5 ms·

Rant incoming: I've recently been involved in a project where I worked very long hours for weeks in a row, including Saturdays and Sundays. One day I got the f

Rant incoming: I've recently been involved in a project where I worked very long hours for weeks in a row, including Saturdays and Sundays. One day I got the flu but I ignored it. I stayed at work till 11:45pm. I was shaking uncontrollably when I was walking home, I felt like dying. I took two days off but the flu stayed with me for an entire fucking month and it was hell. Had some serious relapses and felt like shit all the time. Fast forward a couple of weeks, I finally feel better, but one day I got up from the couch and had the most horrible attack of vertigo and dizziness. I had to throw up hard, and the vertigo didn't go away. When I woke up the next morning I thought I was better but the moment I got up from bed the same shit happened. I went to the emergency with my gf and it turns out I have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. The doc managed to fix it with some positional maneuvers, but I still feel a little bit disoriented from time to time. I feel like this job is ruining my health. Edit: Removed some personal info.

beagle3 13y ago
Dude/Dudette, it IS ruining your health. Start looking. You don't have to quit to start looking - and you might be pleasantly surprised at offers coming your way. Especially if you're in a high demand area like SF or NYC (or can reasonably commute there), but even if you are not.
- mhurron 13y ago
  > it IS ruining your health. No it's not, he is. He is refusing to balance his work out to more healthy levels. He is pushing himself harder to be there. He is not looking for another job. If he can't control himself and work less, he'll simply do it in another job if he moves on.
  - adamman 13y ago
    Lets not go down this road. This is like the guns don't kill people debate.
    - nmcfarl 13y ago
      Maybe - but maybe mhurran is right - I've definitely been the guy that works weekends at the job where no one works weekends. It's not healthy - and work life imbalance is usually driven by others, but sometimes not. And to fix it you need to figure out what the cause is. Looking at yourself shouldn't take that long if your job is the problem, and if you are the problem well you should attack that. In my case working myself to the bone was not a healthy response to a bad breakup but admitting that took some time.
    - brianmcc 13y ago
      I agree with the earlier post. We need to all be responsible for our own contribution levels. At the end of the day, each of us chooses how much work to put in, and a tendency to overdo it will follow us from one job to the next unless we admit we're directly, albeit unconsciously, enabling the imbalance. Granted some workplaces will ask more than others, but it's absolutely a two-sided deal.
    - mhurron 13y ago
      When did it become that you are not responsible for your own health? He is not a slave that has to jump when the whip is cracked.
  - nilkn 13y ago
    In the worst case, if he's established the precedent of working weekends and is now expected to do so, a fresh start could still be useful. Transitioning to another company might also help provide him with the clean mental slate necessary to trash this habit of over-working himself. Also, there is the possibility that the company is somewhat at fault--his post is lacking details, and he may be under legitimate pressure to do extra work.
  - Bluestrike2 13y ago
    The human mind is a funny thing. You're assuming that the individual isn't affected by social factors, and that he can effectively isolate himself from negative demands and expectations. But if research in social psychology has shown nothing else, it's that the individual is not separate from his social environment. Even when we know better, when we should be able to rationally extricate ourselves from a situation, we continue on in it for a myriad of reasons. We see the warning signs, only to blindly rationalize them away so successfully that they disappear from conscious thought. I've been there, and I've suffered the consequences. Take an external authority figure, in this case a boss who values a person's ability to lose themselves in their work in order to get things done, and sit back. Add in a culture of co-workers who celebrate the same. Maybe the employee wants to work their way up the ladder, or maybe they just want to get the satisfaction of positive feedback from those figures. Watch as these factors slowly influence the employee's sense