8 ms·

Burnout

247 points by markchristian 7y ago

blbfsh 7y ago
I like the note in the end about his advice: This advice doesn’t get you very far. In the abstract, it’s just more self-help cliché. For me these are hard-won lessons, and it’s unlikely I would have done anything differently if someone had told me this when I was 26 or 30. I feel like the cause of burnout generally lies much deeper than not asking for help or not putting health first. It's more about certain values embedded in you from your past. Those values make you feel responsible for things you aren't, and might make you push yourself. Which might also bring you good things in life, but you have to wonder where those values came from and if they are indeed true for you and helping you.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  “A soldier does not become a shrewd general merely by endorsing the strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to apply them.” “Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.” — Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (1949) I started reading this a couple of weeks ago after seeing it referenced in Peter Naur’s “Programming as Theory Building”, and this point of his in particular keeps coming up in all sorts of contexts: there’s a fundamental difference between knowing how something is done and knowing how to do it. The former is what you get from any sort of how-to or advice article, but the latter comes from experience. It’s unclear if there’s any internal transfer at all between these two kinds of knowledge.
  - agumonkey 7y ago
    I hit that wall somehow hard. There's a very odd cognitive notion about 'know how'. Even stupid simple obvious things, when you've never done them, good chances you will feel weirdly stuck for tiny and absurd reasons.
    - lanstin 7y ago
      Which is why trying new stuff you don't know how to do and also to do stuff you like but are bad at is so cognitively beneficial.
  - hellisothers 7y ago
    Which is why when you’re interviewing you should have a really good example of personal failure and recovery :)
  - jasim 7y ago
    I've come to believe that reading isn't as useful as I previously thought. I still read prolifically, because it is pleasurable, and occasionally inspiring, but not because there are any causal benefits I can point to. "The saying experientia magistra rerum, ‘experience is a great teacher’, was familiar in the Middle Ages: you don’t learn to ride a horse or shoot an arrow by reading books." (from the book, oh the irony, The Invention of Science by Wooton)
    - dasil003 7y ago
      It sounds like you might be over-correcting if you truly believe reading doesn't have any "causal benefits". The vast majority of what you read might not be directly applicable to your pursuits, but when you find those nuggets that reveal a flaw you hadn't perceived, or point you in a new direction the results can be dramatic. Practice and knowledge go hand-in-hand, the key is judgement on where to focus day-to-day.
      - jasim 7y ago
        I agree - it is a bit of over-correction.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  Not helped by social trends. Disrupt, invent, etc.. there's good things in simple productive, social, regular and predictable work. They're probably healthier.
pixelmonkey 7y ago
This is good post on experiencing burnout (and avoiding it). Written by an early programmer at Slack, and someone involved with their recent desktop app rewrite project. For me, "team marathon running" on software projects means only rarely "sprinting". As the author suggests, sacrificing sleep, body, and hours eventually catches up with you. But, it's very easy to do and we've all been there. This is part of the reason that medical residents are burnt out on medicine even though they love medicine. It doesn't matter that you're doing what you love -- that's only the top little self actualization triangle of Maslow's heirarchy/pyramid of needs. You need all the base components of Maslow's heirarchy satisfied, too -- financial health, bodily health, emotional health.
geggam 7y ago
This was the hardest one for me and caused me a burnout a couple times, especially when working remote from home. Separate your work and personal life. This was a major change for me. I’ve always identified very closely with my work. I’m learning to separate my sense of self-worth and purpose from my professional self.
- twbarber 7y ago
  How did you manage to separate it? I've been remote 2 years now, and I'm just now starting to become aware of how big of a problem this is.
  - geggam 7y ago
    Filled my calendar with things like gym and family time outside of working hours. Set my calendar to reject double booked meetings / events automatically was the first step After that it depends on the reactions you get from that.
draw_down 7y ago
Well, burning out building the first version of Slack is probably materially different than the burnout most others experience, but sure.
Kenji 7y ago
