6 ms·

Is maintenance the cause of burnout then?

by briefcomment 5y ago

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
        [deleted]
      - 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
  [deleted]
- 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...

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
      [deleted]
    - 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
[deleted]
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...