6 ms·

I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some ar

I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some arbitrary deadline. You just sit in your chair every day, endure mindless meetings where half the people have no idea whats going on and then you try and cram in development while praying that no one will ping you and force you to context switch for an hour. Repeat everyday forever, and this is made worse because now most of us work from home so its all done in isolation. Don't get me wrong I like working from home for the freedom it provides but it is isolating and you are now essentially always at work. Deadlines seem to always get shorter and requirements murkier. Stress is always ramping up and rarely resets. This is fine.

SkyPuncher 5y ago
I know scrum and sprints get a lot of hate, but I've found them to be extremely effective tools for combating this.
- greenyoda 5y ago
  Could you describe more about how scrum/sprints can help combat burnout for you? That hasn't been my own experience.
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    they set boundaries? i.e. the set explicit limits to activities, provide structure, make responsibilities clear from the get-go, ...
    - greenyoda 5y ago
      In my experience, whatever boundaries are set within an agile engineering group can be overridden by the priorities, roadmaps, etc. that are imposed from above by the corporate executives. Responsibilities can change overnight as staff are reorganized or laid off by powers beyond their control.
      - bsedlm 5y ago
        well, my answer is theoretical. My own experience is similar to yours: "your team is no longer following scrum in a mad-rush attempt to deliver the deadline." and then everything gets even worse
      - salt-thrower 5y ago
        Every scrum team I've ever been on fell into that pattern eventually. Companies adopted Scrum because it became the trendy way to signal that you're a modern company. Not because of any actual commitment to its framework. In reality, Scrum went from "empower engineers" to "allow managers to micromanage their employees even more, but we call it Agile so you can't push back against it because then you're challenging the orthodoxy."
    - SkyPuncher 5y ago
      Yes. This is exactly it. * We track velocity as the key capacity planning metric. We don't use it for performance or anything else (e.g. we don't care if it creeps or if two different teams have two different velocities). * We then break down all of our work and estimate it. This gives us a scope. * From there, we have a conversation with our PM. Here's the timelines you want to hit. Given the data, we need X. Do you want to cut scope or extend timelines? ----- Lastly, we focus a lot on making decisions that maximize velocity over a medium-term (typically 4 to 12 weeks). There is little value in pushing hard in one sprint if it's going to have an opposite reaction in the next sprint.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  Agree to disagree. Nobody does scrum "correctly". Generally only the parts that are supposed to squeeze the most short term value from the employees are picked.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    It's a scam at every level. There's no reason why anyone should need to be "certified" for a methodology to be applied. There isn't even a reason why SCUM methodology should be applied as a sort of universally applicable process. The funniest thing about SCUM is that every diagram someone makes of it looks nearly identical to the straw man that is "Waterfall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#/media/File:Scrum_Framework.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#/... I mean, tell me that you couldn't change some of the jargon on that diagram and fool just about everyone into thinking it describes Waterfall. The only thing potentially differentiating between SCUM and Waterfall is that the former has (in theory) a smaller iteration window and has liaisons between development and management. But the latter argument is nonsense because generally non-agile teams still self-organize into having liaisons and middle-managers. And as you pointed out, the answer to why SCUM fails always comes down to not doing it "correctly". If no one can do it correctly, that's because it sucks. I've seen agile principles applied in different ways successfully, but I've never seen SCUM actually work any better than no formal methodology at all.
    - geodel 5y ago
      Thanks for calling it what it actually is. We are having developers hired/not-hired on their descriptions of Agile/Scrum/TDD etc in interviews. Imagine that!
  - SkyPuncher 5y ago
    Nobody does it "correctly" because they try to use it for a bunch of things that it shouldn't be used for - like performance comparsions. Scrum is only a capacity planning tool. Within a certain context, track velocity. When new work comes in, estimate it then compare to velocity. If you don't have the timelines you want, then you need to consider changing scope.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
pkdpic 5y ago
> This is fine. I try to remind myself every day how much rougher it was before I got a dev job. The financial hopelessness. Living in junky apartments with roommates as a married couple. Commuting 4 hours one way 2-3 days a week for part time jobs with no security or benefits. Trying to live off $20-30k a year in California. And still feeling lucky to have any work at all. I try to remember this while sitting at zoom meetings and feeling exhausted. But the memory is fading...
- flatiron 5y ago
  totally agree. my wife's family is all in construction or painters, or working as bar tenders or at beauty salons etc. no health insurance, no ESPP/RSU/401k/FSA/PTO/blah blahs. every time someone politely says "hows work, what are you working on?" its pretty hard not to sound like a jackass when i complain about stuff like endless meetings, murky requirements, etc. my brother in law is always amazed that i can do my entire job on a computer as he's cutting wood and putting up fences. i remember one time i was on vacation in costa rica and on a zip line tour. guy asks me where im from what i do. he said "oh man that's the dream, you just sit in a chair in the air conditioning all day? you don't know how lucky you have it!" and this dude runs zip line tours in costa rica. grass is always greener
