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Burnout is caused by lack of community. If they fail to create at least some sense of community, they end up hearing stories of employees burning out or just ge

Burnout is caused by lack of community. If they fail to create at least some sense of community, they end up hearing stories of employees burning out or just getting really jumpy and distrustful. These stories stick in their mind and they feel ashamed to be doing a poor job as leaders. They are trying to control what they can to minimize their own sense of shame. They also don’t want to fire someone after paying 2 months salary to an engineer working 60-hour weeks writing useless code. They’d rather pay someone to spend 7 hours a week coordinating with their team and 30 hours a week writing useful code. In theory they could hire leaders who have spent years running WoW guilds. In practice, that would redefine their own jobs into ones that they were years away from being qualified for.

cableshaft 4y ago
> Burnout is caused by lack of community. As someone who suffered burnout multiple times, 'lack of community' was never the reason. If anything my caring about my fellow coworkers got me putting in the overtime so things didn't slip or get behind, to the point where I got burnt out. Like the time a transition to a different data center didn't go so well, and I worked 60 hours in three days helping the department fix all the fires that happened, including one literal 24 hour day (then four hour break, then a 20 hour day, then a 6 hour break, then a 16 hour day). There continued being various issues for months afterwards, and I ended up too tired to even look for a new job, so I was pretty stuck unless I quit (which in retrospect I should have). But I did it because it needed to be done, I had some knowledge that helped me figure out what changes needed to be made, my department wasn't making any money without these things being fixed, my boss was a nice guy and doing most of the overtime along with me.

cableshaft 4y ago

> Burnout is caused by lack of community. As someone who suffered burnout multiple times, 'lack of community' was never the reason. If anything my caring about my fellow coworkers got me putting in the overtime so things didn't slip or get behind, to the point where I got burnt out. Like the time a transition to a different data center didn't go so well, and I worked 60 hours in three days helping the department fix all the fires that happened, including one literal 24 hour day (then four hour break, then a 20 hour day, then a 6 hour break, then a 16 hour day). There continued being various issues for months afterwards, and I ended up too tired to even look for a new job, so I was pretty stuck unless I quit (which in retrospect I should have). But I did it because it needed to be done, I had some knowledge that helped me figure out what changes needed to be made, my department wasn't making any money without these things being fixed, my boss was a nice guy and doing most of the overtime along with me.