26 ms·

Mental health in software engineering

383 points by cmpit 2y ago

FrustratedMonky 2y ago
link appears to be dead
- CoastalCoder 2y ago
  > link appears to be dead Works for me.
- ekaryotic 2y ago
  https://web.archive.org/web/20240411131046/https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/mental-health-in-software-engineering/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240411131046/https://vadimkrav...
redmattred 2y ago
“Your lack of planning is not my emergency”
- surfingdino 2y ago
  "It was. Now you are fired." how it typically goes at startups.
  - hiatus 2y ago
    Then the startup has to ramp up a hiring pipeline to backfill or dump the work onto someone else. Either way they won't get what they want.
  - np- 2y ago
    A startup that is firing engineers on the spot who dare to disagree probably won't last much longer anyway. Best of luck with their "critical" deadline then...?
  - willcipriano 2y ago
    I was worried about getting fired at these sort of places until I saw how they behaved when I quit a few of them.
  - georgyserga 2y ago
    Or you just miss promotions, raises, bonuses because you didn't do enough, "moderate impact"
- falcor84 2y ago
  I must say that I prefer the slightly longer wording: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine"
datadrivenangel 2y ago
"An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen." At a certain point you have to just build a queue and start the next highest priority thing next. Too much WIP kills you.
- submain 2y ago
  As a manager, if upstream changes priorities on me but what we’re working on is almost done, I just go ahead and finish it anyways. When they eventually switch back to the original thing they are always surprised to know it’s been completed.
  - classified 2y ago
    Bad tactics. You let them make stupid mistakes with impunity. That way they'll never learn.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  Worse is when it's a salesman, not the CEO. It's infuriating. I always wanted to tell that salesman that he got to go back to the customer and tell them that we weren't going to do it, since he was the one who promised it without finding out whether and when we could do it. Of course, I never had the clout to force that to happen...
  - Clubber 2y ago
    It's always sales it seems. We're doing stuff under the gun right now because sales promised a huge new client we had something that wasn't ready yet. They didn't bother to ask us, they just promised so they could get their commission.
    - 2y ago
edding4500 2y ago
Kudos for speaking out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI
vlan0 2y ago
>So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn't the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life. This is so important. Our work is an extension of us. Our state in the moment will bleed into all areas of life. There is nothing more important. As we are limitless potential. But only if we are living in the here and now.
west0n 2y ago
As the founder and CEO of a two-year-old startup, seeking certainty in the direction amidst uncertainty (determining which products can bring customers and profits) should become my instinct.
cjk2 2y ago
I'll dump this one here as it's still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I'm sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you're reading this) and described what he'd managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn't possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he'd assumed that if it worked for a couple of steps in Excel it'd be fine up to a few hundred. I scribbled out the mathematics a few times, wrote some prototype code and no the scalability characteristics approached "all the energy in the universe" levels of compute pretty quickly. O(wtf!). So I go back to him and he accused me of lying and went and told the CEO. The CEO, a pretty chill guy with a doctorate, I was expecting to have a rational discussion about with but not he screamed at me too. I was downtrodden emotionally so I sheepishly said yeah I'll have another look and went back and started at it for another couple of days. No it was impossible. At that point I was stuck in a situation. I've got unemployment on one side and I've got getting screamed at inevitably. I just sat there in a depressed little hole with no options. I was angry, isolated and had no one sympathetic around. I suspect many people end up here. Slept really badly that night. Woke up, got in the car and drove into the office. Got half way and got distracted by a cafe and decided I'd get breakfast and think some more about it. Sitting there eating a fat sausace, something just went ping, I SMS'ed John and the CEO with "fuck you I quit". I moved back in with my parents, did fuck all for 6 months, got another job, which was 80% less shit and the company I worked for went down the shitter about a year later because they couldn't deliver it. If you feel like shit in a job, just leave. It's not worth it.
- TimPC 2y ago
  It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    Sometimes you don't leave by choice and staying ahead of the layoff treadmill takes its own toll on mental health. Probably doesn't hurt to patch things up with the parents if possible.
xyst 2y ago
This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likely fail in the same way if given the position. Albeit, to a much lesser degree. I think management often puts us in these impossible positions without any good reason other than “to look good to X.” What’s even worse if it’s was just to earn fucking brownie points with some no name mid level director. This is why I think unions in tech would be great. To set realistic expectations, approach management from a collective point of view. Unfortunately companies today only aim to get that VC money with a quick exit and IPO. I think the general sentiment amongst the vultures is a union would make the quick exit less of a reality.
- paulcole 2y ago
  > Always doing shit themselves This is one of the most counterintuitive things about leadership roles IMO. If you get promoted there, it’s often because you got a lot of things done yourself in an IC role. And then the fewer things you do yourself, the better off you, the company, and your reports are once you’re in a leadership role. So you have to learn that feeling idle compared to what you used to feel like isn’t a sign that you’re doing a bad job.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    In addition as a leader your best use is often to be interrupted with questions from junior engineers. This means you can never (or rarely) get into a flow where you are productive, as you are getting close someone interrupts your thought with a question. As such if you have time to work on engineering (which you should make to stay sharp) it needs to be something unimportant to the business so that you can be late. Trying to add a new warning to your static analysis tool, checking out the latest framework to see if you should switch to it in the future - and other such things that you really want and long term are good but short term won't pay the bills.
your_mommy 2y ago
industrial revolution broke backs, tech revolution breaks brains
- Bloating 2y ago
  That makes sense... And the preeminent result of the tech revolution: social media.
CartyBoston 2y ago
This piece teaches me almost nothing about Vadim but shows me a ton about the environment he worked in. Someone built that culture, who are they? Why did they do it? Was Vadim complicit? Why did he feel so little control? Hustle culture is not challenging, it does not help anyone grow, it simply exploits people. It's common, banal stuff.
paulcole 2y ago
> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” “I’m taking the day off.” Your coworkers don’t need a reason. If your employer demands one, then that’s a different issue.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  At my current job, I can. Up to three days a year, I can take a mental health day and charge it to sick time. Note well: I have never had this at any other job. But if you need the day, take the day, even if it has to be vacation.
  - paulcole 2y ago
    My point is that no individual you work with (again aside from perhaps HR if the company is hella annoying) needs to know if it’s a mental health day or if you have the flu or whatever. It’s not their business. Just say you’re not going to be there.
- kayodelycaon 2y ago
  I like using Out of Office for everything not work related. It shows up when anyone tries to schedule a random meeting on me. This is also a rare circumstance where having a disability is an advantage. Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask. I wish it didn't require having a disability to be treated like a human being instead of a disposable resource on somebody's balance sheet.
  - paulcole 2y ago
    I just say "Taking PTO today." > Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask. Assuming you're not in the US? In the US, companies are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabilities as part of ADA but can and (often) do ask for documentation of the disability and the specific accommodation requested.
hrnnnnnn 2y ago
> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” You can. I started doing this years ago and it has been an overall positive experience. Others on my team told me about their own struggles because I took the initiative to open up about mine.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HumblyTossed 2y ago
>You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” Yes, you can. You can say you need a mental health day. Adults will understand.
- sesm 2y ago
  In most companies I worked for the standard "I'm not feeling well today, taking a day off" was enough. Nobody asked for details.
  - albert_e 2y ago
    one of the big companies recently replaced "sick leave" (only you can be sick to avail this, not a family member you care for) with "wellbeing leave" (you dont feel up to a day at work, take the day off - no questions asked) and doubled them from 5 days a year to 10 days a year. I am usually cynical about big corporates and their people policies, but this is one I can applaud.
    - fnordian_slip 2y ago
      5 vs 10 days is still ridiculous imho. I've just read an overview about the us system [0], and it does seem rather absurd, when you're looking at it from a German perspective. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave
      - taejavu 2y ago
        I’m in Australia and get 10 days. However, at my company, I could use all 10 at once without having to see a doctor. Can you do that in your company in Germany?
        fnordian_slip 2y ago
        No, you need to see a doctor if it's more than 3 days, though I don't find that much of a problem in practice, even for mental health stuff.
surfingdino 2y ago
I used to be in (moderate) awe of young college drop-out CEOs. Then I worked for a couple of them. Now I refuse to work for startups that have 20-somethings at the top, because they really do not know how to manage or lead. They are motivated by fear of failure and having accomplished nothing so far they treat others like garbage. Avoid.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  The phenomenon of showing up at Stanford and telling some 21-year-old that he's Jesus Christ and that you're going to give him millions of dollars is a wen on the American business culture matched only by corporate raiding. It's the nerd version of college football/basketball recruiting.
  - jongjong 2y ago
