4 ms·

The tech field is one that requires constant and ongoing self-development and learning, or you're just going to be left behind and gradually become all but unem

The tech field is one that requires constant and ongoing self-development and learning, or you're just going to be left behind and gradually become all but unemployable (those who are able to carve out a niche by becoming an expert in an in-demand ancient technology like COBOL aside). But how do you get the energy and motivation for constant learning and self-development when you struggle to get out of bed every day, or are burnt out on tech altogether? Even if, against all odds, a depressed person manages to get a job, it's likely that doing it will feel meaningless and overwhelming, leading to a struggle not to quit, poor performance, and possibly firing. If you screw up at work because of depression, of course you're not going to make a good impression on your colleagues, making getting hired or recommended by them in the future even less likely. If one is out of work for extended periods of time, not only is that a drain on your savings, but also an economic drain on whoever helps you (whether that's family, friends, or society). Then there are the secondary economic effects of all that lost productivity that the depressed person could have contributed to the economy but didn't because of their depression. All of the deals that could have happened, all of the innovation that was missed, the people that they might have inspired, etc, have economic consequences that are difficult to quantify but that are real nevertheless. This doesn't even go in to the potentially drastic economic consequences of suicide, both to the family of the person who takes their life who might have been relying on them for sustenance, and because of the knock-on economic effects of depression and trauma of those affected.

tinyhouse 6y ago
That is a real problem. Here is my advice to people in tech. First, don't think you can work in tech until you retire. Maybe you will. But burn out is real and it usually happens gradually. The key is to save (and invest) as much money as you can in your early career so that when the time comes you have options. That also means being active and looking for jobs every 2-3 years in order to improve your salary. (you'll also gain more experience by working for different companies) As for the learning part. Yes, finding motivation for self development is not easy when you're depressed or burned out. I'm not going to talk about dealing or treating depression since I'm not an expert. One thing I found helpful is developing different interests of mine since it solves the motivation problem. For example, recently I got into the world of investing and I'm learning a lot. This doesn't solve the problem of finding motivation for self development for work, but it helps in making me more productive and overall more excited about learning and doing.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  This is good general career advice for non-depressed people (or maybe people with minor depression), but unfortunately the severely depressed person is unlikely to be very interested in anything (or not long enough to make a career out of it), and just doing career-oriented things like looking for jobs could be an enormous struggle. Not that it's necessarily completely hopeless, and it varies from person to person, but people tend to underestimate how difficult ordinary, "easy" things are for people who are severely depressed.
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    I cannot argue with that. My comment is more about burn out. Someone who is severely depressed needs professional help.
- tayo42 6y ago
  Do you mean your learning unrelated things and its making learning tech and work related things tolerable again? Or just learning in general has been good for you?
  - tinyhouse 6y ago
    A combination of both. For the most part just learning in general has been good for me. But it has a positive impact on my overall mood and productivity so it helps at work too. I should also mention that it can also have a negative impact on work. Often I'm more interested in doing non-work related learnings during work time. But so far it didn't get me into trouble. I can still get enough work done to be a valuable employee (although not a top performer which I'm totally OK with). I think what I'm trying to say is that my work productivity is effected by my overall well being. I think that's true for everyone.
roofwellhams 6y ago
I think only requires constant learning if you do bad choices. If you learn angular, knockout and those framework: your not learning javascript. You're wasting your time learning framework specific stuff and at the end of the day, you don't even know js. For example if you learned react 6 years ago, you would need to learn about hooks and very few things. I think it's just a matter of choosing the right tools.
superfrank 6y ago
> The tech field is one that requires constant and ongoing self-development and learning, or you're just going to be left behind and gradually become all but unemployable Slight tangent, but I hear this all the time and I think it's total BS. Yes, if you're working at a big tech company and are gunning to continually move up the ladder, it's true for a while (eventually soft skills become more important for most), but I know plenty of developers who make a competitive salary, even in HCOL areas, and don't look at code outside of their 9-5 jobs. Sure, they're not making FAANG salaries, but they're making more than enough to live comfortably on. I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery. If you're not striving for the top, there are plenty of development jobs where you can make an above average salary and keep work at work.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Point taken, but I'd argue that those people who manage to work 9-5 for extended periods of time are, first, probably not suffering from severe depression, and second are actually participating in on-the-job learning that really adds up over the years. If you have severe depression, you are probably going to be missing out on years (or even decades) of work, and not learning nearly as much either on or off the job... or at most learning a bit on the rebound from your depression (as it's often cyclical, and even severely depressed people tend to have better days when they feel at least somewhat motivated or at least manage to keep it together). Such severely depressed people are just not going to be competitive with people who manage to keep on working 9-5 for most of their career, even if the latter put in zero extra effort to learn outside of work.
- flukus 6y ago
  > I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery. And when they next apply for a job the recruiters will hang up because they don't have x years of $hotNewTech. Sure they'll probably land a job sooner or later anyway or may be able to rely on word of mouth, but it does give you less opportunities. The jobs they're being rejected for are run of the mill ones too, nothing to do with "striving for the top". Of course this is stupid and anyone with experience should be able to pick up $hotNewtech easily, but it's how things currently work.
btmorex 6y ago
Maybe it's just me, but I can't think of anything more depressing than doing the exact same thing my entire career. I think the need to stay current is an advantage of the tech industry.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Equally depressing is the thought of giving up all the ground gained and lessons learned every time a new fad takes the stage. Watching the same mistakes made over and over, only moreso... That's depressing.
  - throwawayboise 6y ago
    I think this as much as anything contributed to my burnout. Burnout is maybe too strong a term -- disillusionment is maybe better. I see younger devs getting excited about something new, and to me it's just "yeah I've seen this movie before." The novelty factor is just gone -- work is simply not that exciting.
    - pmoriarty 6y ago
      The thing is, though, that there are probably new technologies (or at least technologies that are new to you) that you'd probably find interesting. The key is finding them and giving them a chance. When I was young I hadn't heard much of Lisp, and what I did hear didn't sound that great (Lisp was old and maybe it was great back then, but technology has advanced so much, I thought, that it's probably not worth bothering about)... but when I did finally learn it I fell in love and wished I'd learned it much, much earlier. And it wasn't just a copy of something I'd learned before, as were many other technologies that I'd learned. That said, when you are seriously depressed or burnt out (the two go hand-in-hand), it's tough to find anything interesting, even things that you'd normally be fascinated by.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Different strokes for different folks. I would go bananas having to keep up with the totally unnecessary technology treadmill: re-skilling again and again forever, on new hotness technology fads just because they’re new. “I can’t wait to rewrite this legacy software in Rust!” - said not me.

