
Burnout is caused by resentment - sudonim
http://iamnotaprogrammer.com/Burnout-is-caused-by-resentment.html
======
MrFoof
I'd agree.

Every time I've quit, it's because I felt I was repeatedly getting the short
end of the stick, and management was expecting me to roll over every time I
brought such things up.

I quit my first job at 15 1/2. I worked at a Wal-Mart during the summer to buy
a computer. I covered 200% more departments than I was hired for. I never took
a day off, despite coworkers just not showing up so they could go to the
beach. My department manager LOVED me. After my 3 months, I got $0.24 of my
$0.25/hour potential raise. I asked the store manager responsible as to why I
didn't get the other penny. His answer was utterly asinine. He expected me to
go back to work, understanding. Instead, I called my mom and went home, never
to return.

The next two jobs I was vastly underpaid. I knew this because vendors,
contractors, my own boss and even the office manager told me, quite literally,
that I was getting screwed. I was told to man up in response to crappy raises.
Instead, I found better jobs that were willing to give me 25-30% more just to
walk in their door.

At one place I blew the doors off of all expectations. I qualified for well
above the normal bonus. 32%. I was denied because in order to get the bonus I
had to have been there since July 1st. My start date? July 3rd. It's not like
it wasn't going to be pro-rated, or cut in half. I simply wasn't going to get
it. 32% of my salary was a chunk of change large enough to buy a family sedan,
cash. Obviously, I made an issue of it. I had vacations denied and had already
dealt with that. When a partner said that there was nothing he could do I gave
him my curt two-word response and walked out the door... to basically get my
lost bonus half as a signing bonus, and the rest over the next year.

Employment is a two-way street, and when you also decide to make it known that
my contract is "at will", be advised that I'm aware that I can just not show
up anymore, just to make the point. And even though I won't do that, I know I
could. At the very least I ask that you demonstrate it, and ensure that I feel
appreciated. If you don't, don't be all that surprised when I jump ship at a
moment's notice. It's not rocket science -- put your best foot forward, and if
you can't, explain clear as day why you can't. Show some humility, and don't
expect me to simply sit there and take it, especially in this market. I'm
pretty good about making my happiness unknown, and giving organizations months
and months to respond before I finally depart. However I've worked with folks
that their mentality towards burning bridges is more akin to Aliens: they
don't burn bridges -- they nuke them from orbit, just to make sure.

People do business with people they like, and your employees are not
exceptions.

~~~
philh
What you describe isn't burnout though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)>

~~~
anthonyb
There does seem to be some confusion about what is and isn't burnout. This
link might help. While it's aimed at doctors rather than tech workers, it does
give you some idea of the mindset involved: [http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-
education/medical-education-stu...](http://www.ucl.ac.uk/medical-
education/medical-education-
studies/1991cohort/ScoringAbbreviatedBurnoutInventory.pdf)

------
andrewcooke
no - resentment leads to "being pissed-off enough to go work somewhere else".

please, lets keep "burnout" for _burning out_. you know: when you're in a
foetal ball sobbing, begging for it to stop; when you need years before your
work is enjoyable again; when the client liaison goes on leave after an
"accident" with a knife.

