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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 mont

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.
- milesvp 5y ago
  I personally really like maintenance programming, but I wonder if I've been lucky. All the systems I've ever inherited, I've been able to make impactful changes to them such that they stopped being that one system that causes everyone production headaches. Even the systems that I couldn't make much changes with directly, I was able to isolate, and route other systems around them, such that new data stopped depending on the system. It took a lot of effort, and politicking, but I seem to find the exploration and the juggling to be far more satisfying than greenfield building.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    You may have been incredibly lucky, or have a secret sauce I don't understand. I've worked a pair of maintenace positions. The previous one was incredibly creaky and had no other systems, so changes were scary and there was no recourse to move to something else. The only I'm working now I'm maintaining client code so I don't have any agency there either. Maybe it's agency? Ultimately I don't feel like my contribution wows anyone.
    - milesvp 5y ago
      Yeah, maybe agency. I don't know. It helps that I'm fairly social for an introverted engineer. One of the biggest systems change I ever made was related to a legacy url that the main page had to use. It seems like the type of thing that should be simple to make, but due to the sheer amounts of redirects and multiple systems involved it was really painful to change the primary domain. Only like 2 people in the company had any idea the amount of effort necessary to avoid breaking countless things. But when I finally flipped the switch I spent the entire afternoon running around the company and showing random people I knew in other departments the home page. I got a lot of "huh?"s. literally no one was impressed. But, I can have an infectious enthusiasm, so as I pointed to the URL, and said "look! that was actually really hard to do", people would at least come around and say "ok? good job?". They still weren't particularly impressed, but they at least understood it wasn't trivial. Couple this with a good PM who I knew was also evangelizing some of this stuff, and you can get a lot of agency over time in an org. So maybe the trick is evangelizing? I really don't know, I just know I've been successful, often in spite of the organization I was in. I'm also constantly aware of the amount of luck involved in everything I do, so it's always hard for me to believe that I was the important factor.

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.

milesvp 5y ago
I personally really like maintenance programming, but I wonder if I've been lucky. All the systems I've ever inherited, I've been able to make impactful changes to them such that they stopped being that one system that causes everyone production headaches. Even the systems that I couldn't make much changes with directly, I was able to isolate, and route other systems around them, such that new data stopped depending on the system. It took a lot of effort, and politicking, but I seem to find the exploration and the juggling to be far more satisfying than greenfield building.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  You may have been incredibly lucky, or have a secret sauce I don't understand. I've worked a pair of maintenace positions. The previous one was incredibly creaky and had no other systems, so changes were scary and there was no recourse to move to something else. The only I'm working now I'm maintaining client code so I don't have any agency there either. Maybe it's agency? Ultimately I don't feel like my contribution wows anyone.
  - milesvp 5y ago
    Yeah, maybe agency. I don't know. It helps that I'm fairly social for an introverted engineer. One of the biggest systems change I ever made was related to a legacy url that the main page had to use. It seems like the type of thing that should be simple to make, but due to the sheer amounts of redirects and multiple systems involved it was really painful to change the primary domain. Only like 2 people in the company had any idea the amount of effort necessary to avoid breaking countless things. But when I finally flipped the switch I spent the entire afternoon running around the company and showing random people I knew in other departments the home page. I got a lot of "huh?"s. literally no one was impressed. But, I can have an infectious enthusiasm, so as I pointed to the URL, and said "look! that was actually really hard to do", people would at least come around and say "ok? good job?". They still weren't particularly impressed, but they at least understood it wasn't trivial. Couple this with a good PM who I knew was also evangelizing some of this stuff, and you can get a lot of agency over time in an org. So maybe the trick is evangelizing? I really don't know, I just know I've been successful, often in spite of the organization I was in. I'm also constantly aware of the amount of luck involved in everything I do, so it's always hard for me to believe that I was the important factor.