7 ms·

Early on in my career (I was a late bloomer and already in early 30's) as a developer, I got burnt out pretty bad twice. After the second time and teetering on

Early on in my career (I was a late bloomer and already in early 30's) as a developer, I got burnt out pretty bad twice. After the second time and teetering on a third, I knew I had to do something to change what I was doing and how I managed my work load. I just focused on getting MY stuff done and that was it. I stopped taking on other's people work. I stopped taking on more work once I got my stuff done. I would do exactly what a Sprint called for. Nothing more, nothing less. If I finished early with my tasks, I would stretch out the time and just tell the scrum master I was close, but not done yet, but always finished on time. I basically just did what was required of me. I wasn't out to impress anybody, I just became "Mr. Dependable" on any of the teams I worked on. This was the approach that changed everything. Now, some ten years later? I'm never too high or too low. I still do the same thing, I still just do what is asked of me and that's it. 5pm every night? Laptop gets turned off. Friday at 6pm? Laptop is off for the entire weekend. I turn it back on right before my meetings on Monday. Separating my personal life from my work life with a hard delimiter was paramount. I found out that if you don't protect your sanity and your own well being, people will take advantage of you and your time and it will never end. Once you break the cycle and get that time back for yourself? You'll make sure you never willingly give it to someone else ever again. Protect yourself. Protect your sanity. Once you lose it, like OP said, it's very, very hard to get back. I hope this helps someone else struggling to break this cycle.

