11 ms·

The New Neurasthenia: How burnout became the buzzword of the moment

62 points by miobrien 5y ago

hondo77 5y ago
"Introvert" seems to be another. The number of outgoing co-workers I meet who describe themselves as introverts has been increasing in the past few years.
dade_ 5y ago
That was long winded, but it seems to agree with the ideas: Since the pandemic, more perceived effort is needed to accomplish the same work which directly causes burnout (or whatever name you want to give it) Companies need to think about what employees do in a day to identify grind (tedious, annoying, useless work) and automate or eliminate it. (a little goes a long way)
- lumost 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I think people have to do a lot more to get an idea improved or deal with day to day bs of broken libraries etc. With remote, employers also miss the in person social queues when someone has started going through the motions or everyone is simply tired. In the office I could see when someone was working 12 hour days and intervene, with remote I just see someone sound a little tired on the video screen.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Remote working highlighted for me how much I previously relied on subtle social cues, body language and informal communication (e.g. lunchtime/pub chats) that all but disappeared. This in turn made me feel isolated which i instinctively reacted to by isolating myself even more and procrastinating. That jacked up the amount of stress I felt coz I felt hugely uncertain about everything all the time as well as unproductive which in turn led to me burning out.
- iamdbtoo 5y ago
  Some employers would first have to admit they are part of the issue. The last place I was at just decided everyone else was the problem and kept cycling through people.
  - alexfromapex 5y ago
    I’m not kidding, my employer sent out a survey and scored low on career growth so they had managers ask “what do you want to work on to grow your career?” I said I wanted to learn Rust so my supervisor reached out to other departments to get an idea if anyone was using Rust and came back with an anecdote from a middle manager about how he tried using it but Python was faster. I can’t even.
    - kevinventullo 5y ago
      To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he meant faster to develop in?
      - Frost1x 5y ago
        Even if that's the interpretation, the focus is clearly on work efficiency/output focus (key cause of burnout) over improving career growth. Clearly OP identified their path of interest for growth was in Rust yet someone uninformed came back and said "yea. Nope." Giving them the benefit of doubt, maybe OPs employer may think they're doing OP a favor by sharing informatiom that you can crank out some things more quickly in Python at higher levels of abstraction which fits their business needs and the needs of the person they spoke to, then they falsely projected those requirements onto the world like all businesses would operate under this model of technology adoption. Why would any sane business use Rust if Bob over here says you can make more stuff quicker with Python? Giving them less benefit of doubt and what I suspect is the real case, they really don't actually care what you think. They send surveys around to appease whoever thought it was a good idea, then adjust the responses to fit their perceived reality by ignoring them or explaining them away, because if they really have to set time aside and waste resources on your career growth, they made their lives harder in their eyes because you'll be gone next month or whenever anyways. I've been in corporate environments that send these surveys out and no matter how clear the results, the results are ignored or the lowest effort and lowest effect response is taken to correct them just to provide lip service and continue the charade that they care, changes will be made, and your work environment will improve for you. News flash, your work environment will only improve when you have leverage, otherwise you can assume it's going to be on a continuous decline driven by labor cost minimization.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Since the pandemic, more perceived effort is needed to accomplish the same work which directly causes burnout I don’t disagree, but I don’t think it makes sense to blame the work for this shift. If we’re talking about “the same work” then what makes it more difficult now? I suspect that the people prone to burnout have shifted heavily toward consuming a lot of news media, podcasts, TV shows, and social media in lieu of a lot of the social interaction they previously got from more in-person activity. If someone is consuming 30 clickbait news headlines every day about how the world is ending, 100 social media posts about people complaining about things or fighting against injustices, a couple hours of sedentary TV watching, hours of listening to people debate overly politicized stuff on podcasts, and all of the other anger-as-entertainment outlets, they’re going to be emotionally exhausted before they even attempt to get any work done. When I work with young people it’s painfully common to hear them recite hyperbole about how the world is ending or how we’ve only got a few years left before everything collapses or nuclear war destroys us all. They’re consuming cynicism in unprecedented quantities from all angles. Anecdotally, going to remote work seems to trigger burnout a lot faster in people who were doing okay in the office. It’s way too easy to fill the social void left by WFH with a lot of unhealthy and draining content.
  - zwkrt 5y ago
    My 2c as someone who burned out during the pandemic is that wfh left only the work and no social interaction, as you mention. But I have always been solidly against social media/doom scrolling consumption. For me the burnout stemmed from realizing how much effort I was putting into work versus what I got out of it. My head was swimming with JavaScript typing quirks and database indexing schemes and potential bugs and business requirements. My creativity and intellectual capacity was almost completely consumed by meaningless minutiae and stress about a company that does not care about me, and all I got in return was the ability to sit alone in my house.