That was a great read. I think the most important thing is letting go when stressful problems become a danger to your health. Just think "I'm not that important in the grand scheme of things" and take a few steps away from the problem (obviously that's not always possible, but it's more often possible than people think). What will happen is the following: - Maybe you're right, and things go on nicely without you - Maybe things go not so well, so your coworkers have to learn redundancy and that they cannot pile all the problems on one person - Often, you come back from your break (be it going home early, or taking a few days off, etc.) refreshed and you look at the problem from a new perspective. Potential emotions like anger and impatience have worn off, enabling you to act calmly and rationally.
jacknews 7y ago
Is this really burnout, or just overheating? To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc. This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.
- Wilduck 7y ago
  I downvoted you and wanted to tell you why. In this story someone just shared an experience of being in deep pain, psychologically and physically. While you may not intend to be mean, your response boils down to "you didn't feel enough pain to qualify for burnout." Even if you didn't intend it, this response has an aspect of shaming the author. I think that it's really important for people to be able to talk about mental health constructively. Specifically, it's important to de-stigmatize the fact that people are susceptible to burnout / anxiety / depression / etc. These aren't necessarily conditions that "can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting." Instead, they're often conditions that require tailored effort and outside help. For someone who's going through a mental health issue, it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important. Again, I doubt you were intending to be belittling here, but I want to point out how important empathy is in this situation.
  - yters 7y ago
    I suffered from depression a lot while a teenager and early twenties, and I think lack of empathy from others has helped me snap out of it. Depression, at least for me, can be a form of feeling sorry for myself, and when others feel sorry for me that compounds the problem.
  - forgottenpass 7y ago
    >it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important. Having gone through some dark periods of my life, I'd much rather take "snap out of it" advice over the unintentionally patronizing "support". Both are the words of well-intentioned people unable to relate, but one of them mistakenly believes they've overcoming their inability to relate.
madaxe_again 7y ago
The bit about ending up in hospital with an obstructed bowel from diverticulitis? I call misdiagnosis - either on his part or mine. I had an uncannily similar experience, except in my case it was about a week a month (sometimes much more, sometimes less) that I lost to the vomiting, the nausea, the delirium, the totally immobile bowel. In my case, the stress went on for years, and years, utterly relentlessly, day and night, incessantly, and so did the gut attacks. I’d get angry when people mentioned they’d slept badly, because at least they’d got to sleep. I’d spend a sleepless week shivering and roasting and dripping sweat and reeling with nausea, unable to make words or thoughts, then finally suddenly recover, and the moment I was capable of any movement or coherent thought, I’d be writing apologetic emails and heading back to the office, where I’d get a barrage of abuse from both clients and cofounder for my absence. After multiple hospitalisations they’d decided I had everything from diverticulitis to gallstones to salmonella to a brainstem injury. They took my gallbladder out, did exploratory surgery, every endoscopy you care to name. It kept happening, nothing worked. Then, I quit my business. Two months later, I had my last “attack”, as I’d come to call them, and it’s now been three years. So... I wonder if the author had diverticulitis, or was having the same violent physiological reaction to stress that I had apparently developed.
codeisawesome 7y ago
Great advice if you’re already a millionaire.
- almost_usual 7y ago
  Not sure what being a millionaire has to do with avoiding burn out. There are plenty of wealthy people who still burn out. If you’re burning yourself out solely for “getting rich” you should probably buy lotto tickets instead.
  - Aaargh20318 7y ago
    If you are rich you’re burning out by choice. Having to go through something like long workdays because you want to is a completely different experience than doing so because you have to. I never understood why people keep working once they have accumulated enough to not have to work anymore.
    - almost_usual 7y ago
      The wealthiest people I know work 6-7 days a week. It’s no coincidence they’re rich. The money is nice but that’s not their motivation.
didgeoridoo 7y ago
My wife is a clinical psychologist focusing on the mental health impact of high-pressure jobs. She had me build this “Burnout Calculator” based on a self-evaluation protocol they use in their practice. Leaving it here in case it’s helpful for anyone: https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator
- hellisothers 7y ago
  Assuming this is a relatively standardized protocol this is a great idea. However, getting a score at the end and then the tag line “you’re fine but you should contact us anyway to see if therapy could help” feels icky
  - didgeoridoo 7y ago
