5 ms·

> burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited lov

> burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited love." So much this. If you are putting in too much effort into something at work just because you care about it, this is a recipe for disaster. If you're putting in extra work to learn valuable transferrable skills, that's fine - if that's the tradeoff you want to make. But if you're just working your ass off for no reason, you're setting yourself up for a major let down.

xupybd 5y ago
Yeah it's surprising how little control you end up with once you burn out. I got there and thought I could will myself through it. I was not even keeping up with my timesheeting, it took so much will power just to get through a day. I learnt you have to take holidays, you can't sustain long hours for months at a time and if management is focusing in a different direction than your team it's time to leave.
- dnautics 5y ago
  For me, I realized though that you do have control. The solution is counterintuitive, though. If I am at risk of burnout I slow down a bit, but I don't outright quit. I also queue up labor that will derive small tangible, almost guaranteed wins. Although programmers seem to burn out a lot (probably because there are almost no limits to how much effort you can put in... There's always more code to be pushed, after all), programmers uniquely have the tools to reschedule small tasks (e.g. refactoring, writing those tests you've put off) that can create small emotional "success hits", sometimes even with primary stimuli (green passing tests dots). These can serve to reassociate effort with reward. Conversely, taking a vacation immediately after burning out is likely the worst thing you can do, because it associates not-effort with reward. Typically I like to drop in a timing-non-negotiable vacation far enough in the future to dissociate from the burnout, e.g. 2mo. Anyways, it's been many years since I have had a full-on burnout. (I have had project burnouts though, where I refuse to continue working on a given thing and pivot to something else with a more favorable seeming reward schedule).
  - lumost 5y ago
    I think this thread gets to the heart of why engineers seem to have a more difficult relationship with performance management than most disciplines. When management gives opaque or “unjust” performance reviews, it can almost directly trigger burnout in tech. Similarly if the process is not perceived as transparent engineers can simply feel like they are hitting a brick wall. Given the high turnover rate in tech I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s even worth having a performance management process. Unless someone has straight up stopped working for a prolonged period, it’s unlikely that they will stay with the company long anyway.
    - cookingrobot 5y ago
      Interesting you mention these causes, they’re the topic of this interview currently on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28308970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28308970
sciprojguy 5y ago
It helps a lot to think your management knows what it's doing. If you're stressing out on the latest likely "swing and a miss" feature that you think they picked using a dart board and ransom-note cutouts from magazines, you can end up burnt out for a good long time.
samstave 5y ago
This is precisely why I cringe anytime ANY executive/HR person in a company refers to the team as a "family" No, areyou going to fucking fire Uncle Joe for being too drunk at thanksgiving and cut him off from the family will and make him sign a non-familial-secrets-disclosure promise? Fuck that. You are not a family. HR is NEVER your friend. I was once offered ~8K to non-disparage a company upon leaving. Yeah - no thanks.
- trophycase 5y ago
  Since I assume you did not accept. Care to tell us what company :) ?
  - samstave 5y ago
    nah, im over it... but at the time I sent their CEO regular emails asking if he was still a douchebag.
    - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
      this would be especially funny if you were the only person at the company who knew how to set up filtering on the Exchange server.
      - samstave 5y ago
        Funilly enough I could have pulled this off, but didnt... Although my fav Exchange story was at Lockheed: We sent an email 'on behalf of' the Head of Council (the top corp Lawyer) for our division, to our entire group. "Come by my office for Coffee and Doughnuts!" Droves showed up to his office asking for coffee and doughnuts. On April Fools Day.
- icedchai 5y ago
  I had to sign on a non-disparagement agreement once. HR was like "don't worry! you're not in trouble!! please sign this for our legal dept." I'm there wondering to myself, how can I possibly be in trouble? I had just quit...

xupybd 5y ago

Yeah it's surprising how little control you end up with once you burn out. I got there and thought I could will myself through it. I was not even keeping up with my timesheeting, it took so much will power just to get through a day. I learnt you have to take holidays, you can't sustain long hours for months at a time and if management is focusing in a different direction than your team it's time to leave.

dnautics 5y ago
For me, I realized though that you do have control. The solution is counterintuitive, though. If I am at risk of burnout I slow down a bit, but I don't outright quit. I also queue up labor that will derive small tangible, almost guaranteed wins. Although programmers seem to burn out a lot (probably because there are almost no limits to how much effort you can put in... There's always more code to be pushed, after all), programmers uniquely have the tools to reschedule small tasks (e.g. refactoring, writing those tests you've put off) that can create small emotional "success hits", sometimes even with primary stimuli (green passing tests dots). These can serve to reassociate effort with reward. Conversely, taking a vacation immediately after burning out is likely the worst thing you can do, because it associates not-effort with reward. Typically I like to drop in a timing-non-negotiable vacation far enough in the future to dissociate from the burnout, e.g. 2mo. Anyways, it's been many years since I have had a full-on burnout. (I have had project burnouts though, where I refuse to continue working on a given thing and pivot to something else with a more favorable seeming reward schedule).
- lumost 5y ago
  I think this thread gets to the heart of why engineers seem to have a more difficult relationship with performance management than most disciplines. When management gives opaque or “unjust” performance reviews, it can almost directly trigger burnout in tech. Similarly if the process is not perceived as transparent engineers can simply feel like they are hitting a brick wall. Given the high turnover rate in tech I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s even worth having a performance management process. Unless someone has straight up stopped working for a prolonged period, it’s unlikely that they will stay with the company long anyway.
  - cookingrobot 5y ago
    Interesting you mention these causes, they’re the topic of this interview currently on the front page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28308970 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28308970

sciprojguy 5y ago

It helps a lot to think your management knows what it's doing. If you're stressing out on the latest likely "swing and a miss" feature that you think they picked using a dart board and ransom-note cutouts from magazines, you can end up burnt out for a good long time.

samstave 5y ago

This is precisely why I cringe anytime ANY executive/HR person in a company refers to the team as a "family" No, areyou going to fucking fire Uncle Joe for being too drunk at thanksgiving and cut him off from the family will and make him sign a non-familial-secrets-disclosure promise? Fuck that. You are not a family. HR is NEVER your friend. I was once offered ~8K to non-disparage a company upon leaving. Yeah - no thanks.

trophycase 5y ago
Since I assume you did not accept. Care to tell us what company :) ?
- samstave 5y ago
  nah, im over it... but at the time I sent their CEO regular emails asking if he was still a douchebag.
  - bryanrasmussen 5y ago
    this would be especially funny if you were the only person at the company who knew how to set up filtering on the Exchange server.
    - samstave 5y ago
      Funilly enough I could have pulled this off, but didnt... Although my fav Exchange story was at Lockheed: We sent an email 'on behalf of' the Head of Council (the top corp Lawyer) for our division, to our entire group. "Come by my office for Coffee and Doughnuts!" Droves showed up to his office asking for coffee and doughnuts. On April Fools Day.
icedchai 5y ago
I had to sign on a non-disparagement agreement once. HR was like "don't worry! you're not in trouble!! please sign this for our legal dept." I'm there wondering to myself, how can I possibly be in trouble? I had just quit...