    - borski 5y ago
      Wow, I’ve never quite read such a succinct description of exactly how I’ve felt the last two years. Thanks.
- draw_down 5y ago
giraffe_lady 5y ago
The Sunny Taylor essay linked in this one is an incredible read itself. Highly recommend.
WSSP 5y ago
I suspect many resignations due to burnout would be better attributed to the company's poor management, culture, lack of opportunities/compensation, etc. not that I think burnout isn't real; I think the test is if the person can easily move on to their next thing or not
- bradlys 5y ago
  > I think the test is if the person can easily move on to their next thing or not I think this perspective is one that is a bit too privileged. Even in tech - many of us don’t have the ability to take 6+ month breaks between jobs, find ourselves again, and figure out a way to align the work/life balance. I spent a few months between my last job and my current. You know what I did during that time almost completely? Interview. It’s why I left the other job - I didn’t have enough time to study and interview. 20+ interviews a week. Studying. Applying. Etc. Doing 3-4 onsites/week for a month at a time. Using my “off” days to study more. I took about a month off between accepting the final offer and starting the new job. It wasn’t enough but I had burned through a lot of my savings because of having to exercise options at my last company, pay AMT on exercising said options, and having to pay for another person who lived with me while living in one of the most expensive parts of the world cause all the jobs are here. (ex-wife who was in college and not working) Again - feel like this is a very privileged attitude to take about being able to move onto the next thing. Most of us don’t really get an option. You just have to. Getting to choose your job and when you move onto it seems like something only multi-millionaires I know do. The rest of us just slog through it because we have no other choice.
  - emeraldunicorn9 5y ago
    I agree that this is a problem that prevents people at all income levels from pursuing other options. Partly there is the real issue that you present, which is that you can't afford to take 6+ months off between jobs. But you clearly did a tremendous amount of work to find your next opportunity and that might have been virtually impossible to accomplish if you still had to perform your previous job. But then there is the issue with taking a break. Maybe this is more a problem that women experience, but I'd be interested if men feel like they experience it, too. However, when you have gaps in your employment, I have felt that people didn't respond very positively to that and wanted to know why you had a break and what you were doing it. Because god forbid you weren't doing something "productive" during that time. The way our work style is makes it feel like burnout begets more burnout because the options to escape burnout might not actually be feasible for every individual.
tonymet 5y ago
a friend of mine is a productivity researcher at a notable tech company. She studies all sorts of signals like hours worked , number of meetings , output artifacts like landed commits and docs created etc . overall productivity increased with lockdown , but work efficiency actually went down. basically people worked longer hours and had more meetings, but the output per unit of time went down . burnout is real
- lalos 5y ago
  That metric of "basically people worked longer hours and had more meetings, but the output per unit of time went down" sounds like people doing busy-work to look busy and fill their calendars because its harder to signal that you are 'there' when working remotely. Useless meeting time increased dis-proportionally, and by useless I mean "this could have been a self-documenting email conversation".
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Even email is, for many thorny issues, much less efficient, potentially, than a phone call or a real face to face meeting. And phone calls have fallen out of style. I can’t help but think of how many email chains stretching out over weeks could’ve been resolved in 5 minutes if everyone were in the same room (and not in a meeting context, but standing up near a computer) and were insistent on actually getting the problem solved.
    - giraffe_lady 5y ago
      I've also worked placed that prided themselves on this approach and it wasn't really any better in my experience. You end up in more sessions where your presence probably isn't necessary, but it's hard to be sure ahead of time so there you are. Also a hilariously high percentage of these "problem solving sessions" ended with the need for someone to go off and attempt or research something individually and then bring the results back. Which... should have just been an email yeah.
      - 5y ago
Jerrrry 5y ago
People don't want to face the facts, that we have to make up for lost productivity. nobody wants to be productive, because of the new wave of entitlement. this is both objectively and subjectively true. everyone wants the checks, nobody wants to run at 130% capacity afterwards to help pay those checks off. this point is refuted by the "da globalist cabal stole the productivity", but the math shows otherwise. the pandemic created debts that the average person must repay.
- jnkxhrcixh 5y ago
  This is correct. "Savings" are things that are produced but not consumed. During "lockdown", consumption exceeded production. That means, globally, years of savings were consumed. When savings are reduced, prosperity is reduced. Savings will have to be rebuilt to return to prosperity.
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  - chucksta 5y ago
    Maybe you got a reddit response because its a reddit style post. Highly opinionated, with no support, meme references, and elitism.
