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Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. My first small business I owned hit every bullet point in my career wants and desires and I burne
by spaginal 7y ago
Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen.
My first small business I owned hit every bullet point in my career wants and desires and I burned out pretty hard on it. The constant state of being turned on, dangling the career carrot in front of myself wasn't healthy. I had a bad relationship with my own business.
Even though I enjoyed the work, the compensation was good, and I used my hands creatively, my own expectations weren't matching the reality and I still found myself becoming oddly dissatisfied with the work and becoming overwhelmed by the grind.
I think it's much deeper than just work being meaningful. My wife sits on a phone all day really doing useless work for a large publicly traded company and makes great money and absolutely loves it.
I think it boils down to each their own.
- hinkley 7y agoTrue. Hang out where people talk about volunteerism for very long and you'll run into conversations about managing and preventing burnout. When something matters to you it's easy to overextend yourself. Lots of people join a group for 10-24 months, do lots of useful work and then vanish. The work isn't done, but they are.
- codesushi42 7y agoI like to post hyperbole because it elicits interesting and insightful counterpoints like this one. Thank you sir. Also, to others: stop burning out from working on stupid shit.
- johnchristopher 7y agoPosting something wrong and waiting for people to correct it to claim how you drove the conversation to an interesting place is mostly wasting everyone's time.
- codesushi42 7y agoAnd your response isn't? And who is to say it's wrong?
- falcor84 7y agoI'll play devil's advocate - in what way is it wasting people's time? People (myself included) find meaning in posting their opinions on platforms like HN. Why would this meaning diminish by the intent of the original message? I would argue that although this behavior might be considered on the "trolling" spectrum, it's on the benign side of the spectrum, close to the Socratic approach.
- chapium 7y agocongrats, you are an internet troll
- codesushi42 7y agoYes, because I don't focus on addressing nitpicky pedantry I am a troll. You can find a counterexample to just about anything. But in the end, you're left to make up your fucking mind about something. So why bother addressing every possible edge case and "what if"? This is why software engineers are so good at being mindless drones. They focus on the meaningless details without seeing the big picture. You know, the one where you've spent the best years of your life working on an app called Sploink that's used by teens to send hook up nudes, and otherwise exists to rape users' privacy. You didn't think about it because you were too busy arguing about the merits of type safety in JavaScript. Who needs to argue when your fancy ML approach increased CTR by 2.2%? And hey, on top of everything else, your dumb ass app was featured on PH.
- dorchadas 7y ago> Meaningful work isn't a guarantee that burnout won't happen. Exactly. I'm a public school teacher, which is something many would consider 'meaningful', and which is, in a lot of ways. I'm burnt-out of it, and actively looking for something different. The kids are little shits most the times, and we've basically just become glorified baby sitters to their parents (I'm in the rural Southern US, in a place with next-to-no culture of education) and rarely pay attention. Too busy trying to sneak their next glance on Snapchat...And then trying to teach them math or science when they don't have the proper requisite knowledge because they've been passed along...Definitely burnout waiting to happen. And it's not just me. It's hit two of my other science teachers this year too.
- selimthegrim 7y agoJust wait until you have to teach them at the college level