  - derbOac 5y ago
    I don't know. I don't disagree with you, but I think it's sometimes more difficult than it seems initially. This stuff has been very salient to me the last couple of years. I had a friend who was in a physically abusive relationship, and she was often comparing my behavior, feelings, and thoughts about my job to what she was going through. It's definitely not the same, I don't want to trivialize anything, but in some circumstances a workplace just becomes sort of [emotionally] abusive, extremely dysfunctional, and starts to have tangible harms for spouses, family, etc. in terms of lost time, income, career opportunities, etc. I wrestled a lot with questions like "is it better to not have a job than an abusive dysfunctional one, when it's hurting my family at some level too?" This isn't the same as putting up with some awareness that what you're doing is existentially empty at some level (which has its own set of issues), but balancing costs and benefits of jobs sometimes is trickier than it seems initially. I think maybe it's the same as the grass-is-always greener you mention, although I think that can go pretty far.
smashem 5y ago
Succinctly nailed it.
hmrr 5y ago
This is the joy of working for a large company. I was there a number of years ago. I just started ignoring people and doing what I think is right. No one appeared to notice. I suspect this was because everyone was chasing useless metrics or doesn’t want to challenge the timesheet in case the one apparent source of truth is discovered to be universe crushingly fallible. I banked the experience and learnings and moved to a company which wasn’t in the fatal decline stage of development.
TheCapn 5y ago
>and you are now essentially always at work I suppose it's easier said than done, but the healthiest thing I did for myself in the transition to WFH during the pandemic was to set up and maintain appropriate boundaries between myself and work. I'm done at 3:30. If you contact me after 3:30 I'm either ignoring the message until I'm "at work" the next morning, or I'm writing my time up as billable hours. I've never been questioned on it, and the idea of muting my phone or leaving it in another room provides a mental break that helps with everything
groby_b 5y ago
Set boundaries. Turn off that chat thing when you need to focus. Skip meetings where you neither will learn nor can contribute a unique perspectives. Turn the machine off when the workday is over to deal with the WFH blurriness. Push back on murky requirements. Yes, it's hard, and it's scary. And I fully ack that in some companies, this would be career-limiting moves. If that's the case, you need to decide how much you want to work for them vs. going somewhere that actually lets you work as a dev.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  > Push back on murky requirements. This is a hugely important thing to learn. Fact is, it's extremely unlikely a business is going to fire you for pushing back on something you can demonstrate is ridiculous. And engineers should be financially prepared to leave or be fired by employers being unreasonable with their requirements.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    Everyone should be financially prepared for this, but this doesn't help the swats of people, including devs in less-favorable places and juniors who are stuck in an unfavorable market. The biggest problem remains enough people being willing to put up with these insane demands that the requirements continue to get bigger. I haven't seen much fighting back until the "great resignation", and even that I'd consider mild.
salt-thrower 5y ago
> I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some arbitrary deadline. I could not have said this better myself. Yes, we are paid extremely well, but the soul-crushing grind of building stupid web apps for companies that don't even need them really takes a toll eventually.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  I tell myself that most other jobs are just as meaningless or come with their own baggage, but I don't know for a fact. I do know that when the stars are aligned, when I'm in a flow and have something interesting to work on, I like the job, and consequently it seems "meaningful" - I think that's just sensory, a feeling. On the other hand sticking with it could be embracing mediocrity. I think of Candide from time to time. Who can say if this is the paradisaical garden and alternatives could be much, much worse. Either way it's human nature to be restless. Maybe we can't all have the better job. This turns my attention to side projects, but I think as it pertains to tech, I don't have that much interest.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Lots of service jobs don't feel meaningless most of the time (though they may come with other problems). Plenty of jobs that involve moving around real stuff in real life rarely feel meaningless (though, again, they may have other problems, especially wear & tear on one's body).
    - wonderwonder 5y ago
      I feel like if you are in construction, the daily physical exhaustion and low pay must be crushing but at the end of the job you have built something that is physical and permanent, you have made a mark on the world. In software you have not really made anything, its just a url in a browser. There is nothing tangible you can look back on as you get older and point out to your kids, its just meaningless pixels. There are exceptions of course, people who built the internet changed the world in almost every way. Our crisis is existential.
herbst 5y ago
This is the exact mindset why I burned out and quit (long before COVID). The thing about working home alone is difficult. I highly believe that hard deadlines and fixed meeting times destroy the whole concept. I wake up when I feel to, and do whatever needs to be done and I feel more often motivated to actually do work then I did ever before.