    - Jerrrry 5y ago
      maybe because this site is now inundated with low-quality shit-tier discussions, with the only discourse being ones that align with the silent, liberal, lurker majority. dissent can easily be hidden with a single click, instead of refuted with logic and facts. my "opinionated" start was a statement on the work culture, which is either true, or false, regardless of the individual posters intonation. downvoting dissent and dismissing it as "elitist memes" further proves my point. lets have discourse. people are lazier now than two years ago, and expect more. disagree? explain, because from the face of it, regardless of how "condescending" it may appear of a stance, it is true, and has real ramifications on both the labor force, economy, and policies.
deleted 5y ago
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slibhb 5y ago
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  in the western world, viewing depression as anything but a means to a profit has been culturally sanctioned. feel bad? take your pills, don't try to actually improve your life - that is victim shaming!
slfnflctd 5y ago
As with most things in mental health, personal experiences will vary dramatically. I burned out almost 10 years ago now, and I'm still not sure what recovery/redemption looks like. I know I'm getting closer, but it's a long process, and every unexpected bump in the road slows me down a lot. My main direct insights have mostly been around letting go of ego while somehow still finding things I can reliably dig in and fight for. Redefinition of context is a primary theme.
photochemsyn 5y ago
Main point: > "Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise." It's the same kind of problem communist economies struggled with: why should a worker put out any significant effort at all if the results of their labor are being appropriated by someone else? You can work twice as hard, make a major contribution, but you get no reward - the rewards all go to some form of ruling class, be it the head honchos of the Central Committee (Soviet Union) or some small group of founders and their VC investors (Silicon Valley). I suppose the alternative - living homeless in poverty without any access to medical or dental care - is the stick used to keep the no-contract wage-rate workers in line in the USA, while in the Soviet Union, the threat of deportation to the Siberian gulag served that purpose. The solution is fairly obvious, create a system that rewards people fairly for their contributions. This of course means much less profits flowing to founders and investors, right, hence the organized political resistance to anything like that.
- akira2501 5y ago
  > The solution is fairly obvious, create a system that rewards people fairly for their contributions. It seems to me that an excellent way to achieve that would be to actually use our anti-monopoly laws to properly regulate our market places. Over centralization, be it in a committee or in a cartel, has the same results.
_moof 5y ago
> The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week. Be extremely skeptical of this claim by the super-rich of 70-hour work weeks. I can't find it now but a while back there was a graphic going around by an exec who charted out how he spends his work time. A huge proportion consisted of things like going to the gym and getting haircuts--activities that us common rabble have to call "time off."
- light_hue_1 5y ago
  This has always been part of the propaganda against the poor. If only you worked as hard as this CEO, you'd be rich too! In reality, it's exactly the opposite. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20151720 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20151720 Page 16, Figure 4. Average hours worked by income group. The poorer you are the more hours you work.
  - thesz 5y ago
    The graph shows difference between countries with different income, not groups of individuals with different income within same country. The difference of hours worked may be due to factors relevant to countries, not to job done or individual differences. I cannot deduce your conclusion from that graph.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dannyobrien 5y ago
    The conclusion of the actual paper doesn’t quite support your argument: “ We document that, on average, adults in the developing world work about 50 percent more hours per week than adults in rich countries. Average hours worked are higher in developing countries both for men and for women, for all age and education groups, and along both the extensive and intensive margins. Within countries, hours are decreasing with income on average and particularly so in the poorest countries. In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income. One implication of our findings is that aggregate labor productivity and TFP differences across countries are larger than previously thought. Moreover, ignoring hours worked also leads to misleading conclusions about the extent of welfare differences across countries. Put simply, residents of the poorest countries are not only consumption poor, but leisure poor as well.”
User23 5y ago
