a lack of meaningful contexts to switch to, i.e. eating ice cream for every meal for lack of broccoli, can't be great. Directly gaining the benefit of the software should also help with perspective, motivation and an appreciation of the work invested. But maybe it's too hard to find people who can fill what are effectively 2(+) roles in given field? In what areas other than science/engineering do people actually do this?

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aoeu345 10y ago
I really can't make sense of this post. Perhaps you should re-read it and try to type it out in a more fluid manner.
blablabla123 10y ago
I see what you mean and I'm thinking about that as well. In there startup world there is this "focus mantra". So everybody things that everyone should work as focussed as possible. Somehow this is highly efficient for some time but on the long-run I'm sure it strongly contributes to burn-out or some kind of bore-out.

SadWebDeveloper 10y ago

I solve developer burnout by playing videos games and paying for hookers. Alcohol only causes more depression.

justinclift 10y ago
Not sure "solve" is the right term there. ;)
- lukaszkups 10y ago
  yeah, not sure about hookers, because I've never met any (and I think it actually CAN cause depression in some way IMHO), but playing games can help - especially multiplayer ones.
  - SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
    > not sure about hookers, because I've never met any WHAT? 2017 and you haven't met or saw a hooker in your life? you are kidding right? well if you want to meet some without leaving your room you could just search escorts in your area, it's pretty much the same as an a hooker just more expensive, don't be afraid to try! just remember to paid them after not before.
- SadWebDeveloper 10y ago
  "stress releasing" is more accurate

gardarh 10y ago

A few years back I had a short interaction with Kenneth Reitz. I sent an email about some issue in requests and got a reply within a minute telling me that the issue had been fixed in a release published a few hours prior. Considering how hugely popular requests is I imagine my message was just one of so many he answered on day to day basis and he did all this without really needing to do any of it. I guess I understand how he and other people in similar situations get tired of it all after a while. For whatever its worth requests is an amazing project and has made my life easier in my personal and professional hacking.

foota 10y ago

Last spring we had a few developers leave from my student development team at my university and I had to do 30 hour weeks on top of school in order to finish our projects. My summer internship was a much needed break but even now it's hard to go back to work.

cjbenedikt 10y ago

Interesting subject. When WWII was over women in the UK and Europe who had lost their husbands often had to rebuild their homes, look after their children and had to put food on the table each day. All that after having lived/suffered through 6 years of war. However, none ever mentioned burnout except perhaps when referring to their homes...just saying

MrLeap 10y ago
This is a provocative piece of information, but I think there's some truth in it. When I burned hard out at my last job, I resigned and decided to take some time off. Writing code felt disgusting. I had a timeline when I was going to get back in to work and the hope was that I'd be good. Welp, the one month I gave myself turned in to two, and that turned into three and I still felt just like garbage. I normally work as hard as anyone and yet the inertia to write even the simplest code was insane. My cat got sick and was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the vet trips and treatment obliterated my savings. Within _two_ days of this starting I found the mental blocks removed. This is fortunate because I was starting to get pretty scared I'd end up homeless and starve to death. Necessity caused by crisis seems to have cured my burnout. I've paid the rent on GARBAGE upwork jobs, most of them have paid minimum wage or worse while looking for full time work. All my clients have given me 5 stars and, while it's not fun, rewarding work, it's necessary and I can do it. I can say with 100% honesty that I physically could not have done it back in September when I was flush with cash and still reeling from my last work experience.

profalseidol 10y ago

If we all just listen to Epicurus. And of course, Marx too.

kaffee 10y ago

> So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. Every single person. I stopped paying attention to tech trends and reading hacker news. I went into publish-only mode. The "publish-only mode" is a great, pragmatic solution to this problem. We need some sort of revision to the Tao of the IETF: "Be conservative in what you send. If you have time and energy, be liberal in what you accept."