    It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Why is it that investors actively seek out starry-eyed individuals? It sounds like an economic bubble factory. If every new person who joins elite circles is optimistic to a delusional level, then that level of optimism may be contagious and propagate delusional beliefs among the elite. There are people in the tech sector who were very successful decades ago and are now in their 40s and still haven't come out of their highs. They have the same worldview as I had when I was 15.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      Not investors: venture capital investors in tech. It's a particular kind of investment in a particular industry. Tech VC's are in the business of selling business futures, not building mature businesses. The buyer they sell to can install a practical CEO and worry about actual operations when that time comes. In the meantime, enthusiastic kids provide a relatively cheap, manipulable, supply of powerpoints and pizazz -- whereas sober, mature professionals often need more personal income and tend to focus more on executing the business that they have experience in (mostly irrelevant to the VC's own business) instead of matching the investment pitch for upcoming rounds (all that matters).
dvas 2y ago
I think it is so important to be able to disconnect from whatever it is that we are doing, even for a very short period of time. Go for a walk, brew a coffee or simply close your eyes and breathe. Many times, stress is created artificially. It hurts our performance and deteriorates our ability to think. Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this "crunch". After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3/4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time. Apathy begins to set in after management/decision makers keep on giving these gifts we call "crunches". To help the company and go the extra mile is something most of us have done in the past and will possibly do in the future. However, it's like the story of the boy who cried wolf, if everything is urgent and every task is to be done NOW, then there are bigger issues at play. Like everything in life, there is usually a limit/budget of money, time and effort. By abusing these limits and tolerances, people will lose respect for the people crying wolf and will put less effort into their work.
- snarf21 2y ago
  This is the hardest lesson to learn. Sometimes you won't be afforded the ability to do it "right", either for the company or the product or the customer. Eventually, you'll decide to just show up and ask what is most important today and work on that. Then clock out completely when your work is done and go find meaning and personal satisfaction in your personal life. Go exercise or volunteer or get a hobby or be present for your family. The best way to have work/life balance is to separate them. This is also one of the reasons why I hate wfh. The drive to/from is a great separator and decompressor for me.
  - life-and-quiet 2y ago
    I think this is so hard to learn because it's counter to human nature, and only necessary due to the artificial conditions of the modern world. We're programmed to want to be useful to our tribe. But we don't live in tribes any more. Our brains get confused and burnt out because we perform and perform and perform, but we don't get love and status and security in return, we just get this abstract thing called money, which it doesn't really understand.
arnonejoe 2y ago
The way to get around some of this is to work on contract. I have found I am most free being a contractor. I go in to the gig knowing it has a definite end and do not care about any of the internal politics. It’s not a perfect solution but much better than being an employee where I have granted a company a monopoly on my time.
- kortilla 2y ago
  How do you find gigs that actually pay like FTEs?
  - tossandthrow 2y ago
    at least where I am at, the contractor rate is more than double the FTE rate.
    - jghn 2y ago
      Yes. Contractors typically get more per hour. It still works out cheaper for the company as they don't have to pay for the benefits, PTO, and that sort of thing. And of course the contractor still has to pay for insurance, covering their own PTO, etc.
      - tossandthrow 2y ago
        I think it is a bit different depending on you country. I believe it is comparable in the us with the steep Healthcare prices. in Europe it usually makes sense to contract if you only have smaller projects.
        jajko 2y ago
        Did both in few parts of Europe. Initially its normally better to contract (but you need to have some chops, nobody hires juniors on contract), but not all countries make this easy or even viable. Once you want to settle, if you want to settle, permanent job under normal circumstances offers better overall package. Maybe not outright amounts, but if you count in things like sickness, holidays, off for kids, social contributions, being treated better among colleagues, and for me personally having much more freedom whenever personal I need to do like bureaucracy (but that may be current circumstance only).
coldtea 2y ago
>This was my perfect storm in 2017 — I was trying to control all of the uncertainty around me: (...) Trying to control the looming unrealistic deadlines. Writing a lot of the code myself to ensure we uphold our promises to stakeholders and none of our developers burn out. Which led to me working more and sleeping less. Worrying about next month’s payroll and trying to control our runway. Maintaining developer velocity and tight budgets, juggling future growth and current issues. Trying to control our developer turnover and making sure our juniors grow. There were days I'd be coding non-stop or in a series of back-to-back meetings, forgetting meals, sleeping, and even what it felt like to relax. Sounds like trying to cope at a shitty nightmare job at a shitty company, and blaming yourself.
Ozzie_osman 2y ago
One thing I've realized more and more over the years: it's the operational roles (infra, SRE, Devops) that are actually most stressful. Sure, if you're building product, you get deadlines, but they are predictable and they come and go. But being oncall for a shakey infra stack? That shit is hell. No deadlines, just the threat of incidents or downtime at any time of day.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  You can develop a product and also do Ops for it, getting the best of two worlds.
- mac-chaffee 2y ago
  It's especially frustrating that I firmly believe operations is a solved problem, but good luck getting a company to adopt the practices that every other mature tech company has already figured out.
sanitycheck 2y ago
It's too triggering to do any more than skim the article, but having got the general gist of at least some of it, I shall write my top tip here in case it helps anyone (who manages to do it): Negotiate prohibitively high overtime rates.
- j33zusjuice 2y ago
  Early in my career, I worked with a consultant who charged time and a half after hours, and double time after midnight. Every change we did was at like 10pm, and hardly any of them ever went well. I hope to one day find a way to do what he did.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    This is what psychologists call "a boundary", and there's nothing secret about how it works: you just don't do the thing your abuser is asking you to do.
dakiol 2y ago
Morale of the story: don’t apply for a CTO position. Apply for CEO: more money, less pressure, and you get to be as incompetent as you want.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  What I don't get is it sounds like he accepted the CEO's edicts unquestioningly: > This one time, for example, when our deployment crashed halfway through right before a major release. The CEO emphasized how important this project was, so we were all hands on deck, trying to get it back up, fearing the worst, that the client would go ballistic if he found out we were delaying the release. I was stressing big time, thinking we had to pull off a miracle, and of course we did. > But you know what? After all that chaos, it turned out the relevant stakeholders were away on vacation that week, and the release wasn't even checked for many days after that. A CTO should have some power to push back and set priorities. If you're just doing what you're told you're not really a CTO but a team lead with a fancy title. This a general problem with young people in leadership positions. They don't have the confidence to say no as often as they should nor the perspective to identify what's really important - every setback feels cataclysmic.
  - joelfried 2y ago
    > A CTO should have some power to push back and set priorities. If you're just doing what you're told you're not really a CTO but a team lead with a fancy title. > > This a general problem with young people in leadership positions. Agreed wholeheartedly on both points, though I'd say a general problem with people new to leadership positions rather than make it about age. Society as it exists now (at least as I've experienced it) is very strong on rule following and it's a pretty massive shift to be the person setting the rules. The CEO should've been empowering, too, and it might well be a symptom of the same malady: imagining the way you want things done, then pushing harder and harder until the world is that way regardless of cost. Human psychic cost is real and will cost you your best people. Consider instead if the CEO said to the team "We definitely need this done, but I don't want you to burn yourselves out. Please keep at it as your top priority during working hours, all other goals are on pause until we have a release, and keep me up to date at the end of each day with progress until we're there. I don't want anyone working after hours. Don't worry about the client; I'll handle them." When the story unfolds from there the client doesn't even notice, the team feels supported and heard, and the work still gets done. Everyone wins.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I wish this person luck. I won't make any comments on their fitness/accomplishments/whatever. I am not in their shoes, and can only appreciate the honesty of their exposition (which they seem to be embracing and using as their platform). > In business, there’s no place for perfection. There’s no space for having everything under control. In fact, not only can’t you influence most of the things around you, but most of the things are uncertain. I have found this to be true for life, in general; especially when dealing with other people.
Tade0 2y ago
> An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen. Hardly. What I've found to work best in such scenarios is to always chop up the task at hand to essentials and nice-to-haves[0]. If another task comes up before you're finished, chop it up as well and ask your leadership what's more important: the essentials from this new task or nice-to-haves from that previous one. It's never the nice-to-haves. Also it always helps to not promise something you can't deliver - this applies to every level in the hierarchy. [0] Sometimes, if essentials are the vast majority, you can produce versions of them which are simpler, but still workable from a business perspective, and have bringing the full-featured versions as a nice-to-have.
whb101 2y ago
It's great when this stuff is talked about. The action item is always disappointing: some flavor of "take care of yourself." If we were trees in a forest fire, then yes. Making ourselves more fireproof is the best we can do. We're not trees, though, are we?
keybored 2y ago
A mental health article about the rank & file? Not about bloviators? > , especially those of us who've taken on the challenge of leadership. Nope.
