
What Causes Burnout and How to Overcome It - uladzislau
http://lifehacker.com/what-causes-burnout-and-how-to-overcome-it-1792910323
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tukelully
On Real Burnout ——————————————

TL:DR; (Worth the read though)

I recently—early last year—faced real burnout for the first time and it has
had devastating effects for quite some time. Up until then I considered myself
to have some level of fortitude such that amongst my many failings, I managed
to maintain a strong level of enthusiasm for development and work ethic in
general. I wanted to work. I wanted to do well. I wanted to make new things on
the web. I wanted to do this with smart people who held the same interests.
Working at the last company that I did progressively got more and more dismal
until it came to an unfortunate and abrupt end. All of the positive attributes
that I just mentioned went away. I’m just now coming out of this after having
been unemployed for almost a year, unable to successfully find work and having
to overcome all the previously mentioned hurdles.

My Story.

Starting in mid-2015 I was contacted by a recruiter working out of Vancouver
about a job in the area. I was living at home in Winnipeg at the time, needed
the money (much better than I was capable of making locally), needed the work
itself and further experience. I spoke with the recruiter, did an interview,
and was left with a tough decision to make. I knew the company was a large
corporate entity which I knew I wouldn’t fare well at. But, the money was
literally twice what I had brought in previously and the location much better.
I also hadn’t worked at a large corp. until then and was basing my hesitation
upon my personality and gut instinct rather than hard experience. It was also
one of the largest auction companies in the world, so I figured at the very
least it’ll be good experience. It’ll give me the money and power to do
something different if I need to right? So I gave it a go. I accepted the
offer, said goodbye, and moved.

The day I started was an Agile workshop. Hallmark of corporate stooge hell.
This isn’t in and of itself all that interesting, but in retrospect I should
have started panicking. Anyway, the first few weeks were strange. I was handed
a large and heavy HP “workhorse” laptop, tasked with nothing in particular and
went about my business of inspecting the website to see where improvements
might need to be made. I made an effort to get acquainted with everyone in the
office, some of which helped me get my dev environment set up. This was a
project. No documentation to speak of. No standard image, package, zip file,
consistency. The code base was pulled from SVN (I can elaborate on the stack
if anyone is curious) and configured using one of my colleague’s environments
as an example. Everyone seemed to have their own slight variant of course and
there wasn’t one base, definitely working version, to go off. The codebase was
monolithic, inconsistent, slow, and undocumented. It made “going faster”—one
of my supervisor’s favourite catchphrases—impossible, and “breaking things”
the only element of consistency other than stress. So for the first 6 months I
pushed through and things were going okay. I got along well with my colleagues
and managed to get a decent amount done through sheer brute force. The arcane
knowledge of a few veterans and the support of a good team helped get me
there.

Six months in and my contract up, I still had confidence in my abilities, was
stressed out but not insurmountably so, and enjoyed living in BC. I knew that
this wasn’t a long-term thing for me, but was able to circumvent some of the
archaic policies that had detrimental effects on my work. I was learning a
little about how to work with large legacy codebases and on teams. I was also
learning about what it’s like working in a office in which the managers truly
don’t care and internal politics supersede everything. First experience
witnessing blatant favouritism, backstabbing, and slightly more subtle sexism.
Anyhow, managing to secure a raise and renewed contract, I pushed through into
the new year. Weeks prior there was a bit of a team change up (department
consisted of roughly 5 teams, somewhat arbitrarily put together from the top-
down). Front-end people were moved around a bit. Not a huge change, not a huge
problem. I worked closely with the other team dealing with the front-end web
stuff and had a vague idea that they were going to working on a new high value
re-design. Coming into the new year, management made the decision to
completely re-configure the teams and then immediately start this new project.
Of course, with tight deadlines. My new team, tasked with this new project,
had no domain knowledge to speak of. The other front-end dev which had been
integral to the R&D + planning of it was tasked with something completely
different. Great. Tight deadlines to not only learn how to work with a
different team, within a different team structure, switch contexts to a
foreign part of the system, in a noisy grey office, and operating on a dev
stack more fragile than Donald Trump’s policy decisions. So I did my best. I
started trying to build a solid foundation of communication amongst team
members, attempted to plan a sound process for which to get things done, and
advocated for things that would help us do this. But I was also speaking with
others and started looking for other work here and there. Getting my resume
ready and so forth.

By this point, I was starting to really feel burnt out. My interest in open
source was fading. I wasn’t encouraged to experiment with new things, directly
and indirectly as a result of ludicrous deadlines, I was losing confidence in
my efficacy, and wanted to escape as often as I could. I became the bottleneck
in the team because I couldn’t get anything done. Meetings, noise, stress,
broken builds, slow builds, not enough points, no documentation, slow
hardware, slow libraries, no true responsibility, no time to improve things,
no help with improving things, resentment within the team, literal alienation
through isolation of team members. Going faster was a far off dream. Going at
all would have been a step in the right direction. My normal emotionally
mature, generally muted self turned into a much more quick to irritate and
react self. It was getting bad quick.