tinyhouse 6y ago

That is a real problem. Here is my advice to people in tech. First, don't think you can work in tech until you retire. Maybe you will. But burn out is real and it usually happens gradually. The key is to save (and invest) as much money as you can in your early career so that when the time comes you have options. That also means being active and looking for jobs every 2-3 years in order to improve your salary. (you'll also gain more experience by working for different companies) As for the learning part. Yes, finding motivation for self development is not easy when you're depressed or burned out. I'm not going to talk about dealing or treating depression since I'm not an expert. One thing I found helpful is developing different interests of mine since it solves the motivation problem. For example, recently I got into the world of investing and I'm learning a lot. This doesn't solve the problem of finding motivation for self development for work, but it helps in making me more productive and overall more excited about learning and doing.

pmoriarty 6y ago
This is good general career advice for non-depressed people (or maybe people with minor depression), but unfortunately the severely depressed person is unlikely to be very interested in anything (or not long enough to make a career out of it), and just doing career-oriented things like looking for jobs could be an enormous struggle. Not that it's necessarily completely hopeless, and it varies from person to person, but people tend to underestimate how difficult ordinary, "easy" things are for people who are severely depressed.
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  I cannot argue with that. My comment is more about burn out. Someone who is severely depressed needs professional help.
tayo42 6y ago
Do you mean your learning unrelated things and its making learning tech and work related things tolerable again? Or just learning in general has been good for you?
- tinyhouse 6y ago
  A combination of both. For the most part just learning in general has been good for me. But it has a positive impact on my overall mood and productivity so it helps at work too. I should also mention that it can also have a negative impact on work. Often I'm more interested in doing non-work related learnings during work time. But so far it didn't get me into trouble. I can still get enough work done to be a valuable employee (although not a top performer which I'm totally OK with). I think what I'm trying to say is that my work productivity is effected by my overall well being. I think that's true for everyone.

