11 ms·

Be really careful with these surveys. The problems of these, among other things: - mixing up burnout risk with burnout - mixing up burnout with physical or m

Be really careful with these surveys. The problems of these, among other things: - mixing up burnout risk with burnout - mixing up burnout with physical or mental fatigue - not serving any purpose (i.e. not providing good directions) Burnout is primarily a negative change in perception, and it's a spectrum, obviously. You get burned out when your perception of the same situation gets progressively worse. This can be caused by various factors -- exhaustion, doing stuff that doesn't match your values, etc. It can also be prevented in various ways; i.e. you can do very exhausting work and not get burned out. A really simplistic, but fun/useful way of detecting burnout (not the risk): if you regularly think that you and your team/company/environment work hard, but your customers/broader company/other teams are stupid/not intelligent/not constructive, then that's the first phase ('us vs them'). This can progress to the next phase, where it's more like 'me vs them', so you despise most of your environment. This is when people tend to leave. The last step is apathy, people rarely end here. It's not really possible to move backwards on this scale without changing roles/work/colleagues.

rpastuszak 7y ago
This resonates with me a lot, but are these just your own observations or conclusions supported by directly research? (if so, any chance you could share the sources?)
tpjoynt 7y ago
The book "Tribal Leadership" summarizes that scale nicely.
ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
Wait.... "apathy" is rare? I thought that is the step where most of us have been hanging out. I have been waiting for the "real burnout" to kick in when I dropped another level or two.
- sz4kerto 7y ago
  Apathy is comparatively rare, yes. (Sorry for the HN crowd for not getting into the data here, not enough time right now.) That's because the previous level is usually so painful that people end up changing something. Especially in engineering the market is so much better than in practically any other field that people who don't move out from the previous phase ('I hate everyone around me') mostly do this because they have something else going on in their lives. This, however (other things going on) is something that _prevents_ further burnout, because one of the best burnout prevention method is _purpose_. Example: working in a call center is mostly extremely stressful. Having a purpose like 'I do this to so that I am able to finish my degree' is an useful thing to prevent burnout. Working hard like hell on a startup for 6 months with a clear purpose usually doesn't cause a burnout (can cause other problems tho'). People who end up in the 'apathy' phase usually do so because they somehow lacked the purpose, the means of changing their situation and also the realization that things are going very badly. If you think that you're in the apathetic phase then you're likely not, because you still have some self-reflection.
  - milesvp 7y ago
    Can confirm. I don't have the luxury of burnout, as the the primary breadwinner for a larger than anticipated family (yay twins!). So I hover just above breaking point, and only occasionally dip my toes in no longer having any F*s to give. On the flip side, if I didn't have the family with young children, I'm positive my life would be so much less stressful, that burnout risk would be slim to none...
- gowld 7y ago
  Apathy at work is only possible if you have a nothing-required job where you can't get fired for not working. It happens, but commonly employers will notice and fire such an employee.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    To quote office space: "That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
    - TuringNYC 7y ago
      That describes a big chunk of my co-workers when I worked at a Fortune 500. At bigger companies it is unfortunately particularly easy to coast along that way.
- hug 7y ago
  It depends on what you mean by apathy. I'd look up the definition for you, but honestly I can't be bothered. Hyuk hyuk. Anyway: I am incredibly productive in my ops job, where I feel like the platforms I support are largely meaningless and do nothing but drive efficiency to achieve nothing important for no one in particular. I feel I am driving 'value creation' for people whose wealth is already immeasurable, in a way that it's like it's without beginning or end and perhaps does not even really exist. Running thousands of watts worth of automated infrastructure capable of serving gigabytes of traffic at sub millisecond latency, over multipath anycast triple redundant n-tier software defined fuckin' whatever, so that your loading spinner shows up bit faster. Like a literal hamster wheel. And all that said I am neither unhappy nor close to burn out. I have absolutely no passion for my job, but I do for the things that it allows me to do. Work is always, for everyone involved, a means to an end: For the company, that end is whatever it is producing, widgets for the widgetless, convincing people that widgetlessnes is terrible, tracking widget purchases to better market more advanced widgets to those that desire them, or whatever. For me, it is my salary: The thing in life that grants me the affordance to do what it is that I actually want to do. That which I have pathos for, it could be. Honestly, a lot of people I deal with are the same: If they could leave their nine-to-five in tech and make an equivalent living doing interpretive dance or painting while doing handstands or competing in spoken-word free-verse poetry competitions, y'know, the thing it is that they want to do that is worth absolutely nothing to anyone else, they probably would. I would write bad novels from the back corner of a dimly lit cocktail bar. I can't do that for a salary anything near like what I make now, so I do it in my free time. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.
