15 ms·

Burn-out, daunting work, overstretched, and it's just too much

149 points by mathgladiator 4y ago

gymbeaux 4y ago
My company just announced they were hacked a third time in about a year and each time they get more and more…. Draconian, about security measures. Each time my job gets more and more difficult. I have to approve MFA requests on my phone around 6 times a day because the login timeouts are so low. Now they’re saying we aren’t going to be able to use our own devices, and must use the company-issued computers that are running Windows. That makes no sense. Force me to use the least secure OS because “we need to beef up security”. I do mostly data science work that lends itself to not only a *nix OS but Linux specifically. There are things I use to complete my work that are Linux-only, so I wouldn’t even want a Mac. I started job searching when this news dropped. Life is too short fellas. Life is too short. Make it harder to do my job, for no real reason beyond bureaucracy and politics, and I am out.
- orev 4y ago
  Using your own devices is called “BYOD”. There’s a joke in IT operations/security that the “D” stands for “Disaster”. It’s completely impossible to run a secure operation if people are allowed to use their own devices. If you cannot enforce standard builds, security policies, and updates, then you simply cannot be secure. Windows has come a long way in the past 20 years, and it is definitely on par with regards to security (in general) as other operating systems. However, it also has the advantage of being able to be joined to a domain where Group Policies can be pushed. No other OS has a meaningful equivalent of Group Policy (no, Ansible, etc don’t do the same thing, and would require an enormous amount of effort to replicate what Group Policy does). This post is talking about burn-out, and that definitely can cause negative emotions. But in your case, it sounds like you’re expecting to be treated as a special snowflake and they’re not having it. That would understandably cause negative emotions for you, but the underlying reason in your case is caused by a (probably) incorrect perception of yourself that you should get special treatment for some reason, and you’re having a tantrum because you’re not getting it.
PicassoCTs 4y ago
Burn out not usually presents with the full "i cant work anymore" symptoms from the onset. It usually starts with a "i cant take this main projects stress" anymore. Better switch to a side-project that is not so stressful. Something small. A website. A framework. A library. Something to feel the magic again, of creating, without getting crushed alive.
- zomglings 4y ago
  Your last sentence is poetry. Melancholic, beautiful poetry.
  - firebaze 4y ago
    If you consider this being poetry, you're on the way to burn-out in my eyes. Try to avoid to expect "feeling magic" in a job altogether - if it is there it's a dream job, if not, it's just a job and you should look for the next gig as you go. Don't invest that much emotion in a job to feel the absence of magic. It won't be there by default.
- boredemployee 4y ago
  I completely agree. Problem is, I get so tired after work that my "intelectual energy" goes below zero. I think it's urgent to change the working hours model. I want to engage with my kids while they care, I want to enjoy my mom's health while she is alive, and I don't want to wait for my vacations to only then do that.
  - wonderwonder 4y ago
    Work takes my drive to do anything after work and just crushes it. I understand that I should get up after work and play with my kids or do something but I am almost unable to. I want to I just cant. I just sit mindlessly staring at the screen. I envy people that have a job that doesn't drain them of everything. I watch the guys on the garbage truck with jealousy.
    - 4y ago
pontifier 4y ago
I'm starting to think that we, as humans, are collectively brute forcing the world around us. Each of us has the things we see in front of us, the things we think are important, and if they turn out to really be important the solutions we come up with spread. Because each of us has different experiences and perspective, we all explore a different part of the solution space. Of course we think what we're doing is important, that's why we do it. The big problem is that we all deserve to live a good life, even if only some of us are lucky enough to find these difficult to find solutions.
- fsociety 4y ago
  100%, your comment puts it in really nice words. Plus, the requirements for a good life are so low compared to the lifestyles which the rich lead. It is frustrating that we haven’t got there as a society yet. Imagine a world where you could YOLO into a Ph. D research position, and if you burnt out be able to have a bed, food, clean water and access to medical care. It’s not much but seems utopian compared to the world today.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    That world does sound nice, but will it work if the same applies to every doctor, farmer, and construction worker? Everything you want provided while your burnt out is because someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for decades.
    - hutzlibu 4y ago