parpfish 2y ago
It’s worth pointing out that the people you need to protect yourself from aren’t necessarily doing anything malicious — they just don’t know your limits and will keep feeding you work as long as you keep saying yes. It was a revelation for me when I realized I could tell people “no, I’m swamped right now” and they’d be “ok, no problem”
- space_oddity 2y ago
  The moment you start saying "no" or expressing your limits, it can be surprising how easily others respect it.
kody 2y ago
I'm really curious, how do you factor in time to learn ("up skill")? I'm a self taught dev with 2 young kids. I've always had a healthy approach to work, but now I'm feeling quite a lot of pressure to learn new things on my own time, whether to make sure I'm prepared for the interview circuit if I get laid off, or to patch my skills that are needed at work. I'm starting to feel burnout creep in, getting an hour of study in the morning, taking care of family, and then working 8 hours. I appreciate your insight.
- parpfish 2y ago
  If you’re learning a thing that you actually do for your job (eg, new language or tech), do the studying and training during work hours
- Bayko 2y ago
  Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. For that the way that works for me is to never let go of it. I will solve 2 3 problems over a week even when I have a job. That downtime at work when you are at home or waiting for the next meeting...just leetcode. I absolutely hate LC and hate the fact that it is omnipresent but now no longer fear it. Except Dynamic programming. That thing can go f*ck itself. But ya now when it comes to LC I am "always" or rather one week away from interview ready.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    > Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. I have never had a leetcode-style interview in 40 years. (I may have had one such question, maybe - hard to remember for sure.) So, no, it is not required at all stages. Disclaimer: I'm in embedded systems, which is very different from FAANG.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Also never interviewed at FAANG and never been asked to write code in an interview
croshan 2y ago
This sounds depressing. I’m sorry that you had that experience. It’s a frustrating position to be in, and you can feel quite helpless. In my experience, it’s less about “do only what’s asked”, and rather “say no”. I.e. explain “I can do X, but if I do that then Y will suffer, and Y is a priority”. (Y being another company priority, or even your own mental health). Stated in these terms, it’s easier to negotiate your time with your coworkers.
- pjerem 2y ago
  Thing is that may not depend on you. I did this but I was surrounded by coworkers who were stupidly running straight into burnout themselves and said yes to anything. Well, upper management felt I wasn’t doing enough in comparison and pressured/harassed me. Ultimately, I were the first to burn out. Of course, in hindsight, I should have left way before it happened, but when you are in, you have no hindsight. Sometimes you can’t grab the surrounding toxicity before being hurt.
culi 2y ago
This feels impossible for someone who is early career. How could you balance growth with this? You could say "if your job isn't providing you with opportunities to grow, look for a new job or talk to your manager". But that takes extra time as well. You need to work on portfolio/side projects with in-demand skills you don't currently use, talk to managers, apply to jobs, network, read, etc.
- xtracto 2y ago
  I'm 43 now and you couldn't pay me enough to do several things at job now, like working saturdays (normal here in mexico), working from an office, doing death marches and whatnot. But, I did all that and more in my 20s as IC and 30s as a leader. I helped 3 startups go up and now 2 of them are unicorns (That was pure luck but doesn't change my view). My point is, there is a time for everything. I've hired a couple of JRs at my startup nowadays, and I tell them: what you lack of experience, I want you to cover by will. Guys at 20s want to eat the world. The energy and motivation is amazing. Those are the years to run and hustle like a demon. However, I would never do that in a big Corp environment (like Goog, IBM, MS, etc) because you will only be abused by middle manager. But as 1st, 2nd or 3rd engineer in a startup. I'll do it all again.
gwathk 2y ago
Thanks for sharing and really appreciate the "break the cycle" mindset. A lot of people feeling stuck is holding on "strong work-ethics" as their identity, but it is an endless cycle and you are going to lose as you age. And your sanity is only yours to keep, protect it at all cost.
mverv 2y ago
Any words of encouragement to a 32 year old considering a career switch to software development? I have a CS undegrad and have been working in the industry, although in strategy roles and never as a developer.
- manuel_w 2y ago
  Where do you live? I transitioned to software development in the age of ~30 and am based in Austria, Europe. The way I did is was to work on a project in my free time, and use that to a) LEARN, b) demonstrate that I can aquire skills myself and c) can stay motivated and push through. I wanted to show that I'm worth being given a chance. It worked flawlessly, I got hired on the first try. Just try it, what's the worst that can happen? :) I've got the feeling good software engineers are a bit more rare here, though, and Whiteboard interviews are not a common thing either.
- space_oddity 2y ago
  It’s never too late to switch to software development, especially since you already have a strong foundation with your CS degree and industry experience.
dclowd9901 2y ago
You might as well be narrating my own experience. This is the definition of work life balance.
setopt 2y ago