Perceptes 10y ago

I work in software and also run some pretty active open source projects, so I worry about this happening to me. I've felt somewhat burned out, or felt close to a more serious burn out, on a few occasions. What has helped me is to remind myself that ultimately I don't owe the open source community anything. I do it because I enjoy it, and want to create things for people to use. But if it's creating stress, I take some time off, spend a few weeks playing video games or spending more time with my partner, and that in turn reminds me that the world does not end when I stop programming for a few days. In other words, I haven't stopped, I've just slowed down, and participated in free time open source development with better moderation.

altitudinous 10y ago

This describes me well, today, right now. I have dev'd software my whole life, chucked it in to dev apps, have been successful, I _love_ developing apps but for the last 4 or 5 months I can't do it, sit and write code - I don't want to do anything to do with writing code. I can't stand that I have to sit in front of a keyboard to do anything these days - even research a non computer related activity! So this is a real thing and I'm happy that others experience it too. I interviewed for a casual customer service related role yesterday simply because there are no keyboards involved and I have the time!

freework 10y ago

Its much easier to avoid burnout when your projects are popular. Whats really hard is to avoid burnout when you put hundreds of hours of effort into a project that only you yourself uses.

LyalinDotCom 10y ago

am I the only one who read this and didn't really take anything new away? yeah social media, like anything else is not always a good thing. okay, sure... but i'm sorry developer burnout happens for a lot more reasons then stated in the write-up.

relics443 10y ago

TL;DR I experienced massive burnout after ridiculous working hours and a broken contract I experienced terrible burnout around a year ago that I'm still working to get over. I had taken a pay cut to join a startup with the promise (contractually) that I receive a raise to market value + bonus after 12 months. The latter 6 of those months were spent working 16 hour days ramping up to a massive launch. There were multiple times were I was in the office for 40 hours straight. Throughout this entire period I was locked in and producing top quality code. A few months after launch I approached my boss about the contractual raise + bonus. After blowing me off for a few weeks I had a meeting with the president and CEO where I was told that I would not be receiving either because I was not coming into the office by 10 AM. Not only that, but they told me they didn't appreciate the amount of work I put in, nor the fact that I had barely seen my family and friends in that the period because "no one asked you to do that." Mind you, our CTO had quit with 4 months to go until launch so I had taken some of his responsibilities, and I was the sole developer on Android, and one of two for the backend. All the while the feature requests kept pouring in. Within a week I was bedridden, and I stayed that way for the next 3 months. I've been slowly recovering since then, but I'm not sure I'll ever be the same again. I know I could've sued for the money, but it was the lack of even a basic appreciation that did me in. Some people have told me that I have no one to blame but myself. I sort of agree with them, however, I know that if I would've gotten my raise and bonus I would've been fine.

RockyMcNuts 10y ago
nah, you definitely have some other folks to blame, like the ones who reneged on contractual obligations. yikers. and there's a lot to unpack, but I'd definitely talk to a lawyer, and some kind of therapist/counselor. now go to http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/ http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/
- relics443 10y ago
  I eventually got the money (a few months later), and they had enough decency to keep me on payroll while I was incapacitated. I believe they learned their lesson, and have made serious gestures to show that. But the damage is still done.

JTenerife 10y ago

I've had several periods in my career where I "felt" like I just couldn't get things done. Some weeks ago, I faced panic attacks and anxiety for the first time of my life due to unmanageable workload combine with nastiest politics going on a my workplace. This actually changed it for me. I still feel fear that I'm broken permanently. So, yes, another anecdote. Everyone just needs to really take care by managing themselfes. Working fixed hours only instead of trying to get features by the end of the day / week has done did it for me.

Terr_ 10y ago

Huh? This sound more like social media burnout than developer burnout. I expected something more like maintaining a big ball of mud or dealing with unrealistic expectations or struggling against the inertia of a large company.

zachrose 10y ago

Does the Gary Bernhardt quote about ice cream come from one of his talks or something? (I thought I'd seen them all.)

q-base 10y ago

In my experience a huge part of burnout also comes from deriving all your sense of identity from one source. If you only identity yourself as a developer then you will probably sooner or later start questioning whether what you do is all that meaningful. You will also be seriously exposed to criticism as questioning your abilities becomes questioning of your worth as a human being. You are also someones child, maybe a father or mother and only one step away from being a pianist, boardgamer, hiker, traveller or whatever. Identity diversification.