18 ms·

Study finds 83% of software developers feel burnout

• ggariepy 5y ago
  I read the linked article, then I read part of the original study the article was based upon. My Statistics 101 interpretation of this is the study is bogus. First of all, you have to properly define the terms of what 'burnout' consists of. The study doesn't seem to do that. Second of all, even a well designed study, which this is not, is not statistically significant with such a low number of population samples. They interviewed 258 people for this. My conclusion: this "information" is worthless.
• titzer 5y ago
  If you were a professional painter and every couple of months, someone snuck into your art studio, threw out all your brushes, paint, canvas, and then dumped a huge load of requests for you to "fix" your old paintings, I'm pretty sure you'd get burned out pretty quick.
  • briefcomment 5y ago
    Is maintenance the cause of burnout then?
    • dr-detroit 5y ago
      No apple computers demented mindset and university undergrad computer science profs did it
    • titzer 5y ago
      Can you name another profession that throws out its tools so often?
      • chickenpotpie 5y ago
        That’s not an answer to their question
        • titzer 5y ago
          Their reply was a non sequitur because they didn't understand the analogy. But anyway most "fixes" are really just changing systems to adapt to change in other systems. I spent 3+ years at Google just migrating this and that and the other subsystem to a different datastore, and knew dozens if not hundreds of developers stuck on a treadmill of constantly rewriting to adapt to other people's rewrites.
      • dahfizz 5y ago
        Then... Don't keep throwing out your tools?
        • titzer 5y ago
          Then... Don't plan on lasting more than 10 years in the software industry?
          • dahfizz 5y ago
            This is exclusively a problem with web development. I work in fintech, writing C and using the gnu toolchain. We are a very successful business.
            • deleted 5y ago
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            • Nydhal 5y ago
              Mobile, Full Stack and Data Engineering also have similar issues. Not as bad as anything related to javascript though.
              • kube-system 5y ago
                Even still, a search for "jQuery" on a jobs board typically still returns plenty of results.
            • endisneigh 5y ago
              Though I believe you're correct, this is not a problem inherent to web development. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from pinning things to specific versions other than the fact that projects couple security updates with breaking feature additions.
    • arriu 5y ago
      This is a really great question, I'd love to know how to minimize my own burnout. It's likely not just maintenance as I've felt burned out on brand new projects that have no maintenance.
    • dfxm12 5y ago
      In my experience (and I think also in the spirit of the analogy), it's not just maintenance. It's expecting to maintain everything you've ever done while also simultaneously being expected to keep producing new work at the same rate (and then being expected to maintain that). It's that your work load seems to only increase. As the study found with regards to the causes of burnout, increased workload cited as the main reason. I'm still providing updates to stuff from over five years ago (that has officially been retired), while my boss is breathing down my neck about new projects. The stress of doing this, the stress of trying to manage my manager's expectation, the stress of realizing you'll never be able to really put any of your work out of your mind or have a lighter load of responsibilities, etc. is what leads to burnout.
      • MattGaiser 5y ago
        This is too often ignored. Maintenance, even of applications which do not require new features, can often be non-trivial. In my past job, a lot of challenges were caused by the fact that nobody really budgeted for maintaining the existing stuff but it actually required 2 full time people to deal with.
      • pixl97 5y ago
        Heh, it's like having a kid that is your total dependent for 18 years. And then having another, and another, and another. And unlike real children, they don't help take care of each other.
      • guskel 5y ago
        Yes, and as the list of items to maintain grows, you must perform more and more context switches as bugs or other fixes crop up, spreading you more and more thin. Meanwhile the number of new requests does not slow down.
      • jnwatson 5y ago
        One of the undersold advantages about getting a new job is that all the implicit commitments you built up go away. Try it.
        • 5y ago
    • protonimitate 5y ago
      For me burnout comes from the endless treadmill of external pressures (arbitrary deadlines, changing requirements) and the endless treadmill of development work. There's not really ever a chance to step back and take a breath - just constantly moving from one high priority task to the next. It's also a bit thankless, being good as this job, in a lot of cases, means you are moving really fast from one task to the next without any down time in between. I find it hard to get to a place where I can feel accomplished or proud of a piece of work, because the next fire/high-priority task is already "behind schedule". I think part of it may also be due to the fact that the job is constant problem solving. Even though its nice to find solutions to problems, knowing you'll be perpetually in a state of "there is a problem that must be fixed" is taxing on mental health (for me at least).
      • gmadsen 5y ago
        as far as the last sentence. I think this varies with temperament widely. I like a mix of problem solving and people facing work, but I would find it hard to believe a mathematician would be upset from constant problem solving
        • pseudalopex 5y ago
          Mathematical problems are puzzles. They were talking about defects and new requirements.
      • deleted 5y ago
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      • DonnyV 5y ago
        This 110% ^^^
      • kirse 5y ago
        Yep, sounds like SW development, partly why we get paid some of the highest salaries in the country. I try to keep in mind I have the power to step off the treadmill at regular intervals and go lie on a beach chair or hammock in the mountains.
      • 5y ago
    • karaterobot 5y ago
      Somebody said that the cause of burnout is working hard and then not seeing results. Some common ways that happens in software development are working for months on a feature that gets cut (or undercut) at the last minute, or trying to demonstrate your ability for some role and not being recognized for it, or even just putting your heart and soul into a company that is circling the drain. If those experiences happen over and over, without some intervening successes to recharge you, you get burned out.
