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My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life. I do similar work in my day

My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life. I do similar work in my day job and consulting. I'm very fresh and optimistic during consulting hours, but dread going into the office. I'm genuinely burnt out and just don't give a flying fuck anymore, I don't sleep, and I've been more sick in the last month than ever in my life. The only difference is that one comes with politics and one doesn't.

dylan604 2y ago
> My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life Totally agree. It’s not the stress of doing something new and just trying to figure it all out that’s stressful. That’s actually fun. It’s the arbitrary adjusting of priorities and putting tasks in hold to start some harebrained idea that ultimately gets tossed or proves to not work out that becomes tiresome. Then shit rolls down hill and people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed and assigns blame to the dev rather than piss poor management. No. I’m not bitter
- sateesh 2y ago
  Isn't politics any part of human activity where number of people involved is greater than a critical mass (of say 5) ? I think even the best run, successful orgs have their share of politics. I used to think politics as a bad thing, but now I have accepted that it is an inevitable part of work life and one needs to also learn how to navigate it atleast to the extent that doesn't affect one's well-being or doesn't make one feel that they are being shortchanged, not that I am always successful with it.
  - timr 2y ago
    "Politics" are inevitable, but the stuff that the parent is describing is a particular type of politics that comes with hierarchical power (and possibly bad/immature leadership?) General pattern is that certain people in the level(s) above you are fighting for influence to impress the levels above, and critically, are willing to use the levels below in order to achieve their personal goals (organizational goals are secondary, at best). Unless leadership is unusually adept at punishing the first signs of this behavior, it quickly becomes pathological. Every level gets infected, and before long your org has all of the backstabbing drama one might associate with an imperial court. In times of growth it's painful enough, but in times of limited resources, it's pure bloodsport. There are people who can effectively detect and push back on the behavior, but they seem to be rare, and even more rarely make it into positions of influence. My theory is that it's so exhausting to be sensitive to the drama that you can only make it to the top if you combine it with a big dose of sociopathy. You also see it a lot at startups, because the founders are typically young, arrogant and have no experience managing anyone. By the time they realize they've hired a toxic exec layer, it's too late.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  Even at a higher level what you are observing frequently use caused by politics (which admittedly frequently go hand in hand with incompetence or putting personal gain over company outcomes). Especially technical efforts frequently come under attack by product people who are in turn frequently under pressure my sales staff. Nobody along that line has the full picture and pushes for their issues to be solved which seem most urgent to them. Sometimes this business pressure results in correct decisions which still suck. An example might be interrupting a project or cutting corners to get a feature out to get a contract signed and make payroll. Two years later people wonder why the code is shit but the answer is that the company was struggling to survive and corners were cut left and right. Of course often it's just stupidity. I've seen cases where a PM would ask to get a unvetted pet project staffed ("all I need is two people for a week!!") outside of department planning cycles and later this was used in a write up with new leadership as an example of "engineering refusing to work with product".
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed You know, from all the talk about agile one would think people would remember the one central value from the manifesto that gave the name for the thing...
  - maximus-decimus 2y ago
    Companies don't do agile, they just for some reason gaslight you into believing you're doing agile. My company has fixed date releases with architecture proposals before a feature and predefined requirements for the whole release, but no no it's scrum because we have useless meetings every 2 weeks. I just don't understand why they care so much about pretending we're doing agile.
svara 2y ago
One thing that seems to reliably cause burnout is when a person with high flying ambition finds herself in an environment in which she feels stripped of agency. It's not primarily about expending too much energy, but rather about expending energy in a way that appears futile relative to an ambitious standard set for oneself. Just my personal observation, but dovetails well with the learned helplessness theory of depression.
- ketamine 2y ago
  Feels spot on
- convolvatron 2y ago
  thank you. I feel a little less like a misunderstood snowflake today because of this.
- nostradumbasp 2y ago
  Such a good way of describing it. Thanks for this, and the comment above it.
- moron4hire 2y ago
  This is absolutely it. I've never been able to control how much effort and personal investment I put into a project. If I'm working on something, I have to give it my all. I used to get burnt out at work all the time, but that really hasn't been the case for the last 5 years. The biggest difference is that I'm I'm in charge now. When I say something is going to take X amount of time or that we have to do things in a certain way, management doesn't argue with me anymore. They just accept that is the way it is, because I'm the one in charge of this area of work. I haven't changed. I still take too long to finish ostensibly "simple" things because I've nerd-sniped myself [0] into over-engineering things. What has changed is my relationship to the management class. They see me as one of them, now, and that confers a level of respect that is, frankly, enraging when you consider the lack of it in the obverse situation. But, I can make things my way and I can protect my team and that's enough. [0] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
  - 2y ago
Trasmatta 2y ago
Exactly this. When I can actually do some work, I feel pretty good. But that feels like 5% of my job sometimes.
galleywest200 2y ago
I agree. For me it was not that the work was particularly difficult or unrewarding, but that I felt as if I did not have control over my schedule. Development/Product Management could, at the drop of a hat, say we have an emergency patch and now Operations needs to clear their evening schedule to get it done while the (likely higher paid) developers go home at a regular hour and get to do whatever they want.

