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Hmm in my experience burnout has little to do with how much your peers care about their work relative to you? For me it seems to happen because we feel that we

Hmm in my experience burnout has little to do with how much your peers care about their work relative to you? For me it seems to happen because we feel that we must be emotionally invested in our work, and the toll of being 100% emotionally invested in something that is more likely than not devoid of meaning creates a “burnout” reaction.

js8 7y ago
I don't think it's necessarily peers, it might be any humans that we interact with as a part of our work - our bosses, our clients, etc.
- lanrh1836 7y ago
  My point was more that I disagree that burnout is caused in part by the fact that you perceive other people caring less about work than you do. If anything, the reason why burnout seems to be more frequent is because too many people care too much about their work, which creates pressure on others to join in on appearing like they care and emotionally invest in their work, which goes back to my theory that people ultimately burnout because they’ve been pressured to put their whole selves into their work when for many their work is actually devoid of much meaning.
  - js8 7y ago
    Maybe you're talking about a different phenomenon. > which creates pressure on others to join in on appearing like they care and emotionally invest in their work I don't see this pressure coming from people who care. I mean, they want others to care, but they certainly don't want them to be pretending it. So if anything, this pressure comes from within you, and then it also can be considered an issue of emotional control, but it is a different issue than caring too much about your work. In other words, it seems like there are problems on both ends of the spectrum. I care more than average person in the group => potentially an emotional problem for me (that's my explanation of burnout). I care less than average person in the group => potentially an emotional problem for me (that's your explanation of burnout).
mkesper 7y ago
It's not necessarily the meaninglessness of work. I had one project at a former employer I became emotionally attached to and worked for some weeks from 6am to 6pm on it. After figuring out the project would not be finished any time soon though I almost couldn't work on it anymore after a holiday. It was like running sprint after sprint and realising you need to run at least a marathon. I did not have a real burnout but I think I was very close.
mlthoughts2018 7y ago
I think burnout rarely is connected to an overly strong emotional attachment or investment in work. This almost sounds like trying to blame the victim. There’s a much simpler description: burnout happens to you because of circumstances imposed by the employer. You don’t have to be emotionally invested to be deeply stressed by the prospect of getting fired, demoted or turned into a workplace pariah, and in a lot of toxic environments you are made to feel those threats are connected to whether or not you are putting in 8 hours every Saturday or responding to a permanent triage of PagerDuty alerts with no permission to invest time into fixing root causes. Even when it doesn’t manifest as implied uncompensated overtime, you can end up being expected to be a miracle worker and simultaneously given no resources, all while balancing a personal life or financial obligations that might imply you cannot easily quit jobs or move to a new place for better jobs. In a Hanlon’s Razor sense, I’d say burnout is almost always about toxic management or executive behavior. Sometimes it’s about a problematic teammate. But it’s rarely caused by the degree of emotional investment of the person burning out. Rather that is a symptom exacerbated by the real causes.
- ptero 7y ago
  > burnout happens to you because of circumstances imposed by the employer. This is often the case, but I think very often there is a lot of self-inflicted hurt there, too, with employees burning midnight oil because they convinced themselves that something bad will happen to them if they do a task a day (three days, week) later. <rant> As a personal anecdote, I have to wage real wars to prevent people who work on my projects from coming to work when they are sick. I do not know what is it -- do they want to look heroic? believe this day is super critical? but they still show up to cough and sneeze on everyone. We have unlimited sick days, stay home! <rant off>
- mieseratte 7y ago
  > Sometimes it’s about a problematic teammate. But it’s rarely caused by the degree of emotional investment of the person burning out. If you care and your toxic teammate doesn't, and then your toxic manager doesn't give a shit about the toxic teammate but instead cares that dared "rock the boat" by bringing it up is it all three thing as a cause or just the toxic manager? It's swiss cheese failure. If you didn't care you wouldn't be having trouble. If your toxic teammate wasn't toxic you wouldn't be having trouble. If your toxic manager wasn't toxic you would've reasonably had the problem resolved. I'm saying this having been in this boat two jobs in a row.

js8 7y ago

I don't think it's necessarily peers, it might be any humans that we interact with as a part of our work - our bosses, our clients, etc.

lanrh1836 7y ago
My point was more that I disagree that burnout is caused in part by the fact that you perceive other people caring less about work than you do. If anything, the reason why burnout seems to be more frequent is because too many people care too much about their work, which creates pressure on others to join in on appearing like they care and emotionally invest in their work, which goes back to my theory that people ultimately burnout because they’ve been pressured to put their whole selves into their work when for many their work is actually devoid of much meaning.
- js8 7y ago
  Maybe you're talking about a different phenomenon. > which creates pressure on others to join in on appearing like they care and emotionally invest in their work I don't see this pressure coming from people who care. I mean, they want others to care, but they certainly don't want them to be pretending it. So if anything, this pressure comes from within you, and then it also can be considered an issue of emotional control, but it is a different issue than caring too much about your work. In other words, it seems like there are problems on both ends of the spectrum. I care more than average person in the group => potentially an emotional problem for me (that's my explanation of burnout). I care less than average person in the group => potentially an emotional problem for me (that's your explanation of burnout).

mkesper 7y ago

It's not necessarily the meaninglessness of work. I had one project at a former employer I became emotionally attached to and worked for some weeks from 6am to 6pm on it. After figuring out the project would not be finished any time soon though I almost couldn't work on it anymore after a holiday. It was like running sprint after sprint and realising you need to run at least a marathon. I did not have a real burnout but I think I was very close.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

I think burnout rarely is connected to an overly strong emotional attachment or investment in work. This almost sounds like trying to blame the victim. There’s a much simpler description: burnout happens to you because of circumstances imposed by the employer. You don’t have to be emotionally invested to be deeply stressed by the prospect of getting fired, demoted or turned into a workplace pariah, and in a lot of toxic environments you are made to feel those threats are connected to whether or not you are putting in 8 hours every Saturday or responding to a permanent triage of PagerDuty alerts with no permission to invest time into fixing root causes. Even when it doesn’t manifest as implied uncompensated overtime, you can end up being expected to be a miracle worker and simultaneously given no resources, all while balancing a personal life or financial obligations that might imply you cannot easily quit jobs or move to a new place for better jobs. In a Hanlon’s Razor sense, I’d say burnout is almost always about toxic management or executive behavior. Sometimes it’s about a problematic teammate. But it’s rarely caused by the degree of emotional investment of the person burning out. Rather that is a symptom exacerbated by the real causes.

ptero 7y ago
> burnout happens to you because of circumstances imposed by the employer. This is often the case, but I think very often there is a lot of self-inflicted hurt there, too, with employees burning midnight oil because they convinced themselves that something bad will happen to them if they do a task a day (three days, week) later. <rant> As a personal anecdote, I have to wage real wars to prevent people who work on my projects from coming to work when they are sick. I do not know what is it -- do they want to look heroic? believe this day is super critical? but they still show up to cough and sneeze on everyone. We have unlimited sick days, stay home! <rant off>
mieseratte 7y ago
> Sometimes it’s about a problematic teammate. But it’s rarely caused by the degree of emotional investment of the person burning out. If you care and your toxic teammate doesn't, and then your toxic manager doesn't give a shit about the toxic teammate but instead cares that dared "rock the boat" by bringing it up is it all three thing as a cause or just the toxic manager? It's swiss cheese failure. If you didn't care you wouldn't be having trouble. If your toxic teammate wasn't toxic you wouldn't be having trouble. If your toxic manager wasn't toxic you would've reasonably had the problem resolved. I'm saying this having been in this boat two jobs in a row.