  - baumy 7y ago
    This isn't on topic, but assuming you were serious about writing novels in your free time - I enjoyed this comment so much I read it several times, and probably will come back and read it again at some point in the semi-distant future. You have a wonderful way with words.
    - hug 7y ago
      I was serious about the writing and the cocktail bar. I owe you a heartfelt thank-you: It plainly and honestly brings me an incredible happiness when people compliment my writing.
soneca 7y ago
The first time I heard about burnout was from a colleague that was just trying to go back to a job after about two years being mentally unable to do any job. It started when one day, arriving at the work, they just froze and started crying uncontrollably. It was a diagnosed condition. I am always unsure of what people are talking about when they talk about burnout. Is this panic attack that makes someone temporarily incapable of working or is a strong stress feeling that might be solved just by changing jobs? The spectrum idea makes sense, but the situation, consequences, and ways to help are very different on different parts of this spectrum.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dunkelheit 7y ago
  I think the term burnout was first applied to social workers. Just imagine the situation they are in: a steady stream of people with serious problems in their lives comes to you and you are supposed to help them. But you have so little time and power to help any particular case that you hardly seem to make any difference. And no matter what you do that stream never ends. No wonder that feelings of sheer helplessness, ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear. That's burnout. I don't think it is specifically associated with panic, aside from the panic that if you start working you will experience all the negative emotions that you associate with your job.
  - burntoutfire 7y ago
    > ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.
    - dunkelheit 7y ago
      Yeah, exactly. My own totally unscientific theory of burnout is that with scarce positive reinforcement and lack of progress towards some higher goal your lizard brain just stops understanding why on earth you continue to expend energy on this job thing. Of course your job pays the bills but this may be hard for the lizard brain to understand (and in case of volunteers where even this positive reinforcement is absent, burnout hits them especially hard). Many corporate jobs share this dynamic. Support, obviously. But every position where there is a lot of routine maintenance and lack of any kind of satisfying milestone ahead carries the risk. Also, opensource maintainers (Unpaid? Check. Never ending stream of maintenance work? Check. Lack of some higher goal? Well, their project is already popular, there may be no other definite goal.) Startups are better in this regard because growth provides positive reinforcement and the possibility of an exit provides a higher goal. But what if growth stops and the satisfying exit never materializes? Burnout will hit you like a hammer.
TopHand 7y ago
The major part of burnout is thus caused by HR. HR directs that the way teams are evaluated is that they are compared to one another, and it is mandatory that one team be rated over another team which creates an us vs them mentality. Then members of the team must be evaluated against one another again with one person rated above another which creates a me vs them mentality. If you are rated down, your going to believe that the person doing the rating either can't see that you or your team is working smarter and harder than the rest. They got rated up because they somehow cheated the system and the person who rated them is as stupid as they are. If you or your team are rated first, then obviously they don't work as hard or as smart as you.
- kortilla 7y ago
  This is not how HR departments behave in many companies.
  - TopHand 7y ago
    Do these companies retain their employees longer than the companies that do do this?
ChefboyOG 7y ago
Our common idea of burnout largely comes from Christina Maslach—the Maslach Burnout Inventory is more or less the standard tool that psychologists use to score and diagnose burnout now—and interestingly, it diagnoses burnout as three related but independent subscales: Exhaustion - somewhat self-explanatory Professional Efficacy - your view of your performance Cynicism - a distancing of yourself from your job Though you may come across different names in different writings. It's interesting how the subscales impact each other. I don't know if I fully buy into the framework 100%, but it makes for interesting research nonetheless.
killjoywashere 7y ago
Also, sharing your data with who?
sizzle 7y ago
"The problems of these, among other things: - mixing up burnout risk with burnout - mixing up burnout with physical or mental fatigue - not serving any purpose (i.e. not providing good directions)" Also I'd argue and add to the list: - not accounting for (undiagnosed) comorbid/latent mental health disorders that affect mood, personality, happiness, well-being in social environments that can cloud your judgement and how you perceive your job w.r.t. the signals that generally predict burnout (e.g. clinical depression, panic attack/anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, etc)

