
Survey: The average worker experiences career burnout – by the age of 32 - pseudolus
https://www.studyfinds.org/average-worker-career-burnout-age-32/
======
corobo
Hah. 32, aye. Riding that average!

Probably career suicidal (never admit it in your application) but honestly the
thing I've found helps is just not caring about work at all. It's like the
equivalent to acceptance in grief. Get the day done, look forward to the
weekend, when you book time off make sure to book the following Monday.

I'll do the job as best I can for as long as I'm paid but if you think I'm
here for any reason other than money to pay the bills you're completely
delusional.

Watch the film Office Space, be inspired.

~~~
antihero
I think this isn't great advice for everyone.

I'm 31 and actually, I've gone through phases and got bored and miserable
about my job (I have ADHD and this happens easily). The thing I've found that
helps is to keep things fresh, and find a job where you care about the company
and product and have more flexibility in what you do and are still learning
and keeping stuff interesting. I'm learning Rust at the moment because I know
just doing front-end stuff (I've done all kinds of stuff in the past 12 years,
but at the moment front-end is what gets the money). Even doing more jobs
using React Native and opening up the world of app development has kept thing
interesting.

Also maintaining a work life balance, aggressively enforcing flexibility (I
was straight up with my new employer that some days I am useless and just want
to go for a walk, but I will work hard enough on the days my brain wants to
play ball, that it won't be an issue).

Burnout is a lot easier in corporates because there is less flexibility and
you are so removed from the people at the top and are much more of a cog in a
machine, there are arbitrary seeming rulebooks because they require
consistency, and that is demoralising for individuals. Basically the more
corporate a company is run, the less I like it.

Once I lose interest I'll end up doing stuff that will end up in my being let
go which has happened a couple times in my career, so maintaining interest and
keeping things fresh in whatever way is absolutely imperative. Also the
product I'm building is a factor for me - I've worked at companies where
despite having a good team, what they're building is so mundane and dull I
can't force myself to be excited by it.

Remember what excited you about your field and why you got into it. If that
was purely money then yes, previous advice is all you can do really, but if it
was a passion for your field, then keep feeding the fire and reigniting that
passion by whatever means necessary. Sometimes you need a break, sometimes you
need a change, sometimes you need something new.

~~~
corobo
> find a job where you care about the company and product

I'm an average person. I'm not qualified for those roles. I make websites in
WordPress and I now hate the process of writing code of any flavour with such
passion I'll take anything else that pays more. I don't have the capacity to
learn some new thing on the off chance I go work somewhere that isn't just the
same old.

Also I now work for a small indie company for the very reason of having more
responsibility and purpose. You know what that led to recently? I moved all
our kit to managed hosting in case I went through with offing myself.

It's burnout, not a bad day. I'd love to just take some time off all willy
nillily as you say but that would result in a performance improvement plan and
an eventual firing, which I can't afford right now.

I'd fucking love to go back to Sysadmin work but I've been out so long
everything's gone cloudy - again, not qualified.

All these excuses and more in your nearest person with burnout :)

~~~
antihero
Man it sounds like you have some deeper issues and I hope you can find more
meaning in life in general, but being a WordPress admin would probably drive
most of us to the brink. Probably one of the most tedious and banal jobs in
tech.

Why not start learning more languages and whatnot? What do you mean you don't
have the capacity? I was a PHP dev back in the day and progressed to things
like Python/Django, but there's a whole world of resources that are accessible
to you as an existing coder if you wanted to skill up and take it to the next
level. There were points in the last few years I was bored of coding and
rarely did it outside of my work hours. Recently I started looking at Rust and
it dazzled me into being excited again.

~~~
corobo
I dunno if you'll ever see this but if you do thank you. Calling it out has
put it in focus, today I'm trying to appreciate all of the stuff I have done

For instance the CI/CD I set up is f-in cool how it just works. I'll start
from there.

------
Fezzik
David Foster Wallace wrote a great book entitled The Pale King that wrestles
with the boredom and frustration of our modern office-work related lives. I’m
not sure if I grabbed it from that book, but one of his quotes I enjoy is:
"The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To
function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and
human. To breath, so to speak, without air. The key is the ability, whether
innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the
meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word,
unborable... It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there
is literally nothing you cannot accomplish."