      "Everything you want provided while your burnt out is because someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for decades." That is a hypothesis. So sure, someone needs to get up, so the hot water comes out of the wall, but it is not at all clear that it needs to be always the same guy grinding, while next door someone else is dying of boredom and watching netflix until he passes out. Give him a real chance to qualify and maybe he will be happy to do useful work. Remove the whip of existential threat and maybe he get up on his own again, because he wants to and not because he must. Also there is so much energy spend on fighting for basic ressources, or fighting regulations, or other arbitary constraints, that in theory we could reduce the work needed by a lot. But of course the question is - will society work at all, with the basic competition removed? Will it make population explode, until there are literally no ressources left to share? We don't know, but I am open to try out more experiments in that regard.
revskill 4y ago
I only register for some new service only if it shows runnable code directly from homgepage. Sorry this is not for me. But thanks for sharing the experience.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  I had this, but it was too confusing.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
I just took three weeks off and sat in my apartment. I was borderline close to quitting my job due to some sort of burn out. Prior to my vacation I had a discussion with my manager about what was causing me frustration. She took steps to fix and restructure my work to relieve stress. For instance, a more senior engineer was micromanaging me and it wasnt adding any value at all. She stopped him from doing that. I came back from work and now I actually feel great. But I literally did nothing on that time off. I just watched TV, hit the gym, slept. You can recover/avoid from burnout if people at your job are willing to work with you to change the situation. The big issue is most people in a work relationship are not even capable of changing work patterns. They dont have the management skill to do it, and will have the conversation, but continue down the same path. Thats when you leave.
- luckylion 4y ago
  And it's important to do what you did: talk to someone about it that can do something about it. I have a friend who'll complain to me, not to the people he works with & for. He's too shy for that and rationalizes it as "they wouldn't understand/wouldn't want to change anything/couldn't even change" and suffers while the people who define the processes he suffers from don't know.
  - tinsmith 4y ago
    It should be pointed out that, for some of us, talking to someone and hoping for change is the only option. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have that much PTO, and taking 3 weeks of unpaid leave would financially destroy me. Trust me, I wish it were different, and a lot of people in my position either have to suffer through the burnout, or often end up changing jobs to try to deal with it.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      100%, and it's terrible for those that can't simply talk to someone because of social phobias. In a perfect world, any manager worth their money makes sure that people are comfortable speaking about their issues, but in reality that's often not the case and if you struggle with assertiveness it can get very hard.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
yboris 4y ago
Many of us need a 4DWW - Four Day Work Week. I am consistently frustrated that I don't have enough energy after work to spend time on my personal projects, so I wait for the weekend, at which point I just want to rest. Two-day weekends are not enough to balance life and work!
- shanecp 4y ago
  Just curious, if 4DWW is your goal, can't you ask your employer to give a 4DWW with a 20% pay cut? Then both of you can be happy. Or do you want a 4DWW with the same pay?
  - yboris 4y ago
    I asked about 20% pay cut and they don't do it. There's a cookie-cutter full time position, and nothing else. I suspect part of it could be stupid laws around America's insane healthcare bullshit, but I don't know.
  - lm28469 4y ago
    LPT: in Germany any companies with more than 15 employees more or less have to accept your request for part time work
- esskay 4y ago
  Try telling that to management. Even if you put the undisputable facts and statistics of how successful it's been in recent trials (the UK one for example was an overwhelming success) they still come up with excuses. "Clients wont accept it", "We'll get less work done", "It wont work for us", "We'll look at it in the future". They'll never learn. And for any manager reading this, no, there is absolutely nothing special about your individual situation that means it wont work for you. Stop lying to yourself and your staff.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    My company piloted a four day work week last summer. Two whole months of four day weeks. They gathered the data. They saw productivity was good. Then they didn't adopt it full time It makes my blood boil thinking about it.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
