
Employee burnout is becoming a huge problem in the American workforce - akeck
https://qz.com/932813/employee-burnout-is-becoming-a-huge-problem-in-the-american-workforce/
======
jressey
I've been working professionally in IT for about 6 years now and the concept
of 'working too little' has never come up from any of my managers. I have a
strict personal policy of working the exact amount of hours discussed upon
hiring, and never responding to calls or email outside of those hours. For
example I worked at a Fortune 50 with a 37.5 hour workweek and always stuck to
that. I even counted the time I spent at lunch. Issue never raised.

I am not saying cases exist where workers are asked to work more than their
agreed hours. I killed myself in kitchens for a $25k salary before switching
to tech. These cases are a problem.

My point is that this behavior is often self-imposed. People seem to feel a
sense of importance when they overwork themselves. Simply stick to the number
of hours you've agreed upon and tell your manager to discuss with their
supervisor if they bring it up as a disciplinary issue. This all qualified by
being in a position of demand as an engineer.

Point is, you'd be surprised with what you can 'get away with.'

~~~
CoolGuySteve
For me it's not time per week worked that wears, but vacation time. Scheduling
your life around the 2 or 3 weeks that US employers give is madness. When you
do take the vacation, you're expected to be reachable by email.

But if you ask for more vacation when you're hired, you're told you're not
high enough on some invisible seniority list despite all your previous years
of experience working other places.

~~~
Ascetik
Don't forget, you have to use half of that vacation time to go to the dentist,
doctor, car repair, visit your dying grandmother, funerals, taking care of
kids while your wife is sick, etc... Yes, 2-3 weeks is total trash. Employers
just view us as cogs in the wheel, not as human beings with human needs
anymore. You get punished for having to take time to do personal things. It is
completely maniacal.

I had to use 1 week of my 2 weeks PTO to go support my wife having a child in
the hospital. It was complete BS. I was so angry at my boss, furiously angry
that he would treat me and my family with such utter disrespect as to take
away my hard-earned vacation time simply because my wife needed my support.

Paternity leave? What's that?

~~~
Paul-ish
Let me play devils advocate. Having a kid is a choice isn't it? Why should
someone get more time for their elective activities than someone else? Should
smokers get extra breaks to smoke that others don't get?

Rather than paternity leave, why not more general leave for everyone?

~~~
criley2
Having a child is to society what eating food is to the individual.

You can choose not to eat food, but the individual will not last long.

You can choose not to have kids but the society won't last long.

It's in our interest to support the human part of humanity. We do that with
breaks, meal breaks, sick time, vacation time, and other things. But it's also
in our interest to benefit society, not just the individual. So we incentivize
choices which are mandatory to the health and success of our society, such as
creating the next generation to replace those aging out of the workforce.

~~~
Paul-ish
It would be in the general interest of society if I took some time off to
volunteer my efforts in aid to those in need in other countries (or maybe my
own). Maybe I would rather do that than have kids. Should we create a special
category of time off for that?

~~~
brightball
Some employers to have that. They're called sabbaticals.

My current employer also has a policy allowing a certain amount of unpaid time
out of the office for charity projects that you'd like to participate in.

~~~
Paul-ish
Indeed, and sabbaticals are not limited to taking leave for children. They are
something entirely different from maternity or paternity leave. Something of
that nature is what I am proposing.

------
theothermkn
I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is
meaninglessness. Work, like God, is dead. Even for tech workers, the novelty
has worn off, and people pretty much realize that the _core_ feature of their
jobs is their own economic exploitation.

Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature.

~~~
ashark
> Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off,

Watching most of what you build—which often wasn't exciting or very important-
seeming to begin with—be discarded in short order, having benefitted few (
_i.e._ not enough to justify the effort) or no people, after all kinds of
false or semi-real urgency to get it done, year after year after year, will do
that. It's a testament to how much money is sloshing around that we get paid
so much to spend huge amounts of time building soon-to-be digital garbage, I
guess.

