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>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This really dies sum it up in a useful generic way. Ultimately the balance of this sentence will differ from context to context, but the equation ultimately has to balance. Put another way, if you care a lot, but have no agency, then ultimately you will be frustrated. If you care a lot, but have no resources, then again, you get frustrated. Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. But you -want- to care (about something) so not-caring leads to depression. Matching your care to resources available is a good start. Make sure you care about something that can be materially affected by your resources. Feeling under-resourced is a sign that those allocating the resources have different goals to you. If your care exceeds your agency in resources product direction, code quality, then you can choose to care less, (find something else to care about), align your caring to match those who do have agency, or move on. Starting your own business gives you agency, so you're free to allocate resources as you choose. However you still need to aquire those resources (which in turn can change what you care about.) Starting and running your own business is enormously freeing - it gives you complete agency. But its also HARD. People don't pay you for what -you- care about, they pay you for what -they- care about. Its very hard to find customers who appreciate your priorities, and it's also hard to adjust your priorities (aka what you care -about-) to match theirs. But if you get it right, it's amazing.

brailsafe 4y ago
Very well-articulated. I finally felt like I was bouncing back when I just accepted not giving a fuck and doing the absolute minimum to fulfill whatever the goals seem to be of whoever's deciding on them. Do they care about rendering performance? No? Well then I'm sure as hell not goimg to lose sleep over it, and if it seems actively harmful to customers *that I've met* then it's just a place to leave. There's always a budget, there's always better quality, but if you're the one paying for it in time and energy, and you don't really have a stake in the outcome, the correct answer is "fuck it". Do not care about transactional work more than you need to within the scope that's set forth.
- bruce511 4y ago
  As you move up the business ladder, or indeed start your own business, it's interesting to see how priorities evolve. When you're a coder, the code matters. It can be frustrating to see resources allocated to say marketing. When you are responsible for acquiring resources, then there's more to care about, more to balance. When to market. When to get new hardware. Programmers care about code performance, code elegance, getting every pixel perfect, perfect design (for when we have s billion users). Business owners care about shipping, and getting paid. Without that the doors close. As we grow older, as our position evolves, we have to care about more, but in some ways less deeply. There's more nuance, more compromise, more acceptance that it needs to be "good enough" - better than that even - but that perfection is an expensive goal either small returns. I'm not arguing for mediocre, we all want the product to be better, and incrementally we move towards that. But that movement is in balance with all the other cares.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Very true. The thing that really helped me as I got into the third decade of my career was the realization that things can always be improved, but only if agency and accountability go hand-in-hand, and are widely distributed so that everyone has some ability to influence and optimize something. Obviously this requires a willingness to compromise from all involved, and can easily go off the rails into the worst sort of design-by-committee debacles if the wrong people are given the wrong authority, but when it’s done right that’s the definition of a team gelling. It’s rare in a corporate environment due to sheer volume of individuals involved and the communication/alignment overhead, but still possible, and always feels a bit magical when it happens.
  - pts_ 4y ago
    It's not about age, it's where your interests lie in.
    - OJFord 4y ago
      I think GP is making an (obviously incomplete) assumption that with age comes movement up the org chart, away from code, and towards an awareness of other departments and ultimately owning/directing the business worrying about cash flows.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
The most burnout-inducing environments I’ve worked in have all had one thing in common: They had a person or class of people that had wormed their way into being in control of everything while being responsible for very little. This left the rest of us to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions while having little to no input on the things we were held accountable for. The absolute worst company I worked for had this separation as a core philosophy. They had different managers for everything: Product managers to make all of the product decisions, UX managers to make all of the design decisions, project managers to decide when we’d do things and how to check in on our progress every few hours of every day, program managers who thought they were engineers who just didn’t write code, VPs who would choose all of your programming languages and frameworks for you, and on and on. These people would shuffle from meeting to meeting every day with a 2-hour company-paid lunch in the middle (which they ultimately got in trouble for) but wouldn’t ever do any of the work themselves. Meanwhile, if any engineer dared make a suggestion we’d get a long lecture about staying in our lanes. Then when projects were late/wrong/failed or just missed the mark about what the company needed, they would do long post mortems to assign blame to different engineers for doing it wrong. At best, they’d come up with vague statements about how “we failed as a team due to communication issues” or something. It was the most demoralizing work environment. Every meeting was full of sad, dejected engineers. People would quit without having other jobs lined up because they just couldn’t take it any more.
- scruple 4y ago
  Completely spot on from my personal experience. FWIW, I have seen this in every startup I've joined.
  - jimnotgym 4y ago
    Why do you think that is? Is it because the founders are inexperienced at running an organisation perhaps?
    - dasil003 4y ago
      In many cases I believe this is caused by cargo culting big company practices and not realizing how fast you can move at smaller scale by cutting out unnecessary ceremony and empowering those who prioritize building and learning over talking and pontificating.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
papito 4y ago