    If you actually feel fine, then of course therapy isn’t likely to do much for you. The idea is if you’re feeling terrible enough to evaluate yourself, but it turns out you likely aren’t suffering from burnout, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into therapy. Often people think they are suffering from burnout, but it turns out they actually have underlying trauma, anxiety, depression, etc. unrelated to work stress.
    - slips 7y ago
      Everyone, even healthy people, should attend therapy if able. There's a lot of tricky ground to navigate as a person and you don't have to be experiencing trauma to get help.
      - lanstin 7y ago
        It is a technology to get more satisfactory outcomes from life. Not sure why you wouldn't use it.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
        > Everyone, even healthy people, should attend therapy if able. I feel like this is just a weaponized meme developed for the purpose of marketing.
dawhizkid 7y ago
I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. "Blue collar" burnout, to me, is the archetypal fast food worker making minimum wage working paycheck to paycheck, who not only has to deal with financial insecurity that comes with the job but the physical (actual manual "work") and psychological (rude customers) burdens that come with those types of jobs.
- blinkingled 7y ago
  > because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. This resonates with me a 100%. We forgot that we aren't machines and our mind and soul needs variations - clutching on to something, letting go/resting and moving on to something else is necessary physically and psychologically. Absence of that we have sustained stress and resulting bad consequences.
  - lanstin 7y ago
    Even within a purely work perspective, we arent machines. My productivity (as perceived by the impact of my work not Lines of Code) gies up and down. I will have a good year and save millions of dollars or make a platform that ends up employing dozen software engineers for many products and then you know have years where I make some python framework used by five people have 10 percent better latency. There is a certain tendency by management to reward me in the up years and punish me in the down years but for me as a human they aren't two things. Stuff just goes in cycles. I don't get the big years without the fallow years. I focus on learning stuff each year and trying to get people to always improve things a bit, and it all works out. At least i have learned a lot of cool stuff. And management still hasn't come up with floating promotions where you are a Senior blah blah blah for 24 months then can ebb back.
b_tterc_p 7y ago
I have never been burned out, but I think I would have been. I did a couple stints at various places (non dev work) where I was pretty excited to continue working and get higher in the org. Fortunately for me they were co-ops which ended and allowed me to see that, retrospectively, they kind of sucked, were not especially fruitful career tracks, and would have ground me down after a year or so. It’s really hard to check yourself while engaged and working on something.
agoodthrowaway 7y ago
I had my first major career failure this year and lost a very good job. I was able to land another good job quickly but I’ve been full of doubt and am seriously lacking in confidence ever since. I can’t sleep and have anxiety. The new job has significantly more responsibility and in many ways the pressure that the author describes in rewriting Slack is very similar to what I’m going through. Every time I have a setback at work I am afraid of losing my job. I finally recognized this as burnout and am trying to come back from it but it’s a slow process. I’m trying to exercise more and get enough sleep but the sleep part is still not working all that well.
world32 7y ago
> I design and build technology in Vancouver. I spend most of my time working on Slack, a paradigm-shifting tool for team communication. In my work I strive for usefulness, beauty, and positive impact on the lives of others. From this chap's tag line on his home page it seems like he still identifies strongly with his work and over emphasises the importance of it.
metalgearsolid 7y ago
I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out. I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration. My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.
- polote 7y ago
  it is called bore out
- anmipo 7y ago
  Absolutely. We get stressed when job requirements mismatch our abilities. Usually there's too much work, and we deal with burnout. Sometimes, however, the mismatch goes the other way round, you are overqualified for the job and it becomes excruciatingly boring. That's boreout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout
- chucksmash 7y ago
  > Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out. The common thread of each of the examples you give above sounds like, "other people are incompetent." Applying principle of charity and assuming they are all actually that bad, you've got to meet people where they are if you want to work effectively with them. Lots has been written on the responsibility of senior engineers in guiding and improving their teams without necessarily having a specific mandate from management to do so. Perhaps you might also apply a bit of that charity IRL too though. Examine your perceptions and interactions critically. There's no requirement in life that you have to make things work with any given team, anyway. The clueless and the checked out exist too. If you're surrounded by them and your not married to the org, consider other work.