It feels like there's an exceptionally stupid monkey smashing shapes against
one of those children's shape-in-the-correct-hole puzzles, but larger,
extending forever into the distance, trying to get some of them to fit, which
they mostly don't because the monkey's so damn stupid. And we're the shapes.

~~~
soulnothing
This I feel like it's killing my career. A majority of the contracts I start
are canned within a few weeks of me joining. Then they literally give me
janitorial work. Can't leave, because you jump around to much. Can't say the
job was canned, you should have chosen better. I haven't had a job where stuff
was used for 6 years.

The exception being a contracting gig. Where I wrote everything they canned
me, outsourced it overseas. Then several months later asked me to come back,
because the outsourcing firm only knew an older programming language.

It's burn out just going to work every day. I'm either cleaning up others
messes. Or interfacing with vendors. I'm totally aware that work will be
tedium four out of the five days. I just want one freaking day, where I can
stretch my mind, and actually do something useful. I have a world burning in
my head I want to write. Several projects I want to program, and learn. Yet
I'm so burnt out by work end.

My work feels like a syndicate show at this point. I have been doing primarily
the same thing for 5 years. I've constantly tried to buck this and get into
some other area. But a personal mistake has ensured I constantly need money,
and can't take the time to move properly.

~~~
madengr
"Then they literally give me janitorial work."

That's not so bad. I'll sweep the floor in my lab, wipe down benches,
equipment, etc after a project. I make it a habit of doing that so I have a
fresh start for the next project.

Manual labor is somewhat satisfying sometimes as you can think about other
things while doing it.

~~~
soulnothing
I agree with you. I actually enjoy data center work, cleaning etc. once or so
a week. It's a good way to attack things from a new perspective.

Just coming in to design a software solution, then pivoting over to that as
your sole duty :P.

------
TobyGiacometti
While companies should definitely be doing something about this, at the end of
the day it is our responsibility to look after ourselves. Too many people
tolerate this type of treatment out of fear. I understand that this is easier
said than done, but I do not think the situation will change much unless
people start standing up for themselves.

Remember the number 1 regret Bronnie Ware observed while caring for people in
the last 12 weeks of their lives: _I wish I 'd had the courage to live a life
true to myself, not the life others expected of me._

~~~
itgoon
Some of the best life advice I got from my Grandmother:

You are always working for yourself. You may have an employer, but you are
still working for yourself, not them. You're trading your time for money, like
any other business. If you don't like the deal, then walk away.

~~~
TobyGiacometti
Your grandmother was a wise woman!

~~~
AstralStorm
She forgot to mention a caveat: don't get trapped in a situation you cannot
get out of.

It is easy to get caught by debt, lack of savings, education or skill. Just as
easy by not figuring your advantages and capitalizing on them.

The corollary is that it is as easy to stay in place by standing as by running
on a treadmill.

~~~
TobyGiacometti
> The corollary is that it is as easy to stay in place by standing as by
> running on a treadmill.

I like this metaphor! However, once we realize that we are the treadmill, we
can turn it off and walk away...

~~~
mathgeek
Assuming, of course, that you didn't spend way too much buying the treadmill
and can't afford another exercise device until you pay that one off.

------
6stringmerc
None of this is surprising if three elements are considered:

1\. Productivity has soared

2\. Wages have stagnated / wealth gap has widened significantly

3\. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "Let the Boomers
Retire, we have a Hiring Freeze"

There are too few people doing the work of too many, which chokes the upward
mobility of the youth, increases the wealth gap between Working and Investing
class citizens, and essentially is masochism in the "modern era" of US
Consumerism as an economic engine.

Don't believe me? Do some math on stock buybacks 2015-2016 versus publicly
announced hirings and layoffs. You'd be surprised how easily this amounts to
justification for putting Greenspan and Bernanke in jail. Those guys stole
from tens of millions of Americans to benefit a few hundred.

~~~
gthtjtkt
> 3\. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "Let the Boomers
> Retire, we have a Hiring Freeze"

I would add:

4\. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "If you're not
sacrificing your life for the company, you don't deserve your job."

~~~
draw_down
Yeah, I feel like I see the sentiment "you should feel lucky you even have a
job" often.

~~~
6stringmerc
Sometimes I get chastised for taking too rough of a tone, too cynical, but I
was extremely tempted to include that perspective as a variant of #3, which is
a difficult one to pin down.

In short, I am in complete agreement with you and the above #4 concept.

------
saboot
> The Economic Policy Institute shows that productivity increased by 21.6%,
> yet wages grew by only 1.8% during this time period.

> Companies need to do something about this burnout crisis now because
> otherwise, they will pay the high price of turnover.

Hm, what on earth could they possibly do? It's a mystery shrouded in an
enigma!

~~~
ryangittins
I'm a little ignorant on this subject so please forgive me, but does the
measurement of productivity account for advances in technology?