Right - you want to be professional, you want to do the best that you can do, but you cannot care about your employer more than the employer cares about themselves. Sort of a mercenary attitude - which you always are. This is really the practice of zen and detachment in work and life. Care, but not to the point where is starts to hurt you.
ElFitz 4y ago
> Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day. The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting). “Frustrated" and "stop to fruitlessly care" don’t feel like they even begin to describe that. > But you -want- to care (about something) so not-caring leads to depression. Having also gone through a decade-long depression before that, I’d personally say these two are very different beasts. Both are quite unpleasant, and neither is viable, but each in it’s own way.
- delusional 4y ago
  This might be asking too much on a public forum, but would you be able to describe what differentiates these two for you? Feel free to decline if it's too personal or you just don't feel like it.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Not the person you asked, but I have had experience with both depression and burnout. Depression, in my case, makes things meaningless in a "calmer" way - I can think about any activity, but it just feels meaningless, as if somebody was asking me to dig a hole then bury it back up. Like, why? What is the point? Burnout, on the other hand, had an avoidant element to it - when thinking about work, I start feeling helpless and frustrated, which makes my mind go into some primordial "fear" state, rendering me unable to think clearly at all. If I were working while burned out, my "mental context" would be extremely limited - I'd read the words, but couldn't comprehend anything beyond basic instructions (e.g. change config from "foo" to "bar"). The mind is just avoiding making any connections relevant to the work. This is just my experience. Others' milage may vary.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      > The mind is just avoiding making any connections relevant to the work. This part is insane. But it doesn’t only happen when burned out. It happens to me when I get asked to do something that I do not believe in. I say yes, because you know, my boss is asking me to do it. But when I actually start on it my brain just completely shuts down. Like, is it trying to prevent me from seeming efficient at things I absolutely hate?
hiAndrewQuinn 4y ago
The good old fashioned Job Resources / Job Demands 2x2 strikes again. - Low resources * low demands = low motivation + average stress. You don't really give a shit about the job, but it's also not taking a lot out of you either. - High resources * low demands = high motivation + low stress. The dream! - High resources * high demands = high motivation + average stress. You've got a lot on your plate - but you also feel well equipped to take it all on. This is a really nice place to be, especially if you're hungry for professional growth. - Low resources * high demands = Hell. People expect you do build everything from nothing, and nobody's giving you any help at all, and you're bottlenecked by weird insane corporate BS, and on and on and on. Being at low resources, high demands for too long will lead to burnout. Full stop. If you're there, try to get out. If you're not there, try to stay out. https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#the-job-demands-resources-jd-r-model https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#the-job-demands-resources-j...
- misja111 4y ago
  > High resources * low demands = high motivation + low stress. The dream! I disagree with that. High resources * high demands is the dream for many people including myself. Low demands -> low motivation, at least for most people. Having a stress free job with low motivation for a long time can even lead to burnout!
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    High resources * high demands is probably only the dream of single young newgrads or people without family or other such obligations and want to focus on climbing the ladder and "making it" in the industry. The people I know who wish to focus their life around their hobbies or kids want to stay away from high demand jobs even if they were to have high resources.
    - misja111 4y ago
      I guess it depends on what "high" and "low" mean. With "high demand" I presumed busy, but assuming there are enough resources, no need to work evenings or weekends.
tpoacher 4y ago
I agree, except the "match your care to your resources" sounds like a bad recipe to me. I don't think it's possible to control how much you 'care' about something; only how much you act upon it. It sounds a bit like saying "don't love the other person too much". You can try to be more measured in your displays of affection if you think it may scare the other person away, but you're either in love with someone or you're not; "how much" in love you get to be isn't really a conscious decision. And unreciprocated love can lead to relationship burnout in the same way. So if deep down you care about something but try to consciously "match your care to available resources", it's probably going to lead to more burnout too, not less.
steveBK123 4y ago
>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This is basically the best summation of it, and when I notice my role becoming consumed with this, I know its time to leave or face burnout. My most recent round of this I was a senior IC but put in charge of PMing 2 vendors that were starting work 3 days later, despite them having been in planning for 6+ months without my involvement or knowledge. Both overly ambitious project I didn't plan, the lead on their side I already told my boss I knew previously & did NOT trust, with incompetent vendors I didn't pick, on an unrealistically short timeline that didn't make sense. Also the two vendors were supposed to coordinate on some integration piece, but didn't trust each other, and were not contractually obligated to coordinate, so of course they didn't. Management couldn't decide if I was supposed to be helping make them successful with hands-on technical work & coordination, clearing blockers, or impartially measuring their success for the purposes of whether they deserved to be paid for each milestone. It of course ran 2x over the planned timeline, some of which they demanded we pay for, and a lot of which they did for free.. which meant the work was garbage. In the end one vendor went bankrupt and the other we almost went to court with. I ended up on this so long that I became strongly associated with its failure, and my senior IC role didn't really exist to go back to. My boss, and their boss, both got moved aside internally out of leadership roles around the time I quit. I lingered filling other senior IC++/leader-- type roles for a year until I left. Probably the longest stretch I've gone of not really doing any coding, not really running a team, not doing something I enjoy, and not learning anything.. all at the same time.
psnehanshu 4y ago
Sounds very similar to the book: The Art of not giving a F*ck.