      • raxxorrax 5y ago
        Just going through this with some hosted cloud software because some environments were "deprecated". The best possible result from finishing migration will be that it worked as well as before. This is so frustrating since I don't even know why Microsoft or Amazon deprecated these in the first place. It is work purely generated on their whims. Apparently some AWS tools also got changes since some scripts seem to be failing. It is so stupid to host anything in the cloud if you don't serve millions of users... Not really burnout, but I hate it so much right now...
        • hallway_monitor 5y ago
          "The best possible result from finishing migration will be that it worked as well as before." Talk about working hard and not seeing results. Having worked in several large enterprises, keeping up with new standards causes this situation constantly. Authentication, security, configuration, static analysis, deployment systems. It feels like eventually you get to a point where you are always working but never add a new feature. This is the most demoralizing thing possible in software IMHO.
      • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
        That actually aligns nicely with parents comment about maintenance. I work on a maintenance team and I'm constantly toeing the burn-out line. At best the system works as well as it did before, but that's really it. Sure we tweak it here and there, but otherwise it's hard work with no real visible changes.
    • adkadskhj 5y ago
      I actually question if burnout is related to the idea that as software developers we often come in being passion driven, but "work" as defined by other people tends to whittle away at passion. Eg there's a common saying, something like "Don't let your passion become work". Implying that if you love creating art, it can be a struggle to keep that same love when you start creating for other people. Of course it's all variable, but i hope my explanation suffices. Programming can often be similar in my mind. Sometimes i can be in the height of feeling super uninterested in my work - tired, exhausted, all things i'd collectively describe as progressing towards burnout... but then i daydream and get the urge to go code some random idea. The fire is still there, in me, to be creative and produce something in the way i enjoy. It didn't seem inhibited by my work at all. It just seems work is following down a path of unfun that accumulates. It feels similar to side projects. Devs often joke about how easy it is to start something but how difficult it is to finish. Because larger projects will often become work themselves. But in this side projects you have the luxury of stopping. I suspect if you forced your way through, never stopping on them - you'd burnout in a similar way to real work. If this is at all accurate, the consistent push on uninteresting work is the driving force for burnout in these examples. You're used to doing the work with passion, but extended periods of non-passion feels a lot like burnout, to me at least.
    • klyrs 5y ago
      Hah! More like the inability to perform maintenance, due to management continually demanding new features etc on tight deadlines... and once the burnout sets in, efficiency drops and you can't even think about sneaking some maintenance in... until something catches fire! Then you have a huge backlog and people screaming from multiple directions and nobody wants their deadlines to slip...
  • debt 5y ago
    Stop using esoteric tools and trendy frameworks and use more robust solutions. That might prevent the burnout.
    • warent 5y ago
      Did you retire from engineering? Esoteric tools can certainly be a problem but that's a tiny portion of the pool of people who experience this. Technology in general changes all the time
      • throwaway3699 5y ago
        Part of the issue is the constant churn, not just change. It's change for change's sake, and more broadly, complexity for it's own sake. Take microservices for example. Classic cargo culting development of what Google and Facebook are doing, but usually without a dedicated staffing team of hundreds. No wonder devs are burning out if they have to learn how to run a k8s cluster where a simple binary would've sufficed.
  • zwieback 5y ago
    The difference is that if you were a professional painter you'd also have a second job in order to survive.
    • debug-desperado 5y ago
      More painters should take the Thomas Kinkade-pill and create art for the masses!
    • protonimitate 5y ago
      As a art-degree holder turned engineer - yup. While there's a romantic vision of the starving artist, being broke is a whole different type of burnout.
      • pmoriarty 5y ago
        There are plenty of commercial artists (illustrators, designers, etc) that make a good living making art. Even if you're creating fine art exclusively it's possible to make a good living at it if your art has mass appeal. The problem is when you make art that's not really geared towards the masses. If you make something widely considered "ugly" or disturbing, that most people wouldn't want to hang in their living room or on the walls of their business then you've got a problem. The other problem is if you've either got a style that looks too much like everyone else or if you don't have a consistent style. Then people can't distinguish your work as uniquely yours and that makes having a "brand" difficult to impossible. You can still get by this way (especially if your work still has mass appeal -- see the endless impressionist-style paintings out there), but it's still a lot tougher than if you have a distinctive style. The most successful fine artists have both a distinctive style and mass appeal... or a good marketing team. Often marketing is actually more important than the art itself as far as sales go. Problem is many artists aren't good at marketing and just want to make art and aren't yet famous/rich enough to afford to hire someone to do the marketing for them.
        • Aeolun 5y ago
          > The problem is when you make art that's not really geared towards the masses Well, apparently there’s also a lot of money to be made doing very specific commissions. Not quite sure where I heard about that, but the concept of ‘whales’ exists there as well.
  • Spartan-S63 5y ago
    I also think some of it comes from the expectations of how much time someone is productive in a day. It’s as if the expectation is that you spend all eight hours of the day making brush strokes on the canvas. It’s not practical and it’s exhausting, especially when you’re not feeling particularly motivated or just need time to think about the work ahead.
    • kube-system 5y ago
      It's important for managers to plan time for design, testing, feedback, meetings, administrative tasks, and context switching. In places I've worked that has planned this well, we usually allocated somewhere around 4 hours of development work per day to someone. I think most burnout is systematic, and caused by incomplete task breakdowns.
