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> Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. You probably shouldn't make your "meaning in life" reside completely i

> Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. You probably shouldn't make your "meaning in life" reside completely in your work. But then again, you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you. The problem with burnout generally comes from the feeling of pointlessness. And IT excels at that feeling. We've built an industry that is accustomed -almost to the point of being a fraud to society- to such things as: - Extremely low productivity in the large. While workers may be fully occupied, and even over-worked sometimes, in the large, a lot of productivity is simply wasted in projects which never take off, are discarded, scratched, changed, etc. - Low accountability. Current trends like #NoEstimates #NoTesting #NoProductOwners etc, while may or may not have valid points all lead to a larger #NoAccountability "ideal" where developers seem to want no accountability at all for whatever they do. Not having any responsibilities in what you do is actually not the good idea some think it is. - The pervasive idea that it's all horrible but that's alright. That you don't really need to know how to do stuff, you can just copy-paste it from SO or whatever you find on Google. That programmers just don't know what they are doing but haha I change this line here and it works and I don't know why but it works and that's what matters so I'm going to sarcastically twit about it because everyone will understand and concur. That everything could just crash and burn in microseconds but that won't really happen, right? - The masterful move of claiming that anyone can program with just good will and disposition. That a degree doesn't matter, that experience doesn't matter, that actual knowledge is secondary to "passion". All this ends up producing the result that a lot -most? probably so- of jobs in the industry and a large part of every job in the industry is mostly pointless, or at least feels so. And this pointlessness in turn is what produces the burnout. And I don't really know, but I would tend to think that no matter how much meaning you find outside your job, if that job doesn't at least give you a minimum meaning, you will have a very hard time fighting burnout.

NeoBasilisk 8y ago
>you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you You absolutely can, and millions of people do every day.
- loganfrederick 8y ago
  But that's also probably why millions of people are psychologically miserable all the time. The subset of people who are working a full-time completely meaningless job (may not apply to part-time) and then finding happiness outside of work entirely. There's plenty of gray in-between though (people define 'meaningless' in their own way).
ben7799 8y ago
You make a bunch of great points. A lot of the "No Accountability" stuff to me started to appear about the same time as Agile. Agile removed most of management's accountability and product management's accountability. They could do whatever they want, engineering can just pivot on a dime when they're wrong. If PM asked you to build something ridiculous it's waved away through Agile, it was always too hard to figure out what to build before you build it, so PM can do no wrong. I think some of the "No accountability" trends on the developer side are just a response. But all of it makes the workplace a lot harder to stomach.
jdmichal 8y ago
Just a minor quip about the NoEstimates thing. I have zero illusions that some people adopt it exactly as you state. However, AFAIK the original idea was to use metrics and modeling to eliminate the need for a human to make up an estimate. Instead, you have an estimate based on actual numbers and ideally even with a confidence tied to it.
MaupitiBlue 8y ago
You probably shouldn’t make your happiness contingent on a meaningful life. If your favorite team isn’t in last place, there’s beer in the fridge, and you’re not dealing with significant physical or emotional trauma, then be grateful you have the opportunity to worry about mastering Lagrangian comment design patterns, diverse leadership efficiency, or performant vested class b proxy options.
- dvdkon 8y ago
  Leaving what I'd call "intuitive happiness" immediately leads you into the depths of deciding the goals of human life. If we agree that happiness is desirable, why not just induce it by drugs? Why not try to learn to be happy in all situations at all costs? Mentally disabled people seem to be usually quite happy without all the reasons we need, why not become like them? For me, happiness requires a meaningful life. If I tried to get rid of that dependency, I'd probably end up a broken man and try one of the above ideas.
arvinsim 8y ago
> Extremely low productivity in the large. While workers may be fully occupied, and even over-worked sometimes, in the large, a lot of productivity is simply wasted in projects which never take off, are discarded, scratched, changed, etc. When speed became a major factor in this new startup dominated tech world, people think that they just don't have time to plan. > Low accountability. Current trends like #NoEstimates #NoTesting #NoProductOwners etc, while may or may not have valid points all lead to a larger #NoAccountability "ideal" where developers seem to want no accountability at all for whatever they do. Not having any responsibilities in what you do is actually not the good idea some think it is. When developers are not given time to plan and test, what does one expect? That programmers put in their spare time for the company? Ha! > - The pervasive idea that it's all horrible but that's alright. That you don't really need to know how to do stuff, you can just copy-paste it from SO or whatever you find on Google. That programmers just don't know what they are doing but haha I change this line here and it works and I don't know why but it works and that's what matters so I'm going to sarcastically twit about it because everyone will understand and concur. That everything could just crash and burn in microseconds but that won't really happen, right? Again, if developers are not given time to reflect like post-mortems and such, what do you expect? > - The masterful move of claiming that anyone can program with just good will and disposition. That a degree doesn't matter, that experience doesn't matter, that actual knowledge is secondary to "passion". I used to believe that passion is important. But after a few years in the field, more often than not, it is used as an exploitation vector.