kirstenbirgit 7y ago
Something I think that has helped me avoid burnout is to stop at 16.00 (or whenever your regular working day ends) and leave work, physically and mentally. On the weekends, I don't think about work ever (unless something happens to the system and I'm on-call, which very rarely happens. I realise I'm lucky in this regard.) I just can't work more than 6-7 hours on a given day. Working more won't make me more productive, on the other hand I'll waste more time on reddit since I can't stay focused and I can "catch up" my pre-noon procrastination later. A part of this, of course, is to insist on not working outside work hours from the beginning of joining a company. In doing so, your colleagues will learn to know not to disturb you outside of work unless it's really necessary. I feel like that's the mistake the author of this article is committing: not doing anything else than work. Everyone needs time off to recoup no matter what business they're in.
situational87 7y ago
There is some incredibly obnoxious script on this page that won't let you resize the text. First time I've seen that. I often feel like the web couldn't possibly get any worse, and every day it finds a new way to surprise me and get worse.
- christilut 7y ago
  There is some horrible javascript that calculates what the font size should be based on the height of the browser. A large screen gets a huge font and if you zoom out then the resize event triggers which keeps the font the same size. Might be one of the worst things I've seen on the web so far
voidhorse 7y ago
I hope someone will (or has?) conducted a historical and geographical analysis of the concept of “burnout”. I’m curious about where precisely it emerges (hypothesis, predominantly America) and when (hypothesis, the 21st century). It’s a peculiar concept in that it seems to capture the idea that we’ve reached a stage in human development in which we shouldn’t really have to work that much, but do so anyway. It a sort of paradoxical situation in which we’ve eliminated the conditions which necessitated or fostered overwork with material ends (must produce xyz units of consumable goods, food etc) for overwork with largely frivolous ends (the sustainment of online systems which don’t actually create any material value—only abstract or cultural value—not true in every case, of course) enter the “burnout” concept—the big boss no longer needs to forcibly push his workers to the edge, they’ll do it for him through some odd sense of pride or ridiculous notions of performance which are enforced not through punishment but through the allocation of “benefits” like respect, small bonuses, etc etc. —the workplace “culture” (though the social dynamics which emerge at workplaces are not worthy of the name) is an effective system for ensuring people overextend themselves.
- javiramos 7y ago
  I recently read a book (Behemoth [0]) about the history of the 'factory' and I can tell you that burnout is omnipresent throughout the entire narrative. Particularly, the 18th century textile mills were a brutal and oppressive place to work. Burnout, financial ruin and pressure, and worker unhappiness were persistent elements of the book. To this day, we still have manufacturing settings that heavily rely in oppressive and abusive labor practices. I think that what is "new" is burnout in the context of the office and knowledge work. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/14/behemoth-joshua-freeman-history-factory-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/14/behemoth-joshu...
eccbits 7y ago
Slack spends a lot of time promoting itself as a “work hard, them go home” culture. Do others fimd tat to be true? If so, why would burnout be a risk for someone at Slack?
gepiti 7y ago
Caretaker burnout anyone? Nobody talks about it but this is the hardest of all. You can turn the back on a career but not to your loved ones.
ezekg 7y ago
Burnout fucking sucks. I thought I went through it once in the past (and maybe I did), but when compared to how I feel now it was nowhere near as bad. I recently tried a few things: 1) nootropic supplements, which have helped a bit to an extent; and 2) take a week long tech-free vacation to the mountains, but when I came back my state didn't really change. I think my burnout is due to feeling utterly unchallenged at work. The work I've been doing feels way below my pay grade. I'm also attempting to grow my own SaaS business and growth is very slow (3 years in, at $4k MRR), which makes that "light at the end of the tunnel" of going full-time on my business seem unreachable at times. I also have a 5 month old, so I'd also factor that into the lower-bound of my stress level (but I do feel like she helps me slog through hard days more than anything). I'm starting to be more open about my mental health with family/friends, and I feel like I'm in a rut and not sure how to get out of it. I wish I could take a sabbatical.