The author lists an incredible 17 different projects they're trying to build or maintain at the same time. This ranges from a new cloud platform company to a game runtime to a custom IDE and more. This isn't just about burnout, it's about spreading yourself too thin. This reminds me of a lot of the enthusiastic juniors I interview who want to tell me about their 10 different side projects, none of which got further than a quick proof of concept before they moved on to the next thing. If you hire them, guess what you're going to get? Someone who wants to build proof of concept work and then move on to the next thing as soon as it gets boring. The rest of the team doesn't want to spend their careers picking up the pieces after someone did the fun part and got bored. Personally, if I'm reading an official company blog where the author is bragging about working on over a dozen different large projects simultaneously, I have zero interest in adopting the platform. It's almost guaranteed to be abandoned for the next fun idea, with features left unfinished. When I click on the "Pricing" page I'm given a placeholder that says it's free until the author gets around to building to billing part of the company. I know the author wants to position themself as a "monastic code machine", but I think the biggest thing missing from this person's life is some diversity of activities. My recommendation: Put all but one of the projects on a clear, definitive pause. Focus on the business first. Then use your free time to get out, try new activities, and meet new people. So many of the burnout stories I read online start with people who code all day at work and then come home and try to code all evening on side projects. That can be fun for a while, but if that's the entirety of your life you're going to burn out eventually. Get outside and do something else. You'll be more refreshed when you come back to these projects.
- newsiehey 4y ago
  Did you read the post? He obviously said that he was working on too much at once and then goes on to cut back and say he is happy and focused moving forward... That is perfectly logical and doesn't invite judgment about his daily activities or "going outside" or whatever you are talking about
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > Did you read the post? Yes, which is why I cited specific details from the post in my comment. I also read some of his other posts which is where I gathered the “monastic code machine” and additional context. Please don’t jump to conclusions about other people not reading the post when they’re clearly referring to details within. HN has a guideline about this specifically https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
b1gnasty 4y ago
The author is yak shaving to the extreme, leading to burnout. I don't see how any of the projects on this list are requirements for building an online board game.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  Howdy, author here, and yes, I'm yak shaving. My vision wasn't to just build a single game, but to build a "Roblox for online board games". I've been in the beginning phases of building the runtime and getting the editor to work when I realized that it is going to take much longer to do at the quality that I want. Worse yet, my own credibility of building beyond the infrastructure is shaky, and I could already see the mistakes pile up which means that fight is going to take much longer.
TrispusAttucks 4y ago
The problem with modern work and the associated burnout is that it's so monoculture. This is fundamentally at odds with the natural human experience. Work is typically performed to achieve some end result. Either an outcome or a material gain. Until relatively recently in human existence the work performed to derive the output was varied and specific to the desired outcome. For example: I want to eat carrots. I plant carrots. I want a shed. I build a shed. etc. Now all work passes through the same point. Perform professional duties. Collect money. Buy outcome. I get that it's not efficient to do many of these things but from a human fulfillment perspective there's a lot to be gained by doing them yourself. The Task: "Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor." ~ William Cowper
tppiotrowski 4y ago
Reminds me of a quote in GTD by David Allen: "An ambient angst pervades our society-there's a sense that somehow there's probably something we should be doing that we're not, which creates a tension for which there is no resolution and from which there is no rest." It's super hard to cut scope. Knowing that the software you write has imperfections but needing to move on to building the next feature creates angst. Knowing there's a better solution but not having the time to implement it can drive you crazy. You need to learn how to let things go and make peace with it.
tacker2000 4y ago
This is the typical coming of age of the “new/inexperienced” engineer who wants to build everything from the ground up since he thinks he can do it all better, with new languages, fresh ideas and it will be finished “next week” anyway. Ultimately he will learn a lot about himself and the problems he wants to solve, but can never finish them, since he will realize that he cannot do it all at once - the solutions that are available have already had thousands of man hours poured into them. He will learn to prioritize and think more about conceptualization and pre planning, and how to leverage existing solutions more.
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  Author here, you're right except I'm on the far end of inexperienced. I'm basically retired, and the core isn't isn't that I can't execute. It's that it will take too long until I can invite people in to play with me. What I forgot was how hard it is to teach just one thing at a time, so I'm focusing on that one thing. I still believe in my end vision, but I need to bring others along for the ride.
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Just read 4000 weeks: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122 and you will never have a time management problem or burnout anymore.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  So far it’s very interesting and enlightening. It’s true- the more shit we try to get done, the less shit we get done, and that’s emotionally and physically draining.
- jaiprabhu 4y ago
  I second this recommendation. I eschew self-help book but I made an exception for this because I found an audiobook version that I could rent from my local library (via Libby). The content and the quality of the narration is excellent on that.
epolanski 4y ago
I've eased this multi-project burn out in those steps: - move all projects to a monorepo. This is great because all projects are in one place, they become interconnected as some code will end up being a library for multiple ones. This ensures that even when I'm doing side-project "foo" some of the code or stuff will also end up improving "foo" or "bar". - move the monorepo to github codespaces. The very last thing I want to do when I want to work on my side projects after some time is to remember how I had to setup everything, from ide, to the os, etc. - keep todos, documentation, notes, all in the monorepo. What did I have to do? `apps/foo/todo.md` or search in the project for "TODO:". No point into having docs on different services, they stay close to the project. - write E2E and integration tests first, never unit test anything that doesn't really need to, implement in the end. And that's it. Lowering a lot the entry barrier to contributing and getting back on projects was a huge step (I literally need codespaces to load). Then came creating an ecosystem around my projects thanks to the monorepo. I can now forget a project for months and come back to it with a small effort or checking back where I was. I admit I will never write git in two days like Linus, I won't be releasing a hit game on Steam at any time, but I have fun with my projects, I learn a lot, and even though they move slowly they do move consistently in time. Not saying you will release a banger OSS project this way or some killer application that will make you rich, that requires discipline and focus more than organizing a git repo and few tools, but you will build yourself a nice playground which at every iteration will make further experimentation or production have lower friction.
- zaptheimpaler 4y ago
  monorepo is a good idea. how do you manage multiple languages and build toolchains?
  - epolanski 4y ago
    It's monolanguage by design and intention, I don't think I would be able to handle this added complexity which is far from trivial to tame. Potential benefits from having access to more tools would take too much of my limited time and energy from moving the applications further. That being said, I use @microsoft/rush for my monorepos and I think that with a bit of tinkering it could easily support building external tools.
tombert 4y ago
I was "laid off" from a job a few months ago. I put "laid off" in quotes because I'm reasonably certain that they were just being nice and didn't want to tarnish my resume more than they had to. By all accounts I was most certainly fired. [1] I had a pretty bad attitude and had trouble focusing on work. I thought it was depression, and that's probably a factor of it, but having been unemployed for the last three months now, I think I was just going through a really bad case of burnout. I didn't really want to do anything productive, I just felt bad, and as a result I was missing deadlines and not doing terribly well, and eventually they decided to let me go. They told me it was budget cuts, but I think that might have been more of a catalyst than a cause, and this was depressing because by all accounts this was the best job I'd ever had. If anyone's reading this, take burnout (and depression) seriously. I lost a great job because I didn't. [1] I'm reasonably confident you could figure out which company I'm talking about with some searching, but I politely ask that you don't post it here if you do.
- kerpotgh 4y ago
  [dead]
- kyleyeats 4y ago
  Did you get better? I had a big quit burnout a few years ago. Or so I thought. If it doesn't get better after you quit, it's not burnout. Mine was a health issue.
  - tombert 4y ago
    Well I don't have another job yet so it's tough to say for sure, but I think? I don't really have the same "fuck everything" attitude right now. EDIT: Out of curiosity, and feel free to not answer if this is too personal...what was the health issue?
    - kyleyeats 4y ago
      I have hemochromatosis, or iron overload. It's not a great pairing with famous free cafeteria food. I never even figured it out on my own, just got lucky with a family member's diagnosis.
UnpossibleJim 4y ago
I don't know if this is the case for anyone else, but for me when I would come home and sit at the computer working on personal projects, then go to work and work on work, I was burnt to a crisp. Finally I started hobbies at home totally removed from what I did at work, knowing I would be bad at them. Knowing I could give up on them. Knowing there was no pressure to finish or be good at a thing helped me alleviate the pressure of work where I had to perform.
spoonjim 4y ago
Why are people so much less able to cope with the tribulations of the world these days?