Burnout has become a buzzword that can mean basically anything that excuses poor performance. Like most buzzwords, and excuses for that matter, it's not very interesting to talk about. However, there is such a thing as real physiological burnout, and it is very very nasty. It is not a "mental health condition," but rather a metabolic disorder that can be objectively physiologically diagnosed with the correct equipment. The brain is just another organ, and like every organ in the body it does its best to maintain homeostasis. Thinking, especially deep rigorous logical thinking, is highly metabolically stressful, as can be seen by how it burns thousands of extra calories[1]. The brain is a remarkable organ, but like any organ it can be stressed beyond its ability to adapt[2][3][4]. Spending too much time in exhaustion impairs the body's ability to restore homeostasis and adapt to similar stresses in the future. Continuing in that state for long periods can cause cumulative damage. In short, real mental burnout is akin to real physical overtraining, which incidentally is another term that has become a buzzword. There can be mental health consequences from both burnout and overtraining though. An athlete or a programmer can both become depressed from no longer being able to perform at the level they are accustomed to, among other possibilities. For example, was Bobby Fischer's mental instability later in life an example of the possible mental health effects of physiological burnout? Who knows, but it sounds plausible at least. [1] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2038162/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2038162/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(biology)#General_adaptation_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(biology)#General_adapt... [4] The top search results are absolute pop-sci garbage, read the above paper or the wiki summary.
- SubiculumCode 5y ago
  Mental health conditions are real and they are powerful. Moreover, mental health conditions have a basis in biology.
eldude 5y ago
Burnout is your body trying to save itself because your conscious brain is killing it. The solution is not to rest and then resume consuming toxins but to eliminate the toxicity. In order to do that, you must identify what is killing you.
- blenderdt 5y ago
  No, a burnout is physical. All the stress burned out your body causing all kinds of issues. The first step to recover is 100% rest.
  - eldude 5y ago
    You’re agreeing with me. The solution is not rest and then go right back to a toxic environment but to eliminate the source of toxicity. Burnout is your body trying to save itself because your conscious brain is killing it.
blenderdt 5y ago
After being burned out and reading a lot into it I think the main reason for a burnout is 'not accepting'. Not accepting: you hate your job, you need a break, you need to recover from a disease, you hate your house, you need help, you need to stop cheating, your asking too much from your body, and so on. This causes stress and when this goes on for too long your body burns out. A lot of this comes from social pressure. You hate your job but you need it to pay the big house. You don't want to buy a smaller house because 'what will my family think of me when I do this'. Or: I need to go to this client while I am sick because else I might loose them. Anyway, for those who are feeling burned out I would say: step on the brakes because a burnout can really be dangerous and life threatening.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  > You hate your job but you need it to pay the big house. What if you already have the house? Moving is itself an exhausting and expensive prospect, not to mention the effects of forcing your partner & kids to move with you. It's definitely a last resort.
  - blenderdt 5y ago
    It was just an example. I believe you should make choices that are good for your family and the people close to you. Don't let social pressure guide you. And yes, maybe for some people it's best not to move but to start looking for another job.
asdff 5y ago
Civilization is a recent concept especially in light of evolution. Is it really surprising that people suffer so much stress and anguish trying to live in this civilized manner, whose rules are just whatever bullshit constructs we put on ourselves of the age? Maybe we are so stressed out because we evolved to be out foraging during daylight hours, and instead we toil in caves with drop ceilings and put all kinds of strange expectations on ourselves.
janandonly 5y ago
I've long suspected that my work ethics shield me from getting a burn-out. These ethics are: - work is a way, a tool, a means to an end:to make money. If work becomes more (a way to meet people, a way to have a higher status, a way to fill time) then it should be culled, cut off, put back in its proper corner. - work should not be enjoyed too much. Lest you come into temptation to do more of it than necessary. - work should also not be too boring. A little challenge now and again is fine. - Do not take shit from colleagues. Talk to them about their behavior. No change? Talk to the manager. Still no change? Transfer or quit this job. - Do not take shit from managers or your boss. Be open about this and direct: the buck stops here. Period. - It helps to have F-you money. I suggest 2-3 years salary is a nice stash. - work should not be done too much (working 2 to 4 days per week seems ideal. I've worked for 3 days a week for years and can highly recommend it). - work should be done diligently (you should do the required tasks, and recommend improvements). Any time your suggestions for improvements are sworded down, you should NOT worry. After all, you only work for money, not for your ego. - work should be done honestly (no lying, stealing or cheating). - You do not work overtime, not even when paid, unless there is an emergency. If there are more than 1 emergencies per year, then the company's definition of an emergency is wrong. Look for a less toxic company. - You do not do any unpaid overtime. Work is for money. No money means no working. It's really that simple. But would you really want to abandon your colleagues/coworkers? No, but it's the task of the shareholders or company owners to chip in, not yours. - When fired, give yourself a year sabbatical. - In case of being fired, do not take it personally. Were you really under-performing, or was your new manager just not able to appreciate your work? Hint: he was too short-sighted to see your work's true value. But what if he was right? Maybe you do suck at this. It is better to think about such soul-searching things after the sabbatical. When you still agree: look for a whole new kind of work. A different position with fresh perspectives.
- marssaxman 5y ago
  > It helps to have F-you money. I suggest 2-3 years salary is a nice stash. It is also nice to have a pony and a room full of ice cream.
  - lukas099 5y ago