I find him to be a breath of fresh air, in his books and interviews, in
describing how miraculous yet constrained our lives are. It helps me not burn-
out. I think.

~~~
alextheparrot
I always struggle with DFW. I too enjoy his interviews, some of his writing -
he always feels like he’s figured something out. The part where I struggle is
when looking at him holistically, especially his suicide. How could he have
figured it out and still commit suicide? To use Camus’s framing, “There is but
one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide”.

The difficulty of understanding someone taking their own life is made greater
when that person was a role model. Their descent into the abyss was a personal
journey, but the torch they’d been carrying was a communal flame. I find
myself doubting what they said, worrying their flame leads me down the same
path they traveled without deviation.

~~~
tasuki
> “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide”

What about consciousness? The nature of reality? Suicide feels like a trivial
topic compared to these two.

~~~
alextheparrot
Those are all violent, we didn't choose to be conscious, for reality to be as
it is, to be born. Suicide is the only revolt against that state of affairs.
If we ask "What is the meaning of life", it is sensible to find it in the
affairs that keep us from ending life or to see examples of lives where the
person didn't see a meaning to life and thus ended their own.

The second part is the root of my difficulty with DFW. If someone says things
that matter to me, but then commits suicide, is that them declaring they don't
think those things mattered? What that really means, the act of suicide,
encapsulates all the violence of being brought into this world without choice
and the search for peace within those confines. It is an answer, in a world
full of questions, I suppose.

To give a construction I just was mulling over based on your response, I think
the meaning of life is like a prison cell, whereas consciousness and reality
are just features of the cell. Yes, we can ask "Why is a bed here" and it
might give us comfort to know that it is so I don't need to sleep on the cold
floor. But at the end of the day, the question of most importance is "Why am I
locked in this cell?". We can only understand the cell completely by
understanding what desires drive men to break out.

~~~
Fezzik
My understanding about DFW’s suicide is that he had recently gone off
medication - cold turkey - that he had been taking for quite a while to manage
his (severe) mental health problems and that was a primary contributor to the
event. If anything, his suicide illuminates the fragility of many people and
how they are truly teetering on a knife’s edge due to chemical reactions
beyond their immediate control.

Before he killed himself he had written (at least a few times) about finding
meaning in the companionship of dogs and how he was finally “happy” with his
state of being which, I think, contributed to stopping his medication.

------
emdowling
I’m 32 and can absolutely relate to this, especially with COVID. I work for a
FAANG, and the pressure to perform has increased significantly while working
from home. It feels relentless, and the lack of in-person social contact with
colleagues makes it worse. I know remote working is all the rage right now,
but the lack of all in-person engagement has had a hugely negative impact on
me and led to feelings of burn out.

Layered on top of that is an inability to escape with now. My family all live
overseas, where it isn’t practical to visit them, and holidays are a complex
nightmare right now.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have a job during a pandemic-induced recession,
but man am I feeling exhausted.

~~~
marmaduke
Sometimes it feels like the managers have to flex just to show that they’re
not losing control. We had an extra project to do during lockdown on Covid
modeling, on top of everything else, as if we weren’t tired enough.

~~~
cube00
Too many companies are using Covid as excuse to do what they've always wanted
to do and not get scrutinised for it.

I'll bet your company won't stop running some kind of extra project or
workload even after all this is over, it'll just become the new normal.

