6 ms·

In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in S

In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed. I have some conjectures as to why that may be: 1. High variability of pay, not only between companies but within companies. As a SWE your total compensation can be expected to double every two promotions, and promotions can be pretty fast. Promotions are also not purely a function of tenure like other professions with steep comp growth such as pilots. 2. "This is too good to be true" syndrome. You show up at your comfy 250k job with catered lunch, dinner, and maxed out benefits. After the first month, your workload is about 3-4 hours a day. Everything is flexible - the time you show up, the time you leave, the days you choose to come in to the office, what you wear. Everyone is smart and nice. Free snacks. Imposter syndrome and paranoia set in. Am I doing enough? Should I look at this P2 prod bug on a Satuday? I guess I only worked 20 hours last week so it's fair to work a couple of hours on the weekend. Everything I do needs to be perfect or they could've just hired someone in India for 1/10th my pay, right? etc. Then it snowballs. (I'm probably just describing imposter syndrome.) In reality nothing really happens if you slow down and do things at a comfortable pace. Most managers want to cultivate reliable people who take long-term deep ownership, not productivity machines that just bang out features. If they needed more output, they'd just hire one more person.

mojomark 2y ago
This is an interesting take, but I have a slightly different take. My ding dong company pays everyone including myself, salaries that are way too high. They gave ne a 30% raise I didn't even ask for or expect. We get a contract to do X, which say should take a team of 5 folks. However, we can only staff the contract with 3 folks because our salaries are too high. Now, we're all working 80hr weeks and stressed to the max because we really need more fresh minds on the challenge. Now, we're in a contract lull, so some of us are only charging part time (75%), while actually working overtime. It's bananas. The solution seems obvious. Decrease salaries and increase company stock offerings. Then, if you and your colleagues care to work harder and deliver outstanding product, your stock value will rise over time and you'll be a.) more wealthy than taking 'dumb' money, and b.) more physically and mentally healthy.
- nuclearnice3 2y ago
  Simple conclusions a) the people who have the stock now want to keep it and be more wealthy b) they don’t have much regard for your physical or mental health
- mojomark 2y ago
  Really weird that my comment was downvoted. No idea why. I guess HN just isn't for me after 10 years. Peace out.
  - leoh 2y ago
    I think it’s an interesting comment. Hard to not take that kind of thing personally though.
    - mojomark 2y ago
      I take it extremely personally, after all, I'm talking about voluntarily decreasing my own salary to achieve better work life balance in the present. However, decreasing salary != decreased total compensation. Increase equity shares + decrease salary = improved work-life balance now and much healthier retirement in the future.
  - scott_w 2y ago
    It happens, I wouldn’t sweat it
  - tim333 2y ago
    People do stuff like skim, see 'decrease salaries' and click down without really thinking or even reading it all. It can be kinda random and not worth worrying about.
  - hylaride 2y ago
    Nah, there are people that run companies here, too. Many of them drink the cool-aide.
wegfawefgawefg 2y ago
this doesnt apply to 90% of programming jobs so im not so sure the money growth expectation disilusion angle is right. I generally assume it is due to lack of agency.
dasil003 2y ago
With 25 years experience, the other thing is environments vary a lot, even within a single company. Things can be dysfunctional for lots of reasons, sometimes due to individual incompetence at various points in the hierarchy, or just systemic/cultural issues that no one has the vision or influence to identify and fix. When you're young and inexperienced, but technically brilliant, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees of what's really going on on the human side of things of any large group effort. One of the things I value the most about working at startups in my early career is that it allows relatively "junior" folks more exposure to the big picture, and thus stay grounded in reality and not swayed by all the random narratives that are floated around in the corporate world. No matter how smart you are, or how honest and well intentioned the intent of the speaker, it takes experience to be able to parse through these and understand when and how they are relevant to your individual work. I see a lot of folks over the last 15 years who got hired into big tech during boom times, never got anywhere near the critical path of the business, and were exposed to all manner dysfunction by ambitious but incompetent social climbers who swelled the ranks of anything with the whiff of success. In these types of environment, people who just want to do good software engineering work can easily get swept into various dead end buckets of learned helpless, rest-and-vest, burnout, etc.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  This leads to a more fundamental observation. That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place. As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage.
  - palmotea 2y ago
    > That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place. > As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage. No, your "observation" has a fundamental flaw: There's no general "net positive for most workplaces," because different groups have different interests. Unionization is a "net negative" for certain groups (managers, owners) and a "net positive" for others (employees, if done right). That's why there are sustained agitation campaigns against it.
rlupi 2y ago
> In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed. This is how control works in our society. It's true for all people. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han explains it well in "The Burnout Society".
altacc 2y ago
> the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed Nothing happens in a vacuum and this "self-imposed" work pressure often happens within the a company culture that is either intentionally or accidentally highly demanding of individuals. The "self-imposed" is a false front for enforced expectations from colleagues, managers and clients. We're all in unique situations and you can say if you don't like it then don't work there. However the hustle and start up cultures are viral and spread throughout the industry. Just look at all the talk of Elon Musk & his Twitter and Doge employees working 100 hours weeks and sleeping at the office. Regardless of politics, there are many people who talk about this insane, unhealthy and inefficient level of work as a good and worthy thing. It's the Puritan work ethic myth. In reality the majority of the benefit of this work does not go to the individual doing the work, instead they pay a heavy cost with their quality of life.
jalapenos 2y ago
I've legit never known of a place that hires SWEs that matches this description. Except maybe the sweet gig SWEs got at Twitter before Musk. No wonder you'd feel imposter syndrome if you'd landed a gig that good. Anyone would.
wat10000 2y ago
I'd add 3: most of us really like this stuff. Sometimes I get pinged in the evening for some issue. I have the freedom to say I'll check it out in the morning, or on Monday. Sometimes I do, but often I'll look at it. There's definitely a little bit of 2 in there, but mostly it's because checking it out is fun, and solving it is rewarding. I try not to overdo it. You can still burn out from that sort of thing even if you like it. But as long as it's not excessive, I enjoy the occasional "Sorry it's late, but are you around to take a look at this?"