149 points by mathgladiator 4y ago

My company just announced they were hacked a third time in about a year and each time they get more and more…. Draconian, about security measures. Each time my job gets more and more difficult. I have to approve MFA requests on my phone around 6 times a day because the login timeouts are so low. Now they’re saying we aren’t going to be able to use our own devices, and must use the company-issued computers that are running Windows. That makes no sense. Force me to use the least secure OS because “we need to beef up security”. I do mostly data science work that lends itself to not only a *nix OS but Linux specifically. There are things I use to complete my work that are Linux-only, so I wouldn’t even want a Mac. I started job searching when this news dropped. Life is too short fellas. Life is too short. Make it harder to do my job, for no real reason beyond bureaucracy and politics, and I am out.

orev 4y ago
Using your own devices is called “BYOD”. There’s a joke in IT operations/security that the “D” stands for “Disaster”. It’s completely impossible to run a secure operation if people are allowed to use their own devices. If you cannot enforce standard builds, security policies, and updates, then you simply cannot be secure. Windows has come a long way in the past 20 years, and it is definitely on par with regards to security (in general) as other operating systems. However, it also has the advantage of being able to be joined to a domain where Group Policies can be pushed. No other OS has a meaningful equivalent of Group Policy (no, Ansible, etc don’t do the same thing, and would require an enormous amount of effort to replicate what Group Policy does). This post is talking about burn-out, and that definitely can cause negative emotions. But in your case, it sounds like you’re expecting to be treated as a special snowflake and they’re not having it. That would understandably cause negative emotions for you, but the underlying reason in your case is caused by a (probably) incorrect perception of yourself that you should get special treatment for some reason, and you’re having a tantrum because you’re not getting it.

PicassoCTs 4y ago

Burn out not usually presents with the full "i cant work anymore" symptoms from the onset. It usually starts with a "i cant take this main projects stress" anymore. Better switch to a side-project that is not so stressful. Something small. A website. A framework. A library. Something to feel the magic again, of creating, without getting crushed alive.

zomglings 4y ago
Your last sentence is poetry. Melancholic, beautiful poetry.
- firebaze 4y ago
  If you consider this being poetry, you're on the way to burn-out in my eyes. Try to avoid to expect "feeling magic" in a job altogether - if it is there it's a dream job, if not, it's just a job and you should look for the next gig as you go. Don't invest that much emotion in a job to feel the absence of magic. It won't be there by default.
boredemployee 4y ago
I completely agree. Problem is, I get so tired after work that my "intelectual energy" goes below zero. I think it's urgent to change the working hours model. I want to engage with my kids while they care, I want to enjoy my mom's health while she is alive, and I don't want to wait for my vacations to only then do that.
- wonderwonder 4y ago
  Work takes my drive to do anything after work and just crushes it. I understand that I should get up after work and play with my kids or do something but I am almost unable to. I want to I just cant. I just sit mindlessly staring at the screen. I envy people that have a job that doesn't drain them of everything. I watch the guys on the garbage truck with jealousy.
  - 4y ago

pontifier 4y ago

I'm starting to think that we, as humans, are collectively brute forcing the world around us. Each of us has the things we see in front of us, the things we think are important, and if they turn out to really be important the solutions we come up with spread. Because each of us has different experiences and perspective, we all explore a different part of the solution space. Of course we think what we're doing is important, that's why we do it. The big problem is that we all deserve to live a good life, even if only some of us are lucky enough to find these difficult to find solutions.