247 points by markchristian 7y ago

I like the note in the end about his advice: This advice doesn’t get you very far. In the abstract, it’s just more self-help cliché. For me these are hard-won lessons, and it’s unlikely I would have done anything differently if someone had told me this when I was 26 or 30. I feel like the cause of burnout generally lies much deeper than not asking for help or not putting health first. It's more about certain values embedded in you from your past. Those values make you feel responsible for things you aren't, and might make you push yourself. Which might also bring you good things in life, but you have to wonder where those values came from and if they are indeed true for you and helping you.

kd5bjo 7y ago
“A soldier does not become a shrewd general merely by endorsing the strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to apply them.” “Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.” — Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (1949) I started reading this a couple of weeks ago after seeing it referenced in Peter Naur’s “Programming as Theory Building”, and this point of his in particular keeps coming up in all sorts of contexts: there’s a fundamental difference between knowing how something is done and knowing how to do it. The former is what you get from any sort of how-to or advice article, but the latter comes from experience. It’s unclear if there’s any internal transfer at all between these two kinds of knowledge.
- agumonkey 7y ago
  I hit that wall somehow hard. There's a very odd cognitive notion about 'know how'. Even stupid simple obvious things, when you've never done them, good chances you will feel weirdly stuck for tiny and absurd reasons.
  - lanstin 7y ago
    Which is why trying new stuff you don't know how to do and also to do stuff you like but are bad at is so cognitively beneficial.
- hellisothers 7y ago
  Which is why when you’re interviewing you should have a really good example of personal failure and recovery :)
- jasim 7y ago
  I've come to believe that reading isn't as useful as I previously thought. I still read prolifically, because it is pleasurable, and occasionally inspiring, but not because there are any causal benefits I can point to. "The saying experientia magistra rerum, ‘experience is a great teacher’, was familiar in the Middle Ages: you don’t learn to ride a horse or shoot an arrow by reading books." (from the book, oh the irony, The Invention of Science by Wooton)
  - dasil003 7y ago
    It sounds like you might be over-correcting if you truly believe reading doesn't have any "causal benefits". The vast majority of what you read might not be directly applicable to your pursuits, but when you find those nuggets that reveal a flaw you hadn't perceived, or point you in a new direction the results can be dramatic. Practice and knowledge go hand-in-hand, the key is judgement on where to focus day-to-day.
    - jasim 7y ago
      I agree - it is a bit of over-correction.
agumonkey 7y ago
Not helped by social trends. Disrupt, invent, etc.. there's good things in simple productive, social, regular and predictable work. They're probably healthier.

pixelmonkey 7y ago

This is good post on experiencing burnout (and avoiding it). Written by an early programmer at Slack, and someone involved with their recent desktop app rewrite project. For me, "team marathon running" on software projects means only rarely "sprinting". As the author suggests, sacrificing sleep, body, and hours eventually catches up with you. But, it's very easy to do and we've all been there. This is part of the reason that medical residents are burnt out on medicine even though they love medicine. It doesn't matter that you're doing what you love -- that's only the top little self actualization triangle of Maslow's heirarchy/pyramid of needs. You need all the base components of Maslow's heirarchy satisfied, too -- financial health, bodily health, emotional health.

geggam 7y ago

This was the hardest one for me and caused me a burnout a couple times, especially when working remote from home. Separate your work and personal life. This was a major change for me. I’ve always identified very closely with my work. I’m learning to separate my sense of self-worth and purpose from my professional self.

twbarber 7y ago
How did you manage to separate it? I've been remote 2 years now, and I'm just now starting to become aware of how big of a problem this is.
- geggam 7y ago
  Filled my calendar with things like gym and family time outside of working hours. Set my calendar to reject double booked meetings / events automatically was the first step After that it depends on the reactions you get from that.

draw_down 7y ago

Well, burning out building the first version of Slack is probably materially different than the burnout most others experience, but sure.