For us, we're on "50%" across two projects (some on "33%" across three
projects) which all have full time loads, expectations and deadlines.

~~~
Viliam1234
> For us, we're on "50%" across two projects (some on "33%" across three
> projects) which all have full time loads, expectations and deadlines.

This. Not only the number of developers on our project was halved, but also
all who remained are now expected to work 50% on another project. Sometimes
the other project is a small one, but it still distracts a lot to have two
Jiras to follow, two daily standups, two sets of planning meetings, etc. Twice
the number of managers, but half of teammates. Agile be praised!

Seems to me that a frequent reason to start new projects is a change in
management. Essentially, a new manager gets more credit for starting a new
project than for maintaining the old one. So a new project is started, even if
it does more or less the same thing as the old one. But the old project also
must be maintained, because it is necessary to keep the company running, and
it will take a few months, maybe years, until the new project can reliably
replace its entire functionality. Plus there is the third project, because you
sometimes also need to actually create something new.

Many decisions in corporations start making sense when you ask yourself "how
would this be described on my manager's CV". Then you realize that the
actually useful work would sound completely boring. But those things that
drive you crazy, the change for change's sake, they usually can be described
as "brave technological leadership" or whatever are the right buzzwords. And
this is once-in-a-lifetime chance to get the "brave technological leadership
in the middle of COVID-19 pandemic" achievement, so everyone runs like crazy
to grab it.

Most of us already recognize it when developers try to do something in order
to boost their CVs. "Let's (re)write this in the Newest Framework, preferably
also in the Newest Programming language! There is no business reason to do
that, and maybe the newest technologies are still full of bugs and miss many
important features, but hey, a year or two later when the technology matures
enough and the market is full of well-paying jobs, I will be the one who has a
year or two of experience in my CV." The secret is, successful IT managers
have been already playing this game for a long time.

------
moltar
I find this really helps not to get burned out:

\- limit your work hours to something reasonable during the day, no excuses.
Everyone has a different capacity. No point over exerting now, you are just
borrowing from the future self.

\- use pomodoro to take frequent breaks

\- don’t work for bad managers, they are the leading cause of stress

\- do meaningful things. If not now, strive towards that at least. Make effort
to get there. Because often if your mind thinks you are locked into this
position seemingly forever, it will start hurting you.

\- exercise daily. Anything. Just walking for thirty minutes to an hour is
good enough. This is crucial!

------
tobyhinloopen
I just turned 30. Looks like I have 2 years of productivity left. I should put
in more hours to get stuff done in case I burn out

~~~
unnameduser1
Definitely not. You should preserve now your abilities and build up uoir
health. Find ways to relax, release stress, eat healthy and do moderate
exercise. You will a) delay or prevent burnout b) the impact of burnout would
be less.

I burned out at 34, that was 8y ago. Now cant still do productive work more
than 4h/day. And thats on a good day. Im lucky to have sufficient expertise
and high enough hourly rate to pay for my modest lifestyle.

Meds and therapy help only so much. While some meds are available under social
security its usually not very modern meds, so a good part of income goes to
self paid therapy and more modern meds that help me be at least somewhat
functional ans productive.

4y ago, my productive hours were 2h/ workday on good days. Or 1 day per week.
I survived at that rate but couldnt afford necessary help to recover faster.

2y after burnout my inflammation levels were still so high that doctors
suspected i had cancer. (Wasnt the case). I had to move to small town, close
to nature, cut out all even the slightest stress factors from my life.

Of course if i could have avoided burnout or proper medical attention and time
off after burnout it would have gone better faster.

Now it serves as info for others what not to fall into

~~~
luckylion
Have you tried Modafinil? The 2h/4h workdays sound like what I experienced for
quite a while a few years ago. Modafinil/Armodafinil changed that drastically.
Focus is back, concentration is back, energy is back, and 2h is now
essentially unheard of, with an average of 5 or 6 _productive_ hours, and if I
need to, I can easily do 8 or 10. It's like being 20 again.

It's a miracle drug for me. Strong effect, no tolerance buildup, few side
effects. And it's dirt cheap, even on the black market.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Any recc's where to find on black market?

~~~
anon9001
Just go to a doctor. Black markets are not worth the risk.

Ask around, read reviews, call the offices and be transparent about what you
want. You'll find a doctor that will want to help.

Modafinil/armodafinil might actually be a harder ask than adderall just
because they're less common. YMMV.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Thanks.

------
pault
I take a year or so sabbatical every four to five years. It has destroyed my
ability to build a retirement nest egg, but I still love programming after 20
years in the industry.

~~~
Zenst
I worked with a few contractors who had what I thought was a great solution.

They would work IT contracting 8-9 months a year and during the other months,
would do another job. One case, the chap was a waters-king instructor and did
that in the summer as he loved it. Another was a Ski instructor and in both
cases, they enjoyed their side-gigs more.

For me, I thought that was brilliant, an ideal balance and best of both worlds
kinda approach to the problem.

[EDIT funny spelling mistake - Ski instructor - not skin :-]

~~~
moltar
I knew someone in Canada that operated a snow plow in rural area in the
winter. Then back to programming the rest of the year.