SkyPuncher 5y ago

I know scrum and sprints get a lot of hate, but I've found them to be extremely effective tools for combating this.

greenyoda 5y ago
Could you describe more about how scrum/sprints can help combat burnout for you? That hasn't been my own experience.
- bsedlm 5y ago
  they set boundaries? i.e. the set explicit limits to activities, provide structure, make responsibilities clear from the get-go, ...
  - greenyoda 5y ago
    In my experience, whatever boundaries are set within an agile engineering group can be overridden by the priorities, roadmaps, etc. that are imposed from above by the corporate executives. Responsibilities can change overnight as staff are reorganized or laid off by powers beyond their control.
    - bsedlm 5y ago
      well, my answer is theoretical. My own experience is similar to yours: "your team is no longer following scrum in a mad-rush attempt to deliver the deadline." and then everything gets even worse
    - salt-thrower 5y ago
      Every scrum team I've ever been on fell into that pattern eventually. Companies adopted Scrum because it became the trendy way to signal that you're a modern company. Not because of any actual commitment to its framework. In reality, Scrum went from "empower engineers" to "allow managers to micromanage their employees even more, but we call it Agile so you can't push back against it because then you're challenging the orthodoxy."
  - SkyPuncher 5y ago
    Yes. This is exactly it. * We track velocity as the key capacity planning metric. We don't use it for performance or anything else (e.g. we don't care if it creeps or if two different teams have two different velocities). * We then break down all of our work and estimate it. This gives us a scope. * From there, we have a conversation with our PM. Here's the timelines you want to hit. Given the data, we need X. Do you want to cut scope or extend timelines? ----- Lastly, we focus a lot on making decisions that maximize velocity over a medium-term (typically 4 to 12 weeks). There is little value in pushing hard in one sprint if it's going to have an opposite reaction in the next sprint.
pietrovismara 5y ago
Agree to disagree. Nobody does scrum "correctly". Generally only the parts that are supposed to squeeze the most short term value from the employees are picked.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  It's a scam at every level. There's no reason why anyone should need to be "certified" for a methodology to be applied. There isn't even a reason why SCUM methodology should be applied as a sort of universally applicable process. The funniest thing about SCUM is that every diagram someone makes of it looks nearly identical to the straw man that is "Waterfall." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#/media/File:Scrum_Framework.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)#/... I mean, tell me that you couldn't change some of the jargon on that diagram and fool just about everyone into thinking it describes Waterfall. The only thing potentially differentiating between SCUM and Waterfall is that the former has (in theory) a smaller iteration window and has liaisons between development and management. But the latter argument is nonsense because generally non-agile teams still self-organize into having liaisons and middle-managers. And as you pointed out, the answer to why SCUM fails always comes down to not doing it "correctly". If no one can do it correctly, that's because it sucks. I've seen agile principles applied in different ways successfully, but I've never seen SCUM actually work any better than no formal methodology at all.
  - geodel 5y ago
    Thanks for calling it what it actually is. We are having developers hired/not-hired on their descriptions of Agile/Scrum/TDD etc in interviews. Imagine that!
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  Nobody does it "correctly" because they try to use it for a bunch of things that it shouldn't be used for - like performance comparsions. Scrum is only a capacity planning tool. Within a certain context, track velocity. When new work comes in, estimate it then compare to velocity. If you don't have the timelines you want, then you need to consider changing scope.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

pkdpic 5y ago

> This is fine. I try to remind myself every day how much rougher it was before I got a dev job. The financial hopelessness. Living in junky apartments with roommates as a married couple. Commuting 4 hours one way 2-3 days a week for part time jobs with no security or benefits. Trying to live off $20-30k a year in California. And still feeling lucky to have any work at all. I try to remember this while sitting at zoom meetings and feeling exhausted. But the memory is fading...