dboreham 2y ago
I've come to believe that there's something about the practice of software development that causes, or can cause mental illness. I've seen a few colleagues over the decades have some very serious issues. It's really quite a serious problem in our industry, imho.
- PodgieTar 2y ago
  I think Software Engineering attracts neurodivergent people. I am an adhd software engineer, and know a disproportionate amount of adhd software engineers. I think that level of executive dysfunction and “catchup” is problematic
  - adamc 2y ago
    I have a hypothesis about that, based on prior battles with depression. A characteristic of many people who struggle with depression is revisiting things over and over in your mind, looking for what is often a non-existent solution. This is a very, very useful trait in a software engineer. It helps us think of solutions to hard problems, to see options that are not initially obvious. But it also enables mental illness when you encounter problems that cannot be solved that way -- for me, it was divorce. But life is full of intractable problems.
    - norir 2y ago
      Yes and to add to this, I think also the longer you stay in the industry, the more you realize that the industry itself has intractable problems (at least on the scale at which you can effect change). The tension is whether or not to accept those problems or leave the industry. Unfortunately, I also think that many of the problems are both simultaneously solvable and intractable at the same time, which is particularly crazy making if one is so inclined.
    - sh_hike 2y ago
      +1 I spent most of my childhood and teenage years feeling depressed due to traumatic experiences. I failed at mostly everything until I started programming. I took some mushrooms last year that helped me stop this constant cycle of repeating thoughts.
lxe 2y ago
I haven't worked in a team or with a manager that wasn't receptive and empathetic to burnout or more serious mental health concerns. Guess I got lucky.
- Draiken 2y ago
  Could they actually do something about it? What I found in my career is that the good managers do empathize and even sometimes try to improve the situation, but they simply can't. More often than not the cause of the issues come from decisions done at the top levels of the company.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
In the unforgiving realm of tech, where deadlines loom like tempests and demands soar higher than the tallest spires, a tale unfolds of a coder besieged by the storms of expectation. Leadership, with eyes set on horizons unseen, oft chart courses riddled with contradiction, whispering of features promised to titans, each deemed the pinnacle of priority. Yet, amidst the clamor for creation, a truth, stark and unyielding, emerges: to elevate two masters to the zenith is to court the abyss. Thus, ensnared in this labyrinth of urgency, our protagonist wrestles with the specter of impossibility, urged ever onward by the mantra, "Make it so." A counsel of despair, for within the crucible of incessant toil, the spirit wanes and the flesh wearies. In this odyssey of turmoil, the narrative delves deep into the quagmire of mental strife that ensnares those who toil in the shadow of unyielding expectation. It casts a light on the sanctity of boundaries, the paramount importance of safeguarding one's inner citadel, and the somber realization that, though we may strive with Herculean fervor, the fates of our endeavors lie beyond the realm of our dominion. Herein lies a clarion call to the sentinels of the digital frontier: to honor the sanctity of mind and spirit, to question the altars of perpetual labor upon which we lay our offerings, and to seek a horizon where success is measured not by the quantity of our toil, but by the quality of our lives.
JTbane 2y ago
Anyone else feel like agile is partially to blame? The constant treadmill of work items, the stress of getting things done before sprint end, the demos failing, the anxiety when you get a bug report?
- fullstackchris 2y ago
  yep, two week sprints with no break in between (I can't think of any sporting event where you sprint non stop!), and then we always say we'll "celebrate" when the project is done, but we never do just on to the next project :/
chollida1 2y ago
I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming your free time if you don't set boundaries, all have deadlines that lead to stress. >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years?
- itronitron 2y ago
  Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information (i.e. flu, back issues, mental wellness, etc...) . It would benefit a lot of people if they were taught basic laws related to employment while they are in school.
  - nsguy 2y ago
    Different in every country.
  - cheema33 2y ago
    > Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information. We had an employee that used this technique. Too often. When the company needed to lay off people to cut costs, their name got on the layoff list before anybody else's. Businesses are not charities. They need to make money. And if an employee is not pulling their weight, sooner or later they will be let go. Using the law to extend your stay can only go so far.
- hayst4ck 2y ago
AppleBananaPie 2y ago
I have experienced most of what you have written about and have taken many similar steps :) The major difference being I would describe myself still at the level of a juniorish engineer. My only addition and I'm very curious as to your opinion: I think mental health / physical health is more impactful in software engineering than most other professions. At least for me, if I'm sick it directly impacts my working memory and ability to focus. I always tell my friends I could do yard work just fine, yeah I'd feel like crap still but I could do it. If I'm trying to code something difficult often times I can end up making zero progress or arguably negative progress if I'm sick long enough as I lose context of code changing around me. The same holds true if I'm stressed or anxious or whatever. This can probably become a cycle with the things you mentioned that makes it easy to trend downward. Thanks for sharing your story :)
whoomp12341 2y ago
mental health issues in swe can be rampant and it is a superset of just anxiety / burnout
calderwoodra 2y ago
My wife is a dentist in the bay area - she can tell which patients work in tech based on how ground down their teeth are.
- wobbly_bush 2y ago
  Same thing doesn't happen to say lawyers? Or any of the other white collar jobs?
  - calderwoodra 2y ago
    It might, she just sees a lot of tech workers given the area and she's the "get to know you" kind of dentist so she's not just guessing who has what career.
- cedws 2y ago
  I've got a story about that. All of the tops of my teeths are worn down to the enamel and have been since a young age. My jaw (TMJ joint) on one side has permanent damage resulting in a constant clicking when I eat. I visited a dentist to get botox injected into my masseter muscles to force them to relax and reduce wear on my teeth. He told me they were the most powerful masseters he'd ever seen. Developed as a result of unconscious clenching from stress. Even a high dose of botox had a mild effect on them, and the effect is temporary. Not sure I buy it, but indeed the dentist was telling me clenching is common in particular types of work like software engineering because of something to do with brain waves.
w10-1 2y ago
What in software engineering adds more than the usual stress to working? - Automation is the rule, not the exception. Replace your own work with a script, whenever you can. - Our work product in theory works forever (i.e., until conditions change). You really are not needed when you're done. Script monkeys can copy and fix your stuff. - New technologies and platforms: hardware drives software and vice-versa, leading to frequent choices whether to upgrade to enjoy new benefits. Your skills become dated, and the process of upgrading requires whole-world knowledge no one has. - High competition: with low barriers to entry, you can do great stuff but still be a smidge worse, and lose the entire race. Close is crazy-making. - Low management: with automation the professional process, the employee-manager ratio tends to be very high, typically with senior technicians enlisted for administration (which also makes them more compliant). As a result, employees are not buffered from business forces. NO other profession has all or even most of these features. The closest I can think of is the bench scientist (and they might be in a worse position b/c they have very few alternatives). And AI will amplify both automation and new technologies and will likely increase the employee/manager ratio. But ironically, few professions offer as much leeway for mental derangement. I'm shocked how off some people are, but they still function just fine, because the main determinants of productivity is whatever weird programming model evolved at the company: master that, and you can perform well, so long as you avoid triggering your manager or someone important.
- filleduchaos 2y ago
  You can make a list like this of stressors specific to a particular profession that NO other profession has, and all it will really tell you is that every profession has something unique about it. And while I can't speak for every kind of mental health issue, software engineering is not even close to being one of the worst professions when it comes to job-related depression and suicide risk. There are whole fields that are known to turn workers into high-functioning alcoholics (see e.g. hospitality, construction and law). I feel like one has to be pretty deep inside the tech bubble to not realise just how off plenty of people in other professions are.
SrslyJosh 2y ago
To paraphrase a famous quote... "What do you think about mental health in software engineering?" "I think it would be a good idea."
Joel_Mckay 2y ago
Most firms screen for people that will not challenge their existing process. Whether it is "Culture fit" discrimination, neurodivergent specialists being exploited for not being ambitious in traditional ways, and or outright cons ripping off junior staff with insane contracts. White Knight Syndrome is very real... The trick is knowing you have a problem. Best of luck out there, =)
pylua 2y ago
It’s challenging for people because you are often put in positions you can’t control the outcome of. All you can do is your best, and if you fail, there is little safety net to help you. At least in the U.S. major items are tied to your job. You can also be put in situations where people want you to sacrifice like you have equity in the company, but at the same time treat you like you are replaceable. There is also a lot of people that are willing to over promise and blame you when things fail. At the end of the day it is the company over everyone.
StillBored 2y ago