With modern software I can produce the output of hundreds of people from the
1960s orders of magnitude faster. Does that make me more productive? I mean,
it does in terms of output, but not input. I'm not really working harder. I'm
not really even working _smarter_. I'm just working on the shoulders of
giants.

If I hired a guy to paint a room and gave him a 1-inch wide paintbrush it
would take him significantly longer than a guy with a 2-foot wide paint
roller. Is the second guy more productive? He does the same thing in less
time. If you pay him hourly, you pay him less. You pay less for the same
output. He's not working harder. He's just using better tools.

Again, I'm totally ignorant on what exactly "productivity" means in this
context. Perhaps this is a well-understood facet of the problem and it is
accounted for.

~~~
wyldfire
Productivity is kinda like GDP normalized against how many people were
actually working. So if global war or famine destroyed your working population
but your GDP stayed the same afterwards, that would represent an increased
productivity.

From [1], "... labor productivity measures the amount of real gross domestic
product (GDP) produced by an hour of labor"

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-
productivity.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp)

~~~
VLM
The problem with that is labor is moving out of the economic system. Much more
at the bottom than near the top where programmer laborers work, but it'll get
here.

For example, walmart doesn't pay for employees food anymore because food
stamps/EBT aka taxpayers pay for their employees food. Their labor no longer
has a dollar value of food or their labor no longer pays for food, sorta.
Their employees have left the legacy dollar based food marketplace. Similar
things go on with medical care and no bennie jobs. If you believe in the new
urbanism religion then people no longer own cars anymore, cars are certainly
very expensive and basically unaffordable to the working poor, and someone
else is funding the unprofitable mass transit systems... for now. Certainly
people who can't afford cars are no longer part of the car economy.

The ultimate extreme of income inequality would be something like the last two
unmerged corporations in the USA merge, creating trillions in merger fees as
part of the GDP, which divided across many McJob hours would appear to make us
all fabulously wealthy, but all the money is located somewhere else, and we
all get our food from EBT and health care from medicare and housing has govt
assistance leading to most people not really being involved in the legacy
economy anymore.

Its not as far fetched as you'd think. There's only 100M full time jobs for
320M people. Two thirds of people live off one third of the people still
working. That ratio will increase with automation.

------
workerexploited
First, the unemployment rate numbers are fudged by UNDERemployment, especially
by millennials. It's a BS statistic and more people need to realize this.

Moving on, I'm a millennial that doesn't work as an
engineer/developer/programmer/etc. I make less than $100,000 and I live in a
major US city because that's where the jobs are.

As noted in the article, it really also comes down to wages just as--but
perhaps more than--hours put in. But there's just so much more that is
contributing to burnout and the inseparable turnover.

Rant incoming.

EVERY educated and skilled millennial I know like me (non-"STEM") is job
hopping like crazy for that ever-so-slight raise and hope that the grass is
greener on the other side. Our resumes are getting PACKED with 6-month and
1-year gigs.

Nearly every day on my LinkedIn feed I see someone leaving somewhere and
getting a new job.

There are just so many things wrong with the workplace resulting in burnout
and turnover today for millennials (humans):

\- We're sick of being paid poorly; a dog-friendly office, free snacks, hip
lighting in the lobby, standing desks, and free Friday lunch doesn't make up
for poor pay

\- We're often sick of overpaid-and-often-less-skilled supervisors above us
and especially the even more bloated and overpaid management above them

\- We're sick of positions where we have no opportunities for growth or
development of skills or discovering something new

\- We're sick of working with fellow millenials who give even less of a crap
than us so they're just lazy and don't pull their weight until they find the
next gig--and we often have to pull their weight for them

\- We're sick of interviewing in-person and never hearing a word back from
crap recruiting and human resources teams

\- We're sick of being hired on as "freelancer" or "contract" employees so
that we're denied benefits even though we dedicate 40+ hours per week to a
company

~~~
slededit
> the unemployment rate numbers are fudged by UNDERemployment

The employment numbers are not fudged, they are very specific as to what they
contain. Further there are 6 of them so its important to specify which is
applicable to whatever you're trying to determine. In the case of
underemployment U-6 is the measurement you want to look at.

If you look at the historical charts for U-6 you'll see we're below the
unemployment level of 1995.

[http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-
rate](http://www.macrotrends.net/1377/u6-unemployment-rate)

------
mti27
Once I accumulated so much rollover vacation time I decided "I'm not working
Fridays anymore" which lasted for many months. I found out later someone had
complained to my manager about this, since I was unreachable. That same
company had experimented with a 7:30 - 11:30 schedule on Fridays (7:30 - 5:30
Mon-Thurs) which was great: you'd miss heavy traffic coming in and get a head
start on every weekend. But someone in the field complained about corporate
being unreachable and they ended that too.... The problem is the "flexible
thinking" people always come up against the "Bill Lumberghs" of the world and
everyone is pulled down to the lowest common denominator.

------
krylon
I am getting paid to work 40 hours a week, and for the most part that's what I
do.

I do respond to calls and mails outside of work hours, because we are a 1.5
person IT department, and when e.g. email does not work, it is kind of a big
deal. But that does not happen very often. (I used to have that colleague who
literally called me _every day_ , even when I was on vacation _and_ sick, but
he quit; the guy who replaced him is great though.)

Once a month, servers need to be updated and rebooted, and I do that, too, but
I don't mind. It is kind of soothing, in its own way. ;-)

I have no problem working long hours when it is necessary. It happens, even in
the best of places; but in places where it is the rule, in my experience, it's
because management is too cheap to spring for a decent IT department.

And having been through a case of burnout (which, IMHO, is just a euphemism
for depression), you really can't afford the amount of money it would take to
make me go through that again. Or maybe you can, but you don't want to. Either
way, I am happy to make a modest living working reasonable hours. My boss
seems to agree, so we're cool.

(Full Disclosure: I am living and working in Germany, in case it matters.)

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _I have no problem working long hours when it is necessary. It happens, even
> in the best of places_

Actually, once in a while, having to put out a big fire is kinda stimulating.
Sure it sucks that something's burning, but the challenge can be awesome.

Well, as long as it doesn't happen too often. :)

------
pmoriarty
I've suffered severe burnout so many times in my career, resulting in taking
years off from work because I dreaded going back. I want to switch careers,
but can't think of anything else I'm qualified for that I'd like to do, and
it's really hard to switch careers when you're older. I envy people who can do
what they love, or at least not hate, for a living.

~~~
duderific
If you can "take years off from work" you must have done something extremely
right at some point. The only significant time I've ever had off from work is
getting laid off, and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

~~~
pmoriarty
Yes, but there's always a price.. psychological and/or emotional, in my case.

------
imchillyb
The saying goes: "I'm being over-worked and under-paid."

When greed for profit over product viability or employee considerations is the
/only/ goal of a company, this trend will /always/ be the end result.

Profit is what drives markets, but it is employees that drive companies. Or,
it is employees that ruin said companies.

Businesses beware.

~~~
mtreis86
There was a saying in the Soviet Union, "They pretend to pay us, we pretend to
work."

Apparently this is an ongoing issue
[https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%...](https://www2.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/assets/docs/demokratizatsiya%20archive/05-02_rosenblum.pdf)

------
jm__87
If you are a skilled employee working in IT and you have experienced burn out,
it is likely something you have done to yourself. Do some companies have
ridiculously high expectations of their employees: yes. Do you have to live up
to those expectations: no. As a skilled IT worker your knowledge and
experience are valuable commodities that can presumably be sold elsewhere. The
reason that managers can get away with having ridiculous expectations is
because their employees let them. Capitalism rewards those who can wring out
the most value for the least cost. Many people will take advantage of you if
you simply let them.

~~~
throwaway9475
Sure, just quit your job and stop feeding your family or having a house or
health insurance. Or upend your entire life to move somewhere else where
you'll mostly likely be treated similarly because you have no idea how a job
will be until you work there for three months.

Capitalism rewards those who can wring out the most value for least cost,
which is why unions were created. Workers on their own have basically no
leverage. Honestly, the fact that tech workers can pack up and leave
relatively easily (more easily than most Americans, anyway) is part of the
problem.

~~~
jm__87
The reason I specifically mentioned skilled work is because there is a
significant investment on the part of the company hiring. Labor unions are
useful for unskilled labor where an individual worker has no bargaining chips
and the company can replace someone at low cost. Depending on what you do in
the tech industry, it is unlikely this applies to you. You either hire someone
with less experience and it takes months before they become useful or you hire
someone who has all the skills you already need and it is likely that people
with the exact skill set you require are in low supply. Keeping these two
points in mind, people who work in tech often have quite a good bargaining
position with their employer.

~~~
dvtv75
You would be surprised at just how poorly managed some businesses are, I
think.

A prior employer has such a bad reputation around the city that even the local
IT school refuses to acknowledge that one of their graduates runs the IT
department there, and this school is desperate to wave the "We have a
successful course!" flag so they can compete with the CS course at the
neighboring university.

This business hires a few graduates from the course each year, requiring 40
hours a week minimum. The standard of work required immediately would be
expected of someone with 5 years experience, and there's no budget for
software or hardware, but here's the kicker:

the job is actually an internship. There's no pay, but the project is a high-
end one. The business is simply getting free labor, and does so regularly. The
internships don't lead to a job, although they do provide a professional
reference from a business with a terrible reputation.

There are no guaranteed bargaining chips.

------
dragonwriter
> Companies need to do something about this burnout crisis now because
> otherwise, they will pay the high price of turnover.

No, because it's a tragedy of the commons. Companies who take on extra short
term costs to deal with it will lose out to companies that don't; even if
long-term, overall, it's a better outcome of companies do deal with it.

The existence of things like this is pretty much the reason for government.

~~~
bdhess
Your answer assumes that the cost of preventing burnout exceeds the cost of
turnover.

~~~
falcolas
Based on videogame companies and how they churn through deveopers, this
definitely seems to be the case for at least some sectors.

I'd say the cost of turnover is only high for highly specialized roles; a role
which software development is rarely considered to be by companies.

~~~
leggomylibro
Video games might not be the best example; they aren't commodities, and the
games which are produced as you described often feel like assembly line
productions. Compare Ubisoft's flagship Assassin's Creed or Far Cry games to
Ubisoft's arthouse Montpellier studio (1). It's astonishing what a difference
culture makes with creative works. Their works are smaller and less
consistent, but they have a few enormous successes (compared to how much they
cost) among those.

But with a commodity like paper clips, where you can buy 100 from anybody,
that might not be the case. You get a paper clip no matter how the workers are
treated. I guess that might have been what you meant by 'specialized roles,'
though.

(1)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft_Montpellier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubisoft_Montpellier)

------
chollida1
I think the below article on burnout is the best thing Marissa Mayer has ever
produced!!

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-
av...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-avoid-
burnout-marissa-mayer)

If you subscribe to the theory that burn out is all about resentment then it
gives you a whole new set of tools to deal with it.

~~~
rubiquity
I like the idea but what do you do when your resentment comes from something
external rather than internal? Getting to soccer practice on time and eating
dinner with your friends can be controlled. What do you do when you're burned
out because you don't feel appreciated or challenged?

~~~
dvtv75
Depends on why you're burning out. Constant demands for overtime without the
extra pay? Your manager is also responsible for the IT dept., so when your
computers fail IT are told not to bother? Forced to resign down to a much
lesser role because of 70+ hours/week and an inconsequential spelling mistake?

You seethe, and do less, and less. When a fault occurs that you could correct,
you don't. You turn up 40 minutes after starting time, and walk out of
meetings early. Everything becomes half-assed.

Oh, and you start to plan ahead, so you can get the boss back by dobbing him
into a governmental authority.

Right now, I get paid to flirt with a lot of pretty women for much of the day.

------
jeena
If I didn't have to work for shelter and food, I'd be an artist. I'd be a
photographer [0] and a podcaster [1]. I do both already, but I feel that I
never have the time to do both thoroughly and as often as I would desire. I'd
need some money for travel actually, so I could photograph and interview
people who are interesting but do not live where I do.

[0]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeena/albums/72157677196990660](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeena/albums/72157677196990660)
[1] [https://jeena.net/pods](https://jeena.net/pods)

------
openforce
Early in my career, my then really good manager taught me to say no, Which was
initially difficult for me. But, I am really thankful for that lesson.
Learning to stand your ground and say no to excess work is very important if
you care about a life outside work.

People from India, like me, especially have a hard time saying NO to being
assigned something that, either you have no time to work on or something you
don't want to work on. It's a cultural thing combined with the golden leash of
H1b visas. I see a lot of my colleagues from India accepting more and more
work and end up having almost no life outside of it.

------
vogelke
I wrote about why I like being a sysadmin after 29 years on Reddit about 2
months ago:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5omi1n/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5omi1n/)

One of the biggest things that kept me from burning out was realizing that
companies (or branches of the service) are neither good nor evil, they're just
big. As a result, they'll take whatever you offer and not blink an eye.

------
korzun
A lot of people in technology sector think that showing up and writing two
lines of code is more than enough to deserve six figure salary now.

The same people will make a big deal about staying late or having to work on a
weekend once in a while. The sense of entitlement is pretty mindblowing to me.

------
milge
I was laid off new years. I've been doing development for 10 years and
specializing in salesforce for 7 years. I haven't found the right position
yet, but I know I've been burned out for a little bit now. I've been
considering low-paying metal-working jobs, but the sad reality is unemployment
pays more. Unemployment runs out in June. I'm kinda indifferent whether I find
work. I've started the foreclosure process on my house. This may be the
perfect time to just take some time and explore the US. So while I haven't
found work yet, the work I have done has put me in the mentality that that's
ok. Thanks for reading.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Do the metal working job, or a lower paying job you dig. Do a loan
modification to keep your house. Enjoy the extra equity you receive. Then,
rent it out while you travel the US.

~~~
milge
The foreclosure was inevitable. I bought too high about 8 years ago and my
house is really old. It needs more money in work than I'd ever make back. Such
is life I suppose. A string of hard-earned lessons.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you change your mind, I'm happy to walk you through the process, even if
you do a short sale instead.

------
mnm1
Companies lie about worker burnout so to not seem inhumane when they're well
aware of the conditions they create. Short of a statutory or federal law, this
isn't going to change. The fact that the salary loophole exists and we refuse
to pay even hourly workers overtime if they make too much money (depending on
the state and industry) doesn't bode well for our chances of fixing this. Do
these same companies wonder why most of their employees are disengaged? Or is
that still such a big "mystery" to their blind management?

------
jondubois
A big problem today is that managers and executives are optimised for short-
term gains at the expense of everything else (including long term outlook,
ethics and even sanity).

People move up the ranks by making random, crazy one-off bets that turn out
great in the short term. Nobody notices people who consistently make good long
term bets.

This is compounded by the fact that people who have power these days tend to
overlook failure and only consider good outcomes.

------
smdz
I have been an employee, freelancer and just moved to being/creating an
agency. Retrospectively thinking, burning out as an employee felt much
better(and safer) than burning out as an entrepreneur.

As an employee - I always loved pressure times, but then retrospectively
disliked "performing under pressure" \- why? When I do more work - my
manager(s) did not say "you worked so hard and stayed up so late". There was a
casual "Thanks". But when there was no work - it is suddenly my fault - "You
don't work hard to find work and aren't staying full 8 hours". And just one
such bad incident was enough to have my quarterly rating degraded for multiple
other good incidents.

As a freelancer - I thought it would be easy - But it wasn't. Of course its
not because of client(s) demand. When I worked hourly, every hour counts and
pays. I realized I had worked as an employee - for peanuts and sometimes for
free. I can now put in same effort and get paid hourly. If I am getting a
predetermined price - I work even longer - because its easier to work in a
project trance and reduce task switching inefficiencies. I worked long hours
and I was trapped. It was just a golden-handcuff.

As an agency - The pressure is on me to grow it. Marketing, managing, hiring
and sometimes coding and troubleshooting issues and much more draining is
troubleshooting team issues. My ambitions are now bigger than they ever were.
Even if I am on a not-so-frequent vacation, I cannot stop thinking about work
- "after all its my biz now, if I don't think who will" \- I keep brainwashing
myself with that. Most of my leisure weekends are combined with some sort of
low-pressure work.

The answer to killing burnouts is not in the law - but in the society. The
society today celebrates "entrepreneurship, grilling and hard work" for
material wealth. We celebrate the next Facebook entrepreneur, but we don't
celebrate social entrepreneurship. Everybody wants more, more and more
material stuff (myself included). We are being brainwashed to want more than
what we need. If you look around there are many people working so hard just to
make a decent living. They do valuable work too. As an employee I may get paid
5 times more because I create business value - while they create lesser
business value and arguably add higher social value.

------
terminallyunix
I've been in IT for 20 years next year. I've been a sysadmin this entire time.
Back in Virginia (Silicon Valley East), I made great money, but here in Texas,
I make a pittance.

I'm in my mid 40s and have been looking to get into something else, but
building on my existing skills. No one is even looking at me.

I'm toying with the idea of maybe going it alone. Start a small IT
consultancy. Not sure what angle to look at this from. I'm not trying to put
out a "woe is me" here, but rather appeal to the others in here that are
toying with the idea of maybe going it alone in some capacity.

I've put out literally tons of resumes/CVs in the last couple of years and
nary an interview. It's not like I don't have skills, but it seems that
employers now want sysadmins to also be programmers and network engineers and
coffee monkeys all at the same time.

I've also entertained the notion of getting out of IT altogether, but it's all
I know. A guy I know bought a small cleaning company and he now cleans houses
for the wealthy at 150-200 a house x 4 houses a day. He splits this with one
other person. Not quite sure. But in my mid 40s, I don't think my body could
handle a purely physical job.

~~~
dingbat
> But in my mid 40s, I don't think my body could handle a purely physical job.

not assuming your physical condition, have no idea if you work out or not, but
still wondering if you think sedentary IT career has contributed to lack of
physical fitness?

~~~
terminallyunix
I'm OK physically, not Homer Simpson or Mr. Six Pack. I walk all the time,
play with my kids outside, but a purely physical job doesn't seem like the
right thing for me. Unless I lost my job and had to take on a less-than-
desirable physical job to make ends meet, I doubt I will ever leave IT.

I like IT work, I love being in the command line building servers, instances,
writing shell scripts. Quite a few of my friends have moved up into management
and to a man, I think they are miserable--what with dealing with multiple
personalities every day, plotting peoples' time off, ensuring on-call
coverage, living in meetings. I fancy none of that.

My fear is that within a couple of years I'll be 50 and still a sysadmin. Now,
having said this, I don't find the work belittling or "less than". My wife,
thankfully, is in full support of whatever I undertake as long as I do my bit
to provide financially to the household. She has encouraged me more than once
to strike out on my own and do my own thing. Like most people, I'm terrified
to fail, so I sit and do nothing, wondering why the status quo sucks.

~~~
dingbat
stuck between fears is not good place to be. for reasons similar to yours i
dropped out of the tech field completely years ago, touching upon the
experiences you mention of your friends who did not find mgmt roles to be
satisfying.

one thing you might consider is option of becoming a consultant and having
your existing company be your first client. then you'd have more flexibility
to explore other options with either other clients or side projects. don't
know if that's possible in your organization, but you might be surprised, it
could be a win-win for both you and them.

------
BrandonY
That photo's position, overhead and looking down a long hallway of cubes, with
some meaningless but chipper corporate slogans as well as some very serious
business-looking stuff, reminds me of the opening office shot of the game
Stardew Valley: [http://www11.onrpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Stardew-
Va...](http://www11.onrpg.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Stardew-Valley-
Joja.jpg)

That game's protagonist, perhaps not coincidentally, burns out on their office
job and decides to go become a farmer.

------
burntoffice
The two years I spent in Corporate America on any given day was either living
an episode of The Office or Office Space.

People burnt out by fire drills coming from above, scared to use PTO as it was
"bad optics", not receiving credit or appreciation, etc.

WORTH REMEMBERING: By nature of an employee showing up daily is to perpetually
commit to the job. It is entirely up to person and their risk capacity. Saw a
lot of "stuck" people who didn't like their job, but also wouldn't venture out
to change that or actually tap into their true potential.

------
snarf21
The biggest problem is American corporate work is mostly busyness and not
enough business. Too many layers and too many people who spend all their time
trying to justify their position and not adding value.

------
deletia
Employee burnout happens because the majority of businesses today cling to a
20th century, mass production designed, work model (9am-5pm workday, ass in
seat productivity measure) while employees are forced squeeze their lives
around a corporation for "security".

I recently wrote a post which outlines this idea in a slightly broader context
(those interested can visit [https://allidina.me](https://allidina.me),
feedback & constructive criticism welcome).

Cheers!

------
d--b
I am happy to say that in the hedge I am working at, work hours have gone down
a lot.

When I joined in 2010, I would start at 6.45am and finish after 9pm everyday.
There was a lot of stuff to do.

But once the platform improved and the workload reduced, so did the working
hours. I am now doing 9 to 6 approximately, which is pretty great.

I also removed emails on my smartphone. Best move ever.

Push for it. Working less is worth it.

------
rux
It's from a while back, but here Treehouse describe how they operate on a
9am-6pm four-day week.

[http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/work-less](http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/work-
less)

I remember talking to Ryan Carson (the guy who put this into place) at a
conference and he said that the results from doing it were overwhelmingly
positive.

~~~
paulcole
RIP to Treehouse's 4-day week.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-
forest/index.ssf/2016/09/t...](http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-
forest/index.ssf/2016/09/treehouse_returns_to_five-day.html)

~~~
rux
Ahh damn shame, I hadn't seen this.

------
awinter-py
Investing $$ in employee happiness and retention is a tricky signaling
problem.

If you need the best people, you probably should care about retention.

What if, on the other hand, your managers suck so much that good and bad
workers perform at the same level? In this case signaling to your people you
don't give a crap about them puts you in a powerful negotiating position.

~~~
st3v3r
"What if, on the other hand, your managers suck so much that good and bad
workers perform at the same level? In this case signaling to your people you
don't give a crap about them puts you in a powerful negotiating position."

Only with the people who can't find work elsewhere. For those that are good,
the ones you do want to retain, signaling that you don't give a crap about
them will get them to up and leave. Possibly with no notice period.

------
jakozaur
Not enough holidays?

I know a lot of ppl in USA which take too little or none of them for quite a
while until they burnt out.

[https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/sep/07/america-
vacati...](https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/sep/07/america-vacation-
workaholic-culture-labor-day)

------
2sk21
I often joke that I have to take vacations to get real work done. My company
like many does not allow vacation to be rolled over so, I usually wind up
taking off the last two weeks of December. This is truly when I get my
thinking done - I can spend the entire day from morning to night looking at
code without any interruptions.

------
rconti
"67% said that they think their employees have a balanced life, yet about half
of employees disagree."

owww, my head!

~~~
wyldfire
"67% [of companies] ... yet about half of employees [disagree with the claim
supported by majority companies surveyed]"

> Many companies don’t realize how much burnout is impacting an employee’s
> work-life. For instance, when we asked them about the topic, 67% said that
> they think their employees have a balanced life, yet about half of employees
> disagree.

"For instance, when we asked [the companies!]..."

------
danielschonfeld
Allow me to put this here, seems appropriate. [http://slots.info/love-hate-
map/#/map](http://slots.info/love-hate-map/#/map)

------
encoderer
I question the veracity that American's are working harder than ever before. I
think we have higher wage productivity than ever before, and that is not the
same.

------
Animats
Unions. The people who brought you the weekend.

------
kafkaesq
...and yet those cubes are possibly _sumptuous_ compared to some I've been
asked to work in.

------
Florin_Andrei
> _Vacations allow employees to regenerate so they can elevate their
> productivity upon return._

Sounds like 1975.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, _from the employer 's point of view_, that may well be true. I mean, it
would be nice if employers insisted on vacations and good medical plans and
other benefits because they saw their employees as human beings who had to be
treated well. In practice, though, that's rare. You're more likely to get good
treatment from a company because the company realizes that doing so is
_profitable_ than you are to get it because the company realizes that doing so
is _right._

~~~
sokoloff
I do what's _right_ for our employees _because_ that is profitable.

That doesn't make me a bad employer (IMO). You can bet that we mentally (and
sometimes overtly) trade off improvements to salary vs long-term incentive vs
office perks vs health care vs other benefits.

I don't see any other rational way to get a stable outcome that benefits both
sides. (A company that pays too much [cash or non-cash benefits] and goes out
of business as a result hasn't helped anyone long-term.) We are competing
every day to motivate and retain our engineers.

------
dsfyu404ed
Everyone comes in this thread to complain about how bad life sucks because you
don't get two months of vacation time for existing and can't use your sick
days on a paper-cut but most of these people will turn right around and talk
about how great their employer is if the article is a positive one.

~~~
Clubber
Have any data for that assertion?

------
st3v3r
Not surprising. People are tired of working long, useless hours for nothing
other than to make someone else rich. Workers haven't seen meaningful pay
increases in a long, long time. Most haven't seen a vacation in years. No
wonder they're just tired of the whole thing.

~~~
convolvatron
I think the 'useless' part hasn't been brought up enough on this thread. Every
place I work the build is broken, the dependencies are broken, and the tests
are a joke. Which means that 10 hours of coding can turn into weeks of trying
to get something committed.

When you say 'let me fix the build', its always so far down on the list they
refuse to deal with it. We are already so late as it is. And so everyone keeps
burning hours struggling with the build, and no one is happy.

Or a planning process that has me working on a deliverable for a month only to
find out that we "aren't doing it that way anymore".

Or such a complete lack of any thought testing, which means that when I
finally get through implementing your feature on your horrific codebase, there
isn't any sane way to get it into production.

You pay me well - I'm not taking any vacation - are you going to exploit me
properly or let me fuss in the corner and eventually leave because you can't
come to grips with your own structural issues.

