
Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired' - pmoriarty
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50604035
======
epicgiga
A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model.

Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out.

Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their
ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability,
people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons,
and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it when
they try to work elsewhere after. Totally consume them. Basically
institutionalised "f--k you", gleefully chewing up other human beings.

In some ways we're moving to something worse than slavery. At least with
slaves they were seen as "assets" rather than "temporary rentals". They had to
take care of them out of necessity, so their evil had that limit on it.

~~~
barry-cotter
Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very
well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure
like I-Banking, management consisting or law. People know what they’re getting
into when they start these jobs. The hours and workload are not a secret. Most
people do their two years and get out. A lot of it amounts to pointless hazing
but no one is deceived into thinking Goldman Sachs has a great work life
balance.

The huge majority of companies operate on nothing like this model. Either they
aim to build up a workforce for the long haul and as such care about having a
sustainable workload, with occasional spikes and lulls, or they’re just jobs
that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high turnover and pay
relatively well for low standards in hiring. See working in an Amazon
warehouse.

The companies that do follow this model suck, like EA, but again that’s not a
secret. There’s an inexhaustible supply of suckers for every industry that
people really, really want to get into and whether it’s film or video games
they’re always awful, though at least film pays better.

~~~
ianleeclark
> Companies that expect people to work this hard are almost exclusively very
> well paying entry level jobs for fresh graduates with an up or out structure
> like I-Banking, management consisting or law.

I take it you've never worked in a call center? When I did, anything under a
`10` (out of 10) on the random surveys they sent out was considered a failure.

~~~
barry-cotter
> they’re just jobs that are hard, that suck and that as a result have a high
> turnover and pay relatively well for low standards in hiring.

I have worked in a call centre.

------
lvturner
I think the scariest thing about burn-out, is that not everyone is financially
able to take the recommended time off to recover - what then?

I've certainly been close to being in this boat, had to take a job before I
fully recovered, so took one I felt might be a bit lighter on the load and
still give me some chance of recovery.

Pleased to report it has been mostly successful.

~~~
dnautics
what if the 'recommended time off to recover' is wrong? I believe that burnout
comes from a missing a reward that is expected after protracted and intense
labor, thereby training your brain that labor = bad. Maybe the right thing to
do is to retrain your brain that labor = good, with primary stimuli. Making
green dots appear is definitely one very effective way to get over burnout. I
haven't had a major burnout incident in years, don't know if it's because I'm
getting older and wiser, or if it's because I'm learning how to do little bits
of work that are 1) guaranteed to succeed and 2) nearly guaranteed to reward
me, at least in ways that matter to me, if not financially or socially (those
are the types of reward you can't control and often lead to the hardest
burnout).

~~~
eitland
As someone who hit the brick wall pretty hard at the end of last millennium
this is the best most relatable description I've seen.

Does anyone know if there has been any research into this explanation and, if
so any pointers to where I can read more?

~~~
dnautics
Yeah. My contrarian opinion on burnout cones from about 10 years of
observation as an academic track researcher in the physical sciences (typical
80+, occasional 100h+ workweeks in sometimes physically dangerous environments
- carcinogens, implosion and explosion risks, one time a Dewar imploded in my
face at 2am). The two leading triggers for burnout were "literally the
universe" causing your experiment to repeatedly fail, and possibly more
pernicious, "your boss switches tracks on you", due to funding or political
concerns. Of course the management class (PIs) has zero empathy because the
funnel is so selective that almost all of them had it easy, and anything less
is merely a dumb or incompetent employee.

One of my buddies went into a burnout phase where he would use his pipette
tips in a geometrical pattern and play flash Gameboy Tetris, or sometimes go
to the casino and play poker (all of which he got really good at).

By contrast, programming is a cakewalk.

------
jamisteven
One's career isnt always the sole reason for burnout, many times one's
workload is totally fine, but combined with their work commute, family and
other outside influences, they become burned out. We need to take a holistic
look at burnout and not just attribute it to career.

~~~
cpncrunch
Yes, this was what happened to me. My work wasn't stressful...if anything the
issue with it was that I was sitting all day doing nothing, which is perhaps
stressful. Added on top of that were a stressful commute, issues with the
person I was living with, etc. It started as burnout and then developed into
CFS. The only real solution is to deal with all the issues, and then give time
for your body to recover (which might take a few months).

~~~
blaser-waffle
> if anything the issue with it was that I was sitting all day doing nothing,
> which is perhaps stressful

I'll second this. It feels like you're always waiting for the other shoe to
drop, or for you to be called out on not exercising the will-to-power hustle
that the business culture of 2020 expects. A couple of slow months and I start
getting paranoid.

------
whywhywhywhy
Just gonna say it, I doubt the solution is yet more apps on the device that is
the real source of anxiety.