of perception, and eventually through it, their behaviors and how they judge them. Eventually, you'll see a affective and cognitive responses as they integrate these changed beliefs into their self-identity. This is made all the easier by the presence of authority figures You see this everywhere. Why do young investment bankers accept the idea that they need to work upwards of 80+ hours/week, and often, 100 or more? Worse, they not only accept it but they make it part of their core self-identity to be celebrated. Why do undergrads pull all-nighters and consider them a badge of honor? Or far more darkly, why do so many battered spouses stay with their abusive partners, justifying the abuse as something they somehow "deserve?" If someone tells you that you're dirt enough times, eventually even the strongest-willed of us will start to question it, and far too often, come to believe it. Across all these examples and more, the same cognitive phenomena are at work. You think this is solely a matter of willpower. It's often not. Yes, he's pushing himself. But social factors are also pushing inward on him, making it easier to do so. I'm not belaboring your end point. It's a good one, and the presence of outsiders willing to give such advice--get out, get somewhere where you can rebuild your sense of self and personal boundaries--can help empower people to act on it. But don't assume that it's as simple as turning off the screen, or that you're immune to these pressures. You're not. No one is. Given enough time, even the strongest can and will be influenced by social factors. Often, to positive ends. But not always. Given enough of the bad, eventually, everyone breaks. Not at once. Never at once. But little by little, piece by piece, people will change without even realizing it. And once you're there, the mind's ability to rationalize and protect itself will help keep you there.
michaelochurch 13y ago
Working through a flu (a real flu, not a cold) is not a good idea. I've been around Wall Street and startups for a long-ass time, so I know people who've developed permanent anxiety/panic disorders from that. (March is a deadly month. You have winter's flus and viruses combining with spring's mental health risks.) Flu is usually mild, but it is a potentially life-threatening condition, i.e. not to be fucked around with. You need to change jobs and get one that won't have you working unreasonable hours. Any time other than now is too late.
- stronglikedan 13y ago
  I find that if I try to work through a flu, I'll be sick for a week or two. If I just go home and stay in bed, I get over it in a few days. In the long run, it's much more productive to take care of yourself before your work. No matter how productive you think you are being while sick, the quality of your work is most likely suffering.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    Some companies have this horrible "PTO" pogrom (typo intentional) in which sick days and vacation days are pooled. It wouldn't be so bad if there were a sizable pool (say, 30 days) but usually, it's an excuse to present the company as having ample vacation (15-20 days) while actually deducting sick days from it. It means that a week-long illness will cut into your vacation. Then you have this arrangement where people "work from home" (WFH) while actually ill, just to avoid losing a PTO day. Then you need a manager who understands the difference between sick WFH (don't hit him up, he might read emails and type out a few replies and that's it) and real WFH (you can actually expect that person to be working)-- and who, in addition, cares about that distinction.
    - aestra 13y ago
      > ample vacation (15-20 days) 15-20 days is hardly "ample" vacation time.
      - 13y ago
lost_my_pwd 13y ago
I, too, had to leave college for financial and family health reasons. It always left a question in my head as to whether I was as good as those at the job with a degree. I, too, worked my way up redacted, since personal info was removed by parent poster, my whole rise driven by feelings of inadequacy. Despite the ever increasing disfunction at the job, I stayed way too long, fearing I was not good enough to find another job. You know what? I got over the fear of change and quit (you don't have to, one can always job hunt while still working). A year later, rested and in a better place, I started the next phase of my career where my experience was acknowledged and I gained a much better sense of my worth. I now work with great people, at a job I love, doing interesting work every single day. There is better to be had out there, you just may not see it until you are on the other side. Take the chance, if you value your health and life.