there is a difference between that and "resentment".

~~~
neilk
Yup. If you're resentful, you are antagonistic towards your boss and your co-
workers. You'll be ready to quit.

If you're burned out, you're probably hardest on _yourself_. It's been
described as a 'crisis of self-efficacy'. I suspect that burned-out employees
often don't have the self-esteem to quit, until it's absolutely necessary for
health reasons or they get fired.

That said... going back to resentfulness... if someone believes they're being
gypped by their employer, perhaps that punctures some of the illusions we all
have about work. A lot of us knowledge workers strive more for praise and
recognition than we do for salary, a fact that our bosses exploit. Maybe the
kind of 'burnout' that Marissa Mayer describes, I would call 'waking up to
reality'.

------
anontheanon
Haha. I am currently going through this phase at my current firm. I can almost
track how I have reached this phase:

1\. I find on the first day that in the nine months before I joined the
company, three people who were doing the same stuff I do were fired.

2\. I make an expensive move from a different state. Then on the first day get
told that the move in contract had changed and was forced to be sign the new
one. An interesting contract that tells me even if the company folds for no
good reason of mine, that I would have to payback moving expenses.

3\. I get to spend a significant amount of my personal free time outside of
company hours on company "bonding activities". I don't mind being told to go
on company dinner fests but don't make it a habit and make me miss my own
personal life. I like you as people I work under but you are not my friends
and you are certainly not my life.

4\. For a company that makes $2000 plus per engineer, its fun to see how cheap
they are. A nice ergonomic chair? Nope. Traveling 50% of time across a few
time zones? Make sure you book the cheapest possible flight that you get
(irrespective of the number of stops that you have).

Tiny small things that added up gradually and have led to this situation.

~~~
joshu
re the bonding activities: i've decided they should a) be fun and b) be
instead of work. otherwise it's just forced.

------
ignorethat
This is wrong. It is only one reason for burnout. I have another.

I burned out because I can no longer care enough about what I'm doing at work
to motivate my mind to work on the task at hand. It seems fruitless. People
can try to convince me there is some good it is doing, but I see only waste
and politics. That resentment is not because my workplace doesn't care about
my family. They treat me better than any place I could ever hope to work for.
The only sacrifice I've had to make for work is my sanity. I cannot stand
development anymore, nor technology, nor I.T., but I'm incapable of doing
anything else. I've read the books that say I must love what I do, but I
don't, and there is no option to love what I do. I have chosen an occupation
and career that no longer suits me, and I have no alternative. I am the only
one with a job in my family. I cannot fail. I have to trudge on. This is
burnout. I have no where to go.

Therefore, I would state instead that burnout is caused by lack of hope.

~~~
tomjen3
I am sorry but it sounds more like you are suicidal than burned out. You may
want to talk to a proffesional.

~~~
ignorethat2
No, I'm not suicidal. Thanks for stating that, as I'm sure some might be in
that situation.

I'm just experienced in a different kind of burnout than what the OP was
talking about. And it's a kind of burnout that a number of developers
experience at some level after some number of years, but frequently not the
sort that you find on HN. I've tried to fix via sleep, exercise, losing
weight, etc. and that surely helps but it doesn't fix it. In addition, placing
power and trust in the employee definitely helps in that case, as a lot of
what drives it is a mix of poor health due to lack of sleep which there are
fixes for, lack of ability to concentrate, and weight/fitness, but an
important component is out of the control of the employee: the developer/IT
employee notices that we all seem to fuss about things that in the end don't
really matter, because all code is thrown away, all implementations are
replaced, and there is nothing left standing of what is created, and in the
end we would seem better off and the nation more employed if that technology
weren't distracting everyone. However, activism is not the answer. Technology
is inevitable. So you want to become a landscaper, a bartender, or anything to
get over that feeling, but you know you can't provide for your family if you
do that, so you have the privilege of suffering in a job you hate, knowing
that you are spoiled for complaining about a job that pays well. You can't
even feel good about complaining.

I've also experienced the other kind of burnout which is what developers
usually mean, which is burning the candle at both ends to meet demands you
didn't set at work and could not influence even though you tried diligently
to, so you have a period of lack of motivation or effectiveness. The result of
that for me was that I never want to work for a startup again, because you can
get sucked into the idea and the promise- the hope- later to realize that they
are desperate and do not care about your family. That is what the OP's post is
about, and they are framing it like it can be solved by the employer. Perhaps.

~~~
ignorethat3
Actually, I shouldn't have said the latter is what the OP's post is about,
because being overworked and mismanaged is only one reason for resentment.
Resentment could be caused by a number of other things. However, I stand by my
original point that hopelessness is another reason for burnout.

------
mmcconnell1618
I find that wasting my time is a larger annoyance than monetary compensation.
As I get older I have less tolerance for meaningless meetings and the
requirement to work specific hours or be in a physical office for a client
just because it makes a manager feel better.

