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One thing that surprises me looking at people who are burned out in engineering and PMC jobs is the amount of helplessness people feel despite being among the h
by 0_____0 4y ago
One thing that surprises me looking at people who are burned out in engineering and PMC jobs is the amount of helplessness people feel despite being among the highest resourced people on the planet, especially in Silicon Valley. People who can afford houses, often have years worth of living expenses in their savings accounts, often have no dependents to support.
If your work is making you miserable, many of you can literally just stop and reassess your situation. Quit your job, spend the summer fishing and becoming a regular at your local pub. Go to Mexico for a month. The worst thing that can come from a break like that is that you have to explain the gap in your work history in one of best sellers' markets for engineering talent in recent memory.
And the potential upside is that you are able to evaluate your priorities and plot a new course forward that doesn't make you feel trapped or depressed. Maybe it isn't in engineering.
I have many friends who would kill for the opportunity to get off their treadmill and develop themselves and fix things about their career, life situation etc, but they can't because they would literally become destitute. If you're in engineering you very likely have a privilege that a shrinking minority of USians in particular have. Use it.
- orev 4y agoYou make an interesting point and it makes me think about what might be driving the behavior of people not taking extended time off, if by many measures they should be able to? My vote is for the industry itself that’s driving burnout; not any specific job. One can only go through so many cycles of everyone reinventing the same wheel and having to relearn all one’s skills before just getting completely tired of the uselessness of it all. Another framework. Another platform. Another language. Many with no real reason to exist other than it just happened to catch on and became the trendy thing. You can love and be good at technology, and just get exhausted from the useless churn.
- 0_____0 4y agoI got tired in hardware development. It's a little different than software because the tech doesn't change the way frameworks do, but 95% of the effort I have spent in the last decade has been for naught. Well funded startups that got bought by big companies, the designs shelved... I made good money but I am unwilling to solve problems, even fun ones, if my work is just going to end up in the trash. Part of that is the nature of startup tech, some of it is the nature of R&D generally. I'm currently taking my own advice and fucking off for the summer, about to start a 3000 mile mountain bike tour in a couple weeks. I don't know whether I'll return to engineering. There are infinite ways of living a human life on this planet and I intend to explore some more of them before deciding that an engineering career is really the one that will make me happy.
- Chinjut 4y agoI have savings with years worth of living expenses, and I itch to quit my unsatisfying job and focus on personal interests for a while. Yet it's been drilled into me by my parents society etc never to quit a job without another job lined up. In particular, we all know there's this looming recession. Will I be fucking my life over if I quit my job now, as the recession starts?
- 0_____0 4y agoPut fear aside, put social conditioning aside. What will future you be grateful that you did in this moment? Staying in a job out of fear sounds like an unlikely answer to that question.