radicalbyte 13y ago
Been there, done that, never ever doing it again. It's not worth it. My advise: leave. You're a developer, you've got a world of options before you. You have no reason to work in that environment.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
That's called having the job ruin your health. Let me tell you a little story to make sure you never do this stupid shit again! When I first met my fiancee, perhaps a couple weeks after we met and a week or so after our first date, she got sick. At first we thought it was just a head cold. Then it seemed to be a bit of a flu. She is, of course, a workaholic Determinator of a woman, and kept working on her courses (we were in university) through the whole thing. Eventually she went to University Health Services and got diagnosed with mononucleosis. A day later, she was passing out in the lab and having purple spots flash in front of her eyes. She finished her work, and then had her parents drive out to fetch her and take her to the family doctors. It turned out that she had bacterial meningitis from an impacted tooth, she had to be hospitalized for three weeks, couldn't come back to college for two months, and nearly died. Why? Because for days on end, she tried to power through her illness, and of course because University Health Services didn't check for what she actually had. Don't power through your work when seriously sick unless you want your family and friends praying for you to live.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  The problem is that our society is so terrible about choosing leaders (in academia or business) that its only resolution is to understaff, to generate busywork, and to load people up with artificial stress until most of them crack. It's an idiotic war of attrition. Usually, the "brick wall" is a low-level mental illness (anxiety, depression) in a previously healthy person and it often goes away in a year or so. Sometimes, it doesn't. This is why those of us who have real neurological anxiety or mood disorders can never expect genuine accommodation. Our disease is the culling agent that, with enough stress, will also flare up in the normal and be attributed (God of the Gaps) to "personal weakness". We have this fucked-up culture of "powering through" that malaise. When it's a hard biological issue (i.e. an infection or cancer or mental illness) it refuses to play by our rules. It's not going to go away by "downshifting" at work or when we get that reward for being the last one standing. It's imminently dangerous. But, in our culture of "power through it and get the prize", most people don't get the help they need until it's too late. I would argue, though, that there's no value in this war of attrition. We have enough resources to give everyone a good life and autonomy over their work, and it's only getting better. Why do we set up these health-destroying tournaments of fools in the first place? If we need to pick leaders, it will happen naturally. If we don't, then why not have a looser arrangement where everyone has some autonomy? This attrition game that we use to fill the corporate and academic upper ranks doesn't pick good leaders. The military has known this for a long time. There are 2% of people who don't have the stress-sensitivity of the other 98%. They can be placed in danger or have to kill others and they won't get PTSD, and they don't get the context-driven anxiety and depression disorders that most people get from overwork. They're neurologically insensitive. Not all of them are bad people (some are very good people, if neurologically indistinguishable from murderers, because morality won't show up on an MRI) but half of them are psychopaths. You want people from that 2% (at least, the good ones who have a sense of morality and conscience; but the bad ones are often directed toward things like running POW camps) doing elite and dangerous work (they often enjoy it) but not making general-level decisions that affect thousands.
johnny635 13y ago
You are dying.
kordless 13y ago
I had vertigo for about a month a few months ago. Another friend (in Australia) mentioned he had it as well when I tweeted about it. It can be caused by a virus. Your immune system gets whacked when you don't rest properly, so it's possible you had the same thing that was going around. Try ditching the phone/computer after 8PM and just relax and enjoy life. There will always be more work to do in the morning.