------
WalterBright
> As far as ways to combat work burnout, 20% of respondents now practice
> meditation and or yoga to relax when not working.

I go out and run a few miles. For the last week and a half, I couldn't go
outside because of the smoke. It was driving me nuts. It cleared up yesterday,
and it was a great relief to go out and run.

------
baxtr
I am a bit older than that, not much, but I can totally relate. I think the
key is to acquire the ability to find people who care. Who care about you,
about your well being, your progress and see how you can play a role in
pursuing the overall company vision.

It’s not like all managers are soulless number crunchers. They were like you
once. There are the good ones who authentically care. We need to find
efficient ways to find those people.

------
wojciii
I'm over 40. I burned out while working for a megacorp - the stress got to me
at the end. It was caused by middle management stupidity and my son not
sleeping at night during the first couple of months of his life. It got me
fired (I was looking for another job at that point so it was a godsend and
there was a restructuring). This gave med 4 months with pay (this is normal in
Denmark when the employer ends the contract after a period of time) so that I
could get back on my feet and find work that I actually cared about instead of
soul sucking corporate software job. At the end I just didn't care about what
I was doing and the pointless office politics. I wonder why the HR didn't
react on any of the red flags in my behaviour prior to this. Probably didn't
care as I was just another warm body at the office.

~~~
LockAndLol
HR was probably worn out too. They're just as human as you are. There's no way
there's enough HR in a megacorp to spot those signs and I doubt they're paid
enough to care.

At least you were in Denmark though. Getting fired in the US would surely have
been worse.

> At the end I just didn't care about what I was doing and the pointless
> office politics

Has this changed?

~~~
wojciii
Actually yes, it has changed. I do consulting and it's clear that my clients
need my help. It's my own fault if I don't figure out the requirements and
communicate clearly what I'm doing. Also every new client is making me learn
something new and work on a different tech which is not boring compared to
working on the same codebase day in day out.

------
throwawayamzn1
I guess this is a COVID-time work confessions thread.. Under 35 here and yeah,
it’s real.

Working at a FAANG. It’s nuts.

It’s almost like if you have a family the deck is stacked against you. My
manager low key told me to come to work in our office (which is now open) so
my kids don’t distract me working from home. (And don’t tell me to go to HR,
we all know how that’s going to end up..)

The other senior engineers who try to be human by asking “how’s everyone
really doing” it’s more cute than anything.

It hasn’t gotten any easier folks!

The only way I’ve found to survive here as a young parent is to just give up
sleep. We’ve got some young kiddos at home.. no idea how folks do this, and no
surprise at all folks are burning out and it seems like less and less people
are having kids any more.

If you’re going through it, hope it gets better for you!

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Move to a different team/company. Assuming you can get a job at Amazon, you
can get a job at any other FAANG. FB and Google tend to be less mental with
respect to work-life balance, which should allow you to spend more time with
your family.

Alternatively, stick it out for a year, save as much as possible and then take
some time off (although I hear Google is a really great place to retire).

------
einarfd
A bit over ten years ago I was in my mid thirties, and working in a company
that was acquired by one of our industry giants.

After the acquisition was finalized, all our products where put on the back
burner, and we where all inn in on integrating our production as a feature in
their offering for their next release.

Unfortunately for me, the part of the organization I was in, was minuscule
compared to the size it would have been in the mothership. Which meant that
the expectations of what my team could accomplish, was wildly inaccurate.

So for the year I stayed on. Every workday, no matter how hard I worked, the
stack of unfinished task was always higher at the end, than at the beginning
of the day. I was so stressed out during this, that if I wanted to fall asleep
in the evening, I either had to drink or go for a run.

After a year of this, I managed to get a new job, and leaving was the best
decision I've ever made. But getting a new job while struggling is hard, and I
was lucky to pull it of, in hindsight, I should probably have started looking
way earlier, before I was as stressed out as I was at the end.