NeoBasilisk 8y ago

>you can't work at a job that is completely meaningless to you You absolutely can, and millions of people do every day.

loganfrederick 8y ago
But that's also probably why millions of people are psychologically miserable all the time. The subset of people who are working a full-time completely meaningless job (may not apply to part-time) and then finding happiness outside of work entirely. There's plenty of gray in-between though (people define 'meaningless' in their own way).

ben7799 8y ago

You make a bunch of great points. A lot of the "No Accountability" stuff to me started to appear about the same time as Agile. Agile removed most of management's accountability and product management's accountability. They could do whatever they want, engineering can just pivot on a dime when they're wrong. If PM asked you to build something ridiculous it's waved away through Agile, it was always too hard to figure out what to build before you build it, so PM can do no wrong. I think some of the "No accountability" trends on the developer side are just a response. But all of it makes the workplace a lot harder to stomach.

jdmichal 8y ago

Just a minor quip about the NoEstimates thing. I have zero illusions that some people adopt it exactly as you state. However, AFAIK the original idea was to use metrics and modeling to eliminate the need for a human to make up an estimate. Instead, you have an estimate based on actual numbers and ideally even with a confidence tied to it.

MaupitiBlue 8y ago

You probably shouldn’t make your happiness contingent on a meaningful life. If your favorite team isn’t in last place, there’s beer in the fridge, and you’re not dealing with significant physical or emotional trauma, then be grateful you have the opportunity to worry about mastering Lagrangian comment design patterns, diverse leadership efficiency, or performant vested class b proxy options.

dvdkon 8y ago
Leaving what I'd call "intuitive happiness" immediately leads you into the depths of deciding the goals of human life. If we agree that happiness is desirable, why not just induce it by drugs? Why not try to learn to be happy in all situations at all costs? Mentally disabled people seem to be usually quite happy without all the reasons we need, why not become like them? For me, happiness requires a meaningful life. If I tried to get rid of that dependency, I'd probably end up a broken man and try one of the above ideas.

arvinsim 8y ago

> Extremely low productivity in the large. While workers may be fully occupied, and even over-worked sometimes, in the large, a lot of productivity is simply wasted in projects which never take off, are discarded, scratched, changed, etc. When speed became a major factor in this new startup dominated tech world, people think that they just don't have time to plan. > Low accountability. Current trends like #NoEstimates #NoTesting #NoProductOwners etc, while may or may not have valid points all lead to a larger #NoAccountability "ideal" where developers seem to want no accountability at all for whatever they do. Not having any responsibilities in what you do is actually not the good idea some think it is. When developers are not given time to plan and test, what does one expect? That programmers put in their spare time for the company? Ha! > - The pervasive idea that it's all horrible but that's alright. That you don't really need to know how to do stuff, you can just copy-paste it from SO or whatever you find on Google. That programmers just don't know what they are doing but haha I change this line here and it works and I don't know why but it works and that's what matters so I'm going to sarcastically twit about it because everyone will understand and concur. That everything could just crash and burn in microseconds but that won't really happen, right? Again, if developers are not given time to reflect like post-mortems and such, what do you expect? > - The masterful move of claiming that anyone can program with just good will and disposition. That a degree doesn't matter, that experience doesn't matter, that actual knowledge is secondary to "passion". I used to believe that passion is important. But after a few years in the field, more often than not, it is used as an exploitation vector.