mojomark 2y ago

This is an interesting take, but I have a slightly different take. My ding dong company pays everyone including myself, salaries that are way too high. They gave ne a 30% raise I didn't even ask for or expect. We get a contract to do X, which say should take a team of 5 folks. However, we can only staff the contract with 3 folks because our salaries are too high. Now, we're all working 80hr weeks and stressed to the max because we really need more fresh minds on the challenge. Now, we're in a contract lull, so some of us are only charging part time (75%), while actually working overtime. It's bananas. The solution seems obvious. Decrease salaries and increase company stock offerings. Then, if you and your colleagues care to work harder and deliver outstanding product, your stock value will rise over time and you'll be a.) more wealthy than taking 'dumb' money, and b.) more physically and mentally healthy.

nuclearnice3 2y ago
Simple conclusions a) the people who have the stock now want to keep it and be more wealthy b) they don’t have much regard for your physical or mental health
mojomark 2y ago
Really weird that my comment was downvoted. No idea why. I guess HN just isn't for me after 10 years. Peace out.
- leoh 2y ago
  I think it’s an interesting comment. Hard to not take that kind of thing personally though.
  - mojomark 2y ago
    I take it extremely personally, after all, I'm talking about voluntarily decreasing my own salary to achieve better work life balance in the present. However, decreasing salary != decreased total compensation. Increase equity shares + decrease salary = improved work-life balance now and much healthier retirement in the future.
- scott_w 2y ago
  It happens, I wouldn’t sweat it
- tim333 2y ago
  People do stuff like skim, see 'decrease salaries' and click down without really thinking or even reading it all. It can be kinda random and not worth worrying about.
- hylaride 2y ago
  Nah, there are people that run companies here, too. Many of them drink the cool-aide.

wegfawefgawefg 2y ago

this doesnt apply to 90% of programming jobs so im not so sure the money growth expectation disilusion angle is right. I generally assume it is due to lack of agency.

dasil003 2y ago

With 25 years experience, the other thing is environments vary a lot, even within a single company. Things can be dysfunctional for lots of reasons, sometimes due to individual incompetence at various points in the hierarchy, or just systemic/cultural issues that no one has the vision or influence to identify and fix. When you're young and inexperienced, but technically brilliant, it's easy to miss the forest for the trees of what's really going on on the human side of things of any large group effort. One of the things I value the most about working at startups in my early career is that it allows relatively "junior" folks more exposure to the big picture, and thus stay grounded in reality and not swayed by all the random narratives that are floated around in the corporate world. No matter how smart you are, or how honest and well intentioned the intent of the speaker, it takes experience to be able to parse through these and understand when and how they are relevant to your individual work. I see a lot of folks over the last 15 years who got hired into big tech during boom times, never got anywhere near the critical path of the business, and were exposed to all manner dysfunction by ambitious but incompetent social climbers who swelled the ranks of anything with the whiff of success. In these types of environment, people who just want to do good software engineering work can easily get swept into various dead end buckets of learned helpless, rest-and-vest, burnout, etc.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
This leads to a more fundamental observation. That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place. As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage.
- palmotea 2y ago
  > That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place. > As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage. No, your "observation" has a fundamental flaw: There's no general "net positive for most workplaces," because different groups have different interests. Unionization is a "net negative" for certain groups (managers, owners) and a "net positive" for others (employees, if done right). That's why there are sustained agitation campaigns against it.

rlupi 2y ago

> In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed. This is how control works in our society. It's true for all people. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han explains it well in "The Burnout Society".

altacc 2y ago

> the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed Nothing happens in a vacuum and this "self-imposed" work pressure often happens within the a company culture that is either intentionally or accidentally highly demanding of individuals. The "self-imposed" is a false front for enforced expectations from colleagues, managers and clients. We're all in unique situations and you can say if you don't like it then don't work there. However the hustle and start up cultures are viral and spread throughout the industry. Just look at all the talk of Elon Musk & his Twitter and Doge employees working 100 hours weeks and sleeping at the office. Regardless of politics, there are many people who talk about this insane, unhealthy and inefficient level of work as a good and worthy thing. It's the Puritan work ethic myth. In reality the majority of the benefit of this work does not go to the individual doing the work, instead they pay a heavy cost with their quality of life.

jalapenos 2y ago

I've legit never known of a place that hires SWEs that matches this description. Except maybe the sweet gig SWEs got at Twitter before Musk. No wonder you'd feel imposter syndrome if you'd landed a gig that good. Anyone would.

wat10000 2y ago

I'd add 3: most of us really like this stuff. Sometimes I get pinged in the evening for some issue. I have the freedom to say I'll check it out in the morning, or on Monday. Sometimes I do, but often I'll look at it. There's definitely a little bit of 2 in there, but mostly it's because checking it out is fun, and solving it is rewarding. I try not to overdo it. You can still burn out from that sort of thing even if you like it. But as long as it's not excessive, I enjoy the occasional "Sorry it's late, but are you around to take a look at this?"