
Burnout is classified as an occupational phenomenon by the WHO - SunTzu9087
https://insights.dice.com/2019/06/03/burnout-now-official-medical-condition/
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runesoerensen
Also discussed here last week:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20026378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20026378)

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nemild
I've been working on some tips on burnout for early engs. Would value any
feedback:

[https://www.nemil.com/on-software-engineering/beware-
burnout...](https://www.nemil.com/on-software-engineering/beware-burnout.html)

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2sk21
Very nice write up! This quote stood out:

“I wasn’t overworked, but I was exhausted all the time”

This strikes a chord in me. I’m beginning to dread a daily fifteen minute
scrum - which ought to be no big deal.

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ken
I'm not up on all the current methodologies, but 15 minutes _every day_ sounds
hellish no matter how well-rested one is.

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JohnBooty
Really? Damn, my friend.

Assuming you work 40 hours a week (ha, as if anybody works 40 hours) that's
about _3%_ of your working hours.

Now, if that's an extra 1.25 hours of meetings tacked onto your existing
meeting workload, okay, that's annoying.

But the idea behind daily meetings is that you should spend at least, uh, _3%_
of your time communicating anyway, so let's do some of it in a brief and
scheduled way so we do a little bit less of it in an unscheduled, scattershot
way.

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AlexandrB
> Assuming you work 40 hours a week (ha, as if anybody works 40 hours) that's
> about 3% of your working hours.

It kind of makes sense. That's 3% of your work that is often "bullshit time"
that you have no control over and adds nothing to your ability to get your job
done. Combine with other obligations and tight deadlines and it feels like a
pointless chore.

True communication is not a matter of a daily meeting with rigid procedures
attached.

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JohnBooty
I'd much rather have scheduled meetings than unscheduled ones.

If the meetings are scheduled, I can plan my flow around them...

Much better than when I'm trying to get work done and somebody yanks me out of
the zone and pulls me into some random meeting that's going to last between
one and several zillion minutes. We used to call them "drive-by shootings."

There's definitely room for personal preference. For me, I have large numbers
of years accumulated doing it both ways, and it's no absolutely no contest.

I'll gladly spend 15 minutes of my day on a scheduled meeting, since I know
from experience that it's going to save me a bunch of "drive-by shootings."

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tukson
The trick with burnout is to learn how to bs. You're going to miss deadlines
and there will always be too much work. The trick is no one knows exactly what
you are doing 100% of time. If people ask tell them just say 'yeah, plowing
away just got to finish off a couple of bits and I'll get back to you'.

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Gpetrium
For those interested in gaining insight on working hours throughout history, I
would recommend you to take a look at OurWorldInData's empirical study. It
looks at weekly work hours since 1870s, hunter-gatherer work hours,
productivity vs annual work hours, etc.

[https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours](https://ourworldindata.org/working-
hours)

It begs the question, is a portion of society burning out because of the type
of work, current lifestyle, our knowledge & expectation about the world,
something else or a combination of factors?

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ghostbrainalpha
That graph is amazing! For the people looking at it, you should know that you
can click a button to add the United States even though it is not included by
default.

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Circuits
Workers give their companies too much. Companies expect too much from their
workers. It's a catch 22 of the highest magnitude. Imho, most coders lack the
personal skills or self respect they need. We don't speak out against
injustices enough. We dont request and seek out the personal respect we
deserve. Our eyes hurt, our backs hurt, our heads hurt... but we are competing
with people from countries where a good paying job is more rare than a
vacation getaway so we can't stop making concessions.

~~~
shados
> Companies expect too much from their workers.

(The below will be assuming software developer since you followed up talking
about coders).

In the US at least, there's an additional catch 22 because of salary. The
average software engineer salary is super high, historically (at least in my
experience) because it was compensating people for being oncall, for working
off hours, for doing a mad dash to make deadlines in waterfall projects, for
being understaffed, for needing to do continual education in your own time,
etc.

Now that these super high salaries are the norm and you can't hire anyone with
experience without such salaries, companies end up expecting the world from
them. Other professions that have similar salary ranges (certain part of
finance, law, health, etc) also do.

If salaries were more in line with other type of work (at least in the low
end. Nothing wrong with having a wide range), it would be a bit less crazy for
someone to work 9/5 and call it a day.

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JohnBooty

       Now that these super high salaries are the norm 
       and you can't hire anyone with experience without   
       such salaries, companies end up expecting the world 
       from them. Other professions that have similar salary  
       ranges (certain part of finance, law, health, etc) also do.
    
    

I honestly wish we could perform the labor version of a stock split and double
the number of software engineering jobs and the number of qualified foks while
halving the salaries.

I would gladly do my current job for half of what I'm making now if I could
work reduced hours.

But no, it's _the software industry._ The options are generally "unemployment"
or "make a bunch of money and work unhealthy hours until you want to die, and
then get promoted and work even more" with nothing inbetween. There are
exceptions to those norms, but the norms are the norm.

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aprax
"Burn-out is included in the 11th Revision of the International Classification
of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. It is not classified as a
medical condition."

[https://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/burn-
out/en/](https://www.who.int/mental_health/evidence/burn-out/en/)

Be careful of what you read and believe.

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delinka
@dang: can we get an appropriate title change?

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dang
Yes, changed now.

It's best to email hn@ycombinator.com if you want us to see something. We
don't come close to seeing all the comments here!