flatiron 5y ago
totally agree. my wife's family is all in construction or painters, or working as bar tenders or at beauty salons etc. no health insurance, no ESPP/RSU/401k/FSA/PTO/blah blahs. every time someone politely says "hows work, what are you working on?" its pretty hard not to sound like a jackass when i complain about stuff like endless meetings, murky requirements, etc. my brother in law is always amazed that i can do my entire job on a computer as he's cutting wood and putting up fences. i remember one time i was on vacation in costa rica and on a zip line tour. guy asks me where im from what i do. he said "oh man that's the dream, you just sit in a chair in the air conditioning all day? you don't know how lucky you have it!" and this dude runs zip line tours in costa rica. grass is always greener
- derbOac 5y ago
  I don't know. I don't disagree with you, but I think it's sometimes more difficult than it seems initially. This stuff has been very salient to me the last couple of years. I had a friend who was in a physically abusive relationship, and she was often comparing my behavior, feelings, and thoughts about my job to what she was going through. It's definitely not the same, I don't want to trivialize anything, but in some circumstances a workplace just becomes sort of [emotionally] abusive, extremely dysfunctional, and starts to have tangible harms for spouses, family, etc. in terms of lost time, income, career opportunities, etc. I wrestled a lot with questions like "is it better to not have a job than an abusive dysfunctional one, when it's hurting my family at some level too?" This isn't the same as putting up with some awareness that what you're doing is existentially empty at some level (which has its own set of issues), but balancing costs and benefits of jobs sometimes is trickier than it seems initially. I think maybe it's the same as the grass-is-always greener you mention, although I think that can go pretty far.

smashem 5y ago

Succinctly nailed it.

hmrr 5y ago

This is the joy of working for a large company. I was there a number of years ago. I just started ignoring people and doing what I think is right. No one appeared to notice. I suspect this was because everyone was chasing useless metrics or doesn’t want to challenge the timesheet in case the one apparent source of truth is discovered to be universe crushingly fallible. I banked the experience and learnings and moved to a company which wasn’t in the fatal decline stage of development.

TheCapn 5y ago

>and you are now essentially always at work I suppose it's easier said than done, but the healthiest thing I did for myself in the transition to WFH during the pandemic was to set up and maintain appropriate boundaries between myself and work. I'm done at 3:30. If you contact me after 3:30 I'm either ignoring the message until I'm "at work" the next morning, or I'm writing my time up as billable hours. I've never been questioned on it, and the idea of muting my phone or leaving it in another room provides a mental break that helps with everything

groby_b 5y ago

Set boundaries. Turn off that chat thing when you need to focus. Skip meetings where you neither will learn nor can contribute a unique perspectives. Turn the machine off when the workday is over to deal with the WFH blurriness. Push back on murky requirements. Yes, it's hard, and it's scary. And I fully ack that in some companies, this would be career-limiting moves. If that's the case, you need to decide how much you want to work for them vs. going somewhere that actually lets you work as a dev.

ravenstine 5y ago
> Push back on murky requirements. This is a hugely important thing to learn. Fact is, it's extremely unlikely a business is going to fire you for pushing back on something you can demonstrate is ridiculous. And engineers should be financially prepared to leave or be fired by employers being unreasonable with their requirements.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  Everyone should be financially prepared for this, but this doesn't help the swats of people, including devs in less-favorable places and juniors who are stuck in an unfavorable market. The biggest problem remains enough people being willing to put up with these insane demands that the requirements continue to get bigger. I haven't seen much fighting back until the "great resignation", and even that I'd consider mild.

salt-thrower 5y ago

> I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some arbitrary deadline. I could not have said this better myself. Yes, we are paid extremely well, but the soul-crushing grind of building stupid web apps for companies that don't even need them really takes a toll eventually.

slothtrop 5y ago
I tell myself that most other jobs are just as meaningless or come with their own baggage, but I don't know for a fact. I do know that when the stars are aligned, when I'm in a flow and have something interesting to work on, I like the job, and consequently it seems "meaningful" - I think that's just sensory, a feeling. On the other hand sticking with it could be embracing mediocrity. I think of Candide from time to time. Who can say if this is the paradisaical garden and alternatives could be much, much worse. Either way it's human nature to be restless. Maybe we can't all have the better job. This turns my attention to side projects, but I think as it pertains to tech, I don't have that much interest.
- handrous 5y ago
  Lots of service jobs don't feel meaningless most of the time (though they may come with other problems). Plenty of jobs that involve moving around real stuff in real life rarely feel meaningless (though, again, they may have other problems, especially wear & tear on one's body).
  - wonderwonder 5y ago
    I feel like if you are in construction, the daily physical exhaustion and low pay must be crushing but at the end of the job you have built something that is physical and permanent, you have made a mark on the world. In software you have not really made anything, its just a url in a browser. There is nothing tangible you can look back on as you get older and point out to your kids, its just meaningless pixels. There are exceptions of course, people who built the internet changed the world in almost every way. Our crisis is existential.

herbst 5y ago

This is the exact mindset why I burned out and quit (long before COVID). The thing about working home alone is difficult. I highly believe that hard deadlines and fixed meeting times destroy the whole concept. I wake up when I feel to, and do whatever needs to be done and I feel more often motivated to actually do work then I did ever before.