In almost 30 years of software engineering, I came to the conclusion years ago that most deadlines were entirely arbitrary. The business isn't going to fail if you slip a week, or frequently even six months and if it does its probably not the fault of engineering unless its so dysfunctional as to repeatably blow through its own delivery estimates. Sure there are regulatory deadlines, customer POC or delivery deadlines. But, truly hard deadlines won't pop up as "we need this done next week" unless there is something fundamentally wrong with the business/sales side. A good functioning engineering/business unit will know far in advance of those kinds of deadlines and it becomes a question of whether the existing engineering org is capable of delivering the functionality within a heavily padded schedule. Put another way, I don't think i've ever seen a customer walk from a product because it wasn't released on a cadence, in fact many aren't actually happy about upgrades unless they are fixing a problem they have requested. And sales/POC cycles are such that frequently the customer may not actually have an alternative solution, or if they do, the chances they will switch to your product simply because you have X this year instead of next year isn't something that hinges on small factors that can be done by the engineering team in short cycles. You win because the product is better/etc and that doesn't happen overnight. So, stressing and working endless 80 hour weeks likely is going to have the opposite effect and creates a low quality product that people are trying to get rid of because it keeps breaking.
- makk 2y ago
  > most deadlines were entirely arbitrary Yes. As are most tasks, in my experience. Looking back on your almost 30 years, what percent of tasks could have been skipped entirely and, in the long run, it wouldn't have mattered? For me, it's easily >50% ... catch me on a grumpy day and I'd say it's closer to 90%.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Honestly, most companies and projects fail completely. In my 25ish year career I can only think of a handful of lines of code that I've written that are still in production (or that I think might still be in production) and only a few employers that still exist. When you pan out far enough it all seems a bit silly.
tegiddrone 2y ago
I saw Bryan Cantrill's talk on [Intelligence is Not Enough][0] opposing some opinions on AI/ML is gonna do to the industry... but I felt like it touches on some ideas that can relate the topic of mental health as well. Many software shops/enterprises don't value the necessity of embracing failure and making space for curiosity. That's fine, but then these shops should be strict about using Boring Technology they can just buy support for. If such companies have too much product ambition in the mix, then you need to give devs the ability to be engineers by giving them space to fail, try new things, refactor, rewrite. We can't do that when the pressure is on to ship in unsustainable ways! Failure is not an option. We spent all that money writing that MVP, what do you mean you need a team to just maintain it? We have features to build!! Not everyone is competitive enough to work with excellent engineering culture and we trade mental health in for it sometimes. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk
gaolei8888 2y ago
This is an awesome post. I noticed this for long time back, software engineer some time can be very frustrated emotionally by his work, or his code. I really like this topic becoming a serious one. More than that, I hope somebody can come out some idea to resolve this problem
jexe 2y ago
I worked in the Meta NY office for a while, and had a friend living down the block with anxiety, with a prescription to treat it. Sometime during my tenure, her prescription started becoming unfillable; the pharmacies are only legally allowed to carry a limited quantity to combat substance abuse issues. What was happening? Turns out the Meta office was staffing up rapidly and taking more floors in the building, and all of the engineers needing anti-anxiety medication started consuming all of the local supply. This is a serious problem that we do not take seriously. Broadly speaking, startups in particular are aggressive and there's still an air of machismo and bro culture (from which Meta was born) that prevents caring for one another in this way.
bvan 2y ago
Not to be too cheeky, but take javascript out to the woodshed and I expect a marked improvement in mental health all around.
ferociouskite56 2y ago
Glad he quit alcohol as I did at 21. I found out then that marijuana is the best antidepressant and anxiolytic, Xanax second place. But benzos are anticonvulsants with significant withdrawal effects. I dread having a mandatory talk therapist and am not sure how that helps social anxiety. Free book warns to not trust psychiatrists because you may go in for stress and never be allowed out. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw/quackLawApr92024.txt?rlkey=z9y61ogwxonz6q042vu6ddq75&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw/quackLa...
Zavied34 2y ago
Hold On, You are not far away where you will be able to track your mind. We are on the way to develop the device,which will help you to reduce the Mental Stress so far. To know more Visit:- Edenband.io
Czajnikowski 2y ago
Fair. I’ve been there too. Exploitation is our industry standard unfortunately. Like everybody (I suppose) in that position, I’ve been trying to understand the root cause of the problem. IMHO the root cause is in the structure of “teams” and related responsibilities/positiins. I’ve written “teams” in quotation makrs, cause most of them are simoly a group of people without any real shared goal. Real teams are structured in a way that enables real cross-dependence of their members. In a group each member is accountable individually, and individual accountability stands in opposition to team work. If we structure teams to work as teams (together, not alone), and enable collaborative processes and architecture (structure, process and architecture all have to work together) - we enable many ways of support among individuals, and thats where the team gains powers to form a self-awareness and heal itself. Without an intervention of HR, organizing coffee breaks over Zoom half an hour each week, or other nonsense.
nprateem 2y ago
> I was now in charge of a small team of developers, and our startup has made many promises to many partners This was the problem. I saw it myself in one place. The sales guys go out and promise the moon on a stick. After all, they're incentivised to sell, and the won't be one ones stressing to get the job done. They probably have no clue that that one feature they've just agreed to is massively complicated and probably not that important anyway. Unless a decision is made with the CTO/an architect in the loop, forget it. If it was and is unreasonable just tell them and then forget it. You only get stressed if you accept other peoples' made up deadlines. They probably get you to do this with the promise of a meagre bonus or something. Just don't buy into any of that nonsense. The other source of stress for a founder is the illusion of control. Just do what you can and keep shipping. It's a marathon. Be kind on yourself.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
> People not getting their salaries and the company going bankrupt. I think that’s a big enough reason to risk burning out. Like for deadlines : most of the time it isn't. People can get new jobs. You can found a new company. But burnout is like losing a limb : you will never be able to operate at the same level again (not to mention the months it's going to take before you can start do even part-time work again). There are very few situations where such a sacrifice would be worth it. Probably only those involving family members, and consider that after that they will have to deal with your now relatively crippled status for the rest of your life.
mrnobody_ 2y ago
Everybody understand and recognise physically demanding work, but for scientists and more in general for people experiencing that kind of 'stress' it's still hard being recognised. Some of the other fields also have associations and so on, while in our field we are typically on ourselves.
potherca 2y ago
> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” Actually, that is exactly what you _can_ do. It just takes more transparent communication about your needs and desires and more trust and safety within you r company and team...
- cchi_co 2y ago
  You can but there's still stigma surrounding mental health in many workplaces
  - potherca 2y ago
    I agree. As a person with bipolar disorder, that is one of the first "test" when taking a new job. If we can even discuss my mental health, there's no way I'll be able to work there.
potherca 2y ago
I think the conclusion is spot on: > So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn't the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life. Happy people work harder, get more done, are more creative and ill less often. It pays off for employees as well as employers to put life happiness first.
ThinkBeat 2y ago
One of the primary responsiblities as you climb the hierarchy is to protect your team / teams / departments from maniacs in other places fo the hierarchy. That means standing up and saying "No" and sticking to it. Overtime it will show that your people perform better than others since they have a sane person ensuring that they are not on death marches to failure. Or it can mean losing your job, in some instances. What would you rather do? Kill your team by imposing impossivle tasks, due to pressure form the top in order to climb higher in the hierarchy or at least maintain,. Or be straight and honest, and if nescessary take one for the team-+
pradn 2y ago
It might be helpful to catalog a few reasons why software engineering can be so stressful. Many of these are common to other professions as well, to varying degrees. * It's hard to predict how long something will take so you stress out when you take longer. Even if requirements are clear, all sorts of things can delay implementation: debugging, build issues, plugging in dependencies, bugs in underlying libraries. All these can take a limitless amount of time. * Complexity can be overwhelming. Staring at a thousand line, convoluted class can make you shut down, just because it's too much. * Being new and not able to produce at the same level as others. This one hopefully goes away after some time as you ramp up, but you might be new at different projects in the same team. * Changing requirements, increasing scope. * Priority inversion - you depend on another team for your work, but they aren't working on it, and you have to answer for that. * Having to give an update at a status meeting when you know you haven't made as much progress as you'd like. * Feeling bad about your productivity, so you don't take care of yourself (wasting time at night), are tired, and aren't able to be productive the next day. This whole loop can last for a long time if you can't break it. * You can't ask for help because you feel like others will think you're stupid for asking those questions. And you can't make progress bc you really need to know those things. Many of these things are exacerbated by life circumstance, social position, personality, previous mental health history, and management/peers. The way you can improve this stuff for yourself is by having a solid wellness routine (exercise, sleep, diet), good communication with your peers/manager (this is a chicken/egg situation), and pushing for reasonable organizational changes. Of these, only wellness is totally under your control. The others require people around you to change, which may not be possible.
ornornor 2y ago
> We go to the doctor for a physical ailment; why should our mental health be any different? Most health insurance system do seem to think there is a difference. Just like teeth seem to be luxury bones and eyesight is kinda optional. Why aren’t all these things first class in most health systems? Coverage is usually pretty decent for physicians, but if you have a problem with your mind (or teeth, or eyes) then good luck here is a fraction of what the therapy costs and don’t bother us with it again.