      • Spartan-S63 5y ago
        I agree. I previously worked in an XP shop that spent seven hours a day doing pair programming. It was exhausting, and challenging to do non-dev work in the hour a day left. Especially as a team lead, it took a lot of extra time or carving out time away from the pair to get enough done. I also don’t know if full eight hour days are good, in general. I feel like 5x6 or 4x8 would be a better schedule, though, with a four day week, I’d be curious to try “weekend Wednesday” out instead of just having a three day weekend.
        • kube-system 5y ago
          I feel like measuring a workday in hours is more useful for measuring the workload of a non-stop assembly line type work than it is for a knowledge-based job. 8 hours of work where you can grab a coffee and read HN whenever you want could be easier on the mind than 6 hours of work where your attention is in constant demand. I do wish I could do the same number of hours over 4 days instead of 5, though.
          • Spartan-S63 5y ago
  • seriousquestion 5y ago
    I think this is why a lot of developers take on things like woodworking as a hobby or even a new career. The tools just WORK. They are reliable. They don't randomly change. There isn't a constant churn. You don't spend all day fighting with your toolset. They fade into the background. Your time is spent on what you actually want to do.
    • _moof 5y ago
      I build wooden, hand-riveted boats in my spare time and it’s an absolute joy. One day on the computer when I was fighting with a stupid custom-made build system, I muttered to myself, “anyone who says a good carpenter doesn’t blame their tools never had to use an exploding hammer.”
  • globular-toast 5y ago
    When I worked for a large corporation I actually did have tools deleted from my own laptop. I left very shortly after that. I've never had this problem in any other company, though. Is this common?
  • hindsightbias 5y ago
    FAANGs maintain their code? Impossible.
    • sombremesa 5y ago
      The newbies who haven’t figured out that new projects = promotions will do it.
      • throwaway3699 5y ago
        It's worth mentioning that this is a myth. Invisible maintenance work on old products can be very impactful if done correctly.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • sombremesa 5y ago
          I don't really have a horse in this race because I've made my millions and long since quit the FAANG shit, but this is absolutely not a myth. Perhaps you've never worked at a FAANG, or perhaps we've confused being impactful for being promotable.
  • ZoomZoomZoom 5y ago
    Do you really think it's appropriate to compare maintenance of one's engineering work with intrusive changes to one's artistic output? This doesn't invalidate the conclusion, strictly speaking, but the basis for it is flawed in my opinion.
  • kristopolous 5y ago
    It's more like you get scrawlings from toddlers on your desk every day and the boss says "these were supposed to be the blueprints to the next skyscraper. I paid a lot for this so you can't throw it away" and then you need to work with crayon scrawlings and somehow get the job done
    • Joeri 5y ago
      Well, at least a toddler would ask “why” every once in a while. I went long stretches where the only “why” asked with regards to the requirements passing my desk was the silent scream inside my head.
• notjustanymike 5y ago
  A bit clickbaity, as it's referring to the only first question in their study (https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+the+impact+of+COVID-19+on+Software+Engineers+-+Full+Report.pdf https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+...) which further breaks down into: I feel burnt out from work: - 21% to a great extent - 34% to a moderate extent - 28% to a small extent
  • antris 5y ago
    Being even slightly burnt out should be alarming. Some people don't even acknowledge their burning out before they become unable to work and fall into depression. It's not normal to feel this way. Being burnt out is not just regular tiredness, it's a mental health issue.
    • jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
      But do the study's participants understand that definition of burnout? Burnout, the way its casually thrown around these days, seems to be synonymous with regular tiredness in casual conversation.
      • Applejinx 5y ago
        Very likely not. There's no such thing as small extent of burnout. 'small extent of burnout' means 'I can feel my own boundaries and need to do something for self-care'. I've often flirted with burnout to the point of having to take unwanted hiatus and fail to complete what I wanted to do. Better awareness of boundaries and self-care made that better, and STOPPING overcommitment worked best of all. It meant there are things I can't say about myself now, even as ambitions of mine. That didn't used to be true: I lived in the space between owning my ambitions and executing on 'em. Stopping burnout means YOU ARE LESS. It's not a method of learning to work more efficiently and accomplish more. It's getting more right-sized, including your expectations. Those who are going to be in actual burnout, who are going to begin falling into hurdles and breaking themselves, will either never acknowledge 'small amount of burnout', or the opposite: that's what they call it, no matter how great the burning wreckage surrounding them. They'll be legless and bleeding out and trying to drag themselves on by one good fingernail, and if you asked them, they would say 'this is a small amount of burnout'. It's still a problem but I'm betting some of the folks in that 83% total, are willing and able to scale back their commitments and will then not be in burnout. Burnout is when you break. Physical exercise counterpart: muscle building and strain, vs. rhabdo.
• humbleMouse 5y ago
  It’s almost like this job is akin to devil worship
• Someone 5y ago
  If you read https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+the+impact+of+COVID-19+on+Software+Engineers+-+Full+Report.pdf https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+..., you’ll see Q1. To what extent, if any, do the following statements apply to you? I feel burnt out from work. On a four-point scale, that scores 21%, 35%, 28%, 17%. So, they took everyone except those who said they didn’t feel burnt out at all, and got 83%. I think asking for feelings of burnout exaggerates the issue of being burnt out by a huge factor. For me, burnout means not only being tired of your job, but also inability to ‘burn’ outside work. I don’t even see how you can be that moderately, but over a quarter of respondents reported that.
