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I am definitely still recovering from burnout after 2 years. I find your response baffling, albeit not a surprising one to find. The claim in the article is fun

I am definitely still recovering from burnout after 2 years. I find your response baffling, albeit not a surprising one to find. The claim in the article is fundamentally incompatible with certain worldviews. I’ll allow that I share some of the responsibility for my burnout, as I participated in its inception. But I wasn’t the only participant, and I had a limited set of options which were both realistic and ethical. Burnout is an injury. The cause of an injury can be complex, varying from self-neglect, to unnoticeable until it’s too late, to accidental, to malicious. I don’t know where on that spectrum your experience falls, or if it was something else entirely. But I’m certainly not going to accept full responsibility for my situation and what happened to me. It’s just as unreasonable, to me, as suggesting that someone running from a mountain lion take full responsibility if they suffer a heart attack while running. Yes, they chose to run, but their other choices were just as likely to lead to injury. I don’t expect my employer to take better care of me than I do myself, I expect my employer—to the full extent it’s capable—to provide support and resources which allow me to effectively care for myself.

s1artibartfast 4y ago
In my case, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that the alternative options weren't bad at all. I kept telling my bosses yes, I can take on more work when I really shouldn't have. They didn't know if I was working 20 hrs or 60 hours a week, how could they. I didn't tell them when I pulled all-nighters to meet a deadline. I kept pushing myself to take on more thinking it would advance my career. I was scared to say no to new work and deadlines. After a year+ of burnout, I finally talked to my manager about off loading some of my work. Their answer was "no problem, sounds like a great idea". Pride, ambition, fear, depression, and an inability to back down lead me to burnout. I don't know how my company could have prevented this without a tremendous amount of spying and invasive nannying. I get that this isn't the situation for everyone. some people are in genuinely worker hostile environments. That said, if you are being worked beyond your limits, the worst case outcome for most tech workers is to leave your company and get a pay raise.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  I hear you, I’ve burned out in situations similar to what you describe several times. Gratefully with a much shorter timeline to recover in those cases. And yeah, I’d absolutely own my responsibility for those instances, even if my workaholism was more visible. However, > That said, if you are being worked beyond your limits, the worst case outcome for most tech workers is to leave your company and get a pay raise. Generally? Maybe, I don’t know nearly enough to say. A lot of people have very different considerations about what factors into their sense of obligation/duty. I know that in this instance, I couldn’t ethically justify any alternative options until I knew I’d done everything I could to minimize the impact on people who had no fault in the situation, no direct recourse which wouldn’t be more harmful, and the potential impact being fairly serious relative to impact of a lot of common tech incident scenarios.

s1artibartfast 4y ago

In my case, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that the alternative options weren't bad at all. I kept telling my bosses yes, I can take on more work when I really shouldn't have. They didn't know if I was working 20 hrs or 60 hours a week, how could they. I didn't tell them when I pulled all-nighters to meet a deadline. I kept pushing myself to take on more thinking it would advance my career. I was scared to say no to new work and deadlines. After a year+ of burnout, I finally talked to my manager about off loading some of my work. Their answer was "no problem, sounds like a great idea". Pride, ambition, fear, depression, and an inability to back down lead me to burnout. I don't know how my company could have prevented this without a tremendous amount of spying and invasive nannying. I get that this isn't the situation for everyone. some people are in genuinely worker hostile environments. That said, if you are being worked beyond your limits, the worst case outcome for most tech workers is to leave your company and get a pay raise.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
I hear you, I’ve burned out in situations similar to what you describe several times. Gratefully with a much shorter timeline to recover in those cases. And yeah, I’d absolutely own my responsibility for those instances, even if my workaholism was more visible. However, > That said, if you are being worked beyond your limits, the worst case outcome for most tech workers is to leave your company and get a pay raise. Generally? Maybe, I don’t know nearly enough to say. A lot of people have very different considerations about what factors into their sense of obligation/duty. I know that in this instance, I couldn’t ethically justify any alternative options until I knew I’d done everything I could to minimize the impact on people who had no fault in the situation, no direct recourse which wouldn’t be more harmful, and the potential impact being fairly serious relative to impact of a lot of common tech incident scenarios.