Kenji 7y ago

That was a great read. I think the most important thing is letting go when stressful problems become a danger to your health. Just think "I'm not that important in the grand scheme of things" and take a few steps away from the problem (obviously that's not always possible, but it's more often possible than people think). What will happen is the following: - Maybe you're right, and things go on nicely without you - Maybe things go not so well, so your coworkers have to learn redundancy and that they cannot pile all the problems on one person - Often, you come back from your break (be it going home early, or taking a few days off, etc.) refreshed and you look at the problem from a new perspective. Potential emotions like anger and impatience have worn off, enabling you to act calmly and rationally.

jacknews 7y ago

Is this really burnout, or just overheating? To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc. This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.

Wilduck 7y ago
I downvoted you and wanted to tell you why. In this story someone just shared an experience of being in deep pain, psychologically and physically. While you may not intend to be mean, your response boils down to "you didn't feel enough pain to qualify for burnout." Even if you didn't intend it, this response has an aspect of shaming the author. I think that it's really important for people to be able to talk about mental health constructively. Specifically, it's important to de-stigmatize the fact that people are susceptible to burnout / anxiety / depression / etc. These aren't necessarily conditions that "can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting." Instead, they're often conditions that require tailored effort and outside help. For someone who's going through a mental health issue, it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important. Again, I doubt you were intending to be belittling here, but I want to point out how important empathy is in this situation.
- yters 7y ago
  I suffered from depression a lot while a teenager and early twenties, and I think lack of empathy from others has helped me snap out of it. Depression, at least for me, can be a form of feeling sorry for myself, and when others feel sorry for me that compounds the problem.
- forgottenpass 7y ago
  >it's often really hard to go through the steps needed to improve the situation for themselves. Having others around them understand that it's a struggle, and not something they can "snap out of" is really important. Having gone through some dark periods of my life, I'd much rather take "snap out of it" advice over the unintentionally patronizing "support". Both are the words of well-intentioned people unable to relate, but one of them mistakenly believes they've overcoming their inability to relate.

madaxe_again 7y ago

The bit about ending up in hospital with an obstructed bowel from diverticulitis? I call misdiagnosis - either on his part or mine. I had an uncannily similar experience, except in my case it was about a week a month (sometimes much more, sometimes less) that I lost to the vomiting, the nausea, the delirium, the totally immobile bowel. In my case, the stress went on for years, and years, utterly relentlessly, day and night, incessantly, and so did the gut attacks. I’d get angry when people mentioned they’d slept badly, because at least they’d got to sleep. I’d spend a sleepless week shivering and roasting and dripping sweat and reeling with nausea, unable to make words or thoughts, then finally suddenly recover, and the moment I was capable of any movement or coherent thought, I’d be writing apologetic emails and heading back to the office, where I’d get a barrage of abuse from both clients and cofounder for my absence. After multiple hospitalisations they’d decided I had everything from diverticulitis to gallstones to salmonella to a brainstem injury. They took my gallbladder out, did exploratory surgery, every endoscopy you care to name. It kept happening, nothing worked. Then, I quit my business. Two months later, I had my last “attack”, as I’d come to call them, and it’s now been three years. So... I wonder if the author had diverticulitis, or was having the same violent physiological reaction to stress that I had apparently developed.

codeisawesome 7y ago

Great advice if you’re already a millionaire.

almost_usual 7y ago
Not sure what being a millionaire has to do with avoiding burn out. There are plenty of wealthy people who still burn out. If you’re burning yourself out solely for “getting rich” you should probably buy lotto tickets instead.
- Aaargh20318 7y ago
  If you are rich you’re burning out by choice. Having to go through something like long workdays because you want to is a completely different experience than doing so because you have to. I never understood why people keep working once they have accumulated enough to not have to work anymore.
  - almost_usual 7y ago
    The wealthiest people I know work 6-7 days a week. It’s no coincidence they’re rich. The money is nice but that’s not their motivation.