  • tchalla 5y ago
    > I think asking for feelings of burnout exaggerates the issue of being burnt out by a huge factor. Is there a better scientific method to quantify burnout?
    • dgb23 5y ago
      Not sure, but I'd ask questions around symptoms. A doctor also doesn't ask whether you have illness X, but rather if you have symptoms Y and Z and tests them. Burnout has some pretty severe symptoms associated with it, several of them can be taboo in certain circles. It has strong overlap with depression for example. If 83% of developers have these symptoms, it would be shocking to me.
  • geoduck14 5y ago
    > I think asking for feelings of burnout exaggerates the issue of being burnt out by a huge factor. I kind of see where you are coming from, but I think this is an important question to ask. Asking someone's opinion on something is a REALLY good indicator of their opinion on that thing: do you hate your job, do you like chocolate, do you love your wife, etc. While the question "are you burned out" might not predict attrition as well as other questions and it might not be "scientifically assailable" - it still does tell us something about the person. At work, I frequently ask my team (individually), "do you feel burned out", but I ALSO ask other questions "do you feel like you are doing good work", "do you enjoy what your are doing", "do you like the people you work with", "am I a good manager (a notoriously BAD question)". These and others help me keep a pulse on my team and what is going on in their head.
• codyswann 5y ago
  This is why I have a tough time putting much weight into the soft-sciences. I don't see any operational definition of "Burnout" so this is like asking people if they feel "fast". How about something like "How many times a week do you feel like not coming into work?" But these subjective terms are useless.
  • antris 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_burnout Burnout is not just a subjective term. It is a highly researched syndrome and can be tested for.
    • Someone 5y ago
      Yes, but I doubt those questioned knew and used that definition. Reading https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+the+impact+of+COVID-19+on+Software+Engineers+-+Full+Report.pdf https://haystack-books.s3.amazonaws.com/Study+to+understand+... it certainly wasn’t tested for. It’s all self-reported, and the question didn’t even ask whether the subjects thought they were burnt out, just whether they felt like it (for me, that’s a weaker thing)
    • codyswann 5y ago
      If that's the definition they're using, put it in the paper. Otherwise, it's just like asking someone if they feel "hot" at work. And if it can be tested for, why not do a study that tests for it? Otherwise, it's like asking people if they feel like they have cancer.
      • antris 5y ago
        Studies aren't there to cater to your ignorance. Burnout is well defined, and generally quite well understood by even the general public, this is not news. You switched from "soft science is all subjective nonsense" to "I don't like how it's written". You don't have to like it.
        • 5y ago
• danpalmer 5y ago
  Are software developers any different from other professions with regards to burnout?
  • dahfizz 5y ago
    Yes, we have the disposal income to take a few months off work when we want to and can spend that extra time writing blog posts about how hard life is. Everyone else just sucks it up.
    • NicoJuicy 5y ago
      Sure. Everyone has their estimates planned as bad as dev
  • cj 5y ago
    It might make us feel good to think we're unique and different, but realistically I can't imagine software development to be much more/less worse than being a mechanic, a carpenter, real estate agent, etc. I sometimes wonder how real estate agents avoid burnout. All of the ones I've worked with work most weekends and are on call 24/7 (because they give you their personal cell phone number to call and text any time).
    • deagle50 5y ago
      Getting your fair share of the transaction helps.
• mypastself 5y ago
  As far as I can tell, neither the article nor the linked report actually defines the term “burnout”. Additionally, it is possible that the (258, U.K.-based) developers who bothered to fill the questionnaire online were more likely to answer in the affirmative.
• luffapi 5y ago
  A large part of the problem is that management doesn’t realize that writing software is a creative endeavor. You don’t get more creative output by working people harder, you do it by giving them more freedom. I may create more value with one spark of insight than months if trudging along, yet almost all management is meant to optimize the trudge and not the spark. This also adds to the very low quality of most code (also cited in the study). We see a lot of VCs blog about how you can’t succeeded if you don’t work long, hard hours but the truth is the complete opposite. You can’t operate at peak coding performance if you’re not rested, motivated and feeling creative. 4 day work weeks (or less), 100% flexible schedules, wfh and far fewer meetings are some ways you can combat burnout.
  • sprafa 5y ago
    So true. I see programming as very similar activity to making poetry. I’m a filmmaker by trade but I enjoy doing some code every once in a while, and it’s always felt to me to be very similar to poetry in the way you have to think about it and structure it.
  • soco 5y ago
    Managers (MBA and the likes) will optimize only what can the tested and optimized. Can anyone define spark? We can all agree it's needed, but no regular management practice looks at it because everybody knows it can't be optimized. So this is what we are left with: optimizing butt time. Yes, there's also the discipline of engineering managers, but they seem to always be on the losing side when financial discussions time comes.
    • luffapi 5y ago
      > So this is what we are left with: optimizing butt time. Hence low quality code bases and developer burnout. It’s up to us as developers to demand more from our employers. Thankfully the shift to wfh seems to have tipped the balance of power away from the MBA types, which is why you see all the pearl clutching blog posts about the return to the office and “working hard”.
    • cloverich 5y ago
• varelaz 5y ago
  Developers are getting too spoiled. Did someone do the same research for teachers for example.