brailsafe 4y ago

Very well-articulated. I finally felt like I was bouncing back when I just accepted not giving a fuck and doing the absolute minimum to fulfill whatever the goals seem to be of whoever's deciding on them. Do they care about rendering performance? No? Well then I'm sure as hell not goimg to lose sleep over it, and if it seems actively harmful to customers *that I've met* then it's just a place to leave. There's always a budget, there's always better quality, but if you're the one paying for it in time and energy, and you don't really have a stake in the outcome, the correct answer is "fuck it". Do not care about transactional work more than you need to within the scope that's set forth.

bruce511 4y ago
As you move up the business ladder, or indeed start your own business, it's interesting to see how priorities evolve. When you're a coder, the code matters. It can be frustrating to see resources allocated to say marketing. When you are responsible for acquiring resources, then there's more to care about, more to balance. When to market. When to get new hardware. Programmers care about code performance, code elegance, getting every pixel perfect, perfect design (for when we have s billion users). Business owners care about shipping, and getting paid. Without that the doors close. As we grow older, as our position evolves, we have to care about more, but in some ways less deeply. There's more nuance, more compromise, more acceptance that it needs to be "good enough" - better than that even - but that perfection is an expensive goal either small returns. I'm not arguing for mediocre, we all want the product to be better, and incrementally we move towards that. But that movement is in balance with all the other cares.
- dasil003 4y ago
  Very true. The thing that really helped me as I got into the third decade of my career was the realization that things can always be improved, but only if agency and accountability go hand-in-hand, and are widely distributed so that everyone has some ability to influence and optimize something. Obviously this requires a willingness to compromise from all involved, and can easily go off the rails into the worst sort of design-by-committee debacles if the wrong people are given the wrong authority, but when it’s done right that’s the definition of a team gelling. It’s rare in a corporate environment due to sheer volume of individuals involved and the communication/alignment overhead, but still possible, and always feels a bit magical when it happens.
- pts_ 4y ago
  It's not about age, it's where your interests lie in.
  - OJFord 4y ago
    I think GP is making an (obviously incomplete) assumption that with age comes movement up the org chart, away from code, and towards an awareness of other departments and ultimately owning/directing the business worrying about cash flows.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