didgeoridoo 7y ago

My wife is a clinical psychologist focusing on the mental health impact of high-pressure jobs. She had me build this “Burnout Calculator” based on a self-evaluation protocol they use in their practice. Leaving it here in case it’s helpful for anyone: https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator

hellisothers 7y ago
Assuming this is a relatively standardized protocol this is a great idea. However, getting a score at the end and then the tag line “you’re fine but you should contact us anyway to see if therapy could help” feels icky
- didgeoridoo 7y ago
  If you actually feel fine, then of course therapy isn’t likely to do much for you. The idea is if you’re feeling terrible enough to evaluate yourself, but it turns out you likely aren’t suffering from burnout, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into therapy. Often people think they are suffering from burnout, but it turns out they actually have underlying trauma, anxiety, depression, etc. unrelated to work stress.
  - slips 7y ago
    Everyone, even healthy people, should attend therapy if able. There's a lot of tricky ground to navigate as a person and you don't have to be experiencing trauma to get help.
    - lanstin 7y ago
      It is a technology to get more satisfactory outcomes from life. Not sure why you wouldn't use it.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
      > Everyone, even healthy people, should attend therapy if able. I feel like this is just a weaponized meme developed for the purpose of marketing.

dawhizkid 7y ago

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. "Blue collar" burnout, to me, is the archetypal fast food worker making minimum wage working paycheck to paycheck, who not only has to deal with financial insecurity that comes with the job but the physical (actual manual "work") and psychological (rude customers) burdens that come with those types of jobs.

blinkingled 7y ago
> because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. This resonates with me a 100%. We forgot that we aren't machines and our mind and soul needs variations - clutching on to something, letting go/resting and moving on to something else is necessary physically and psychologically. Absence of that we have sustained stress and resulting bad consequences.
- lanstin 7y ago
  Even within a purely work perspective, we arent machines. My productivity (as perceived by the impact of my work not Lines of Code) gies up and down. I will have a good year and save millions of dollars or make a platform that ends up employing dozen software engineers for many products and then you know have years where I make some python framework used by five people have 10 percent better latency. There is a certain tendency by management to reward me in the up years and punish me in the down years but for me as a human they aren't two things. Stuff just goes in cycles. I don't get the big years without the fallow years. I focus on learning stuff each year and trying to get people to always improve things a bit, and it all works out. At least i have learned a lot of cool stuff. And management still hasn't come up with floating promotions where you are a Senior blah blah blah for 24 months then can ebb back.

b_tterc_p 7y ago

I have never been burned out, but I think I would have been. I did a couple stints at various places (non dev work) where I was pretty excited to continue working and get higher in the org. Fortunately for me they were co-ops which ended and allowed me to see that, retrospectively, they kind of sucked, were not especially fruitful career tracks, and would have ground me down after a year or so. It’s really hard to check yourself while engaged and working on something.

agoodthrowaway 7y ago

I had my first major career failure this year and lost a very good job. I was able to land another good job quickly but I’ve been full of doubt and am seriously lacking in confidence ever since. I can’t sleep and have anxiety. The new job has significantly more responsibility and in many ways the pressure that the author describes in rewriting Slack is very similar to what I’m going through. Every time I have a setback at work I am afraid of losing my job. I finally recognized this as burnout and am trying to come back from it but it’s a slow process. I’m trying to exercise more and get enough sleep but the sleep part is still not working all that well.

world32 7y ago

> I design and build technology in Vancouver. I spend most of my time working on Slack, a paradigm-shifting tool for team communication. In my work I strive for usefulness, beauty, and positive impact on the lives of others. From this chap's tag line on his home page it seems like he still identifies strongly with his work and over emphasises the importance of it.

metalgearsolid 7y ago

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out. I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration. My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.

polote 7y ago
it is called bore out
anmipo 7y ago
Absolutely. We get stressed when job requirements mismatch our abilities. Usually there's too much work, and we deal with burnout. Sometimes, however, the mismatch goes the other way round, you are overqualified for the job and it becomes excruciatingly boring. That's boreout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout
chucksmash 7y ago
> Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out. The common thread of each of the examples you give above sounds like, "other people are incompetent." Applying principle of charity and assuming they are all actually that bad, you've got to meet people where they are if you want to work effectively with them. Lots has been written on the responsibility of senior engineers in guiding and improving their teams without necessarily having a specific mandate from management to do so. Perhaps you might also apply a bit of that charity IRL too though. Examine your perceptions and interactions critically. There's no requirement in life that you have to make things work with any given team, anyway. The clueless and the checked out exist too. If you're surrounded by them and your not married to the org, consider other work.