I had previously booked a short 1 week vacation at a point that wasn’t
supposed to be too busy. Management seemed irritated that I took it because
the project ran straight through it, now way past deadline. It was a wake up
call. I went home, collected my thoughts, drove thousands of KM, and gained
some perspective. When I got back I was going to actively pursue leaving more
than previously, and figure out a way to get this project done. Fortunately, I
got back and was promptly fired. I saw it coming. Managers had been planning
this for a while. Not a confidence booster and I was already too late. I was
burnt out.

So I packed up my crap, said goodbye to everyone, met up a few more times with
them (while maintaining some friends and connections) and took some well
needed time off. I needed to enjoy myself. I don’t know how this would have
played out had it just been that. Tragically though, this coincided with the
news of my grandmother falling critically ill back home. I flew back and spent
the next two months helping my family through a very rough time. Enjoying
myself though I did in the time I could, it was in large part a period of time
spent watching a key family member pass away. I did not look for work during
this time, and all of these things coming together likely contributed to every
part of this becoming more difficult.

Upon arrival back home I found it an arduous task at a minimum gathering the
spirit and curiosity I once had. I didn’t care about practicing my career and
now had dependancies to finance. I couldn’t focus easily, I couldn’t find
anything interesting and obtainable, a multitude of job interviews came and
went, and money was disappearing quickly. I was stuck. But, I still had my
hobbies. Skateboarding, friends, and adventure all kept me going. I was able
to maintain perseverance if nothing else. Eventually, it slowly started coming
back. Very slowly. I found a unique conference in Europe to attend surrounding
web graphics and climate science which I thought would really help me get back
into it. By introducing me to new tech, brilliant people, and coupling it with
adventure, I made a small step forward. I started working with visualization
more, reading more theory, exploring subjects outside my comfort zone, and
kept going forward. Still slowly, but kind of getting there.

In late December I was offered some part-time work installing a CKAN Open Data
portal for a University which was not only not something I had not done
before, but it fit directly in-line with what I want to be working on again.
Now in March I’ve come to the end of that, made a tiny bit of money, but am
still essentially income-less, unsuccessful at finding consistent work, and
still struggle with motivation. On the upside, I have an idea of what I want
to be doing. I’ve met more people and done more interesting things than ever
before. I’ve regained a good amount of confidence in my skill, a good amount
of ambition, and am still in the best health/physical condition I’ve ever been
in. The mental health is the harder part, it’s been 10 long months.

To anyone here going through something similar, don’t give up. Keep pushing.
Introduce variety and try new things. Meet smart people and ask for advice.
Have fun. The bounce-back is very slow, and ongoing for me personally, but I
think you can get through it.

~~~
pmoriarty
I've burnt out many times, been out of work for many years, am still pretty
burnt out, actually. All I can say is the tech profession is not for everyone.
It can start out interesting, but eventually you might come to realize it's
not for you. It can be difficult and scary to switch careers though... even
harder as you get older. The older I get the more trapped I feel in this
profession, and the less I want to do it. But I don't have much choice.

~~~
tukelully
Very good good point. That's something that's certainly crossed my mind a
number of times and still does.

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ironic_ali
Didn't Yahoo's Mayer ban working from home?

So, when she says burnout comes from not being able to do the things you love,
like spending extra time with your family by working from home - seems
somewhat hypocritical..

~~~
simonswords82
Fuck what Yahoo are doing, they're dead in the water.

What annoys me more about modern workplace culture is the inflexibility that
companies adopt on almost any every facet of employee work life. A little
flexibility around how employees go about performing their work could make a
huge impact on their employee's quality of life. Large companies are
particularly problematic. For example:

* No working from home, period. Despite technology and comms being so advanced now most jobs could probably be performed from the moon.

* 20 holiday days per annum and no negotiation around how one might earn, purchase or simply request additional time off in the form of unpaid leave

* No flexitime - in at 9am, out at 5pm...hour for lunch, that's your lot. Sucks to be you, enjoy being stuck in rush hour traffic twice a day

* More often than I hoped would be the case in 2017, many companies enforce a strict dress code even for people working behind the scenes. Some of the biggest morons I've had to work with have been devout wearers of the suit and tie (or female equivalent)

You get the idea.

~~~
ivanhoe
If it's in at 9am, out at 5pm that's great... my experience was more like: you
have to be in at 9am at the latest, but almost every day you get stuck until
7-8pm or more. And if you're late 15 minutes in the morning it's a huge deal,
but staying 2-3 hours longer is just fine, even recommended if you wish to get
good assessments. And they honestly couldn't understand why all senior
engineers are leaving them after a year or so.

~~~
tukelully
But how do you plan to be productive if you miss the daily scrum?

Same experience here.

~~~
mjevans
Document first (remote first) workflow.

I think I've /wanted/ it but have never experienced it because this is how I
want all meetings to go:

    
    
      * Someone makes a list of the points to discuss and the initial background on them.
    
      * Everyone else contributes to clarifying the points and data, as well as possible reactions/conclusions.
    
      * At some point the data is summarized and whoever does make the decisions does so.
    