~~~
gnosis
If you call being sick of meetings and having to come in at specific times
"burnout", you have a very mild case of it.

Burnout started for me when I noticed that my interests weren't aligned with
my company's interests.. or with _any_ company's interests.. or even with my
profession's interests.

Coding became boring. So I switched to doing sysadmin. Then sysadmin stuff
became boring. Then technology in general became boring. I just didn't care to
learn another stupid language or configuration syntax for products I didn't
care about and companies whose success or failure I couldn't give two shits
about. I didn't care about the clients. Or the users. Or my coworkers.

Not caring. That's a big part of it. So's lacking interest. At times I'd stop
caring about anything. Other times I'd care about things, but they weren't
things having anything to do with work.

Everything to do with work became a severe chore at best, and a complete
nightmare at worst. It all seemed so fake and full of bullshit -- from the
company's stupid pep talks or fake parties and dinners where everyone
pretended to like each other and kissed up to their bosses.

When I finally quit it felt like such a relief. Quitting days were some of the
happiest days of my life. I did that a lot.

That's burnout.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I'm not saying that being annoyed at meeting == burnout. I'm saying that it is
a contributing factor just like resentment over unequal compensation, etc.

~~~
gnosis
Sure. It all comes down to having a job you don't want to do, for one reason
or another, but are nevertheless doing.

The more you don't want to do that job, the less you want to be there, and the
longer you stay anyway, the more burnt out you'll be.

Many factors can contribute to this, including relationships you have with the
people at the company, your feelings towards them, your job, and the company,
and how you feel you and others at the company are treated.

------
sliverstorm
Perhaps one of the causes, but in times past I've definitely started to get
burned out on projects I did not resent- that were simply truckloads of work,
with limited time for sleep/food/unwinding.

On the bright side, that was much easier to recover from than the soul-
crushing burnout I associate with resentment.

~~~
j_baker
...so it sounds like you resented that job due to giving you limited time for
sleep/food/unwinding?

~~~
sliverstorm
You can lose motivation to do something without resenting it.

~~~
jrallison
I agree, but I think burnout and low motivation aren't necessarily the same
thing.

------
boofar
Most here have commented 3-4 hours ago, but 2 hours ago Isaac Yonemoto left an
excellent comment on the blog. So if you read this message, because you're
checking the thread for new discussion, I encourage you to check out his
comment as well. :-)

~~~
xtremecool
Yes, he says something like you burnout when you effectively condition your
brain to associate work with failure.

------
Aaronontheweb
I agree. The biggest reason why employees (or hell, founders too) quit is
because they don't feel appreciated.

If I'm working 60-70 hours a week and have a never-ending stream of people
inside the company griping at me about why I wasn't able to get non-essential-
to-my-role task X,Y, or Z done for them (this is what being in a big company
feels like) - that really starts to mount even for employees who know that
they're appreciated by their immediate peers and leadership.

Being appreciated by your managing team or your peers isn't enough - YOU need
to feel like you're doing a good job. Even someone with a stalwart self-
sureness will crumble if they feel like they're constantly failing to deliver
what the business needs.

~~~
gnosis
It's about more than just feeling appreciated and feeling like you've done a
good job.

I had both, and yet I still burnt out.

What was lacking was fulfillment -- the sense that the work you do is
meaningful for you.

Ideally, your job should be interesting, fun, stimulating, and you should feel
that what you do is important. If it's stressful, it should be at a level of
stress you can deal with, and the stress should be of a positive sort, not a
negative sort.

At some of my jobs I was greatly appreciated, and I knew I was doing a great
job. But the work was boring, I didn't feel it was important, and it was
extremely stressful. So I burnt out.