fsociety 4y ago
100%, your comment puts it in really nice words. Plus, the requirements for a good life are so low compared to the lifestyles which the rich lead. It is frustrating that we haven’t got there as a society yet. Imagine a world where you could YOLO into a Ph. D research position, and if you burnt out be able to have a bed, food, clean water and access to medical care. It’s not much but seems utopian compared to the world today.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  That world does sound nice, but will it work if the same applies to every doctor, farmer, and construction worker? Everything you want provided while your burnt out is because someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for decades.
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    "Everything you want provided while your burnt out is because someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for decades." That is a hypothesis. So sure, someone needs to get up, so the hot water comes out of the wall, but it is not at all clear that it needs to be always the same guy grinding, while next door someone else is dying of boredom and watching netflix until he passes out. Give him a real chance to qualify and maybe he will be happy to do useful work. Remove the whip of existential threat and maybe he get up on his own again, because he wants to and not because he must. Also there is so much energy spend on fighting for basic ressources, or fighting regulations, or other arbitary constraints, that in theory we could reduce the work needed by a lot. But of course the question is - will society work at all, with the basic competition removed? Will it make population explode, until there are literally no ressources left to share? We don't know, but I am open to try out more experiments in that regard.

revskill 4y ago

I only register for some new service only if it shows runnable code directly from homgepage. Sorry this is not for me. But thanks for sharing the experience.

mathgladiator 4y ago
I had this, but it was too confusing.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

I just took three weeks off and sat in my apartment. I was borderline close to quitting my job due to some sort of burn out. Prior to my vacation I had a discussion with my manager about what was causing me frustration. She took steps to fix and restructure my work to relieve stress. For instance, a more senior engineer was micromanaging me and it wasnt adding any value at all. She stopped him from doing that. I came back from work and now I actually feel great. But I literally did nothing on that time off. I just watched TV, hit the gym, slept. You can recover/avoid from burnout if people at your job are willing to work with you to change the situation. The big issue is most people in a work relationship are not even capable of changing work patterns. They dont have the management skill to do it, and will have the conversation, but continue down the same path. Thats when you leave.

luckylion 4y ago
And it's important to do what you did: talk to someone about it that can do something about it. I have a friend who'll complain to me, not to the people he works with & for. He's too shy for that and rationalizes it as "they wouldn't understand/wouldn't want to change anything/couldn't even change" and suffers while the people who define the processes he suffers from don't know.
- tinsmith 4y ago
  It should be pointed out that, for some of us, talking to someone and hoping for change is the only option. I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have that much PTO, and taking 3 weeks of unpaid leave would financially destroy me. Trust me, I wish it were different, and a lot of people in my position either have to suffer through the burnout, or often end up changing jobs to try to deal with it.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    100%, and it's terrible for those that can't simply talk to someone because of social phobias. In a perfect world, any manager worth their money makes sure that people are comfortable speaking about their issues, but in reality that's often not the case and if you struggle with assertiveness it can get very hard.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

yboris 4y ago

Many of us need a 4DWW - Four Day Work Week. I am consistently frustrated that I don't have enough energy after work to spend time on my personal projects, so I wait for the weekend, at which point I just want to rest. Two-day weekends are not enough to balance life and work!

shanecp 4y ago
Just curious, if 4DWW is your goal, can't you ask your employer to give a 4DWW with a 20% pay cut? Then both of you can be happy. Or do you want a 4DWW with the same pay?
- yboris 4y ago
  I asked about 20% pay cut and they don't do it. There's a cookie-cutter full time position, and nothing else. I suspect part of it could be stupid laws around America's insane healthcare bullshit, but I don't know.
- lm28469 4y ago
  LPT: in Germany any companies with more than 15 employees more or less have to accept your request for part time work
esskay 4y ago
Try telling that to management. Even if you put the undisputable facts and statistics of how successful it's been in recent trials (the UK one for example was an overwhelming success) they still come up with excuses. "Clients wont accept it", "We'll get less work done", "It wont work for us", "We'll look at it in the future". They'll never learn. And for any manager reading this, no, there is absolutely nothing special about your individual situation that means it wont work for you. Stop lying to yourself and your staff.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  My company piloted a four day work week last summer. Two whole months of four day weeks. They gathered the data. They saw productivity was good. Then they didn't adopt it full time It makes my blood boil thinking about it.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