roofwellhams 6y ago

I think only requires constant learning if you do bad choices. If you learn angular, knockout and those framework: your not learning javascript. You're wasting your time learning framework specific stuff and at the end of the day, you don't even know js. For example if you learned react 6 years ago, you would need to learn about hooks and very few things. I think it's just a matter of choosing the right tools.

superfrank 6y ago

> The tech field is one that requires constant and ongoing self-development and learning, or you're just going to be left behind and gradually become all but unemployable Slight tangent, but I hear this all the time and I think it's total BS. Yes, if you're working at a big tech company and are gunning to continually move up the ladder, it's true for a while (eventually soft skills become more important for most), but I know plenty of developers who make a competitive salary, even in HCOL areas, and don't look at code outside of their 9-5 jobs. Sure, they're not making FAANG salaries, but they're making more than enough to live comfortably on. I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery. If you're not striving for the top, there are plenty of development jobs where you can make an above average salary and keep work at work.

pmoriarty 6y ago
Point taken, but I'd argue that those people who manage to work 9-5 for extended periods of time are, first, probably not suffering from severe depression, and second are actually participating in on-the-job learning that really adds up over the years. If you have severe depression, you are probably going to be missing out on years (or even decades) of work, and not learning nearly as much either on or off the job... or at most learning a bit on the rebound from your depression (as it's often cyclical, and even severely depressed people tend to have better days when they feel at least somewhat motivated or at least manage to keep it together). Such severely depressed people are just not going to be competitive with people who manage to keep on working 9-5 for most of their career, even if the latter put in zero extra effort to learn outside of work.
flukus 6y ago
> I can name three different ex-colleagues at three different companies all making well over 100k a year and they're all still writing JQuery. And when they next apply for a job the recruiters will hang up because they don't have x years of $hotNewTech. Sure they'll probably land a job sooner or later anyway or may be able to rely on word of mouth, but it does give you less opportunities. The jobs they're being rejected for are run of the mill ones too, nothing to do with "striving for the top". Of course this is stupid and anyone with experience should be able to pick up $hotNewtech easily, but it's how things currently work.

btmorex 6y ago

Maybe it's just me, but I can't think of anything more depressing than doing the exact same thing my entire career. I think the need to stay current is an advantage of the tech industry.

nitrogen 6y ago
Equally depressing is the thought of giving up all the ground gained and lessons learned every time a new fad takes the stage. Watching the same mistakes made over and over, only moreso... That's depressing.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  I think this as much as anything contributed to my burnout. Burnout is maybe too strong a term -- disillusionment is maybe better. I see younger devs getting excited about something new, and to me it's just "yeah I've seen this movie before." The novelty factor is just gone -- work is simply not that exciting.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    The thing is, though, that there are probably new technologies (or at least technologies that are new to you) that you'd probably find interesting. The key is finding them and giving them a chance. When I was young I hadn't heard much of Lisp, and what I did hear didn't sound that great (Lisp was old and maybe it was great back then, but technology has advanced so much, I thought, that it's probably not worth bothering about)... but when I did finally learn it I fell in love and wished I'd learned it much, much earlier. And it wasn't just a copy of something I'd learned before, as were many other technologies that I'd learned. That said, when you are seriously depressed or burnt out (the two go hand-in-hand), it's tough to find anything interesting, even things that you'd normally be fascinated by.
ryandrake 6y ago
Different strokes for different folks. I would go bananas having to keep up with the totally unnecessary technology treadmill: re-skilling again and again forever, on new hotness technology fads just because they’re new. “I can’t wait to rewrite this legacy software in Rust!” - said not me.