  • antris 5y ago
    This myth of "spoiled developers" definitely feeds into the problem. People feel like they cannot complain about their work conditions because they have nice toys and benefits at the work place.
    • playpause 5y ago
      As a long time developer, I think we are pretty good at complaining about our work conditions, and are spoiled in many ways. We also have some very valid complaints about the bullshit we have to deal with, interfering micromanagers making us less productive and less happy, etc. All these things can be true at once. You don’t need to dismiss any of them as myths.
  • Verdex 5y ago
    If it turned out that teachers (and everyone else) also have an ~80% burnout rate, then that only shows a more fundamental problem. Not that anyone is being spoiled. And it's okay if that starts by finding out that developers have a ~80% burnout rate. To be fair, you are at least correct that we should run the same study against teachers. (And really as many other people as we can find the time/money for.)
    • varelaz 5y ago
      The thing is that these bare numbers say nothing without "in compare with". There should be comparison with other job types or historical at least to make certain assumptions. Also for such burnouts developers often have some type of compensation, while other jobs rather not. Compare for example developers problems with Amazon devilery service drivers problems with toilets. A lot of jobs just luck minimal comfort and compesations and hardly can complain.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• mytailorisrich 5y ago
  I feel they should clarify what they mean, and what respondents meant, by 'burnout'. Burnout is an extreme state and I am extremely surprised that 83% would feel that way. From the actual study "A total of 83% of Software Engineers reported feelings of burnout with only 17% reporting no burnout. 55%, a majority, reported “great” or “moderate” levels of burnout." What is a "moderate level of burnout"? This is self-contradictory, so I'm not convinced that respondents really meant 'burnout' in the strict sense, and the question itself leads to this lack of clarity.
  • pixl97 5y ago
    So burnout is a binary state of on or off? Or is it a continuum where you go from slightly stressed to "I'm walking out that door right now and never coming back"
    • antris 5y ago
      I'd say it's like a tiny smoldering piece of charcoal, that suddenly ignites when there's too much gasoline in the air. You may be aware of the signs early, and even know what your progression is, but just before the tipping point you may still be a completely productive worker.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  How much of the workload is just the dev shortage/insufficient staffing? I am currently the only dev on my team because of departures (there should be 4). Now, it is not really all that in production yet so it hasn't required late nights or waking up at odd hours, but it does linger in my mind that this could be a big issue if it grew a lot and my team didn't. I would hate to support it alone. A friend of mine is missing two people on his team at another company. It means that they had to shove the interns into the support rotation to have full coverage of their app. They are hiring too, but as things stand, interns are staying up in the night deal with production errors and they are waking each other up as well, they are interns and don't know what they are doing. Software seems like something that needs a sufficiently sized team after a certain point and nearly every team I know of anywhere is short people at the moment, even at FAANGs.
  • rantwasp 5y ago
    using interns as this is unacceptable. is there a dev shortage or is there an expectation that you can hire people for cheap and work them to death?
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      In economic terms, there are no shortages. In practical terms though, it means that there are a bunch of projects out there that aren't viable without heavily working people and employers are incentivized to extract as much as possible from people.
      • rantwasp 5y ago
        projects that are not viable should simply not get done. it always amazes me that people put up with this insanity. The first thing I teach junior developers that join my team is 1) learn to set boundaries 2) your WLB and mental sanity is more important than any project (if you are struggling you’re gonna get fired, ie don’t kill yourself with work when you are … disposable)
  • cloverich 5y ago
• jeffail 5y ago
  Anecdotally I'd say professions that often double up as a hobby and don't have a significant material or energy cost to exercise will be more susceptible to burn out. If you're _really_ into software engineering and struggle to pace yourself then burn out will often stop you sooner than finger fatigue or your computing costs. I'm not saying workplace pressure etc isn't a factor, but those are also similar factors in pretty much all careers.
  • an_opabinia 5y ago
    It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know. Lawyers and doctors also say the workload burns them out. Some doctors have to do 24 hour shifts which are more than 3x physically demanding than working 1 8 hour day. I understand what you mean by hobby though. It’s toxic to discount people feeling shitty. But the biggest complainers I know - maybe the shittiest people - get into programming or the guilded professions to make money.
    • GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
      They shouldn’t be forced into 24hour shifts, I’m sure they’d have an easier time with regular work hours
• wonderwonder 5y ago
  I wonder if software presents a unique situation as we generally make a pretty decent salary and to transition to a new career involves a pretty significant pay cut. So some developers become trapped in jobs they hate with golden handcuffs. I really don't enjoy software development at all, but at this stage, to even think about doing something else would result in a massive pay cut. I did it once when I was younger, quit software and started a new career with a 55% pay cut. Liked the new work and did it for 5 years. Then I had kids and needed more money so I returned to software, since then I just exist in a constant state of burnout.
  • atlgator 5y ago
    That's the problem I have. I really want to switch to finance but I make so much money now I dread starting over at $60k or something.
    • wonderwonder 5y ago
      yup, my salary allowed my wife to recently switch careers and take a 50% salary cut. There is no way we could do the same for my career though unless we made drastic changes like selling the house and never retiring.
