At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so I'm not au

At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so I'm not authority, etc etc). stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one time or another. There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Google (from my experience) approaches software development that end up addressing a lot of these. 1. Most (if not all) engineering managers are... engineers. I've seen internal job postings for engineering directors (to put that in perspective, an eng director might have 30-100 engineers under him or her typically with some engineering managers in between although some particularly senior engineers may report directly to their director) that call for "deep knowledge of C++". Some eng directors still submit CLs. This is something Google takes very seriously; 2. As an engineer, I don't have to work for you (where "you" is any particular manager or director). This is incredibly important because it puts strict limits on how much crap you can be given because (assuming you're in good standing) you can request a transfer to any team that will take you (within limits and your existing manager can delay you but can't block you); 3. Internally, Google is extremely open with what's going on in the company. There are a handful of things off-limit but in almost all cases you can view the data and code and announcements for almost every project in Google; 4. The level of meetings and overall bullshit has been, in my experience, incredibly low compared to previous employers; 5. Performance reviews are peer-driven. This system is not perfect and you'll have critics who point to thinks like you need senior people around you to get promoted. Some of these claims have merit but the system while not perfect is still (IMHO) very good; and 6. Gratitude. As Steve Yegge [1] puts it: > You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you. I find many of these alleviate burnout by way of mitigating resentment. I'm not sure I fully agree that burnout is solely caused by resentment however. I've known people who have been well-rewarded and respected for what they've done but they just reach a point where they need a break and have to do something else. I'd characterize this as burnout but perhaps definitions vary. Lastly, I'll touch on a point someone else mentioned: as time goes on my tolerance for bullshit and time-wasting goes down. No I'm not going to your daily standup ("mini performance review") because it's a waste of my time. No I'm not going to work on your shitty project that's made shitty technology choices for political rather than technical reasons. I don't have the time nor inclination to indulge you in this. [1]: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile...