
Ask HN: What should I do if I feel burnt out? - rsjaaji
I&#x27;m a 23 year old developer working for a medium size startup. I made the switch to my current employer about four months ago from a corporate job. While I enjoyed the move for the first three months or so, I do not feel the same now.<p>The reason is that recently one of &quot;star&quot; developers at my current employer was poached by another company. As  a result, most of his work (which I had no clue of) came on my shoulders. The code that I inherited is unidiomatic and written in a way that only the author could understand. And now, since I &quot;own&quot; the code, I&#x27;ve been putting extra hours and working on it as much as 15 hours a day to understand it and make fixes (which has become my day job). Despite of all this, I&#x27;ve failed to deliver on most deadlines (as the managers had higher expectations from me). To add to all of this, I&#x27;ve been diagnosed with hypertension, that gets worse with stress.<p>Given this, should I risk being labelled incompetent, by telling my stakeholders about my problems or should I put in the long hours needed to get stuff done (as that&#x27;s what people in startups do).
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patio11
_Given this, should I risk being labelled incompetent, by telling my
stakeholders about my problems or should I put in the long hours needed to get
stuff done (as that 's what people in startups do)._

Gaaaaaaaaaaah.

Sorry, that was just my scream of frustration about a world which doesn't make
this answer obvious.

You're an adult now. Go to manager; say that you've inherited a code base
written by a more senior developer which has a substantial amount of technical
debt in it and you'll need time to get up to speed on it. Work together to get
a better understanding of when the milestones will be shipped successfully.
(Unobvious-to-younguns true fact about managing: managers often need
predictability a lot more than they need speed.)

Do not work 15 hour days to try to grok the code better. If you model your
manager as a heartless automaton (and he isn't!), he'd heartlessly prefer you
to be resting at home rather than in the hospital, since only one of those
means you'll be filing TPS reports tomorrow.

Do not attempt to sprint your way out a scheduling issue. The business will
_always_ be capable of finding another catastrophe. You know how there are a
herd of cows or a murder of crows? There's a startup of catastrophes.
Companies/individuals/teams which develop crunch cultures _never stop
crunching_. They ship whatever the blocked milestone was -- late, of course,
because crunching very rarely actually speeds shipping -- and then promptly
identify a new milestone to crunch towards.

It is not the job of 23 year old developers to insulate the business from the
predictable consequences of the actions of more senior employees. If your
manager feels differently, there are many saner managers available. That's a
pretty radical step, but choosing burnout is a _much worse_ step. Burnout is
_not fun_. You wouldn't choose to develop adult-onset diabetes because it
would avoid a difficult conversation at work. Don't choose burnout, either.

~~~
zamalek
> Do not work 15 hour days to try to grok the code better.

... because that's less likely to succeed than using 8 hours a day.

Even if you neglect the long-term eventuality of burnout working more hours in
a creative/intellectual job does not result in more work being done: it will
nearly always result in less.

If you can't get the work done in your normal working hours it means that the
deadline is actually impossible. Some problems cannot be solved by throwing
numbers at them; your manager has to throw planning at them.

~~~
crdb
In many companies:

\- saying "it's going to take me X months because of the technical debt" is
not an acceptable answer to the manager;

\- working 15 hour days and taking X months more than the deadline is rewarded
particularly if every diff is recorded in some kind of micromanagement tool
used by the manager, for being "team spirit" even and especially with lower
productivity.

Since not everybody can hop jobs easily, a successful way to survive in such a
situation CAN be to just pretend to work long hours, put in the face time,
enthusiastically play along with the micromanagement game and hope the job
market will improve before the company goes under or the department is
disciplined for its lack of productivity, and before this situation takes too
deep a toll on your intellectual ability and happiness. The key is continuous
small, trackable deliverables, and focusing on additive changes rather than
improving the existing codebase.

It's important not to think about karma as such managers get promoted out of
the way before their results catch up with them, and you'll just get more
miserable as you watch them fly higher and higher on their column of hot air.

/rant

~~~
zamalek
> Since not everybody can hop jobs easily

That's a reality I forgot about. Your advice is far better than mine is for
someone just starting out.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
No, it's not. The damage of burnout is real. It can damage peoples' physical
health, and also their marriages/relationships.

Then there's "faking". That damages your soul, your heart, your inner person.
Have integrity. Don't fake.

So, if he/she has to put in the insane hours to prevent being laid off, he/she
should be job hunting for a sane situation, starting today.

------
edw519
_should I risk being labelled incompetent, by telling my stakeholders about my
problems or should I put in the long hours needed to get stuff done_

Neither.

You should out the "star" and give your management the opportunity to solve
their problem.

What's the problem with the "star"? "Getting stuff done" is only half our job.
The other half is "keeping things done". You're probably the first one to
discover his charade. (Yes it's a charade if you're hitting deadlines while
creating techincal debt for everyone else!)

What's management's problem? They understand "getting stuff done" but
obviously don't understand "keeping stuff done". They have failed by allowing
all this technical debt to be accumulated. Where's the due diligence? The peer
review? The code review vs. standards? The regression testing? They need to
get their house in order and you're just the person with just the right
ammunition to help them get started.

Your best option is also the right thing to do: fix the problem long term and
give everyone else (management) the best opportunity to do their jobs
properly. Anything less is bad for everyone, especially yourself. Remember,
it's a marathon, not a sprint.

What you see as lemons is actually a rare enterprise opportunity (at age 23!)
to make lemonade. Take advantage and become the real "star".

------
gamedna
Please, make sure you are eating healthy, exercising, taking regular breaks,
and sleeping. Burnout manifests itself much quicker and continues to linger
even longer when our health is neglected.

Start a conversation with your manager and a HR representative immediately.
Burnt out engineers are a sign of bigger problems, and I guarantee that you
are not the only one in that situation. If your company is worth working for,
this type of conversation is welcomed.

Some context: my most recent experience with burnout was about a year ago. A
result of 8 sequential 130+ hour weeks. Around week 6 or 7, my code was utter
garbage (more than usual), my attitude towards the project was awful and I was
setting a bad example to my peers & team. In retrospect, I was probably
hurting the company more than I was helping.

Today, those 20 hour days with 2 to 4 hours of sleep screwed with my memory
retention and general ability to focus. Wish I could take it back and do it
differently.

For me the burnout cycle ended after several conversations with the company's
founders. They were very clear that employee health is paramount to the
company's success and continue to work on mitigating the root causes of
engineer burnout.

~~~
pjc50
_eating healthy, exercising, taking regular breaks, and sleeping_

Once someone's reached a 15 hour workday, that's pretty much impossible.
Normalising hours to 8 has absolutely got to be the first step.

~~~
gamedna
Selecting a somewhat arbitrary number of hours without establishing personal
priorities for self well-being only fosters a more stressful situation that
increases the probability for relapse.

(disclaimer: what works for one person may not work for everyone)

Nutrition, exercise, regular breaks, and a reasonable amount of sleep are what
I consider the bare minimum and should be implemented with a thought out plan.

When faced with the 15 hour week. I start by creating a time budget,
allocating my personal priorities first.

Here is a simplified example:

Sleep: 6 hours Exercise: 1 hour Meals: 30mins x 4 = 2 hours Breaks: 8*15min =
2 hours \------------------------------- Total personal hours: 11 hours

Remaining work hours: 13 hours /day

1 Day off every week to run personal errands, shopping, etc.

For me, this budget yields a 6 day work week totaling close to 80 working
hours ensuring a break roughly every hour and 4 nutrient dense smaller meals.

Hope this helps.

------
andersthue
You will do permanent damage to your brain if you choose the stress/burn down
way!

Besides all the research pointing to that fact, I myself has burned myself
into smitherines from stress and a toxic working enviroment. It took me two
(2) years after my burnout to be able to work more than 2-3 hours a day and
4-5 years before I could work 8 hours a day for a week!

The brain is plastic, this means that it changes from stress and once you have
overloaded it, it becomes more sensitive!

It's like breaking a bone - even though it grows back together, it will always
be weaker.

~~~
Swizec
Not disagreeing with the general point, but aren't bones _stronger_ after a
break? I thought that was the whole point of martial artist's punching hard
stuff.

That said, I also have burned out before and it is _not_ fun. While I didn't
have the long-lasting negative effects you describe, I have grown a strong
reluctance towards working "long hours" on other people's ideas.

~~~
throwaway1410
> Not disagreeing with the general point, but aren't bones stronger after a
> break? I thought that was the whole point of martial artist's punching hard
> stuff.

They don't break the bones, but merely introduce microfractures.

------
buserror
Well you already know where it leads. I think if you have a smart manager, a
good long talk might be in order; explain that if you feel the urge to bolt
and find another job, it's probably not a good idea for anyone involved.
Explain that as much as you are ok with 'pressure' there is a pressure point
where it breaks, and you feel it's not far off...

If you don't have a smart manager, well, take off QUICK. I had a burnout in
2006, took me the best part of a year to recover, and that was actually quite
hard.

~~~
test001only
Talk...Talk to your manager, friends, family and other support system. This
will give you different view points on how the current situation can be
handled. Solicit help. Do not always try to brazen through these issues alone.