  • cloverich 5y ago
    I was thinking a lot about Golden Handcuff situations and in a weird sense its artificially creating the actually bad scenario where someone is stuck in a job because they NEED it to make ends meat. You can be sure people in low paying jobs with low mobility are also burnt out. The difference is recognizing that golden handcuffs is an artificial situation and money doesn't create happiness (once you cross that base threshold). Its easy to see in others but hard to act on yourself. Ultimately its one of those things where you just need to be principled -- never stay at a job (career, etc) because of Golden Handcuffs. Its just like building flexibility or resiliency into an engineering system. You don't need to specifically justify it, its just a good principle to follow as a general rule.
  • Aeolun 5y ago
    > since then I just exist in a constant state of burnout The worst part is that even that doesn’t seem to matter. Whether I do my best work because I’m 100% into the job, or my worst because I just cannot be bothered any more, people perceive me the same way, and my salary remains the same. If the effect is nil why should I even bother.
• throwawayswede 5y ago
  This is such a great example of bullshit studies. Yeah I'm gonna go on a limb and say this is a marketing campaign. It's an insult to science to call this a "study". From the pdf: > The fieldwork of this study was carried out at remarkable speed, from the 23rd to 24th of June 2021 Data was collected in 1 day. Is this a joke? No it's not! > The population sampled included Software Engineers aged 18+ living in the United Kingdom. In total we surveyed 258 such people Survation, the market research agency who did the actual work, interviewed 258 people only, I don't see any definition or criteria on what that means, years of experience, field, cultural-background, or any of the many other very important aspects that anyone would wonder about. I really don't understand how they can do a half-assed data survey on 258 people only, and then have the gall to claim "83% of developers". What's really sad about this is that there is indeed an increased workload I've heard people say that they've experienced, caused by the side-effects of the covid-response most governments took, from working from home for extended periods to mental health issues. This kind of click-bait bullshit marketing campaigns is pretty harmful to the very real issue of burnout because it muddles the ground and dilutes the issue.
  • himoacs 5y ago
    Thanks for taking the time to read the details. I am always skeptical when I see "Study finds...".
  • jquery 5y ago
    I’m guilty of posting before reading the article. I’m glad you pointed this out. Sounds like an awful study. There’s true burnout and then there’s feelings of stress. They aren’t the same thing at all. I know because I’ve experienced both. Burnout cuts you down to your soul. I haven’t programmed professionally in 2 years and the thought of doing so makes me nauseous. That’s burnout.
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      Let's me 100% honest here - if we cannot define clearly the psychological and medical definition of a burn-out (with accurate diagnosis), it is just fine to discuss in non-scientific context. The moment you call this a study and no one here is willing to ask hard questions makes me extremely disappointed in HN and the intellectual curiosity that usually drives discussions here. Why do I feel like there is some political angle to this? (labor rights).
• 71a54xd 5y ago
  I made the mistake early in my career of not taking enough vacation. If I'd just taken time off, I could've avoided partial burnout, coasting to handle burnout and nearly getting fired a few times. Funny how you learn things like this in your early twenties.
• jquery 5y ago
  I “retired” after 12 years of web development due to extreme burnout. I now work in a completely different industry and could not be happier. It felt like my workload was forever increasing. I could never rest on any laurels without falling significantly “behind”. I developed a major substance abuse problem as well (sober 14 months now), although untangling cause and effect here is impossible. I think I was abusing substances in part to cope with the stress.
  • antris 5y ago
    > It felt like my workload was forever increasing. I could never rest on any laurels without falling significantly “behind”. Sounds very familiar. Also, when I finally put my foot down to demand changes in order to avoid burnout, that was used against me when I was later discussing a pay raise. I learned to never bring up problems again, and got crashed hard.
    • jquery 5y ago
      That line about it being used against you rings true. Business is often a toxic stew of keeping secrets from others lest they exploit you. This warps our perception and experience of human intimacy. Yet one more reason I’m glad to have left the industry.
  • ipnon 5y ago
    Your very first submission! "Ask HN: how do you avoid burnout and getting taken advantage of?"[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=939580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=939580
    • jquery 5y ago
      Haha, thanks. That brings back memories. If I recall, that thread helped me avoid burnout for a while. But it eventually caught up to me again with a ferocity I was unable to defend against, with the catalyst being a parent who died. Fortunately, I was in a position of financial strength and faced the beast head-on. On further reflection... burnout turned out to be a gift in disguise. It was an impetus for necessary change.
• morpheos137 5y ago
  Honestly as somebody not working in software development these posts seem ridiculous to me. The pay is great, the physical work environment is good, if you work for a FANG company you might get free food, access to a corporate gym, and other amenities. Can somebody give example of another job that is better? I do agree though that America's work culture is bad as a whole and does not afford sufficient work life balance in most jobs. But SWE have one of the best jobs out there, it seems from somebody looking in on the outside. There is a huge lack of understanding what other people do for work. Many jobs are much harder than an Amazon pick and pack position. I bring that up because Amazon is frequently mentioned as a bad employer here. See for example junior investment banker working 80 hours a week making power point decks for tight deadlines.
  • cloverich 5y ago
    > Can somebody give example of another job that is better? Dentistry. I know many Dentists and rarely if ever meet one that works more than 4 days a week. But I don't think that's a real retort to your point :p > But SWE have one of the best jobs out there, it seems from somebody looking in on the outside. There is a huge lack of understanding what other people do for work. Generally speaking anyone working in a situation where their efforts of improvement are frustrated will feel burnt out. Of course this is common in crappy jobs too and often manifests in highly managed employees who are driven with very strict metrics and work environments, because a constant threat of unemployement is the only method to sustain output. So its a real phenomenon and no amount of money or perks is the answer, in the same way that most people know that being rich isn't a silver bullet towards happiness. To over simplify, you can want both riches and fulfillment, and lament the lack of either independent of the other. More constructively as an employer, if you are paying and treating your employees well and they are still unhappy, it might be that they are spoiled brats and you should fire them and find others. OR it might be that there is an actual problem that needs fixed. IME its always been the latter, and failing to fix that problem has always been a missed opportunity for the places I've worked.