------
jroseattle
Most people on the thread have this correct: there is a difference between
resentment and burnout. I understand this innately, as I've been there with
both feelings, and they are quite different.

When I felt burned out, it was literally like a flame on a match stick. I was
exhausted and didn't see a way out of the situation (amazing what a little
perspective will get you.) I didn't want to do my job, because my head was
full and it felt heavy to me.

Contrast that with resentment, and I was pissed off (and motivated.) I had
energy to change the situation, which was entirely different from feeling
burned out.

One situation gave me energy and focus; the other felt like an immovable
burden. Big difference to me.

------
Jabbles
What are the average work hours per week and days' holiday a year taken by a
(US) Googler?

~~~
j_baker
I don't know that there's really that much data on the subject (and if there
is, I probably wouldn't be able to disclose it). I will say this though: I've
never been asked to work long hours. Nor have I ever been assigned enough work
that I've had to work long hours. We tend to not have fixed deadlines, so it's
rare that I have to work in crunch mode. Some people _love_ their jobs and
work at all hours. Google is more than willing to accommodate those people.
Me, I strive to get a lot done in little time so I have more time to unwind
and can be more productive the next day.

TL;DR - It depends.

~~~
makmanalp
The interesting thing about a culture where the long work day is more common
than not is that it starts becoming an expectation even though it isn't
codified in any rule. So for example you'd be less likely to get a raise or
promotion than a person who puts in more hours than the required. So even
though you're not abusing the company you get less benefits for doing the
amount of work you're getting paid for.

~~~
matwood
_So for example you'd be less likely to get a raise or promotion than a person
who puts in more hours than the required._

If person A does more work than person B who should be promoted and paid more?
Some people get more work done than other people because they are smarter.
Others get more work done because they simply put in more hours. Is there
really much difference between the two?

~~~
makmanalp
In principle, I agree wholly. In practice, I think hours often gets used as a
substitute metric for amount of work done or value brought. It's this
substitution and the (possibly unconscious) merit given to extra hours over
extra efficiency.

------
cletus
At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about
Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so
I'm not authority, etc etc).

stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in
previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one
time or another.

There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Google
(from my experience) approaches software development that end up addressing a
lot of these.

1\. Most (if not all) engineering managers are... engineers. I've seen
internal job postings for engineering directors (to put that in perspective,
an eng director might have 30-100 engineers under him or her typically with
some engineering managers in between although some particularly senior
engineers may report directly to their director) that call for "deep knowledge
of C++". Some eng directors still submit CLs. This is something Google takes
very seriously;

2\. As an engineer, I don't have to work for you (where "you" is any
particular manager or director). This is _incredibly_ important because it
puts strict limits on how much crap you can be given because (assuming you're
in good standing) you can request a transfer to any team that will take you
(within limits and your existing manager can delay you but can't block you);

3\. Internally, Google is _extremely_ open with what's going on in the
company. There are a handful of things off-limit but in almost all cases you
can view the data and code and announcements for almost every project in
Google;

4\. The level of meetings and overall bullshit has been, in my experience,
incredibly low compared to previous employers;

5\. Performance reviews are peer-driven. This system is not perfect and you'll
have critics who point to thinks like you need senior people around you to get
promoted. Some of these claims have merit but the system while not perfect is
still (IMHO) very good; and

6\. Gratitude. As Steve Yegge [1] puts it:

> You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like
> you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you.

I find many of these alleviate burnout by way of mitigating resentment. I'm
not sure I fully agree that burnout is solely caused by resentment however.
I've known people who have been well-rewarded and respected for what they've
done but they just reach a point where they need a break and have to do
something else. I'd characterize this as burnout but perhaps definitions vary.

Lastly, I'll touch on a point someone else mentioned: as time goes on my
tolerance for bullshit and time-wasting goes down. No I'm not going to your
daily standup ("mini performance review") because it's a waste of my time. No
I'm not going to work on your shitty project that's made shitty technology
choices for political rather than technical reasons. I don't have the time nor
inclination to indulge you in this.