The most burnout-inducing environments I’ve worked in have all had one thing in common: They had a person or class of people that had wormed their way into being in control of everything while being responsible for very little. This left the rest of us to be responsible for the consequences of their decisions while having little to no input on the things we were held accountable for. The absolute worst company I worked for had this separation as a core philosophy. They had different managers for everything: Product managers to make all of the product decisions, UX managers to make all of the design decisions, project managers to decide when we’d do things and how to check in on our progress every few hours of every day, program managers who thought they were engineers who just didn’t write code, VPs who would choose all of your programming languages and frameworks for you, and on and on. These people would shuffle from meeting to meeting every day with a 2-hour company-paid lunch in the middle (which they ultimately got in trouble for) but wouldn’t ever do any of the work themselves. Meanwhile, if any engineer dared make a suggestion we’d get a long lecture about staying in our lanes. Then when projects were late/wrong/failed or just missed the mark about what the company needed, they would do long post mortems to assign blame to different engineers for doing it wrong. At best, they’d come up with vague statements about how “we failed as a team due to communication issues” or something. It was the most demoralizing work environment. Every meeting was full of sad, dejected engineers. People would quit without having other jobs lined up because they just couldn’t take it any more.

scruple 4y ago
Completely spot on from my personal experience. FWIW, I have seen this in every startup I've joined.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  Why do you think that is? Is it because the founders are inexperienced at running an organisation perhaps?
  - dasil003 4y ago
    In many cases I believe this is caused by cargo culting big company practices and not realizing how fast you can move at smaller scale by cutting out unnecessary ceremony and empowering those who prioritize building and learning over talking and pontificating.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

papito 4y ago

Right - you want to be professional, you want to do the best that you can do, but you cannot care about your employer more than the employer cares about themselves. Sort of a mercenary attitude - which you always are. This is really the practice of zen and detachment in work and life. Care, but not to the point where is starts to hurt you.

ElFitz 4y ago

> Burnout is just the moment whe you stop fruitlessly caring. To me it was the moment I started breaking down in tears when getting to the subway station down my street, on my way to work. Every day. The next time was when I could not speak about my job and the project I was working on without stammering and my mind going blank (and still couldn’t for months after quitting). “Frustrated" and "stop to fruitlessly care" don’t feel like they even begin to describe that. > But you -want- to care (about something) so not-caring leads to depression. Having also gone through a decade-long depression before that, I’d personally say these two are very different beasts. Both are quite unpleasant, and neither is viable, but each in it’s own way.

delusional 4y ago
This might be asking too much on a public forum, but would you be able to describe what differentiates these two for you? Feel free to decline if it's too personal or you just don't feel like it.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  Not the person you asked, but I have had experience with both depression and burnout. Depression, in my case, makes things meaningless in a "calmer" way - I can think about any activity, but it just feels meaningless, as if somebody was asking me to dig a hole then bury it back up. Like, why? What is the point? Burnout, on the other hand, had an avoidant element to it - when thinking about work, I start feeling helpless and frustrated, which makes my mind go into some primordial "fear" state, rendering me unable to think clearly at all. If I were working while burned out, my "mental context" would be extremely limited - I'd read the words, but couldn't comprehend anything beyond basic instructions (e.g. change config from "foo" to "bar"). The mind is just avoiding making any connections relevant to the work. This is just my experience. Others' milage may vary.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > The mind is just avoiding making any connections relevant to the work. This part is insane. But it doesn’t only happen when burned out. It happens to me when I get asked to do something that I do not believe in. I say yes, because you know, my boss is asking me to do it. But when I actually start on it my brain just completely shuts down. Like, is it trying to prevent me from seeming efficient at things I absolutely hate?