383 points by cmpit 2y ago

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

link appears to be dead

CoastalCoder 2y ago
> link appears to be dead Works for me.
ekaryotic 2y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240411131046/https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/mental-health-in-software-engineering/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240411131046/https://vadimkrav...

redmattred 2y ago

“Your lack of planning is not my emergency”

surfingdino 2y ago
"It was. Now you are fired." how it typically goes at startups.
- hiatus 2y ago
  Then the startup has to ramp up a hiring pipeline to backfill or dump the work onto someone else. Either way they won't get what they want.
- np- 2y ago
  A startup that is firing engineers on the spot who dare to disagree probably won't last much longer anyway. Best of luck with their "critical" deadline then...?
- willcipriano 2y ago
  I was worried about getting fired at these sort of places until I saw how they behaved when I quit a few of them.
- georgyserga 2y ago
  Or you just miss promotions, raises, bonuses because you didn't do enough, "moderate impact"
falcor84 2y ago
I must say that I prefer the slightly longer wording: "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine"

datadrivenangel 2y ago

"An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen." At a certain point you have to just build a queue and start the next highest priority thing next. Too much WIP kills you.

submain 2y ago
As a manager, if upstream changes priorities on me but what we’re working on is almost done, I just go ahead and finish it anyways. When they eventually switch back to the original thing they are always surprised to know it’s been completed.
- classified 2y ago
  Bad tactics. You let them make stupid mistakes with impunity. That way they'll never learn.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Worse is when it's a salesman, not the CEO. It's infuriating. I always wanted to tell that salesman that he got to go back to the customer and tell them that we weren't going to do it, since he was the one who promised it without finding out whether and when we could do it. Of course, I never had the clout to force that to happen...
- Clubber 2y ago
  It's always sales it seems. We're doing stuff under the gun right now because sales promised a huge new client we had something that wasn't ready yet. They didn't bother to ask us, they just promised so they could get their commission.
  - 2y ago

edding4500 2y ago

Kudos for speaking out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI

vlan0 2y ago

>So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn't the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life. This is so important. Our work is an extension of us. Our state in the moment will bleed into all areas of life. There is nothing more important. As we are limitless potential. But only if we are living in the here and now.

west0n 2y ago

As the founder and CEO of a two-year-old startup, seeking certainty in the direction amidst uncertainty (determining which products can bring customers and profits) should become my instinct.

cjk2 2y ago

I'll dump this one here as it's still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I'm sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you're reading this) and described what he'd managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn't possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he'd assumed that if it worked for a couple of steps in Excel it'd be fine up to a few hundred. I scribbled out the mathematics a few times, wrote some prototype code and no the scalability characteristics approached "all the energy in the universe" levels of compute pretty quickly. O(wtf!). So I go back to him and he accused me of lying and went and told the CEO. The CEO, a pretty chill guy with a doctorate, I was expecting to have a rational discussion about with but not he screamed at me too. I was downtrodden emotionally so I sheepishly said yeah I'll have another look and went back and started at it for another couple of days. No it was impossible. At that point I was stuck in a situation. I've got unemployment on one side and I've got getting screamed at inevitably. I just sat there in a depressed little hole with no options. I was angry, isolated and had no one sympathetic around. I suspect many people end up here. Slept really badly that night. Woke up, got in the car and drove into the office. Got half way and got distracted by a cafe and decided I'd get breakfast and think some more about it. Sitting there eating a fat sausace, something just went ping, I SMS'ed John and the CEO with "fuck you I quit". I moved back in with my parents, did fuck all for 6 months, got another job, which was 80% less shit and the company I worked for went down the shitter about a year later because they couldn't deliver it. If you feel like shit in a job, just leave. It's not worth it.

TimPC 2y ago
It's good advice if you have the appropriate financial resources or support network, but plenty of us don't have the option to move back in with our parents for six months and need to adult on hard-mode.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Sometimes you don't leave by choice and staying ahead of the layoff treadmill takes its own toll on mental health. Probably doesn't hurt to patch things up with the parents if possible.

xyst 2y ago

This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit. No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”/“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree. At the same time, I would likely fail in the same way if given the position. Albeit, to a much lesser degree. I think management often puts us in these impossible positions without any good reason other than “to look good to X.” What’s even worse if it’s was just to earn fucking brownie points with some no name mid level director. This is why I think unions in tech would be great. To set realistic expectations, approach management from a collective point of view. Unfortunately companies today only aim to get that VC money with a quick exit and IPO. I think the general sentiment amongst the vultures is a union would make the quick exit less of a reality.

paulcole 2y ago
> Always doing shit themselves This is one of the most counterintuitive things about leadership roles IMO. If you get promoted there, it’s often because you got a lot of things done yourself in an IC role. And then the fewer things you do yourself, the better off you, the company, and your reports are once you’re in a leadership role. So you have to learn that feeling idle compared to what you used to feel like isn’t a sign that you’re doing a bad job.
- bluGill 2y ago
  In addition as a leader your best use is often to be interrupted with questions from junior engineers. This means you can never (or rarely) get into a flow where you are productive, as you are getting close someone interrupts your thought with a question. As such if you have time to work on engineering (which you should make to stay sharp) it needs to be something unimportant to the business so that you can be late. Trying to add a new warning to your static analysis tool, checking out the latest framework to see if you should switch to it in the future - and other such things that you really want and long term are good but short term won't pay the bills.

your_mommy 2y ago

industrial revolution broke backs, tech revolution breaks brains

Bloating 2y ago
That makes sense... And the preeminent result of the tech revolution: social media.

CartyBoston 2y ago

This piece teaches me almost nothing about Vadim but shows me a ton about the environment he worked in. Someone built that culture, who are they? Why did they do it? Was Vadim complicit? Why did he feel so little control? Hustle culture is not challenging, it does not help anyone grow, it simply exploits people. It's common, banal stuff.

paulcole 2y ago

> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” “I’m taking the day off.” Your coworkers don’t need a reason. If your employer demands one, then that’s a different issue.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago
At my current job, I can. Up to three days a year, I can take a mental health day and charge it to sick time. Note well: I have never had this at any other job. But if you need the day, take the day, even if it has to be vacation.
- paulcole 2y ago
  My point is that no individual you work with (again aside from perhaps HR if the company is hella annoying) needs to know if it’s a mental health day or if you have the flu or whatever. It’s not their business. Just say you’re not going to be there.
kayodelycaon 2y ago
I like using Out of Office for everything not work related. It shows up when anyone tries to schedule a random meeting on me. This is also a rare circumstance where having a disability is an advantage. Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask. I wish it didn't require having a disability to be treated like a human being instead of a disposable resource on somebody's balance sheet.
- paulcole 2y ago
  I just say "Taking PTO today." > Companies are legally required to allow me to prioritize my health over my job without discriminating against me. They aren't allowed to ask. Assuming you're not in the US? In the US, companies are required to provide reasonable accommodations for disabilities as part of ADA but can and (often) do ask for documentation of the disability and the specific accommodation requested.

hrnnnnnn 2y ago

> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” You can. I started doing this years ago and it has been an overall positive experience. Others on my team told me about their own struggles because I took the initiative to open up about mine.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

HumblyTossed 2y ago

>You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” Yes, you can. You can say you need a mental health day. Adults will understand.

sesm 2y ago
In most companies I worked for the standard "I'm not feeling well today, taking a day off" was enough. Nobody asked for details.
- albert_e 2y ago
  one of the big companies recently replaced "sick leave" (only you can be sick to avail this, not a family member you care for) with "wellbeing leave" (you dont feel up to a day at work, take the day off - no questions asked) and doubled them from 5 days a year to 10 days a year. I am usually cynical about big corporates and their people policies, but this is one I can applaud.
  - fnordian_slip 2y ago
    5 vs 10 days is still ridiculous imho. I've just read an overview about the us system [0], and it does seem rather absurd, when you're looking at it from a German perspective. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_leave
    - taejavu 2y ago
      I’m in Australia and get 10 days. However, at my company, I could use all 10 at once without having to see a doctor. Can you do that in your company in Germany?
      - fnordian_slip 2y ago
        No, you need to see a doctor if it's more than 3 days, though I don't find that much of a problem in practice, even for mental health stuff.

surfingdino 2y ago

I used to be in (moderate) awe of young college drop-out CEOs. Then I worked for a couple of them. Now I refuse to work for startups that have 20-somethings at the top, because they really do not know how to manage or lead. They are motivated by fear of failure and having accomplished nothing so far they treat others like garbage. Avoid.