beagle3 13y ago

Dude/Dudette, it IS ruining your health. Start looking. You don't have to quit to start looking - and you might be pleasantly surprised at offers coming your way. Especially if you're in a high demand area like SF or NYC (or can reasonably commute there), but even if you are not.

mhurron 13y ago
> it IS ruining your health. No it's not, he is. He is refusing to balance his work out to more healthy levels. He is pushing himself harder to be there. He is not looking for another job. If he can't control himself and work less, he'll simply do it in another job if he moves on.
- adamman 13y ago
  Lets not go down this road. This is like the guns don't kill people debate.
  - nmcfarl 13y ago
    Maybe - but maybe mhurran is right - I've definitely been the guy that works weekends at the job where no one works weekends. It's not healthy - and work life imbalance is usually driven by others, but sometimes not. And to fix it you need to figure out what the cause is. Looking at yourself shouldn't take that long if your job is the problem, and if you are the problem well you should attack that. In my case working myself to the bone was not a healthy response to a bad breakup but admitting that took some time.
  - brianmcc 13y ago
    I agree with the earlier post. We need to all be responsible for our own contribution levels. At the end of the day, each of us chooses how much work to put in, and a tendency to overdo it will follow us from one job to the next unless we admit we're directly, albeit unconsciously, enabling the imbalance. Granted some workplaces will ask more than others, but it's absolutely a two-sided deal.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    When did it become that you are not responsible for your own health? He is not a slave that has to jump when the whip is cracked.
- nilkn 13y ago
  In the worst case, if he's established the precedent of working weekends and is now expected to do so, a fresh start could still be useful. Transitioning to another company might also help provide him with the clean mental slate necessary to trash this habit of over-working himself. Also, there is the possibility that the company is somewhat at fault--his post is lacking details, and he may be under legitimate pressure to do extra work.
- Bluestrike2 13y ago
  The human mind is a funny thing. You're assuming that the individual isn't affected by social factors, and that he can effectively isolate himself from negative demands and expectations. But if research in social psychology has shown nothing else, it's that the individual is not separate from his social environment. Even when we know better, when we should be able to rationally extricate ourselves from a situation, we continue on in it for a myriad of reasons. We see the warning signs, only to blindly rationalize them away so successfully that they disappear from conscious thought. I've been there, and I've suffered the consequences. Take an external authority figure, in this case a boss who values a person's ability to lose themselves in their work in order to get things done, and sit back. Add in a culture of co-workers who celebrate the same. Maybe the employee wants to work their way up the ladder, or maybe they just want to get the satisfaction of positive feedback from those figures. Watch as these factors slowly influence the employee's sense of perception, and eventually through it, their behaviors and how they judge them. Eventually, you'll see a affective and cognitive responses as they integrate these changed beliefs into their self-identity. This is made all the easier by the presence of authority figures You see this everywhere. Why do young investment bankers accept the idea that they need to work upwards of 80+ hours/week, and often, 100 or more? Worse, they not only accept it but they make it part of their core self-identity to be celebrated. Why do undergrads pull all-nighters and consider them a badge of honor? Or far more darkly, why do so many battered spouses stay with their abusive partners, justifying the abuse as something they somehow "deserve?" If someone tells you that you're dirt enough times, eventually even the strongest-willed of us will start to question it, and far too often, come to believe it. Across all these examples and more, the same cognitive phenomena are at work. You think this is solely a matter of willpower. It's often not. Yes, he's pushing himself. But social factors are also pushing inward on him, making it easier to do so. I'm not belaboring your end point. It's a good one, and the presence of outsiders willing to give such advice--get out, get somewhere where you can rebuild your sense of self and personal boundaries--can help empower people to act on it. But don't assume that it's as simple as turning off the screen, or that you're immune to these pressures. You're not. No one is. Given enough time, even the strongest can and will be influenced by social factors. Often, to positive ends. But not always. Given enough of the bad, eventually, everyone breaks. Not at once. Never at once. But little by little, piece by piece, people will change without even realizing it. And once you're there, the mind's ability to rationalize and protect itself will help keep you there.

michaelochurch 13y ago

Working through a flu (a real flu, not a cold) is not a good idea. I've been around Wall Street and startups for a long-ass time, so I know people who've developed permanent anxiety/panic disorders from that. (March is a deadly month. You have winter's flus and viruses combining with spring's mental health risks.) Flu is usually mild, but it is a potentially life-threatening condition, i.e. not to be fucked around with. You need to change jobs and get one that won't have you working unreasonable hours. Any time other than now is too late.

stronglikedan 13y ago
I find that if I try to work through a flu, I'll be sick for a week or two. If I just go home and stay in bed, I get over it in a few days. In the long run, it's much more productive to take care of yourself before your work. No matter how productive you think you are being while sick, the quality of your work is most likely suffering.
- michaelochurch 13y ago
  Some companies have this horrible "PTO" pogrom (typo intentional) in which sick days and vacation days are pooled. It wouldn't be so bad if there were a sizable pool (say, 30 days) but usually, it's an excuse to present the company as having ample vacation (15-20 days) while actually deducting sick days from it. It means that a week-long illness will cut into your vacation. Then you have this arrangement where people "work from home" (WFH) while actually ill, just to avoid losing a PTO day. Then you need a manager who understands the difference between sick WFH (don't hit him up, he might read emails and type out a few replies and that's it) and real WFH (you can actually expect that person to be working)-- and who, in addition, cares about that distinction.
  - aestra 13y ago
    > ample vacation (15-20 days) 15-20 days is hardly "ample" vacation time.
    - 13y ago

