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I was wondering about the parenting angle. How do you work through burnout when quitting is not an option?

carlivar 5y ago
If it's literally food on the table at risk, your finances are stretched way too thin and you should solve that separately. And living on the edge like this is probably a big contributor to burnout/stress. But to try to answer your question: I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help. Like a bank or just a local place that needs more I.T. type of help than amazing startup code. I tend to doubt this would work though. Maybe work for a non-profit with a mission that aligns with your values? This is where I would lean.
- legerdemain 5y ago
  I have just quit a dev job at a corporate philanthropy whose mission "aligns with my values." It was more aimless, more cryptic, less meaningful, less "real," and less obviously impactful than any other dev job I've had. Every day was just a long, drawn-out feeling of "why bother."
  - carlivar 5y ago
    Corporate philanthropy triggers my BS detector a bit though. Do you think a non-profit would be different? Like, say, ASPCA or UNICEF instead of the Exxon-Mobil Climate Taskforce or whatever corporate philanthropy means (I actually do not know, could you elaborate?).
    - legerdemain 5y ago
      I was working at a philanthropic org funded by one of the Bay Area tech giants. The org was focused on science research and advocacy. But being neither a scientist nor activist, I was very far removed from whatever it is that our org did. My job was keeping the proverbial lights on. The combination of uninteresting work and being really peripheral within the org finally did me in.
      - jb_s 5y ago
        Common pitfall. It doesn't matter how interesting the company is if you're not actually working on the interesting stuff!
- JohnFen 5y ago
  A number of years ago, the finest dev I personally know hit peak burnout. He quit his job, went to truck driving school, and became a long-haul truck driver. He did that for five years or so, and is now a dev again. He said that it was a great decision. The work was different enough that it let the dev parts of his mind rest, but had enough similarities that it stayed interesting enough for a while. He also said that he was completely surprised by how many truck drivers he met who used to be devs. I'm not sure if that speaks to software development or truck driving, but there seems to be an overlap there. In any case, I do think that a viable option to being unemployed is to take up a job that exercises different muscles than your current position does for a while. It worked for one person, anyway.
- ornornor 5y ago
  > I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help. I had a similar thought and so I left startup world to go and work for a government software department. 3 years in, I can definitively say that it’s just a different twist on the same shit sandwich. The people I work with are incredibly bad at what they do, they’ve been there for 5–20 years, and the pressure doesn’t come from investor wanting growth at all cost but rather from clueless managers, PMs, and other stakeholders who insist on velocity at the expense of quality. Our software is very poorly written (think the daily wtf level of quality), has no thought put into architecture, most don’t even know how to write a unit test, but we are pushed to fix bugs and add features faster and faster because “its just a button, why would it take so long”(tm). Never mind that adding the button requires us to modify half a dozen packages and break the backend because of the senseless architecture. Anyway, I’m ranting. The point is that this kind of company tends to attract lifers who suck at their job. It’s stressful and it sucks as well, but for different reasons than your typical high pressure startup. But at least I can stop working at 5:00pm on the dot and no one will tell me anything. Same after 40:00h a week, I just shut off the computer until the next Monday. So there is that.
deleted 5y ago
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jkhdigital 5y ago
Nature seems to flip a switch in parents—the profound responsibility of raising a child is its own source of perseverance.
Applejinx 5y ago
"quitting is not an option" is one of the best definitions of burnout that I've ever seen. :)

If it's literally food on the table at risk, your finances are stretched way too thin and you should solve that separately. And living on the edge like this is probably a big contributor to burnout/stress. But to try to answer your question: I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help. Like a bank or just a local place that needs more I.T. type of help than amazing startup code. I tend to doubt this would work though. Maybe work for a non-profit with a mission that aligns with your values? This is where I would lean.

legerdemain 5y ago
I have just quit a dev job at a corporate philanthropy whose mission "aligns with my values." It was more aimless, more cryptic, less meaningful, less "real," and less obviously impactful than any other dev job I've had. Every day was just a long, drawn-out feeling of "why bother."
- carlivar 5y ago
  Corporate philanthropy triggers my BS detector a bit though. Do you think a non-profit would be different? Like, say, ASPCA or UNICEF instead of the Exxon-Mobil Climate Taskforce or whatever corporate philanthropy means (I actually do not know, could you elaborate?).
  - legerdemain 5y ago
    I was working at a philanthropic org funded by one of the Bay Area tech giants. The org was focused on science research and advocacy. But being neither a scientist nor activist, I was very far removed from whatever it is that our org did. My job was keeping the proverbial lights on. The combination of uninteresting work and being really peripheral within the org finally did me in.
    - jb_s 5y ago
      Common pitfall. It doesn't matter how interesting the company is if you're not actually working on the interesting stuff!
JohnFen 5y ago
A number of years ago, the finest dev I personally know hit peak burnout. He quit his job, went to truck driving school, and became a long-haul truck driver. He did that for five years or so, and is now a dev again. He said that it was a great decision. The work was different enough that it let the dev parts of his mind rest, but had enough similarities that it stayed interesting enough for a while. He also said that he was completely surprised by how many truck drivers he met who used to be devs. I'm not sure if that speaks to software development or truck driving, but there seems to be an overlap there. In any case, I do think that a viable option to being unemployed is to take up a job that exercises different muscles than your current position does for a while. It worked for one person, anyway.
ornornor 5y ago
> I've wondered if going to work for a slow, boring company would help. I had a similar thought and so I left startup world to go and work for a government software department. 3 years in, I can definitively say that it’s just a different twist on the same shit sandwich. The people I work with are incredibly bad at what they do, they’ve been there for 5–20 years, and the pressure doesn’t come from investor wanting growth at all cost but rather from clueless managers, PMs, and other stakeholders who insist on velocity at the expense of quality. Our software is very poorly written (think the daily wtf level of quality), has no thought put into architecture, most don’t even know how to write a unit test, but we are pushed to fix bugs and add features faster and faster because “its just a button, why would it take so long”(tm). Never mind that adding the button requires us to modify half a dozen packages and break the backend because of the senseless architecture. Anyway, I’m ranting. The point is that this kind of company tends to attract lifers who suck at their job. It’s stressful and it sucks as well, but for different reasons than your typical high pressure startup. But at least I can stop working at 5:00pm on the dot and no one will tell me anything. Same after 40:00h a week, I just shut off the computer until the next Monday. So there is that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jkhdigital 5y ago

Nature seems to flip a switch in parents—the profound responsibility of raising a child is its own source of perseverance.

Applejinx 5y ago

"quitting is not an option" is one of the best definitions of burnout that I've ever seen. :)