    • morpheos137 5y ago
      My feeling is that software developement is made more complicated than it needs to be because of bunch of frameworks and work processes churning that basically re-invent the exact same wheel spokes and all over and over again. The field desparately needs standardised work. Once the development process is standardised the pay and entitled blog posts will drop. I am quite confident for example you could build a web app with the same functionality as today with 2015 technology but it wouldn't work today because of churn inspired obselecence.
• deregulateMed 5y ago
  I'd like separate breakdowns based on how long people have worked at the same company and same job. I'm not sure who is more cynical, the contractor who has seen all companies operate similar, or the "lifer" who has to put up with the revolving door of thankless projects. I personally can go from burned out from my data job to having fun programming embedded projects. All bets are off if I'm working more than 40 hours a week.
• werber 5y ago
  I went through a period of really horrible depression during the pandemic and I doubt that’s unique. Basic work tasks were harder and it felt meaningless. I’m better now but isolation was difficult
• daniel_iversen 5y ago
  There were a few comments here throwing shade at the findings and also people who said that software developers are burning out way more than other occupations. I can't speak for this study in question, but the WHO did classify burnout as an occupational phenomenon a couple of years ago [1] and our own research (I work for Asana and we yearly survey 10K+ knowledge workers) suggests that indeed between 70-80% of knowledge workers in general experience burnout two or more times a year! Sad really. I've experienced it quite severely a long time ago and it can truly rock your world and take a very long time to recover from. [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupational-phenomenon-international-classification-of-diseases https://www.who.int/news/item/28-05-2019-burn-out-an-occupat... [2] https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work
• m1117 5y ago
  8/10 data scientist working on this article were having a burnout.
• CaptainDrewBoy 5y ago
  Can we talk for a second about the fact that to even read this article I needed to enable JavaScript from no fewer than FIVE different sources? I just want some plain HTML, and maybe a little CSS. I don't want your fancy animations and 50 trackers. The modern web is doomed.
• CaptainDrewBoy 5y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but can we just talk about the fact that reading this article required me to load JavaScript from FIVE different sources? The user experience of me scrolling down some formatted text with an image on the top could have been replicated in HTML and CSS easily. And even if it simply HAD to have been done in JS, why so many sources? I don't know who intercom.io or webflow.com are, but I doubt your article needs them to load. And if it does, you need to stop refusing to load pages before you're done plopping slow animations and subtle trackers on me.
  • progval 5y ago
    You can use your browser's reader mode. The content is all there in the HTML, but there's a bunch of `style="opacity:0"` attributes to hide them until JS removes the attributes.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• bbojan 5y ago
  A long time ago I was reading a text on burnout, and one factor that stood out was lack of closure. Think of an architect - they design a building, deliver blueprints and the building gets built. They're done. They can drive by the building and say "Look, I've designed that building". There's closure. A developer's job is rarely done. You do a fantastic job and fix 2 almost intractable bugs in a sprint. What happens the next sprint? You get more bugs to fix. There's rarely closure.
  • Verdex 5y ago
    Interesting idea. Here's my anecdote [or in other words, we should be dubious that there is any meaning here at all beyond coincidence]. Most of the work that I've done was for medical technology where the customer tends to deploy more often in Europe. I have seen very few finished products where I had a hand in implementing something. However, one of my happiest experiences was years ago when we finished a rewrite of some hardware for a customer that had to be done because they didn't want to interrupt their sales pipeline (also their customers wanted to be able to continue buying with out their purchasing pipeline being interrupted either). Anyway, so things had to move fast and once we were done soon after (months later iirc) there was a website up that had the new product that we had worked on. It felt really good (even years later now thinking back) to be able to actually see and be able to show people I knew the product that we worked over a year on.
  • benhurmarcel 5y ago
    It's the same in a lot of industries and jobs. You're a doctor and cure a patient; what do you get tomorrow, more patients. You're a automotive worker and assemble 100 cars today; what do you get tomorrow, more cars to build. You're a mechanical engineer and fix a customer's issue with the machinery; what do you get next week, more customer issues. Jobs where you can regularly fully close a project and never hear about it again are the exception.