lenerdenator 2y ago
The phenomenon of showing up at Stanford and telling some 21-year-old that he's Jesus Christ and that you're going to give him millions of dollars is a wen on the American business culture matched only by corporate raiding. It's the nerd version of college football/basketball recruiting.
- jongjong 2y ago
  It's so weird. I started to think that maybe this is intentional. It looks as though investors want to invest only in over-optimistic people who believe that we're living in some kind of utopian paradise; at the same time they avoid investing in anyone who has had so much of a faint whiff of how the sausage gets made. It's like the entire system is desperate to keep optimists optimistic and pessimists pessimistic. Why is it that investors actively seek out starry-eyed individuals? It sounds like an economic bubble factory. If every new person who joins elite circles is optimistic to a delusional level, then that level of optimism may be contagious and propagate delusional beliefs among the elite. There are people in the tech sector who were very successful decades ago and are now in their 40s and still haven't come out of their highs. They have the same worldview as I had when I was 15.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    Not investors: venture capital investors in tech. It's a particular kind of investment in a particular industry. Tech VC's are in the business of selling business futures, not building mature businesses. The buyer they sell to can install a practical CEO and worry about actual operations when that time comes. In the meantime, enthusiastic kids provide a relatively cheap, manipulable, supply of powerpoints and pizazz -- whereas sober, mature professionals often need more personal income and tend to focus more on executing the business that they have experience in (mostly irrelevant to the VC's own business) instead of matching the investment pitch for upcoming rounds (all that matters).

dvas 2y ago

I think it is so important to be able to disconnect from whatever it is that we are doing, even for a very short period of time. Go for a walk, brew a coffee or simply close your eyes and breathe. Many times, stress is created artificially. It hurts our performance and deteriorates our ability to think. Encountered numerous situations where work was "urgent" and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this "crunch". After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3/4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time. Apathy begins to set in after management/decision makers keep on giving these gifts we call "crunches". To help the company and go the extra mile is something most of us have done in the past and will possibly do in the future. However, it's like the story of the boy who cried wolf, if everything is urgent and every task is to be done NOW, then there are bigger issues at play. Like everything in life, there is usually a limit/budget of money, time and effort. By abusing these limits and tolerances, people will lose respect for the people crying wolf and will put less effort into their work.

snarf21 2y ago
This is the hardest lesson to learn. Sometimes you won't be afforded the ability to do it "right", either for the company or the product or the customer. Eventually, you'll decide to just show up and ask what is most important today and work on that. Then clock out completely when your work is done and go find meaning and personal satisfaction in your personal life. Go exercise or volunteer or get a hobby or be present for your family. The best way to have work/life balance is to separate them. This is also one of the reasons why I hate wfh. The drive to/from is a great separator and decompressor for me.
- life-and-quiet 2y ago
  I think this is so hard to learn because it's counter to human nature, and only necessary due to the artificial conditions of the modern world. We're programmed to want to be useful to our tribe. But we don't live in tribes any more. Our brains get confused and burnt out because we perform and perform and perform, but we don't get love and status and security in return, we just get this abstract thing called money, which it doesn't really understand.

arnonejoe 2y ago

The way to get around some of this is to work on contract. I have found I am most free being a contractor. I go in to the gig knowing it has a definite end and do not care about any of the internal politics. It’s not a perfect solution but much better than being an employee where I have granted a company a monopoly on my time.

kortilla 2y ago
How do you find gigs that actually pay like FTEs?
- tossandthrow 2y ago
  at least where I am at, the contractor rate is more than double the FTE rate.
  - jghn 2y ago
    Yes. Contractors typically get more per hour. It still works out cheaper for the company as they don't have to pay for the benefits, PTO, and that sort of thing. And of course the contractor still has to pay for insurance, covering their own PTO, etc.
    - tossandthrow 2y ago
      I think it is a bit different depending on you country. I believe it is comparable in the us with the steep Healthcare prices. in Europe it usually makes sense to contract if you only have smaller projects.
      - jajko 2y ago
        Did both in few parts of Europe. Initially its normally better to contract (but you need to have some chops, nobody hires juniors on contract), but not all countries make this easy or even viable. Once you want to settle, if you want to settle, permanent job under normal circumstances offers better overall package. Maybe not outright amounts, but if you count in things like sickness, holidays, off for kids, social contributions, being treated better among colleagues, and for me personally having much more freedom whenever personal I need to do like bureaucracy (but that may be current circumstance only).

coldtea 2y ago

>This was my perfect storm in 2017 — I was trying to control all of the uncertainty around me: (...) Trying to control the looming unrealistic deadlines. Writing a lot of the code myself to ensure we uphold our promises to stakeholders and none of our developers burn out. Which led to me working more and sleeping less. Worrying about next month’s payroll and trying to control our runway. Maintaining developer velocity and tight budgets, juggling future growth and current issues. Trying to control our developer turnover and making sure our juniors grow. There were days I'd be coding non-stop or in a series of back-to-back meetings, forgetting meals, sleeping, and even what it felt like to relax. Sounds like trying to cope at a shitty nightmare job at a shitty company, and blaming yourself.

Ozzie_osman 2y ago

One thing I've realized more and more over the years: it's the operational roles (infra, SRE, Devops) that are actually most stressful. Sure, if you're building product, you get deadlines, but they are predictable and they come and go. But being oncall for a shakey infra stack? That shit is hell. No deadlines, just the threat of incidents or downtime at any time of day.

alexey-salmin 2y ago
You can develop a product and also do Ops for it, getting the best of two worlds.
mac-chaffee 2y ago
It's especially frustrating that I firmly believe operations is a solved problem, but good luck getting a company to adopt the practices that every other mature tech company has already figured out.

sanitycheck 2y ago

It's too triggering to do any more than skim the article, but having got the general gist of at least some of it, I shall write my top tip here in case it helps anyone (who manages to do it): Negotiate prohibitively high overtime rates.

j33zusjuice 2y ago
Early in my career, I worked with a consultant who charged time and a half after hours, and double time after midnight. Every change we did was at like 10pm, and hardly any of them ever went well. I hope to one day find a way to do what he did.
- dboreham 2y ago
  This is what psychologists call "a boundary", and there's nothing secret about how it works: you just don't do the thing your abuser is asking you to do.

dakiol 2y ago

Morale of the story: don’t apply for a CTO position. Apply for CEO: more money, less pressure, and you get to be as incompetent as you want.

AlexandrB 2y ago
What I don't get is it sounds like he accepted the CEO's edicts unquestioningly: > This one time, for example, when our deployment crashed halfway through right before a major release. The CEO emphasized how important this project was, so we were all hands on deck, trying to get it back up, fearing the worst, that the client would go ballistic if he found out we were delaying the release. I was stressing big time, thinking we had to pull off a miracle, and of course we did. > But you know what? After all that chaos, it turned out the relevant stakeholders were away on vacation that week, and the release wasn't even checked for many days after that. A CTO should have some power to push back and set priorities. If you're just doing what you're told you're not really a CTO but a team lead with a fancy title. This a general problem with young people in leadership positions. They don't have the confidence to say no as often as they should nor the perspective to identify what's really important - every setback feels cataclysmic.
- joelfried 2y ago
  > A CTO should have some power to push back and set priorities. If you're just doing what you're told you're not really a CTO but a team lead with a fancy title. > > This a general problem with young people in leadership positions. Agreed wholeheartedly on both points, though I'd say a general problem with people new to leadership positions rather than make it about age. Society as it exists now (at least as I've experienced it) is very strong on rule following and it's a pretty massive shift to be the person setting the rules. The CEO should've been empowering, too, and it might well be a symptom of the same malady: imagining the way you want things done, then pushing harder and harder until the world is that way regardless of cost. Human psychic cost is real and will cost you your best people. Consider instead if the CEO said to the team "We definitely need this done, but I don't want you to burn yourselves out. Please keep at it as your top priority during working hours, all other goals are on pause until we have a release, and keep me up to date at the end of each day with progress until we're there. I don't want anyone working after hours. Don't worry about the client; I'll handle them." When the story unfolds from there the client doesn't even notice, the team feels supported and heard, and the work still gets done. Everyone wins.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

I wish this person luck. I won't make any comments on their fitness/accomplishments/whatever. I am not in their shoes, and can only appreciate the honesty of their exposition (which they seem to be embracing and using as their platform). > In business, there’s no place for perfection. There’s no space for having everything under control. In fact, not only can’t you influence most of the things around you, but most of the things are uncertain. I have found this to be true for life, in general; especially when dealing with other people.

Tade0 2y ago

> An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can't be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen. Hardly. What I've found to work best in such scenarios is to always chop up the task at hand to essentials and nice-to-haves[0]. If another task comes up before you're finished, chop it up as well and ask your leadership what's more important: the essentials from this new task or nice-to-haves from that previous one. It's never the nice-to-haves. Also it always helps to not promise something you can't deliver - this applies to every level in the hierarchy. [0] Sometimes, if essentials are the vast majority, you can produce versions of them which are simpler, but still workable from a business perspective, and have bringing the full-featured versions as a nice-to-have.

whb101 2y ago

It's great when this stuff is talked about. The action item is always disappointing: some flavor of "take care of yourself." If we were trees in a forest fire, then yes. Making ourselves more fireproof is the best we can do. We're not trees, though, are we?

keybored 2y ago

A mental health article about the rank & file? Not about bloviators? > , especially those of us who've taken on the challenge of leadership. Nope.

dboreham 2y ago

I've come to believe that there's something about the practice of software development that causes, or can cause mental illness. I've seen a few colleagues over the decades have some very serious issues. It's really quite a serious problem in our industry, imho.