lost_my_pwd 13y ago

I, too, had to leave college for financial and family health reasons. It always left a question in my head as to whether I was as good as those at the job with a degree. I, too, worked my way up redacted, since personal info was removed by parent poster, my whole rise driven by feelings of inadequacy. Despite the ever increasing disfunction at the job, I stayed way too long, fearing I was not good enough to find another job. You know what? I got over the fear of change and quit (you don't have to, one can always job hunt while still working). A year later, rested and in a better place, I started the next phase of my career where my experience was acknowledged and I gained a much better sense of my worth. I now work with great people, at a job I love, doing interesting work every single day. There is better to be had out there, you just may not see it until you are on the other side. Take the chance, if you value your health and life.

radicalbyte 13y ago

Been there, done that, never ever doing it again. It's not worth it. My advise: leave. You're a developer, you've got a world of options before you. You have no reason to work in that environment.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

That's called having the job ruin your health. Let me tell you a little story to make sure you never do this stupid shit again! When I first met my fiancee, perhaps a couple weeks after we met and a week or so after our first date, she got sick. At first we thought it was just a head cold. Then it seemed to be a bit of a flu. She is, of course, a workaholic Determinator of a woman, and kept working on her courses (we were in university) through the whole thing. Eventually she went to University Health Services and got diagnosed with mononucleosis. A day later, she was passing out in the lab and having purple spots flash in front of her eyes. She finished her work, and then had her parents drive out to fetch her and take her to the family doctors. It turned out that she had bacterial meningitis from an impacted tooth, she had to be hospitalized for three weeks, couldn't come back to college for two months, and nearly died. Why? Because for days on end, she tried to power through her illness, and of course because University Health Services didn't check for what she actually had. Don't power through your work when seriously sick unless you want your family and friends praying for you to live.

michaelochurch 13y ago
The problem is that our society is so terrible about choosing leaders (in academia or business) that its only resolution is to understaff, to generate busywork, and to load people up with artificial stress until most of them crack. It's an idiotic war of attrition. Usually, the "brick wall" is a low-level mental illness (anxiety, depression) in a previously healthy person and it often goes away in a year or so. Sometimes, it doesn't. This is why those of us who have real neurological anxiety or mood disorders can never expect genuine accommodation. Our disease is the culling agent that, with enough stress, will also flare up in the normal and be attributed (God of the Gaps) to "personal weakness". We have this fucked-up culture of "powering through" that malaise. When it's a hard biological issue (i.e. an infection or cancer or mental illness) it refuses to play by our rules. It's not going to go away by "downshifting" at work or when we get that reward for being the last one standing. It's imminently dangerous. But, in our culture of "power through it and get the prize", most people don't get the help they need until it's too late. I would argue, though, that there's no value in this war of attrition. We have enough resources to give everyone a good life and autonomy over their work, and it's only getting better. Why do we set up these health-destroying tournaments of fools in the first place? If we need to pick leaders, it will happen naturally. If we don't, then why not have a looser arrangement where everyone has some autonomy? This attrition game that we use to fill the corporate and academic upper ranks doesn't pick good leaders. The military has known this for a long time. There are 2% of people who don't have the stress-sensitivity of the other 98%. They can be placed in danger or have to kill others and they won't get PTSD, and they don't get the context-driven anxiety and depression disorders that most people get from overwork. They're neurologically insensitive. Not all of them are bad people (some are very good people, if neurologically indistinguishable from murderers, because morality won't show up on an MRI) but half of them are psychopaths. You want people from that 2% (at least, the good ones who have a sense of morality and conscience; but the bad ones are often directed toward things like running POW camps) doing elite and dangerous work (they often enjoy it) but not making general-level decisions that affect thousands.

johnny635 13y ago

You are dying.

kordless 13y ago

I had vertigo for about a month a few months ago. Another friend (in Australia) mentioned he had it as well when I tweeted about it. It can be caused by a virus. Your immune system gets whacked when you don't rest properly, so it's possible you had the same thing that was going around. Try ditching the phone/computer after 8PM and just relax and enjoy life. There will always be more work to do in the morning.