> Laptop is off for the entire weekend. I turn it back on right before my meetings on Monday. Separating my personal life from my work life with a hard delimiter was paramount. That sounds like a good philosophy for work-life balance. I sometimes work evenings or weekends, but it might be a bit different since I don’t work at a company but at a university, so my work hours are a bit flexible. I have had burnout before, especially during Covid home office. A big improvement for me was: - Regardless what’s going on, have at least one day per week when I don’t work at all (usually Saturday) and never pull all-nighters (no work after midnight); - Stop syncing work email to any mobile devices, and close the mail app on my laptop outside standard working hours. (This does wonders for destressing.) - Track the amount of time you “try to work” (e.g. how long you have your work laptop open). Note that this is not the same as tracking e.g. “focus hours”. Keep an eye on it and don’t let it accumulate too much per week.
- BossingAround 2y ago
  > Regardless what’s going on, have at least one day per week when I don’t work at all (usually Saturday) and never pull all-nighters (no work after midnight); Why are you working during the weekend and after work hours?
rawbot 2y ago
> I just focused on getting MY stuff done and that was it. I stopped taking on other's people work... I would do exactly what a Sprint called for... This is my reason for burnout, opposite of your example. There's a thin balance doing more work because you enjoy, and doing it because managers are pushing you to do it. And now that I JUST do my job and what I'm asked to do, I have lost a lot of the drive that I loved about being a developer and engineer, making life kind of dull. Weird thing is that it is the job description that put me into this place, with no room for growth, and the search for new jobs has been dry, year after year of searching. I traded my sanity for a big chunk of my life's enjoyment. That ain't great either.
- BigJono 2y ago
  My theory is burnout comes from a lack of autonomy. If your "do the minimum" is having complete control over a module and implementing features as slow as you can without pissing anyone off too much, you're going to have a great time. If your "do the minimum" is picking up the bare minimum number of Jira cards in a sunshine and roses "teamwork makes the dream work" team where everyone is responsible for every line of code but nobody knows more than 5% of the codebase, your mental health is going to go straight down the toilet, because nothing is more stressful than working with over-complicated code you didn't write, and the less cards you pick up, the less code you're going to understand.
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    your example seems to show that autonomy doesn't matter so much if your choices are ill informed or the environment in which you have autonomy is toxic. Personally, I think autonomy has little to do with it and lacking autonomy is dangerous to pin burnout on because it puts the responsibility on the person, when burnout is often the result of a system (broken or exploitative). Sure having autonomy can help cope or delay burnout, but I don't think lacking autonomy is causing burnout singlehandedly.
crossroadsguy 2y ago
I have a slightly different aspect (as I was the complete opposite of that) of this from my life - but it's not a disagreement. So I have always had such a nice (some would say epic) work-life balance as far as "hours" and "availability" go. After a (forced) break from work, and exploring health related help professionally, I came to know I was clearly burnt out. I was told high number of "hours" working or "visible or quantifiable work load" don't necessarily have to be present for a burn out. There are other factors at work which cause stress/etc and they are often more insidious than the typical "load" (not to reduce the ill effect of the typical load^). And were those signs abundant in my life and work! It was quite shocking. I always used to think that with my kind of work-life balance at least burn out was never going to be a problem. ^ It was added by them - those typical load/etc almost always cause mental health damage so I should not consider them okay all.
- ahaferburg 2y ago
  Your comment is very vague to the point of not containing any information. I would sum it up as "there are factors other than hours spent when it comes to burnout". What are those factors?
mrmetanoia 2y ago
You really do have to protect yourself. I think at some point I felt like if I set boundaries I'd get fired, then I realized if I didn't set boundaries I'd go insane which seemed worse than fired so I started telling people "no," and logging off on time. It's been an improvement. "Will the fight for our sanity, be the fight of our lives?" - flaming lips
- paulcole 2y ago
  > You really do have to protect yourself I don’t know why this is a revelation to so many people. Who cares about you more than you do? Nobody — especially not anybody at work.
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    For me the revelation wasn't so much that I have to protect myself but that it wouldn't get me fired. Maybe it is a revelation for those who haven't been taught to say no outside work? I was told to be quiet and obey growing up, why would anyone expect me to be equipped to stand up for myself as an adult after that?
    - paulcole 2y ago
      > I was told to be quiet and obey growing up, why would anyone expect me to be equipped to stand up for myself as an adult after that? Because you are equipped to do it. It’ll be a new experience for you but it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that it’s in your best interests.
shortrounddev2 2y ago
> I stopped taking on more work once I got my stuff done. I would do exactly what a Sprint called for. Nothing more, nothing less. If I finished early with my tasks, I would stretch out the time and just tell the scrum master I was close, but not done yet, but always finished on time. A PM at my company told me a few weeks ago "if you finish your work early, we can always find other things for you to work on" and I told him "you understand that my incentive is not to do that, right? If working faster only gives me more work to do, then why would I work faster?" He told me that fast workers are repaid with bonuses, promotions, etc., but I don't think most people believe in that kind of upward mobility anymore. I certainly don't
space_oddity 2y ago
We all need to understand the importance of setting healthier boundaries in a work feald. That shift made a big difference for you