dylan604 2y ago

> My experience is that burnout tends not to come from the actual work, but all the politics and bullshit that come from office life Totally agree. It’s not the stress of doing something new and just trying to figure it all out that’s stressful. That’s actually fun. It’s the arbitrary adjusting of priorities and putting tasks in hold to start some harebrained idea that ultimately gets tossed or proves to not work out that becomes tiresome. Then shit rolls down hill and people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed and assigns blame to the dev rather than piss poor management. No. I’m not bitter

sateesh 2y ago
Isn't politics any part of human activity where number of people involved is greater than a critical mass (of say 5) ? I think even the best run, successful orgs have their share of politics. I used to think politics as a bad thing, but now I have accepted that it is an inevitable part of work life and one needs to also learn how to navigate it atleast to the extent that doesn't affect one's well-being or doesn't make one feel that they are being shortchanged, not that I am always successful with it.
- timr 2y ago
  "Politics" are inevitable, but the stuff that the parent is describing is a particular type of politics that comes with hierarchical power (and possibly bad/immature leadership?) General pattern is that certain people in the level(s) above you are fighting for influence to impress the levels above, and critically, are willing to use the levels below in order to achieve their personal goals (organizational goals are secondary, at best). Unless leadership is unusually adept at punishing the first signs of this behavior, it quickly becomes pathological. Every level gets infected, and before long your org has all of the backstabbing drama one might associate with an imperial court. In times of growth it's painful enough, but in times of limited resources, it's pure bloodsport. There are people who can effectively detect and push back on the behavior, but they seem to be rare, and even more rarely make it into positions of influence. My theory is that it's so exhausting to be sensitive to the drama that you can only make it to the top if you combine it with a big dose of sociopathy. You also see it a lot at startups, because the founders are typically young, arrogant and have no experience managing anyone. By the time they realize they've hired a toxic exec layer, it's too late.
ajmurmann 2y ago
Even at a higher level what you are observing frequently use caused by politics (which admittedly frequently go hand in hand with incompetence or putting personal gain over company outcomes). Especially technical efforts frequently come under attack by product people who are in turn frequently under pressure my sales staff. Nobody along that line has the full picture and pushes for their issues to be solved which seem most urgent to them. Sometimes this business pressure results in correct decisions which still suck. An example might be interrupting a project or cutting corners to get a feature out to get a contract signed and make payroll. Two years later people wonder why the code is shit but the answer is that the company was struggling to survive and corners were cut left and right. Of course often it's just stupidity. I've seen cases where a PM would ask to get a unvetted pet project staffed ("all I need is two people for a week!!") outside of department planning cycles and later this was used in a write up with new leadership as an example of "engineering refusing to work with product".
marcosdumay 2y ago
> people want to know why the paused project isn’t completed You know, from all the talk about agile one would think people would remember the one central value from the manifesto that gave the name for the thing...
- maximus-decimus 2y ago
  Companies don't do agile, they just for some reason gaslight you into believing you're doing agile. My company has fixed date releases with architecture proposals before a feature and predefined requirements for the whole release, but no no it's scrum because we have useless meetings every 2 weeks. I just don't understand why they care so much about pretending we're doing agile.

svara 2y ago

One thing that seems to reliably cause burnout is when a person with high flying ambition finds herself in an environment in which she feels stripped of agency. It's not primarily about expending too much energy, but rather about expending energy in a way that appears futile relative to an ambitious standard set for oneself. Just my personal observation, but dovetails well with the learned helplessness theory of depression.

ketamine 2y ago
Feels spot on
convolvatron 2y ago
thank you. I feel a little less like a misunderstood snowflake today because of this.
nostradumbasp 2y ago
Such a good way of describing it. Thanks for this, and the comment above it.
moron4hire 2y ago
This is absolutely it. I've never been able to control how much effort and personal investment I put into a project. If I'm working on something, I have to give it my all. I used to get burnt out at work all the time, but that really hasn't been the case for the last 5 years. The biggest difference is that I'm I'm in charge now. When I say something is going to take X amount of time or that we have to do things in a certain way, management doesn't argue with me anymore. They just accept that is the way it is, because I'm the one in charge of this area of work. I haven't changed. I still take too long to finish ostensibly "simple" things because I've nerd-sniped myself [0] into over-engineering things. What has changed is my relationship to the management class. They see me as one of them, now, and that confers a level of respect that is, frankly, enraging when you consider the lack of it in the obverse situation. But, I can make things my way and I can protect my team and that's enough. [0] https://xkcd.com/356/ https://xkcd.com/356/
- 2y ago

Trasmatta 2y ago

Exactly this. When I can actually do some work, I feel pretty good. But that feels like 5% of my job sometimes.

galleywest200 2y ago

I agree. For me it was not that the work was particularly difficult or unrewarding, but that I felt as if I did not have control over my schedule. Development/Product Management could, at the drop of a hat, say we have an emergency patch and now Operations needs to clear their evening schedule to get it done while the (likely higher paid) developers go home at a regular hour and get to do whatever they want.