------
toiter
You're too young to be going through this anxiety. That'll come later in the
"years of responsibility". Take all the things you worry most about in your
situation and assume they are true. Assuming they're true, then what? From
that answer do the same thing until you can't cone to any more negative
outcomes. You'll be surprised what you learn about your mind and the true
cause of your stress (not so much the 15 hour days). At the end of the day,
you're 23 and have the world by the balls. Open your mouth and let your
superiors know that it's too much for one person. Worst case scenario, you
walked out of there with a valuable lesson and probably working in a better
environment somewhere else. Keep your head up and blood pressure down. :)

------
klibertp
> should I risk being labelled incompetent

That depends on if you _are_ incompetent or not.

No, seriously - it's _very_ hard to judge the level of your own skills, both
technical and others. Try to find a senior dev who is not a total asshole and
go ask them. If they worked with you earlier, it's all the better, but
probably any experienced dev (who's not an asshole) will do. Just tell them
honestly what you're doing, what you're struggling with, what you did in your
previous work, things like this. This should be enough for any decent senior
to tell you how skilled - relatively to others - you are. Would it be easy to
change the job? Which kind of development (embedded, mobile, ...?) would be
the most natural for you to pick up? What would you need to learn to change
your domain to something else than your current one? Just have a little chat
and you'll at least know your options much better.

And also, if you're unable to find a well-meaning, non-asshole senior dev in
your company you should be out of there already!

------
srpablo
Don't burn out. Tell them, in very frank terms, about the technical debt and
demand a reasonable timeline. If they give you pushback, tell them to do it
themselves or fuck off. You don't have to use those words, but you may have
to.

The fact is, you're putting in 15 hour days to give them a chance to get
extremely wealthy. You deserve to do so in a way that lets you live a life you
are happy with. Always a relevant link [http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-
a-vc-use-my-name-to-se...](http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/11/watch-a-vc-use-my-
name-to-sell-a-con/)

Employment in a startup can be very rewarding, but it needs to be mutually
beneficial. If you're getting taken advantage of, bite back. A good friend
doesn't just praise you, they criticize you when you're failing, and in this
situation the company is failing you, as both an employee and a human.

Good luck.

------
robinwarren
You need to talk to your manager, it's their job to understand your situation
and help you (and therefore the business) to succeed. There is a possibility
they won't get that in which case you need to look for a new job (that won't
be hard). Pushing yourself too hard can be an issue, doing it with a backing
track of stress around others impressions of your competence is a recipe for
disaster.

There should be a way out of this which will leave you, your manager and your
coworkers happy and productive and your company successful as a result. Focus
on that belief when you plan to talk to your manager, and try to ignore any
fear you have about negative impressions they may have of you. And take a
break as soon as possible.

------
killface
Stop working 15 hour days. That's just stupid and grossly counter-productive.
Work your 8 hours, then go home and don't think about it.

Your brain needs time to absorb, process, and synthesize. It can't do that if
you're trying to force-feed it new information faster than it can handle.

Take some time to write a couple tests against the code, to make some small
refactorings, etc. If you still feel overwhelmed or underwater, talk with your
manager and just tell them the code is a pile of crap (if it really is). They
don't want to hear it, but they might cut you some slack.

------
exodust
Marathon stretches of dev time can be very productive.

You know that feeling when you leave the office at 11pm having finally sorted
out that bug? Nothing beats that feeling, you sleep VERY well that night.

You know your limits better than anyone. Pull a few late ones, but not too
many. If it still seems too much work or too hard, then tell stakeholders.

~~~
BWStearns
I get that sense when I figure out how to make something new. I get a VERY
different sense after getting to the bottom of something and finding out that
someone was "moving fast" and that I wasted hours because some easily
avoidable mistake was made. Busting your ass to build stuff makes you feel
kinda accomplished, busting your ass because someone managed to use your time
as collateral to pay for their convenience makes you feel kinda dicked over.

------
panjaro
You're not incompetent. No one in this world is incompetent. Just put that in
your mind.

Communicate with your management. Explain the situation. Be on the point.
Don't over explain.

Things will work out. If the management doesn't care, it's not the company you
should be working for.

------
byg80
Take a 1-2 week vacation.

~~~
klibertp
Much too little time in my experience. Two weeks is just enough to start
thinking that maybe not everything is shit, but not enough to really believe
it. When you get back to work in this state of mind, you quickly realize that
indeed, everything _is_ shit, and you're much worse off than before.

1-2 weeks of vacation is what "normally" suffices, i.e., what "normal" people
do. "Normal" people as contrasted with "burned out" or "on the road to
burnout" people. It's not going to be enough for the latter group to do what
is normally done: if it were enough, they wouldn't be burned out in the first
place.