parpfish 2y ago

It’s worth pointing out that the people you need to protect yourself from aren’t necessarily doing anything malicious — they just don’t know your limits and will keep feeding you work as long as you keep saying yes. It was a revelation for me when I realized I could tell people “no, I’m swamped right now” and they’d be “ok, no problem”

space_oddity 2y ago
The moment you start saying "no" or expressing your limits, it can be surprising how easily others respect it.

kody 2y ago

I'm really curious, how do you factor in time to learn ("up skill")? I'm a self taught dev with 2 young kids. I've always had a healthy approach to work, but now I'm feeling quite a lot of pressure to learn new things on my own time, whether to make sure I'm prepared for the interview circuit if I get laid off, or to patch my skills that are needed at work. I'm starting to feel burnout creep in, getting an hour of study in the morning, taking care of family, and then working 8 hours. I appreciate your insight.

parpfish 2y ago
If you’re learning a thing that you actually do for your job (eg, new language or tech), do the studying and training during work hours
Bayko 2y ago
Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. For that the way that works for me is to never let go of it. I will solve 2 3 problems over a week even when I have a job. That downtime at work when you are at home or waiting for the next meeting...just leetcode. I absolutely hate LC and hate the fact that it is omnipresent but now no longer fear it. Except Dynamic programming. That thing can go f*ck itself. But ya now when it comes to LC I am "always" or rather one week away from interview ready.
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  > Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. I have never had a leetcode-style interview in 40 years. (I may have had one such question, maybe - hard to remember for sure.) So, no, it is not required at all stages. Disclaimer: I'm in embedded systems, which is very different from FAANG.
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    Also never interviewed at FAANG and never been asked to write code in an interview

croshan 2y ago

This sounds depressing. I’m sorry that you had that experience. It’s a frustrating position to be in, and you can feel quite helpless. In my experience, it’s less about “do only what’s asked”, and rather “say no”. I.e. explain “I can do X, but if I do that then Y will suffer, and Y is a priority”. (Y being another company priority, or even your own mental health). Stated in these terms, it’s easier to negotiate your time with your coworkers.

pjerem 2y ago
Thing is that may not depend on you. I did this but I was surrounded by coworkers who were stupidly running straight into burnout themselves and said yes to anything. Well, upper management felt I wasn’t doing enough in comparison and pressured/harassed me. Ultimately, I were the first to burn out. Of course, in hindsight, I should have left way before it happened, but when you are in, you have no hindsight. Sometimes you can’t grab the surrounding toxicity before being hurt.

culi 2y ago

This feels impossible for someone who is early career. How could you balance growth with this? You could say "if your job isn't providing you with opportunities to grow, look for a new job or talk to your manager". But that takes extra time as well. You need to work on portfolio/side projects with in-demand skills you don't currently use, talk to managers, apply to jobs, network, read, etc.

xtracto 2y ago
I'm 43 now and you couldn't pay me enough to do several things at job now, like working saturdays (normal here in mexico), working from an office, doing death marches and whatnot. But, I did all that and more in my 20s as IC and 30s as a leader. I helped 3 startups go up and now 2 of them are unicorns (That was pure luck but doesn't change my view). My point is, there is a time for everything. I've hired a couple of JRs at my startup nowadays, and I tell them: what you lack of experience, I want you to cover by will. Guys at 20s want to eat the world. The energy and motivation is amazing. Those are the years to run and hustle like a demon. However, I would never do that in a big Corp environment (like Goog, IBM, MS, etc) because you will only be abused by middle manager. But as 1st, 2nd or 3rd engineer in a startup. I'll do it all again.

gwathk 2y ago

Thanks for sharing and really appreciate the "break the cycle" mindset. A lot of people feeling stuck is holding on "strong work-ethics" as their identity, but it is an endless cycle and you are going to lose as you age. And your sanity is only yours to keep, protect it at all cost.

mverv 2y ago

Any words of encouragement to a 32 year old considering a career switch to software development? I have a CS undegrad and have been working in the industry, although in strategy roles and never as a developer.

manuel_w 2y ago
Where do you live? I transitioned to software development in the age of ~30 and am based in Austria, Europe. The way I did is was to work on a project in my free time, and use that to a) LEARN, b) demonstrate that I can aquire skills myself and c) can stay motivated and push through. I wanted to show that I'm worth being given a chance. It worked flawlessly, I got hired on the first try. Just try it, what's the worst that can happen? :) I've got the feeling good software engineers are a bit more rare here, though, and Whiteboard interviews are not a common thing either.
space_oddity 2y ago
It’s never too late to switch to software development, especially since you already have a strong foundation with your CS degree and industry experience.

dclowd9901 2y ago

You might as well be narrating my own experience. This is the definition of work life balance.

setopt 2y ago

> Laptop is off for the entire weekend. I turn it back on right before my meetings on Monday. Separating my personal life from my work life with a hard delimiter was paramount. That sounds like a good philosophy for work-life balance. I sometimes work evenings or weekends, but it might be a bit different since I don’t work at a company but at a university, so my work hours are a bit flexible. I have had burnout before, especially during Covid home office. A big improvement for me was: - Regardless what’s going on, have at least one day per week when I don’t work at all (usually Saturday) and never pull all-nighters (no work after midnight); - Stop syncing work email to any mobile devices, and close the mail app on my laptop outside standard working hours. (This does wonders for destressing.) - Track the amount of time you “try to work” (e.g. how long you have your work laptop open). Note that this is not the same as tracking e.g. “focus hours”. Keep an eye on it and don’t let it accumulate too much per week.