PodgieTar 2y ago
I think Software Engineering attracts neurodivergent people. I am an adhd software engineer, and know a disproportionate amount of adhd software engineers. I think that level of executive dysfunction and “catchup” is problematic
- adamc 2y ago
  I have a hypothesis about that, based on prior battles with depression. A characteristic of many people who struggle with depression is revisiting things over and over in your mind, looking for what is often a non-existent solution. This is a very, very useful trait in a software engineer. It helps us think of solutions to hard problems, to see options that are not initially obvious. But it also enables mental illness when you encounter problems that cannot be solved that way -- for me, it was divorce. But life is full of intractable problems.
  - norir 2y ago
    Yes and to add to this, I think also the longer you stay in the industry, the more you realize that the industry itself has intractable problems (at least on the scale at which you can effect change). The tension is whether or not to accept those problems or leave the industry. Unfortunately, I also think that many of the problems are both simultaneously solvable and intractable at the same time, which is particularly crazy making if one is so inclined.
  - sh_hike 2y ago
    +1 I spent most of my childhood and teenage years feeling depressed due to traumatic experiences. I failed at mostly everything until I started programming. I took some mushrooms last year that helped me stop this constant cycle of repeating thoughts.

lxe 2y ago

I haven't worked in a team or with a manager that wasn't receptive and empathetic to burnout or more serious mental health concerns. Guess I got lucky.

Draiken 2y ago
Could they actually do something about it? What I found in my career is that the good managers do empathize and even sometimes try to improve the situation, but they simply can't. More often than not the cause of the issues come from decisions done at the top levels of the company.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

In the unforgiving realm of tech, where deadlines loom like tempests and demands soar higher than the tallest spires, a tale unfolds of a coder besieged by the storms of expectation. Leadership, with eyes set on horizons unseen, oft chart courses riddled with contradiction, whispering of features promised to titans, each deemed the pinnacle of priority. Yet, amidst the clamor for creation, a truth, stark and unyielding, emerges: to elevate two masters to the zenith is to court the abyss. Thus, ensnared in this labyrinth of urgency, our protagonist wrestles with the specter of impossibility, urged ever onward by the mantra, "Make it so." A counsel of despair, for within the crucible of incessant toil, the spirit wanes and the flesh wearies. In this odyssey of turmoil, the narrative delves deep into the quagmire of mental strife that ensnares those who toil in the shadow of unyielding expectation. It casts a light on the sanctity of boundaries, the paramount importance of safeguarding one's inner citadel, and the somber realization that, though we may strive with Herculean fervor, the fates of our endeavors lie beyond the realm of our dominion. Herein lies a clarion call to the sentinels of the digital frontier: to honor the sanctity of mind and spirit, to question the altars of perpetual labor upon which we lay our offerings, and to seek a horizon where success is measured not by the quantity of our toil, but by the quality of our lives.

JTbane 2y ago

Anyone else feel like agile is partially to blame? The constant treadmill of work items, the stress of getting things done before sprint end, the demos failing, the anxiety when you get a bug report?

fullstackchris 2y ago
yep, two week sprints with no break in between (I can't think of any sporting event where you sprint non stop!), and then we always say we'll "celebrate" when the project is done, but we never do just on to the next project :/

chollida1 2y ago

I'm not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is. All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are. All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming your free time if you don't set boundaries, all have deadlines that lead to stress. >You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP. I'm now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn't but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule. Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years?

itronitron 2y ago
Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information (i.e. flu, back issues, mental wellness, etc...) . It would benefit a lot of people if they were taught basic laws related to employment while they are in school.
- nsguy 2y ago
  Different in every country.
- cheema33 2y ago
  > Many people don't know that they can tell their manager they will be out for health/medical reasons and do not have to provide any additional information. We had an employee that used this technique. Too often. When the company needed to lay off people to cut costs, their name got on the layoff list before anybody else's. Businesses are not charities. They need to make money. And if an employee is not pulling their weight, sooner or later they will be let go. Using the law to extend your stay can only go so far.
hayst4ck 2y ago

AppleBananaPie 2y ago

I have experienced most of what you have written about and have taken many similar steps :) The major difference being I would describe myself still at the level of a juniorish engineer. My only addition and I'm very curious as to your opinion: I think mental health / physical health is more impactful in software engineering than most other professions. At least for me, if I'm sick it directly impacts my working memory and ability to focus. I always tell my friends I could do yard work just fine, yeah I'd feel like crap still but I could do it. If I'm trying to code something difficult often times I can end up making zero progress or arguably negative progress if I'm sick long enough as I lose context of code changing around me. The same holds true if I'm stressed or anxious or whatever. This can probably become a cycle with the things you mentioned that makes it easy to trend downward. Thanks for sharing your story :)

whoomp12341 2y ago

mental health issues in swe can be rampant and it is a superset of just anxiety / burnout

calderwoodra 2y ago

My wife is a dentist in the bay area - she can tell which patients work in tech based on how ground down their teeth are.

wobbly_bush 2y ago
Same thing doesn't happen to say lawyers? Or any of the other white collar jobs?
- calderwoodra 2y ago
  It might, she just sees a lot of tech workers given the area and she's the "get to know you" kind of dentist so she's not just guessing who has what career.
cedws 2y ago
I've got a story about that. All of the tops of my teeths are worn down to the enamel and have been since a young age. My jaw (TMJ joint) on one side has permanent damage resulting in a constant clicking when I eat. I visited a dentist to get botox injected into my masseter muscles to force them to relax and reduce wear on my teeth. He told me they were the most powerful masseters he'd ever seen. Developed as a result of unconscious clenching from stress. Even a high dose of botox had a mild effect on them, and the effect is temporary. Not sure I buy it, but indeed the dentist was telling me clenching is common in particular types of work like software engineering because of something to do with brain waves.

w10-1 2y ago

What in software engineering adds more than the usual stress to working? - Automation is the rule, not the exception. Replace your own work with a script, whenever you can. - Our work product in theory works forever (i.e., until conditions change). You really are not needed when you're done. Script monkeys can copy and fix your stuff. - New technologies and platforms: hardware drives software and vice-versa, leading to frequent choices whether to upgrade to enjoy new benefits. Your skills become dated, and the process of upgrading requires whole-world knowledge no one has. - High competition: with low barriers to entry, you can do great stuff but still be a smidge worse, and lose the entire race. Close is crazy-making. - Low management: with automation the professional process, the employee-manager ratio tends to be very high, typically with senior technicians enlisted for administration (which also makes them more compliant). As a result, employees are not buffered from business forces. NO other profession has all or even most of these features. The closest I can think of is the bench scientist (and they might be in a worse position b/c they have very few alternatives). And AI will amplify both automation and new technologies and will likely increase the employee/manager ratio. But ironically, few professions offer as much leeway for mental derangement. I'm shocked how off some people are, but they still function just fine, because the main determinants of productivity is whatever weird programming model evolved at the company: master that, and you can perform well, so long as you avoid triggering your manager or someone important.

filleduchaos 2y ago
You can make a list like this of stressors specific to a particular profession that NO other profession has, and all it will really tell you is that every profession has something unique about it. And while I can't speak for every kind of mental health issue, software engineering is not even close to being one of the worst professions when it comes to job-related depression and suicide risk. There are whole fields that are known to turn workers into high-functioning alcoholics (see e.g. hospitality, construction and law). I feel like one has to be pretty deep inside the tech bubble to not realise just how off plenty of people in other professions are.

SrslyJosh 2y ago

To paraphrase a famous quote... "What do you think about mental health in software engineering?" "I think it would be a good idea."

Joel_Mckay 2y ago

Most firms screen for people that will not challenge their existing process. Whether it is "Culture fit" discrimination, neurodivergent specialists being exploited for not being ambitious in traditional ways, and or outright cons ripping off junior staff with insane contracts. White Knight Syndrome is very real... The trick is knowing you have a problem. Best of luck out there, =)

pylua 2y ago

It’s challenging for people because you are often put in positions you can’t control the outcome of. All you can do is your best, and if you fail, there is little safety net to help you. At least in the U.S. major items are tied to your job. You can also be put in situations where people want you to sacrifice like you have equity in the company, but at the same time treat you like you are replaceable. There is also a lot of people that are willing to over promise and blame you when things fail. At the end of the day it is the company over everyone.