      * That feeds in to the next 'meeting'.
    
    

All of this, of course, happens without ACTUALLY having a meeting; it's just
scheduling sync points to have contributes (if you are contributing) in before
the deadlines.

~~~
tukelully
My comment was actually sarcasm, but it's worth discussing. What you describe
is one way that an ideal process can work, but actually make things worse when
put into practice by people whose job it is to meetings. You want to batch
them and optimize, but what I've seen managers do is take these principles and
increase the amount of meetings. If there's time to spare because of less
meetings, you might as well book a meeting to plan ahead.

~~~
tukelully
Of course it's worth noting that in a "remote-first"—a term I love and a
principle I can get behind—environment, these people wouldn't have anything to
do.

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le-mark
I don't know if you call it burnout or what but I've done very little at my
jobs the past few years. I can't make myself code. I may do one day of work a
week. But oddly, this has been enough! I was sitting on my hands at a contract
gig for over a month, told a friend I feared I may be fired. Then got a good
review from the client manager. Blew me away.

~~~
RSZC
Apologies in advance for the unsolicited advice.

Please just be careful. I worry that your in-office retirement is going to
make finding your next job very difficult.

~~~
Namrog84
I had a job like that and remember reading about a guy who did literally
nothing for 7 years before getting caught and then suddenly realizing they
hadn't been developing their career skills and found it very difficult to have
years of experience without the actual skill for the apparent experience he
should have had.

I quickly left that job and worked harder and am very glad to have gotten
everything back on track and am much happier with life because of it.

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rdiddly
The word "burnout" is a less-precise and not-all-that-useful way of describing
existing, known psychological conditions, such as depression and trauma. In
other words I don't really think burnout is a thing, and I think it does a
disservice by inadvertently encouraging, via its analogy, the common
misconception that it's just a matter of working too much. You are not just
working too much or too hard, you are being traumatized by dehumanizing and
stressful conditions that fall into known-harmful patterns - shitty, inhuman
practices that create low-level, long-term trauma.

------
arca_vorago
I have gotten burnout a few times over the last few years, and every time my
reaction has been to drop the company like hot cakes and take care of myself.
I never understood all the braying about loyalty to a company. They aren't
loyal to employees, if the roles were reversed and I did the things they did
to me they would have fired me on the spot. In the end I think people have
forgotten that their work is nothing more than an at will contract, and they
can walk away anytime. I'm always reminded of Chomsky talking about the early
industrial revolution and saying many people thought of the 5 day work week as
only slightly better than chattel slavery, the only difference being you get
to go home at the end of the day.

Of course there are consequences to such actions. If you live a lifestyle of
debt, and you can't afford a few months without work due to all the needed
payments, it becomes more and more difficult to break away from intuitively
bad situations. To me, the real cause of burnout is the hopelessness that
comes with being stuck in a bad situation and being unable to get out of it.
Even if sometimes its more mind forged than reality.

For me, work has always been a means to an end. Since I got out of the Marines
work was what financed my efforts to study and understand the highest level
geopolitical picture because I was not satisfied with the answers to my
questions about our wars. In the process I became a pretty good sysadmin, and
tried to maintain excellence in what I did, but what I often found was
incompetence or mismanagement prevented me from being as effective as I could
be. Once a certain level of frustration was hit that wasn't justified to my
salary, I knew it was time to go. For me then, pay really did factor in, but
employers are drastically underpaying IT workers in Texas so my bullshit
tolerance levels were lower than they could should have been if salaries
matched work. I was also never perfect, and separation from a company has
often been the move I needed to reevaluate and improve my skills, for example,
For a long time I just wanted to be a senior sysadmin in the server room just
doing all the hard, high level back end work, but I've learned that if no one
is playing the meeting room, board room political/business games for the IT
department, those more technical roles can't get their job done without
interruption. Which is why I am increasingly interested in the role of CTOs
and CIOs who are the ones who should be doing that for an IT department.

Bottom line is, burnout happens, don't be afraid to break away from it for
your own health, and learn lessons in the process. Life is about making
mistakes and learning from them.

------
Asooka
I've definitely felt the effects before and have dropped at least one job over
it. So why are these threads filled with people complaining about unreasonable
workloads but we don't hear it from coworkers? And what is a burnt out dev to
do if they don't wish to work in the standard corporate structure? I mean,
even Google don't offer 6 hour days or work from home (unless you're SRE for
which work from home is required).

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Pica_soO
A 'you got to work on that burnout of yours, jeff overcame his way faster'
article. It had potential for a awesome parody- you need a Kan-board, some
charts to watch your burn-out rate, and you got to go all in - mocking the
produces of burnouts trying to use the tools with which they cause burnout on
people who are to devoted. Finally, a reference to Meta-Burnout, getting a
burnout on your burnout while you solve it with these tools, and a reference
to the article to solve these problem by recursion.

~~~
cbanek
Can I please see your burnout burn down chart? I'm not sure you're going fast
enough. Maybe you need some growth hacks?

~~~
tukelully
I love this. It's such a depressingly accurate and concise depiction of the
last office I worked in.