kirstenbirgit 7y ago

Something I think that has helped me avoid burnout is to stop at 16.00 (or whenever your regular working day ends) and leave work, physically and mentally. On the weekends, I don't think about work ever (unless something happens to the system and I'm on-call, which very rarely happens. I realise I'm lucky in this regard.) I just can't work more than 6-7 hours on a given day. Working more won't make me more productive, on the other hand I'll waste more time on reddit since I can't stay focused and I can "catch up" my pre-noon procrastination later. A part of this, of course, is to insist on not working outside work hours from the beginning of joining a company. In doing so, your colleagues will learn to know not to disturb you outside of work unless it's really necessary. I feel like that's the mistake the author of this article is committing: not doing anything else than work. Everyone needs time off to recoup no matter what business they're in.

situational87 7y ago

There is some incredibly obnoxious script on this page that won't let you resize the text. First time I've seen that. I often feel like the web couldn't possibly get any worse, and every day it finds a new way to surprise me and get worse.

christilut 7y ago
There is some horrible javascript that calculates what the font size should be based on the height of the browser. A large screen gets a huge font and if you zoom out then the resize event triggers which keeps the font the same size. Might be one of the worst things I've seen on the web so far

voidhorse 7y ago

I hope someone will (or has?) conducted a historical and geographical analysis of the concept of “burnout”. I’m curious about where precisely it emerges (hypothesis, predominantly America) and when (hypothesis, the 21st century). It’s a peculiar concept in that it seems to capture the idea that we’ve reached a stage in human development in which we shouldn’t really have to work that much, but do so anyway. It a sort of paradoxical situation in which we’ve eliminated the conditions which necessitated or fostered overwork with material ends (must produce xyz units of consumable goods, food etc) for overwork with largely frivolous ends (the sustainment of online systems which don’t actually create any material value—only abstract or cultural value—not true in every case, of course) enter the “burnout” concept—the big boss no longer needs to forcibly push his workers to the edge, they’ll do it for him through some odd sense of pride or ridiculous notions of performance which are enforced not through punishment but through the allocation of “benefits” like respect, small bonuses, etc etc. —the workplace “culture” (though the social dynamics which emerge at workplaces are not worthy of the name) is an effective system for ensuring people overextend themselves.

javiramos 7y ago
I recently read a book (Behemoth [0]) about the history of the 'factory' and I can tell you that burnout is omnipresent throughout the entire narrative. Particularly, the 18th century textile mills were a brutal and oppressive place to work. Burnout, financial ruin and pressure, and worker unhappiness were persistent elements of the book. To this day, we still have manufacturing settings that heavily rely in oppressive and abusive labor practices. I think that what is "new" is burnout in the context of the office and knowledge work. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/14/behemoth-joshua-freeman-history-factory-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/14/behemoth-joshu...

eccbits 7y ago

Slack spends a lot of time promoting itself as a “work hard, them go home” culture. Do others fimd tat to be true? If so, why would burnout be a risk for someone at Slack?

gepiti 7y ago

Caretaker burnout anyone? Nobody talks about it but this is the hardest of all. You can turn the back on a career but not to your loved ones.

ezekg 7y ago

Burnout fucking sucks. I thought I went through it once in the past (and maybe I did), but when compared to how I feel now it was nowhere near as bad. I recently tried a few things: 1) nootropic supplements, which have helped a bit to an extent; and 2) take a week long tech-free vacation to the mountains, but when I came back my state didn't really change. I think my burnout is due to feeling utterly unchallenged at work. The work I've been doing feels way below my pay grade. I'm also attempting to grow my own SaaS business and growth is very slow (3 years in, at $4k MRR), which makes that "light at the end of the tunnel" of going full-time on my business seem unreachable at times. I also have a 5 month old, so I'd also factor that into the lower-bound of my stress level (but I do feel like she helps me slog through hard days more than anything). I'm starting to be more open about my mental health with family/friends, and I feel like I'm in a rut and not sure how to get out of it. I wish I could take a sabbatical.