hiAndrewQuinn 4y ago

The good old fashioned Job Resources / Job Demands 2x2 strikes again. - Low resources * low demands = low motivation + average stress. You don't really give a shit about the job, but it's also not taking a lot out of you either. - High resources * low demands = high motivation + low stress. The dream! - High resources * high demands = high motivation + average stress. You've got a lot on your plate - but you also feel well equipped to take it all on. This is a really nice place to be, especially if you're hungry for professional growth. - Low resources * high demands = Hell. People expect you do build everything from nothing, and nobody's giving you any help at all, and you're bottlenecked by weird insane corporate BS, and on and on and on. Being at low resources, high demands for too long will lead to burnout. Full stop. If you're there, try to get out. If you're not there, try to stay out. https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#the-job-demands-resources-jd-r-model https://commoncog.com/g/burnout/#the-job-demands-resources-j...

misja111 4y ago
> High resources * low demands = high motivation + low stress. The dream! I disagree with that. High resources * high demands is the dream for many people including myself. Low demands -> low motivation, at least for most people. Having a stress free job with low motivation for a long time can even lead to burnout!
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  High resources * high demands is probably only the dream of single young newgrads or people without family or other such obligations and want to focus on climbing the ladder and "making it" in the industry. The people I know who wish to focus their life around their hobbies or kids want to stay away from high demand jobs even if they were to have high resources.
  - misja111 4y ago
    I guess it depends on what "high" and "low" mean. With "high demand" I presumed busy, but assuming there are enough resources, no need to work evenings or weekends.

tpoacher 4y ago

I agree, except the "match your care to your resources" sounds like a bad recipe to me. I don't think it's possible to control how much you 'care' about something; only how much you act upon it. It sounds a bit like saying "don't love the other person too much". You can try to be more measured in your displays of affection if you think it may scare the other person away, but you're either in love with someone or you're not; "how much" in love you get to be isn't really a conscious decision. And unreciprocated love can lead to relationship burnout in the same way. So if deep down you care about something but try to consciously "match your care to available resources", it's probably going to lead to more burnout too, not less.

steveBK123 4y ago

>> caring about the results of our actions but having no meaningful control over those outcomes This is basically the best summation of it, and when I notice my role becoming consumed with this, I know its time to leave or face burnout. My most recent round of this I was a senior IC but put in charge of PMing 2 vendors that were starting work 3 days later, despite them having been in planning for 6+ months without my involvement or knowledge. Both overly ambitious project I didn't plan, the lead on their side I already told my boss I knew previously & did NOT trust, with incompetent vendors I didn't pick, on an unrealistically short timeline that didn't make sense. Also the two vendors were supposed to coordinate on some integration piece, but didn't trust each other, and were not contractually obligated to coordinate, so of course they didn't. Management couldn't decide if I was supposed to be helping make them successful with hands-on technical work & coordination, clearing blockers, or impartially measuring their success for the purposes of whether they deserved to be paid for each milestone. It of course ran 2x over the planned timeline, some of which they demanded we pay for, and a lot of which they did for free.. which meant the work was garbage. In the end one vendor went bankrupt and the other we almost went to court with. I ended up on this so long that I became strongly associated with its failure, and my senior IC role didn't really exist to go back to. My boss, and their boss, both got moved aside internally out of leadership roles around the time I quit. I lingered filling other senior IC++/leader-- type roles for a year until I left. Probably the longest stretch I've gone of not really doing any coding, not really running a team, not doing something I enjoy, and not learning anything.. all at the same time.

psnehanshu 4y ago

Sounds very similar to the book: The Art of not giving a F*ck.