62 points by miobrien 5y ago

"Introvert" seems to be another. The number of outgoing co-workers I meet who describe themselves as introverts has been increasing in the past few years.

dade_ 5y ago

That was long winded, but it seems to agree with the ideas: Since the pandemic, more perceived effort is needed to accomplish the same work which directly causes burnout (or whatever name you want to give it) Companies need to think about what employees do in a day to identify grind (tedious, annoying, useless work) and automate or eliminate it. (a little goes a long way)

lumost 5y ago
Anecdotally, I think people have to do a lot more to get an idea improved or deal with day to day bs of broken libraries etc. With remote, employers also miss the in person social queues when someone has started going through the motions or everyone is simply tired. In the office I could see when someone was working 12 hour days and intervene, with remote I just see someone sound a little tired on the video screen.
- pydry 5y ago
  Remote working highlighted for me how much I previously relied on subtle social cues, body language and informal communication (e.g. lunchtime/pub chats) that all but disappeared. This in turn made me feel isolated which i instinctively reacted to by isolating myself even more and procrastinating. That jacked up the amount of stress I felt coz I felt hugely uncertain about everything all the time as well as unproductive which in turn led to me burning out.
iamdbtoo 5y ago
Some employers would first have to admit they are part of the issue. The last place I was at just decided everyone else was the problem and kept cycling through people.
- alexfromapex 5y ago
  I’m not kidding, my employer sent out a survey and scored low on career growth so they had managers ask “what do you want to work on to grow your career?” I said I wanted to learn Rust so my supervisor reached out to other departments to get an idea if anyone was using Rust and came back with an anecdote from a middle manager about how he tried using it but Python was faster. I can’t even.
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    To give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he meant faster to develop in?
    - Frost1x 5y ago
      Even if that's the interpretation, the focus is clearly on work efficiency/output focus (key cause of burnout) over improving career growth. Clearly OP identified their path of interest for growth was in Rust yet someone uninformed came back and said "yea. Nope." Giving them the benefit of doubt, maybe OPs employer may think they're doing OP a favor by sharing informatiom that you can crank out some things more quickly in Python at higher levels of abstraction which fits their business needs and the needs of the person they spoke to, then they falsely projected those requirements onto the world like all businesses would operate under this model of technology adoption. Why would any sane business use Rust if Bob over here says you can make more stuff quicker with Python? Giving them less benefit of doubt and what I suspect is the real case, they really don't actually care what you think. They send surveys around to appease whoever thought it was a good idea, then adjust the responses to fit their perceived reality by ignoring them or explaining them away, because if they really have to set time aside and waste resources on your career growth, they made their lives harder in their eyes because you'll be gone next month or whenever anyways. I've been in corporate environments that send these surveys out and no matter how clear the results, the results are ignored or the lowest effort and lowest effect response is taken to correct them just to provide lip service and continue the charade that they care, changes will be made, and your work environment will improve for you. News flash, your work environment will only improve when you have leverage, otherwise you can assume it's going to be on a continuous decline driven by labor cost minimization.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Since the pandemic, more perceived effort is needed to accomplish the same work which directly causes burnout I don’t disagree, but I don’t think it makes sense to blame the work for this shift. If we’re talking about “the same work” then what makes it more difficult now? I suspect that the people prone to burnout have shifted heavily toward consuming a lot of news media, podcasts, TV shows, and social media in lieu of a lot of the social interaction they previously got from more in-person activity. If someone is consuming 30 clickbait news headlines every day about how the world is ending, 100 social media posts about people complaining about things or fighting against injustices, a couple hours of sedentary TV watching, hours of listening to people debate overly politicized stuff on podcasts, and all of the other anger-as-entertainment outlets, they’re going to be emotionally exhausted before they even attempt to get any work done. When I work with young people it’s painfully common to hear them recite hyperbole about how the world is ending or how we’ve only got a few years left before everything collapses or nuclear war destroys us all. They’re consuming cynicism in unprecedented quantities from all angles. Anecdotally, going to remote work seems to trigger burnout a lot faster in people who were doing okay in the office. It’s way too easy to fill the social void left by WFH with a lot of unhealthy and draining content.
- zwkrt 5y ago
  My 2c as someone who burned out during the pandemic is that wfh left only the work and no social interaction, as you mention. But I have always been solidly against social media/doom scrolling consumption. For me the burnout stemmed from realizing how much effort I was putting into work versus what I got out of it. My head was swimming with JavaScript typing quirks and database indexing schemes and potential bugs and business requirements. My creativity and intellectual capacity was almost completely consumed by meaningless minutiae and stress about a company that does not care about me, and all I got in return was the ability to sit alone in my house.
  - borski 5y ago
    Wow, I’ve never quite read such a succinct description of exactly how I’ve felt the last two years. Thanks.
draw_down 5y ago

giraffe_lady 5y ago

The Sunny Taylor essay linked in this one is an incredible read itself. Highly recommend.

