5 ms·

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 cause

• 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