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My experience is that there is. I tend to be really intense about my job, and as a result I've left almost all of my jobs due to burnout, usually related to fr
by RickS 7y ago
My experience is that there is.
I tend to be really intense about my job, and as a result I've left almost all of my jobs due to burnout, usually related to frustration that my dept isn't prioritizing what I feel is important to be successful, and that my time isn't well spent.
I recently went through this at my current gig, despite having good pay, good manager, and as close to a non-toxic environment as I think is possible. In other words... I couldn't easily scapegoat the org. The problem probably had to do with me. So I tried a new thing: to actually salvage the gig and fight to get my needs met instead of throwing my hands up and abandoning the whole affair.
It took a few months of failed compromises before I resorted to being totally upfront about it. I tried to ask for things like "one sprint on, one sprint off" and hearing that "we don't have bandwidth" until I finally said "look, i'm not having a good time, my productivity is on the floor, i have no morale and things that should take 10 easy minutes take a miserable week. i'm gonna take a month, and when I come back, i'm gonna work on other stuff (with a large, thorough doc of what "other stuff" should be: the intersection of things i find valuable/interesting + would also be valuable to the team).
Management was on board this time. I think they could tell that I was pained enough to walk if I had to, like most of the people in these stories. We also have a new engineer that unlocked some bandwidth. They asked me to move my month off to December instead of November, but greenlit my new work effective the next sprint.
The turnaround was astonishing. Overnight, my output went from unusually low to unusually high. I wake up excited to work on stuff, and care enough that I can be self-directing without needing to be fed tickets or have a PM prioritizing goals. My demos hit heavy, I feel great about my job, and I haven't even taken the vacation yet. I'm still taking it, but it no longer feels like I'll have a breakdown if I don't.
Point is: sometimes burnout comes from feelings of helplessness, arbitrariness, lack of autonomy, and misalignment of personal and company goals. Then you get bitter, and fatigued by constant bitterness, and the hole deepens until you can't see a way out anymore.
But if you can recognize whats got you down, come up with a viable alternative, set and defend boundaries on your time, and fight for them with adult conflict resolution skills... that crippling dissatisfaction is VERY actionable.
"Burnout" is a catch-all term for many nebulous forms of psychological fatigue. The idea that there's no cure for any of those things is pretty silly to me.
- mettamage 7y agoThis is an amazing example for the “autonomy” part of self-determination theory. And it shows how intrinsic motivation relates to mental health. It also shows to some extent “relatedness” and “competence” part of SDT. Other than that this post shows a potential issue that many people with burnout face: adult conflict. Without conflict one’s course of action is to change themselves. With conflict, one can change their environment. This (probably) only works in a healthy environment like the parent described.
- RickS 7y agoIt wasn't mentioned in my post, but the "relatedness" aspect was definitely a big component. I felt like I was letting myself down by not working on what's important to me, but I felt like I was letting the team down by being ineffective in my regular "keep the lights on" role, and so _everyone_ was being disappointed. I disliked the work, but I still like my team, and didn't want to be responsible for making their jobs harder. One of the goals here was to remove that conflict of interest. SDT is interesting – I hadn't read anything about this before, so thanks for the keyword.
- tootie 7y agoI've struggled with this one too. I never really felt a ton of pressure in my life as a developer, but since moving up to manager/director level you end up in this situation where you have to drive a lot of process and decision-making, but the parameters are set by other people. It's been extremely draining emotionally to have to drive action on things you don't always believe you should be doing. Now it's like I'm chasing a dragon of acquiring more authority so I'm not cleaning up someone else's mess. At the same time, the authority I do have is driving me insane so why would I want more? The times I've been happiest in this role is when I'm really friends with my peers and leaders and we can work together and criticize freely. Whenever I feel like I have a "boss" I get stressed.
- pico303 7y agoI can completely relate to what you’re going through. One thing that’s helped me is to realize that management, like development, requires training. Study it like an art. Take some classes, listen to podcasts, find books on the subject. Harvard Business Review is a great resource. Check out the Dear HBR podcast as a jumping off point.