The author lists an incredible 17 different projects they're trying to build or maintain at the same time. This ranges from a new cloud platform company to a game runtime to a custom IDE and more. This isn't just about burnout, it's about spreading yourself too thin. This reminds me of a lot of the enthusiastic juniors I interview who want to tell me about their 10 different side projects, none of which got further than a quick proof of concept before they moved on to the next thing. If you hire them, guess what you're going to get? Someone who wants to build proof of concept work and then move on to the next thing as soon as it gets boring. The rest of the team doesn't want to spend their careers picking up the pieces after someone did the fun part and got bored. Personally, if I'm reading an official company blog where the author is bragging about working on over a dozen different large projects simultaneously, I have zero interest in adopting the platform. It's almost guaranteed to be abandoned for the next fun idea, with features left unfinished. When I click on the "Pricing" page I'm given a placeholder that says it's free until the author gets around to building to billing part of the company. I know the author wants to position themself as a "monastic code machine", but I think the biggest thing missing from this person's life is some diversity of activities. My recommendation: Put all but one of the projects on a clear, definitive pause. Focus on the business first. Then use your free time to get out, try new activities, and meet new people. So many of the burnout stories I read online start with people who code all day at work and then come home and try to code all evening on side projects. That can be fun for a while, but if that's the entirety of your life you're going to burn out eventually. Get outside and do something else. You'll be more refreshed when you come back to these projects.

newsiehey 4y ago
Did you read the post? He obviously said that he was working on too much at once and then goes on to cut back and say he is happy and focused moving forward... That is perfectly logical and doesn't invite judgment about his daily activities or "going outside" or whatever you are talking about
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > Did you read the post? Yes, which is why I cited specific details from the post in my comment. I also read some of his other posts which is where I gathered the “monastic code machine” and additional context. Please don’t jump to conclusions about other people not reading the post when they’re clearly referring to details within. HN has a guideline about this specifically https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

b1gnasty 4y ago

The author is yak shaving to the extreme, leading to burnout. I don't see how any of the projects on this list are requirements for building an online board game.

mathgladiator 4y ago
Howdy, author here, and yes, I'm yak shaving. My vision wasn't to just build a single game, but to build a "Roblox for online board games". I've been in the beginning phases of building the runtime and getting the editor to work when I realized that it is going to take much longer to do at the quality that I want. Worse yet, my own credibility of building beyond the infrastructure is shaky, and I could already see the mistakes pile up which means that fight is going to take much longer.

TrispusAttucks 4y ago

The problem with modern work and the associated burnout is that it's so monoculture. This is fundamentally at odds with the natural human experience. Work is typically performed to achieve some end result. Either an outcome or a material gain. Until relatively recently in human existence the work performed to derive the output was varied and specific to the desired outcome. For example: I want to eat carrots. I plant carrots. I want a shed. I build a shed. etc. Now all work passes through the same point. Perform professional duties. Collect money. Buy outcome. I get that it's not efficient to do many of these things but from a human fulfillment perspective there's a lot to be gained by doing them yourself. The Task: "Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor." ~ William Cowper

tppiotrowski 4y ago

Reminds me of a quote in GTD by David Allen: "An ambient angst pervades our society-there's a sense that somehow there's probably something we should be doing that we're not, which creates a tension for which there is no resolution and from which there is no rest." It's super hard to cut scope. Knowing that the software you write has imperfections but needing to move on to building the next feature creates angst. Knowing there's a better solution but not having the time to implement it can drive you crazy. You need to learn how to let things go and make peace with it.

tacker2000 4y ago

This is the typical coming of age of the “new/inexperienced” engineer who wants to build everything from the ground up since he thinks he can do it all better, with new languages, fresh ideas and it will be finished “next week” anyway. Ultimately he will learn a lot about himself and the problems he wants to solve, but can never finish them, since he will realize that he cannot do it all at once - the solutions that are available have already had thousands of man hours poured into them. He will learn to prioritize and think more about conceptualization and pre planning, and how to leverage existing solutions more.

mathgladiator 4y ago
Author here, you're right except I'm on the far end of inexperienced. I'm basically retired, and the core isn't isn't that I can't execute. It's that it will take too long until I can invite people in to play with me. What I forgot was how hard it is to teach just one thing at a time, so I'm focusing on that one thing. I still believe in my end vision, but I need to bring others along for the ride.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Just read 4000 weeks: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374159122 and you will never have a time management problem or burnout anymore.