WSSP 5y ago

I suspect many resignations due to burnout would be better attributed to the company's poor management, culture, lack of opportunities/compensation, etc. not that I think burnout isn't real; I think the test is if the person can easily move on to their next thing or not

bradlys 5y ago
> I think the test is if the person can easily move on to their next thing or not I think this perspective is one that is a bit too privileged. Even in tech - many of us don’t have the ability to take 6+ month breaks between jobs, find ourselves again, and figure out a way to align the work/life balance. I spent a few months between my last job and my current. You know what I did during that time almost completely? Interview. It’s why I left the other job - I didn’t have enough time to study and interview. 20+ interviews a week. Studying. Applying. Etc. Doing 3-4 onsites/week for a month at a time. Using my “off” days to study more. I took about a month off between accepting the final offer and starting the new job. It wasn’t enough but I had burned through a lot of my savings because of having to exercise options at my last company, pay AMT on exercising said options, and having to pay for another person who lived with me while living in one of the most expensive parts of the world cause all the jobs are here. (ex-wife who was in college and not working) Again - feel like this is a very privileged attitude to take about being able to move onto the next thing. Most of us don’t really get an option. You just have to. Getting to choose your job and when you move onto it seems like something only multi-millionaires I know do. The rest of us just slog through it because we have no other choice.
- emeraldunicorn9 5y ago
  I agree that this is a problem that prevents people at all income levels from pursuing other options. Partly there is the real issue that you present, which is that you can't afford to take 6+ months off between jobs. But you clearly did a tremendous amount of work to find your next opportunity and that might have been virtually impossible to accomplish if you still had to perform your previous job. But then there is the issue with taking a break. Maybe this is more a problem that women experience, but I'd be interested if men feel like they experience it, too. However, when you have gaps in your employment, I have felt that people didn't respond very positively to that and wanted to know why you had a break and what you were doing it. Because god forbid you weren't doing something "productive" during that time. The way our work style is makes it feel like burnout begets more burnout because the options to escape burnout might not actually be feasible for every individual.

tonymet 5y ago

a friend of mine is a productivity researcher at a notable tech company. She studies all sorts of signals like hours worked , number of meetings , output artifacts like landed commits and docs created etc . overall productivity increased with lockdown , but work efficiency actually went down. basically people worked longer hours and had more meetings, but the output per unit of time went down . burnout is real

lalos 5y ago
That metric of "basically people worked longer hours and had more meetings, but the output per unit of time went down" sounds like people doing busy-work to look busy and fill their calendars because its harder to signal that you are 'there' when working remotely. Useless meeting time increased dis-proportionally, and by useless I mean "this could have been a self-documenting email conversation".
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Even email is, for many thorny issues, much less efficient, potentially, than a phone call or a real face to face meeting. And phone calls have fallen out of style. I can’t help but think of how many email chains stretching out over weeks could’ve been resolved in 5 minutes if everyone were in the same room (and not in a meeting context, but standing up near a computer) and were insistent on actually getting the problem solved.
  - giraffe_lady 5y ago
    I've also worked placed that prided themselves on this approach and it wasn't really any better in my experience. You end up in more sessions where your presence probably isn't necessary, but it's hard to be sure ahead of time so there you are. Also a hilariously high percentage of these "problem solving sessions" ended with the need for someone to go off and attempt or research something individually and then bring the results back. Which... should have just been an email yeah.
    - 5y ago

Jerrrry 5y ago

People don't want to face the facts, that we have to make up for lost productivity. nobody wants to be productive, because of the new wave of entitlement. this is both objectively and subjectively true. everyone wants the checks, nobody wants to run at 130% capacity afterwards to help pay those checks off. this point is refuted by the "da globalist cabal stole the productivity", but the math shows otherwise. the pandemic created debts that the average person must repay.