  • loudlambda 5y ago
    In high school I worked some janitor jobs; every week your cleaning up a very similar mess as last week, but the work can be fulfilling if you're striving to do an excellent job and achieve mastery. That's one area that is soul crushing in software; the complete disdain for excellence and mastery. Nobody on the business side seems to care about creating master pieces. They want to throw half cooked spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks before throwing more spaghetti against more walls, and they strive to be the next facebook and have tens of thousands of employees throwing spaghetti. Android has 10 year old bugs with thousands of watchers and instead Google is off trying to use Android in cars or televisions or probably tennis shoes. Maybe it's finally fixed, but for years AWS cloud-formation and CDK was unable to be used with a significant and critical set of AWS services and features. Instead, AWS is off creating toy RC cars and creating elastic-cloud-simple-machine-model-shift service, which are both missing cloud-formation bindings. If your the guy who actually cares about your customers, and is trying to fix these things, you're career has been repeatedly hit-and-run by everyone else making career moves and running off to make purpose-built block-chain gamified cloud-native social machine-learned pez dispensers. And even if you can't find a job that will let you create excellence, using and learning excellent tools can be rewarding. Instead it seems like a downward spiral. There was a brief moment of sanity when the industry dropped all tangled complexity that was XML, but in general it seems like the industry is going from well crafted products like PostgreSQL, to half-baked databases like Cassandra CQL which apparently doesn't allow NOT NULL constraints. Once Java, C++, and Javascript all start to have fairly nice feature sets, it suddenly becomes hard to not find one's self stuck in jobs requiring the obtuse language go. And then there's helm, which seems to be trying to win at a competition to see if it's possible to make a configuration that's more brittle and convoluted then the old M4 based Sendmail configs of yore. Why should I even bother becoming anything more then slightly proficient in any of these if they're going to be replaced with something even uglier and less ergonomic next year? What's the point of pouring my sweat and tears into a product for a company if the company is just going to strand it and rush off to build something else that it's going to abandon and rush off to yet something else?
• lastofthemojito 5y ago
  Shocking, when we're perpetually working in "sprints" that we're burnt out and overworked. Sample size of 1 obviously, but I recall feeling less work stress in the days before agile took over the world.
• fridif 5y ago
  Only time I felt burned out was through horrible management.
• abz10 5y ago
  It could be genetic. RCCX gene mutations may make people more susceptible to CF/ME and being a software developer. For most people CF/ME will present as burnout.
  • techsin101 5y ago
    it's very weird when people take correlation and present it as causation. I feel there are at least few steps in statement that people with that gene mutation are more susceptible to burn out. Like people with that gene mutation "like to be independent", "like variety", and therefore lack of those in regular 9-5 software development leads to burn out. How it is presented as a causation has only one practical application. Gene xyz is bad, don't hire people with gene xyz.
    • abz10 5y ago
      And I think it’s weird when people assume that nature would conform to morality. That would be convenient and I’m suspicious of convenience. It’s a proposed causation hence the ‘may’ qualifier. I’m suggesting people should check it out further. They may be surprised. Also, it has huge implications beyond employment. My particular RCCX mutations yield hEDS which I can now treat. I wish I would have known 20 years ago. That’s one of many treatable genetic disorders that people barely know about. It would also mean burnout is curable, so instead of not hiring people susceptible to burnout we can instead cure it for everyone.
• p0nce 5y ago
  Burnout is a clinical condition and there are tests for it. You can't just ask people if they "feel" burned-out, as the term is often employed outside of the condition.
• c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Recently I've been feeling more and more detached from work. I thought about taking annual leave but I'm covering for my boss who just went on paternity leave. My employer also coerced (forced) us to take a big chunk of our annual leave already because of concerns there will be a huge clash later in the year. So I feel reluctant to use even more of it and then suffer later in the year. I also thought about asking for unpaid leave but I just moved to a new role and it might be a bad look when I have my review in 6 months. I'm having a harder and harder time sleeping. Sometimes I only get 2 or 3 hours and I'm up at 4am with what feels like a high level of anxiety, worrying about many kinds of scenarios. Sleeping pills I bought over the counter seem to have no effect. Would be great if my employer gave us a week to breathe like some companies have, but we're also a startup who just got acquired, so no chance of that either. I'm struggling.
  • dandersh 5y ago
    I was in the same boat as you. Definitely talk to someone, see someone, take something, etc. I didn't and it spiraled out of control.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• stevev 5y ago
  If it helps. I feel burnout.
• v1l 5y ago
  I think one of the biggest factors for dev burnout is processes and lack of ownership/input devs are subjected to. Most teams look at developers as just ticket takers and rarely involve them in the product or the decision making. Eventually you just tire of implementing the same stuff over and over like a code monkey.
  • jm__87 5y ago
    I have a job where I get to do a lot of the requirements in addition to the development and trust me, it is just more work and I am more burnt out for it.
    • v1l 5y ago
      so what is the root cause? is it just the constant (often fake) urgency, the dull and repetitive nature of sprints and working on tickets, or the volume of work?
      • jm__87 5y ago
        Probably a combination of those things + for many, poor lifestyle choices will be an issue
• adhdsufferer 5y ago
  This is just what it's like to work a repetitive desk job. I imagine it's similar for lawyers and accountants.
  • ipnon 5y ago
    There is some misery inherent to sitting on the dark side of a sunny window for the privilege of doing it all again the next day.
    • heurist 5y ago
      I've had fun doing it and been miserable doing it. It depends on the work and opportunity for creativity/impact.
• SeanFerree 5y ago
  I am burnt out from all the unnecessary updates so I can understand why the developers would be burnt out as well
• eliseumds 5y ago
  How do we compare to workers in other industries?
• zarkov99 5y ago
  Poor developers in their safe, respected, well paid jobs. Perhaps the should quit and find something easier on their fragile little souls.
• ewzimm 5y ago
  Study finds 17% of software developers can't feel anything anymore.
• moltar 5y ago
  My pet theory is that software never ends and thus we don’t get closure. Which then exacerbates the feelings of burnout.
• soobrosa 5y ago
  What is N?
• joelbondurant 5y ago
  Tax cattle state property objects must comply with full USA communist unity.