gymbeaux 4y ago
So far it’s very interesting and enlightening. It’s true- the more shit we try to get done, the less shit we get done, and that’s emotionally and physically draining.
jaiprabhu 4y ago
I second this recommendation. I eschew self-help book but I made an exception for this because I found an audiobook version that I could rent from my local library (via Libby). The content and the quality of the narration is excellent on that.

epolanski 4y ago

I've eased this multi-project burn out in those steps: - move all projects to a monorepo. This is great because all projects are in one place, they become interconnected as some code will end up being a library for multiple ones. This ensures that even when I'm doing side-project "foo" some of the code or stuff will also end up improving "foo" or "bar". - move the monorepo to github codespaces. The very last thing I want to do when I want to work on my side projects after some time is to remember how I had to setup everything, from ide, to the os, etc. - keep todos, documentation, notes, all in the monorepo. What did I have to do? `apps/foo/todo.md` or search in the project for "TODO:". No point into having docs on different services, they stay close to the project. - write E2E and integration tests first, never unit test anything that doesn't really need to, implement in the end. And that's it. Lowering a lot the entry barrier to contributing and getting back on projects was a huge step (I literally need codespaces to load). Then came creating an ecosystem around my projects thanks to the monorepo. I can now forget a project for months and come back to it with a small effort or checking back where I was. I admit I will never write git in two days like Linus, I won't be releasing a hit game on Steam at any time, but I have fun with my projects, I learn a lot, and even though they move slowly they do move consistently in time. Not saying you will release a banger OSS project this way or some killer application that will make you rich, that requires discipline and focus more than organizing a git repo and few tools, but you will build yourself a nice playground which at every iteration will make further experimentation or production have lower friction.

zaptheimpaler 4y ago
monorepo is a good idea. how do you manage multiple languages and build toolchains?
- epolanski 4y ago
  It's monolanguage by design and intention, I don't think I would be able to handle this added complexity which is far from trivial to tame. Potential benefits from having access to more tools would take too much of my limited time and energy from moving the applications further. That being said, I use @microsoft/rush for my monorepos and I think that with a bit of tinkering it could easily support building external tools.

tombert 4y ago

I was "laid off" from a job a few months ago. I put "laid off" in quotes because I'm reasonably certain that they were just being nice and didn't want to tarnish my resume more than they had to. By all accounts I was most certainly fired. [1] I had a pretty bad attitude and had trouble focusing on work. I thought it was depression, and that's probably a factor of it, but having been unemployed for the last three months now, I think I was just going through a really bad case of burnout. I didn't really want to do anything productive, I just felt bad, and as a result I was missing deadlines and not doing terribly well, and eventually they decided to let me go. They told me it was budget cuts, but I think that might have been more of a catalyst than a cause, and this was depressing because by all accounts this was the best job I'd ever had. If anyone's reading this, take burnout (and depression) seriously. I lost a great job because I didn't. [1] I'm reasonably confident you could figure out which company I'm talking about with some searching, but I politely ask that you don't post it here if you do.

kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]
kyleyeats 4y ago
Did you get better? I had a big quit burnout a few years ago. Or so I thought. If it doesn't get better after you quit, it's not burnout. Mine was a health issue.
- tombert 4y ago
  Well I don't have another job yet so it's tough to say for sure, but I think? I don't really have the same "fuck everything" attitude right now. EDIT: Out of curiosity, and feel free to not answer if this is too personal...what was the health issue?
  - kyleyeats 4y ago
    I have hemochromatosis, or iron overload. It's not a great pairing with famous free cafeteria food. I never even figured it out on my own, just got lucky with a family member's diagnosis.

UnpossibleJim 4y ago

I don't know if this is the case for anyone else, but for me when I would come home and sit at the computer working on personal projects, then go to work and work on work, I was burnt to a crisp. Finally I started hobbies at home totally removed from what I did at work, knowing I would be bad at them. Knowing I could give up on them. Knowing there was no pressure to finish or be good at a thing helped me alleviate the pressure of work where I had to perform.

spoonjim 4y ago

Why are people so much less able to cope with the tribulations of the world these days?