rpastuszak 7y ago

This resonates with me a lot, but are these just your own observations or conclusions supported by directly research? (if so, any chance you could share the sources?)

tpjoynt 7y ago

The book "Tribal Leadership" summarizes that scale nicely.

ghostbrainalpha 7y ago

Wait.... "apathy" is rare? I thought that is the step where most of us have been hanging out. I have been waiting for the "real burnout" to kick in when I dropped another level or two.

sz4kerto 7y ago
Apathy is comparatively rare, yes. (Sorry for the HN crowd for not getting into the data here, not enough time right now.) That's because the previous level is usually so painful that people end up changing something. Especially in engineering the market is so much better than in practically any other field that people who don't move out from the previous phase ('I hate everyone around me') mostly do this because they have something else going on in their lives. This, however (other things going on) is something that _prevents_ further burnout, because one of the best burnout prevention method is _purpose_. Example: working in a call center is mostly extremely stressful. Having a purpose like 'I do this to so that I am able to finish my degree' is an useful thing to prevent burnout. Working hard like hell on a startup for 6 months with a clear purpose usually doesn't cause a burnout (can cause other problems tho'). People who end up in the 'apathy' phase usually do so because they somehow lacked the purpose, the means of changing their situation and also the realization that things are going very badly. If you think that you're in the apathetic phase then you're likely not, because you still have some self-reflection.
- milesvp 7y ago
  Can confirm. I don't have the luxury of burnout, as the the primary breadwinner for a larger than anticipated family (yay twins!). So I hover just above breaking point, and only occasionally dip my toes in no longer having any F*s to give. On the flip side, if I didn't have the family with young children, I'm positive my life would be so much less stressful, that burnout risk would be slim to none...
gowld 7y ago
Apathy at work is only possible if you have a nothing-required job where you can't get fired for not working. It happens, but commonly employers will notice and fire such an employee.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  To quote office space: "That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."
  - TuringNYC 7y ago
    That describes a big chunk of my co-workers when I worked at a Fortune 500. At bigger companies it is unfortunately particularly easy to coast along that way.
hug 7y ago
It depends on what you mean by apathy. I'd look up the definition for you, but honestly I can't be bothered. Hyuk hyuk. Anyway: I am incredibly productive in my ops job, where I feel like the platforms I support are largely meaningless and do nothing but drive efficiency to achieve nothing important for no one in particular. I feel I am driving 'value creation' for people whose wealth is already immeasurable, in a way that it's like it's without beginning or end and perhaps does not even really exist. Running thousands of watts worth of automated infrastructure capable of serving gigabytes of traffic at sub millisecond latency, over multipath anycast triple redundant n-tier software defined fuckin' whatever, so that your loading spinner shows up bit faster. Like a literal hamster wheel. And all that said I am neither unhappy nor close to burn out. I have absolutely no passion for my job, but I do for the things that it allows me to do. Work is always, for everyone involved, a means to an end: For the company, that end is whatever it is producing, widgets for the widgetless, convincing people that widgetlessnes is terrible, tracking widget purchases to better market more advanced widgets to those that desire them, or whatever. For me, it is my salary: The thing in life that grants me the affordance to do what it is that I actually want to do. That which I have pathos for, it could be. Honestly, a lot of people I deal with are the same: If they could leave their nine-to-five in tech and make an equivalent living doing interpretive dance or painting while doing handstands or competing in spoken-word free-verse poetry competitions, y'know, the thing it is that they want to do that is worth absolutely nothing to anyone else, they probably would. I would write bad novels from the back corner of a dimly lit cocktail bar. I can't do that for a salary anything near like what I make now, so I do it in my free time. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.
- baumy 7y ago
  This isn't on topic, but assuming you were serious about writing novels in your free time - I enjoyed this comment so much I read it several times, and probably will come back and read it again at some point in the semi-distant future. You have a wonderful way with words.
  - hug 7y ago
    I was serious about the writing and the cocktail bar. I owe you a heartfelt thank-you: It plainly and honestly brings me an incredible happiness when people compliment my writing.