jnkxhrcixh 5y ago
This is correct. "Savings" are things that are produced but not consumed. During "lockdown", consumption exceeded production. That means, globally, years of savings were consumed. When savings are reduced, prosperity is reduced. Savings will have to be rebuilt to return to prosperity.
Jerrrry 5y ago
- chucksta 5y ago
  Maybe you got a reddit response because its a reddit style post. Highly opinionated, with no support, meme references, and elitism.
  - Jerrrry 5y ago
    maybe because this site is now inundated with low-quality shit-tier discussions, with the only discourse being ones that align with the silent, liberal, lurker majority. dissent can easily be hidden with a single click, instead of refuted with logic and facts. my "opinionated" start was a statement on the work culture, which is either true, or false, regardless of the individual posters intonation. downvoting dissent and dismissing it as "elitist memes" further proves my point. lets have discourse. people are lazier now than two years ago, and expect more. disagree? explain, because from the face of it, regardless of how "condescending" it may appear of a stance, it is true, and has real ramifications on both the labor force, economy, and policies.

deleted 5y ago

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slibhb 5y ago

Jerrrry 5y ago
in the western world, viewing depression as anything but a means to a profit has been culturally sanctioned. feel bad? take your pills, don't try to actually improve your life - that is victim shaming!

slfnflctd 5y ago

As with most things in mental health, personal experiences will vary dramatically. I burned out almost 10 years ago now, and I'm still not sure what recovery/redemption looks like. I know I'm getting closer, but it's a long process, and every unexpected bump in the road slows me down a lot. My main direct insights have mostly been around letting go of ego while somehow still finding things I can reliably dig in and fight for. Redefinition of context is a primary theme.

photochemsyn 5y ago

Main point: > "Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise." It's the same kind of problem communist economies struggled with: why should a worker put out any significant effort at all if the results of their labor are being appropriated by someone else? You can work twice as hard, make a major contribution, but you get no reward - the rewards all go to some form of ruling class, be it the head honchos of the Central Committee (Soviet Union) or some small group of founders and their VC investors (Silicon Valley). I suppose the alternative - living homeless in poverty without any access to medical or dental care - is the stick used to keep the no-contract wage-rate workers in line in the USA, while in the Soviet Union, the threat of deportation to the Siberian gulag served that purpose. The solution is fairly obvious, create a system that rewards people fairly for their contributions. This of course means much less profits flowing to founders and investors, right, hence the organized political resistance to anything like that.

akira2501 5y ago
> The solution is fairly obvious, create a system that rewards people fairly for their contributions. It seems to me that an excellent way to achieve that would be to actually use our anti-monopoly laws to properly regulate our market places. Over centralization, be it in a committee or in a cartel, has the same results.

_moof 5y ago

> The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week. Be extremely skeptical of this claim by the super-rich of 70-hour work weeks. I can't find it now but a while back there was a graphic going around by an exec who charted out how he spends his work time. A huge proportion consisted of things like going to the gym and getting haircuts--activities that us common rabble have to call "time off."

light_hue_1 5y ago
This has always been part of the propaganda against the poor. If only you worked as hard as this CEO, you'd be rich too! In reality, it's exactly the opposite. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20151720 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20151720 Page 16, Figure 4. Average hours worked by income group. The poorer you are the more hours you work.
- thesz 5y ago
  The graph shows difference between countries with different income, not groups of individuals with different income within same country. The difference of hours worked may be due to factors relevant to countries, not to job done or individual differences. I cannot deduce your conclusion from that graph.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dannyobrien 5y ago
  The conclusion of the actual paper doesn’t quite support your argument: “ We document that, on average, adults in the developing world work about 50 percent more hours per week than adults in rich countries. Average hours worked are higher in developing countries both for men and for women, for all age and education groups, and along both the extensive and intensive margins. Within countries, hours are decreasing with income on average and particularly so in the poorest countries. In the richest countries, hours worked are flat or increasing in income. One implication of our findings is that aggregate labor productivity and TFP differences across countries are larger than previously thought. Moreover, ignoring hours worked also leads to misleading conclusions about the extent of welfare differences across countries. Put simply, residents of the poorest countries are not only consumption poor, but leisure poor as well.”

User23 5y ago

Burnout has become a buzzword that can mean basically anything that excuses poor performance. Like most buzzwords, and excuses for that matter, it's not very interesting to talk about. However, there is such a thing as real physiological burnout, and it is very very nasty. It is not a "mental health condition," but rather a metabolic disorder that can be objectively physiologically diagnosed with the correct equipment. The brain is just another organ, and like every organ in the body it does its best to maintain homeostasis. Thinking, especially deep rigorous logical thinking, is highly metabolically stressful, as can be seen by how it burns thousands of extra calories[1]. The brain is a remarkable organ, but like any organ it can be stressed beyond its ability to adapt[2][3][4]. Spending too much time in exhaustion impairs the body's ability to restore homeostasis and adapt to similar stresses in the future. Continuing in that state for long periods can cause cumulative damage. In short, real mental burnout is akin to real physical overtraining, which incidentally is another term that has become a buzzword. There can be mental health consequences from both burnout and overtraining though. An athlete or a programmer can both become depressed from no longer being able to perform at the level they are accustomed to, among other possibilities. For example, was Bobby Fischer's mental instability later in life an example of the possible mental health effects of physiological burnout? Who knows, but it sounds plausible at least. [1] https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmasters-magnus-carlsen-fabiano-caruana-lose-weight-playing-chess https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/27593253/why-grandmaste... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2038162/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2038162/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(biology)#General_adaptation_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_(biology)#General_adapt... [4] The top search results are absolute pop-sci garbage, read the above paper or the wiki summary.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
Mental health conditions are real and they are powerful. Moreover, mental health conditions have a basis in biology.