StillBored 2y ago

In almost 30 years of software engineering, I came to the conclusion years ago that most deadlines were entirely arbitrary. The business isn't going to fail if you slip a week, or frequently even six months and if it does its probably not the fault of engineering unless its so dysfunctional as to repeatably blow through its own delivery estimates. Sure there are regulatory deadlines, customer POC or delivery deadlines. But, truly hard deadlines won't pop up as "we need this done next week" unless there is something fundamentally wrong with the business/sales side. A good functioning engineering/business unit will know far in advance of those kinds of deadlines and it becomes a question of whether the existing engineering org is capable of delivering the functionality within a heavily padded schedule. Put another way, I don't think i've ever seen a customer walk from a product because it wasn't released on a cadence, in fact many aren't actually happy about upgrades unless they are fixing a problem they have requested. And sales/POC cycles are such that frequently the customer may not actually have an alternative solution, or if they do, the chances they will switch to your product simply because you have X this year instead of next year isn't something that hinges on small factors that can be done by the engineering team in short cycles. You win because the product is better/etc and that doesn't happen overnight. So, stressing and working endless 80 hour weeks likely is going to have the opposite effect and creates a low quality product that people are trying to get rid of because it keeps breaking.

makk 2y ago
> most deadlines were entirely arbitrary Yes. As are most tasks, in my experience. Looking back on your almost 30 years, what percent of tasks could have been skipped entirely and, in the long run, it wouldn't have mattered? For me, it's easily >50% ... catch me on a grumpy day and I'd say it's closer to 90%.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Honestly, most companies and projects fail completely. In my 25ish year career I can only think of a handful of lines of code that I've written that are still in production (or that I think might still be in production) and only a few employers that still exist. When you pan out far enough it all seems a bit silly.

tegiddrone 2y ago

I saw Bryan Cantrill's talk on [Intelligence is Not Enough][0] opposing some opinions on AI/ML is gonna do to the industry... but I felt like it touches on some ideas that can relate the topic of mental health as well. Many software shops/enterprises don't value the necessity of embracing failure and making space for curiosity. That's fine, but then these shops should be strict about using Boring Technology they can just buy support for. If such companies have too much product ambition in the mix, then you need to give devs the ability to be engineers by giving them space to fail, try new things, refactor, rewrite. We can't do that when the pressure is on to ship in unsustainable ways! Failure is not an option. We spent all that money writing that MVP, what do you mean you need a team to just maintain it? We have features to build!! Not everyone is competitive enough to work with excellent engineering culture and we trade mental health in for it sometimes. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk

gaolei8888 2y ago

This is an awesome post. I noticed this for long time back, software engineer some time can be very frustrated emotionally by his work, or his code. I really like this topic becoming a serious one. More than that, I hope somebody can come out some idea to resolve this problem

jexe 2y ago

I worked in the Meta NY office for a while, and had a friend living down the block with anxiety, with a prescription to treat it. Sometime during my tenure, her prescription started becoming unfillable; the pharmacies are only legally allowed to carry a limited quantity to combat substance abuse issues. What was happening? Turns out the Meta office was staffing up rapidly and taking more floors in the building, and all of the engineers needing anti-anxiety medication started consuming all of the local supply. This is a serious problem that we do not take seriously. Broadly speaking, startups in particular are aggressive and there's still an air of machismo and bro culture (from which Meta was born) that prevents caring for one another in this way.

bvan 2y ago

Not to be too cheeky, but take javascript out to the woodshed and I expect a marked improvement in mental health all around.

ferociouskite56 2y ago

Glad he quit alcohol as I did at 21. I found out then that marijuana is the best antidepressant and anxiolytic, Xanax second place. But benzos are anticonvulsants with significant withdrawal effects. I dread having a mandatory talk therapist and am not sure how that helps social anxiety. Free book warns to not trust psychiatrists because you may go in for stress and never be allowed out. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw/quackLawApr92024.txt?rlkey=z9y61ogwxonz6q042vu6ddq75&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw/quackLa...

Zavied34 2y ago

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Czajnikowski 2y ago

Fair. I’ve been there too. Exploitation is our industry standard unfortunately. Like everybody (I suppose) in that position, I’ve been trying to understand the root cause of the problem. IMHO the root cause is in the structure of “teams” and related responsibilities/positiins. I’ve written “teams” in quotation makrs, cause most of them are simoly a group of people without any real shared goal. Real teams are structured in a way that enables real cross-dependence of their members. In a group each member is accountable individually, and individual accountability stands in opposition to team work. If we structure teams to work as teams (together, not alone), and enable collaborative processes and architecture (structure, process and architecture all have to work together) - we enable many ways of support among individuals, and thats where the team gains powers to form a self-awareness and heal itself. Without an intervention of HR, organizing coffee breaks over Zoom half an hour each week, or other nonsense.

nprateem 2y ago

> I was now in charge of a small team of developers, and our startup has made many promises to many partners This was the problem. I saw it myself in one place. The sales guys go out and promise the moon on a stick. After all, they're incentivised to sell, and the won't be one ones stressing to get the job done. They probably have no clue that that one feature they've just agreed to is massively complicated and probably not that important anyway. Unless a decision is made with the CTO/an architect in the loop, forget it. If it was and is unreasonable just tell them and then forget it. You only get stressed if you accept other peoples' made up deadlines. They probably get you to do this with the promise of a meagre bonus or something. Just don't buy into any of that nonsense. The other source of stress for a founder is the illusion of control. Just do what you can and keep shipping. It's a marathon. Be kind on yourself.

BlueTemplar 2y ago

> People not getting their salaries and the company going bankrupt. I think that’s a big enough reason to risk burning out. Like for deadlines : most of the time it isn't. People can get new jobs. You can found a new company. But burnout is like losing a limb : you will never be able to operate at the same level again (not to mention the months it's going to take before you can start do even part-time work again). There are very few situations where such a sacrifice would be worth it. Probably only those involving family members, and consider that after that they will have to deal with your now relatively crippled status for the rest of your life.

mrnobody_ 2y ago

Everybody understand and recognise physically demanding work, but for scientists and more in general for people experiencing that kind of 'stress' it's still hard being recognised. Some of the other fields also have associations and so on, while in our field we are typically on ourselves.

potherca 2y ago

> You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.” Actually, that is exactly what you _can_ do. It just takes more transparent communication about your needs and desires and more trust and safety within you r company and team...

cchi_co 2y ago
You can but there's still stigma surrounding mental health in many workplaces
- potherca 2y ago
  I agree. As a person with bipolar disorder, that is one of the first "test" when taking a new job. If we can even discuss my mental health, there's no way I'll be able to work there.

potherca 2y ago

I think the conclusion is spot on: > So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn't the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life. Happy people work harder, get more done, are more creative and ill less often. It pays off for employees as well as employers to put life happiness first.

ThinkBeat 2y ago

One of the primary responsiblities as you climb the hierarchy is to protect your team / teams / departments from maniacs in other places fo the hierarchy. That means standing up and saying "No" and sticking to it. Overtime it will show that your people perform better than others since they have a sane person ensuring that they are not on death marches to failure. Or it can mean losing your job, in some instances. What would you rather do? Kill your team by imposing impossivle tasks, due to pressure form the top in order to climb higher in the hierarchy or at least maintain,. Or be straight and honest, and if nescessary take one for the team-+

pradn 2y ago

It might be helpful to catalog a few reasons why software engineering can be so stressful. Many of these are common to other professions as well, to varying degrees. * It's hard to predict how long something will take so you stress out when you take longer. Even if requirements are clear, all sorts of things can delay implementation: debugging, build issues, plugging in dependencies, bugs in underlying libraries. All these can take a limitless amount of time. * Complexity can be overwhelming. Staring at a thousand line, convoluted class can make you shut down, just because it's too much. * Being new and not able to produce at the same level as others. This one hopefully goes away after some time as you ramp up, but you might be new at different projects in the same team. * Changing requirements, increasing scope. * Priority inversion - you depend on another team for your work, but they aren't working on it, and you have to answer for that. * Having to give an update at a status meeting when you know you haven't made as much progress as you'd like. * Feeling bad about your productivity, so you don't take care of yourself (wasting time at night), are tired, and aren't able to be productive the next day. This whole loop can last for a long time if you can't break it. * You can't ask for help because you feel like others will think you're stupid for asking those questions. And you can't make progress bc you really need to know those things. Many of these things are exacerbated by life circumstance, social position, personality, previous mental health history, and management/peers. The way you can improve this stuff for yourself is by having a solid wellness routine (exercise, sleep, diet), good communication with your peers/manager (this is a chicken/egg situation), and pushing for reasonable organizational changes. Of these, only wellness is totally under your control. The others require people around you to change, which may not be possible.

ornornor 2y ago

> We go to the doctor for a physical ailment; why should our mental health be any different? Most health insurance system do seem to think there is a difference. Just like teeth seem to be luxury bones and eyesight is kinda optional. Why aren’t all these things first class in most health systems? Coverage is usually pretty decent for physicians, but if you have a problem with your mind (or teeth, or eyes) then good luck here is a fraction of what the therapy costs and don’t bother us with it again.