Now ten years later, I'm doing fine, and the whole ordeal is just a bad
memory. But I do know that one of my colleagues from an other team, ended up
burnt out and spent at least a year on sick leave before getting somewhat on
their feet again.

So my recommendation to those that are struggling. Take action now, rather
than later. For me, leaving worked, but I'm sure that it isn't the only
solution for everyone. If you think that there is nothing you can do, that
sounds wrong, and you should look again. Maybe talking it out with someone
else, either a mental health professional, or a friend would help figuring out
the next step? I did not do that, and that is something I regret, I think that
would have helped me handle the whole thing better.

------
edem
I'm 34 and I just dodged a bullet. I was very close to burnout at the start of
this year so I just quit. I've been doing small freelance projects and
trainings since than and my stress levels dropped off a cliff. I work half as
much for 80% pay.

If you feel that burnout is encroaching on you just quit and find something
else to do.

~~~
shoo
> my stress levels dropped off a cliff. I work half as much for 80%

Good on you for taking action to change your situation! That sounds like a
pretty fantastic outcome.

------
JimboOmega
I'm definitely feeling closer to burnout than at any previous point in my
life.

Since COVID started I've slowly been losing myself into workaholism. It feels
like there is nothing else to care about besides work; I am single and while I
had an active social life that's naturally very limited during COVID. Often on
Saturday and Sunday I'm just waiting for it to be Monday, and at least once I
worked through Saturday afternoon since I had nothing else to do.

All the extra work feels completely unappreciated. I got wrapped into a roller
coaster of a conflict with my lead - within one week he said I wasn't
performing at entry level, then was begging me not to leave the team. That
just keeps escalating (it's dragging through HR now, but nobody is, according
to them, going on a PIP). The experience is, I think, driven by COVID - my
lead's mental health is degrading, and I'm suffering as a result.

I'm working hard, with no clear expectations, and no clear understanding of
what the point of that work is. I was promised a new position when I joined
this team, and I don't know if that will ever come (it's been close to 2
months since my lead and I can have a normal conversation). I am paid very
well (yay, the stock is up) but there's no way to spend that money (clothes
nobody sees? Trips to closed down cities?).

Meanwhile all my other outlets for energy are cut off. Most of my friends are
either sliding into depression or screaming at me to somehow care even more
about the political disaster of the day. There's no dating, there's no bars,
there's no clubs. All the events I look forward to every year are canceled.
All my spots are permanently closing down one at a time.

So there's only work, and the story there isn't very different from my
friends; mental health is declining among everybody I know. Sick days are up,
people are asking me how my conversations with HR about depression went last
year since they're going to have one soon. Engaged as I am there are times I
just want to walk out the door. Well, if there was a door. In practice that
would just be switching back to my personal computer from my work one.

Frankly, I'm not sure how anybody is _not_ heading to burnout. Either you are
overwhelmed with other things (like childcare) and feel like work is killing
you, or work is all you have but it feels hollow since there's no other life
context to give it meaning.

I tried to take a vacation, it didn't work. I spent 4 days obsessing over what
to say in the next wild conversation with my boss (which didn't disappoint, he
was sobbing at the end). Sitting in a room somewhere else while everything is
closed or operating on a very weird and limited basis around you doesn't feel
like vacation.

~~~
WalterBright
> somehow care even more about the political disaster of the day

I suspect the lockdowns and such have led to a large amplification of our
political divisions.

~~~
JimboOmega
Me, my friends, coworkers, etc, are all broadly on the same side of this
political situation. I _do_ feel bad the things that are happening.

However, there are many people who I can't talk to without them insisting I
donate more, I call all my representatives, etc., etc. etc.

It makes sense when I think about it. We all want to feel like we can actually
do something when we feel so powerless. I have tried hard at work, they pick
politics. We need something to do.

But I don't need to be reminded how terrible the latest event is; I want to
get away from the news cycle, not lose myself in doomscrolling.

------
agumonkey
now who never experienced that ?

------
edem
> A recent survey of 2,000 working adults

I wouldn't call this statistically significant.

~~~
read_if_gay_
Depending on your results and how you select, even n=200 can be significant.
At n=2000 there would have to be very strong biases in selection to invalidate
the results.