eldude 5y ago

Burnout is your body trying to save itself because your conscious brain is killing it. The solution is not to rest and then resume consuming toxins but to eliminate the toxicity. In order to do that, you must identify what is killing you.

blenderdt 5y ago
No, a burnout is physical. All the stress burned out your body causing all kinds of issues. The first step to recover is 100% rest.
- eldude 5y ago
  You’re agreeing with me. The solution is not rest and then go right back to a toxic environment but to eliminate the source of toxicity. Burnout is your body trying to save itself because your conscious brain is killing it.

blenderdt 5y ago

After being burned out and reading a lot into it I think the main reason for a burnout is 'not accepting'. Not accepting: you hate your job, you need a break, you need to recover from a disease, you hate your house, you need help, you need to stop cheating, your asking too much from your body, and so on. This causes stress and when this goes on for too long your body burns out. A lot of this comes from social pressure. You hate your job but you need it to pay the big house. You don't want to buy a smaller house because 'what will my family think of me when I do this'. Or: I need to go to this client while I am sick because else I might loose them. Anyway, for those who are feeling burned out I would say: step on the brakes because a burnout can really be dangerous and life threatening.

nerdponx 5y ago
> You hate your job but you need it to pay the big house. What if you already have the house? Moving is itself an exhausting and expensive prospect, not to mention the effects of forcing your partner & kids to move with you. It's definitely a last resort.
- blenderdt 5y ago
  It was just an example. I believe you should make choices that are good for your family and the people close to you. Don't let social pressure guide you. And yes, maybe for some people it's best not to move but to start looking for another job.

asdff 5y ago

Civilization is a recent concept especially in light of evolution. Is it really surprising that people suffer so much stress and anguish trying to live in this civilized manner, whose rules are just whatever bullshit constructs we put on ourselves of the age? Maybe we are so stressed out because we evolved to be out foraging during daylight hours, and instead we toil in caves with drop ceilings and put all kinds of strange expectations on ourselves.

janandonly 5y ago

I've long suspected that my work ethics shield me from getting a burn-out. These ethics are: - work is a way, a tool, a means to an end:to make money. If work becomes more (a way to meet people, a way to have a higher status, a way to fill time) then it should be culled, cut off, put back in its proper corner. - work should not be enjoyed too much. Lest you come into temptation to do more of it than necessary. - work should also not be too boring. A little challenge now and again is fine. - Do not take shit from colleagues. Talk to them about their behavior. No change? Talk to the manager. Still no change? Transfer or quit this job. - Do not take shit from managers or your boss. Be open about this and direct: the buck stops here. Period. - It helps to have F-you money. I suggest 2-3 years salary is a nice stash. - work should not be done too much (working 2 to 4 days per week seems ideal. I've worked for 3 days a week for years and can highly recommend it). - work should be done diligently (you should do the required tasks, and recommend improvements). Any time your suggestions for improvements are sworded down, you should NOT worry. After all, you only work for money, not for your ego. - work should be done honestly (no lying, stealing or cheating). - You do not work overtime, not even when paid, unless there is an emergency. If there are more than 1 emergencies per year, then the company's definition of an emergency is wrong. Look for a less toxic company. - You do not do any unpaid overtime. Work is for money. No money means no working. It's really that simple. But would you really want to abandon your colleagues/coworkers? No, but it's the task of the shareholders or company owners to chip in, not yours. - When fired, give yourself a year sabbatical. - In case of being fired, do not take it personally. Were you really under-performing, or was your new manager just not able to appreciate your work? Hint: he was too short-sighted to see your work's true value. But what if he was right? Maybe you do suck at this. It is better to think about such soul-searching things after the sabbatical. When you still agree: look for a whole new kind of work. A different position with fresh perspectives.

marssaxman 5y ago
> It helps to have F-you money. I suggest 2-3 years salary is a nice stash. It is also nice to have a pony and a room full of ice cream.
- lukas099 5y ago