[1]: [http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-
agile...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-
agile_27.html)

~~~
Agathos
> you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of
> you.

As a recovering academic, I felt a twinge of horror when I read this. When I
didn't love the work I pushed on mainly out of guilt, and it was more than I
could carry after a while. Maybe I should have tried resentment.

~~~
polyfractal
As another recovering ex-academic, I would often tell my friends that academic
science (biology in my case) keeps 90% of people around because of guilt and a
misplaced sense of honor/duty.

~~~
Drbble
But my impression is that in the lab sciences (or any crunch mode job) you are
made to feel that everyone relies on you so you are stuck taking care of them,
whereas the gratitude model is that the company is so nice to you that you
want to earn the respect they give you.

~~~
madhadron
Actually, it's more subtle and more pernicious in biology. First, you make
sure that your wage slaves have no marketable skills (a PhD in molecular
biology is comparable to a community college graduate). Then you carefully
isolate them from all perspective and knowledge of career tracks other than
the academic treadmill. Finally, you dangle the PhD in front of grad students
("You can't quit now, you won't get anything! You have to hold on until you
have the degree! It's all or nothing!"), until they've sunk so many years in
that they aren't willing to abandon the sunk time. Then you set up a culture
where ridiculous hours and inadequate support are considered normal and make
the payoff for the bosses be to get as much labor out of someone as they can
get before shoving them out the door to the next slave master. The behavior of
your average professor towards his lab would have him slapped with lawsuits in
normal work environments.

------
jacquesm
You can get burnt out all by your lonesome self just fine without resenting
anybody or anything at all.

------
abalashov
Unplug for merely a week? How very masochistically American. Let me teach you
something about burnout, you poor, pathetically narrow-minded little man. I'd
like to unplug for six months out of the year, at an absolute minimum. That's
burnout, my friend.

~~~
SideSwipe
Is it just me, or is insulting + judging + stereotyping someone the epitome of
being narrow-minded?

------
falava
Read the first comment in the page by Isaac Yonemoto it's better than the
post.

------
paulhauggis
I agree with this.

My problem is that I have a big problem sacrificing my free time for my
regular paycheck while the boss makes potentially millions.

~~~
joezydeco
Hey, that boss isn't taking home a paycheck like you are, so suck it up.
<adding sarcasm tag here just in case>

~~~
tensor
Offer your boss to work completely for free in exchange for equity then. I
wonder if anyone has tried this and what the response was.

~~~
kamaal
Nothing would happen.

I don't know from where this started.

But I am expected to make for somebody Else's lapses all the times. This is
called in classic management language 'Team work'. And the managers don't pay
you for doing 'Team work' , at best you are assumed to just doing your duty.
So you are not supposed to get paid extra.

I know a lot of managers who consider people who ask rewards for
extra/free/innovation/<whatever fancy word for making you slog extra for free>
work as a evil people.

~~~
tensor
I took the comment about bosses not taking home a paycheck to be referring to
a startup scenario where funding is tight and so the founders don't take home
a salary while the first few employees do.

In that situation it's not at all uncommon to trade some wage for equity, but
there are not many cases that I've heard of, outside of the founders
themselves, that are so extreme that people literally take home only equity.

If the discussion is talking about big well established companies, then the
situation is very different. I can't imagine many managers not taking home a
salary and definitely agree that inequity is generally a big problem as is the
expectation of common place unpaid overtime.

~~~
joezydeco
It's about the startup scenario, because I'm living it.

I'm an early hire and took a pay cut in return for a tiny amount of equity.
CEO is in fully and is taking home a _very_ small salary. So every request for
a raise is augmented with "well, I'm not making as much as _you_ are".

You can only hear that so many times before the resumes go out.

------
Radzell
I'd agree I almost never burn out because I workout everyday. I really believe
the studies that says fit people are happier because nothing clears my mind
like working out or playing basketball especially after a long coding session.