soneca 7y ago

The first time I heard about burnout was from a colleague that was just trying to go back to a job after about two years being mentally unable to do any job. It started when one day, arriving at the work, they just froze and started crying uncontrollably. It was a diagnosed condition. I am always unsure of what people are talking about when they talk about burnout. Is this panic attack that makes someone temporarily incapable of working or is a strong stress feeling that might be solved just by changing jobs? The spectrum idea makes sense, but the situation, consequences, and ways to help are very different on different parts of this spectrum.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dunkelheit 7y ago
I think the term burnout was first applied to social workers. Just imagine the situation they are in: a steady stream of people with serious problems in their lives comes to you and you are supposed to help them. But you have so little time and power to help any particular case that you hardly seem to make any difference. And no matter what you do that stream never ends. No wonder that feelings of sheer helplessness, ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear. That's burnout. I don't think it is specifically associated with panic, aside from the panic that if you start working you will experience all the negative emotions that you associate with your job.
- burntoutfire 7y ago
  > ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.
  - dunkelheit 7y ago
    Yeah, exactly. My own totally unscientific theory of burnout is that with scarce positive reinforcement and lack of progress towards some higher goal your lizard brain just stops understanding why on earth you continue to expend energy on this job thing. Of course your job pays the bills but this may be hard for the lizard brain to understand (and in case of volunteers where even this positive reinforcement is absent, burnout hits them especially hard). Many corporate jobs share this dynamic. Support, obviously. But every position where there is a lot of routine maintenance and lack of any kind of satisfying milestone ahead carries the risk. Also, opensource maintainers (Unpaid? Check. Never ending stream of maintenance work? Check. Lack of some higher goal? Well, their project is already popular, there may be no other definite goal.) Startups are better in this regard because growth provides positive reinforcement and the possibility of an exit provides a higher goal. But what if growth stops and the satisfying exit never materializes? Burnout will hit you like a hammer.

TopHand 7y ago

The major part of burnout is thus caused by HR. HR directs that the way teams are evaluated is that they are compared to one another, and it is mandatory that one team be rated over another team which creates an us vs them mentality. Then members of the team must be evaluated against one another again with one person rated above another which creates a me vs them mentality. If you are rated down, your going to believe that the person doing the rating either can't see that you or your team is working smarter and harder than the rest. They got rated up because they somehow cheated the system and the person who rated them is as stupid as they are. If you or your team are rated first, then obviously they don't work as hard or as smart as you.

kortilla 7y ago
This is not how HR departments behave in many companies.
- TopHand 7y ago
  Do these companies retain their employees longer than the companies that do do this?

ChefboyOG 7y ago

Our common idea of burnout largely comes from Christina Maslach—the Maslach Burnout Inventory is more or less the standard tool that psychologists use to score and diagnose burnout now—and interestingly, it diagnoses burnout as three related but independent subscales: Exhaustion - somewhat self-explanatory Professional Efficacy - your view of your performance Cynicism - a distancing of yourself from your job Though you may come across different names in different writings. It's interesting how the subscales impact each other. I don't know if I fully buy into the framework 100%, but it makes for interesting research nonetheless.

killjoywashere 7y ago

Also, sharing your data with who?

sizzle 7y ago

"The problems of these, among other things: - mixing up burnout risk with burnout - mixing up burnout with physical or mental fatigue - not serving any purpose (i.e. not providing good directions)" Also I'd argue and add to the list: - not accounting for (undiagnosed) comorbid/latent mental health disorders that affect mood, personality, happiness, well-being in social environments that can cloud your judgement and how you perceive your job w.r.t. the signals that generally predict burnout (e.g. clinical depression, panic attack/anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, etc)