BossingAround 2y ago
> Regardless what’s going on, have at least one day per week when I don’t work at all (usually Saturday) and never pull all-nighters (no work after midnight); Why are you working during the weekend and after work hours?

rawbot 2y ago

> I just focused on getting MY stuff done and that was it. I stopped taking on other's people work... I would do exactly what a Sprint called for... This is my reason for burnout, opposite of your example. There's a thin balance doing more work because you enjoy, and doing it because managers are pushing you to do it. And now that I JUST do my job and what I'm asked to do, I have lost a lot of the drive that I loved about being a developer and engineer, making life kind of dull. Weird thing is that it is the job description that put me into this place, with no room for growth, and the search for new jobs has been dry, year after year of searching. I traded my sanity for a big chunk of my life's enjoyment. That ain't great either.

BigJono 2y ago
My theory is burnout comes from a lack of autonomy. If your "do the minimum" is having complete control over a module and implementing features as slow as you can without pissing anyone off too much, you're going to have a great time. If your "do the minimum" is picking up the bare minimum number of Jira cards in a sunshine and roses "teamwork makes the dream work" team where everyone is responsible for every line of code but nobody knows more than 5% of the codebase, your mental health is going to go straight down the toilet, because nothing is more stressful than working with over-complicated code you didn't write, and the less cards you pick up, the less code you're going to understand.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  your example seems to show that autonomy doesn't matter so much if your choices are ill informed or the environment in which you have autonomy is toxic. Personally, I think autonomy has little to do with it and lacking autonomy is dangerous to pin burnout on because it puts the responsibility on the person, when burnout is often the result of a system (broken or exploitative). Sure having autonomy can help cope or delay burnout, but I don't think lacking autonomy is causing burnout singlehandedly.

crossroadsguy 2y ago

I have a slightly different aspect (as I was the complete opposite of that) of this from my life - but it's not a disagreement. So I have always had such a nice (some would say epic) work-life balance as far as "hours" and "availability" go. After a (forced) break from work, and exploring health related help professionally, I came to know I was clearly burnt out. I was told high number of "hours" working or "visible or quantifiable work load" don't necessarily have to be present for a burn out. There are other factors at work which cause stress/etc and they are often more insidious than the typical "load" (not to reduce the ill effect of the typical load^). And were those signs abundant in my life and work! It was quite shocking. I always used to think that with my kind of work-life balance at least burn out was never going to be a problem. ^ It was added by them - those typical load/etc almost always cause mental health damage so I should not consider them okay all.

ahaferburg 2y ago
Your comment is very vague to the point of not containing any information. I would sum it up as "there are factors other than hours spent when it comes to burnout". What are those factors?

mrmetanoia 2y ago

You really do have to protect yourself. I think at some point I felt like if I set boundaries I'd get fired, then I realized if I didn't set boundaries I'd go insane which seemed worse than fired so I started telling people "no," and logging off on time. It's been an improvement. "Will the fight for our sanity, be the fight of our lives?" - flaming lips

paulcole 2y ago
> You really do have to protect yourself I don’t know why this is a revelation to so many people. Who cares about you more than you do? Nobody — especially not anybody at work.
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  For me the revelation wasn't so much that I have to protect myself but that it wouldn't get me fired. Maybe it is a revelation for those who haven't been taught to say no outside work? I was told to be quiet and obey growing up, why would anyone expect me to be equipped to stand up for myself as an adult after that?
  - paulcole 2y ago
    > I was told to be quiet and obey growing up, why would anyone expect me to be equipped to stand up for myself as an adult after that? Because you are equipped to do it. It’ll be a new experience for you but it shouldn’t take you long to figure out that it’s in your best interests.

shortrounddev2 2y ago

> I stopped taking on more work once I got my stuff done. I would do exactly what a Sprint called for. Nothing more, nothing less. If I finished early with my tasks, I would stretch out the time and just tell the scrum master I was close, but not done yet, but always finished on time. A PM at my company told me a few weeks ago "if you finish your work early, we can always find other things for you to work on" and I told him "you understand that my incentive is not to do that, right? If working faster only gives me more work to do, then why would I work faster?" He told me that fast workers are repaid with bonuses, promotions, etc., but I don't think most people believe in that kind of upward mobility anymore. I certainly don't

space_oddity 2y ago

We all need to understand the importance of setting healthier boundaries in a work feald. That shift made a big difference for you