Putting the thing in airplane mode and leaving it in a different room when you
get home is going to do you way more good than staring into your phone and
swiping away at more apps.

~~~
marketingfool
My podcasts make my commute enjoyable rather than miserable. My apps make time
waiting enjoyable.

But I basically don't use my phone at home. At most TV and gaming.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> My apps make time waiting enjoyable

It's a trade off, you're getting entertainment but you're trading away
creative brain problem solving time that occurs when you idle on a commute or
whatever.

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adrianmonk
A bit of a tangent, but that phrase originally comes from a famous 1964 speech
by civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer:

[https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/08/09/im-sick-
and-t...](https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/08/09/im-sick-and-tired-of-
being-sick-and-tired-dec-20-1964/)

------
torgian
This is a good article.

I’ve experienced burn out before in my previous career, but never experienced
very bad symptoms like the lady in this article did.

Anecdotally, I believe burnout is more likely when you work on a job that only
cares about profits, or is not fulfilling in some meaningful way. I personally
couldn’t work at most of the software companies out there. Why would I want to
work for some ad company, or some company that makes meaningless apps /
programs that doesn’t benefit humanity?

Sure, on a knowledge scale, some of that might be rewarding for me. But I
wouldn’t last more than six months in a company like that.

~~~
saiya-jin
Burnout was experienced by many professions, ie caretakers for wounded during
world wars. They did care about their work deeply. Same for these days
doctors, they choose the work because they are idealists, they still care
about their work but grueling hours, little rest etc still make it happen.

I've never understood how somebody can get burnout in usual for-profit
corporation. No feedback loop of 'ok-enough-work-lets-rest-or-have-fun'. But
its true many people are desperately lonely or struggle in their personal
lives, and structured corporate one might seem tempting.

------
daniel_iversen
Yeah burnout sucks. I've been there and it can take a very long time to
recover - it's devastating.

WHO classified it as an occupational phenomenon last year too:
[https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/97/9/19-020919/en/](https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/97/9/19-020919/en/)

It's certainly getting worse in the modern world of knowledge work, not
better.

And shameless plug (I guess?) but in my mind fascinating research, we (Asana)
surveyed 10K+ knowledge workers a few months ago around the state of work (to
figure out where we spend our time at work and what stresses us out etc.):

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/kiue54hsni6o87x/DO%20NOT%20SEND%20...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/kiue54hsni6o87x/DO%20NOT%20SEND%20-%20Asana%20AoW%20Report%20101019.pdf?dl=0)

------
angarg12
I appreciate giving more visibility to burnout, since I suffered from it in
the past, but is this piece an article or PR for this woman and some random
app?

~~~
anon9001
> A serious mental-health crisis inspired her new app, designed to help people
> track their mental health in the same way they might track their diet,
> weight or workouts, and look for correlations in data between, for example,
> anxiety levels and sleep, or caffeine consumption and work stress.

Yes, it appears to be that.

~~~
jodrellblank
" _" We're built as a tracking-performance tool to help people enhance their
lives and their mental fitness."_"

She's been the addict, now she's the dealer.

~~~
cpncrunch
The lady who developed the app is a different person from the one who suffered
the burnout. If you want to understand or cope with burnout, best just ignore
the last part of the article.

------
Falloodude
Most instances of burnout in my life have come from non-work these days. The
company I work for of course doesn't give a shit about this, despite it having
a very real effect on my work output.

In 2019, one of my parents tried to meddle in my relationship with my wife,
and then took the additional step of nearly ruining our wedding. The
additional dozen or so hours per week needed to deal with this (which, by the
way, sent me back to my therapist) was overwhelming once sustained for a few
months. Oh, also, someone broke into my wife's house and stole a lot of
valuable heirlooms, which also caused extra drama in the middle of these two
things, which also cost me in lost time, lost sleep, and random interruptions
at work.

My performance review for year 2019 was bad. My boss says it was because my
Jira card count and code contributions were below X. I let him know of
impending catastrophe as best I could the entire year, and adjusted
expectations accordingly, but it's clear the org doesn't actually care — so
why should he?

------
dantodor
I absolutely love how that app that's advertised in the writing is primarily
targeted at the 25-40 range... Perhaps after 40 they think you don't work hard
anymore... For the record, I started writing code for a living more than 30
years ago. I guess I should be safe, by the mind of these clever guys.

~~~
amelius
I have to say that my own experience is that people over 40 work less and at
the same time seem to make more money.

~~~
sharms
This is highly inaccurate depending on where the upper bound of age is (ie
excluding retirees or part timers). For instance, the average person above 40
years of age have much more time to focus on work: Children already grown, not
frequently going out to bars or staying up late etc.

~~~
jlokier
Children already grown?

These days, for various reasons people are having children in their mid-to-
late 30s, and waiting closer and closer to 40 to _start_ having children (many
then find out they can't because they left it too late).

For many, the children are not grown and old enough to leave home until the
parents hit mid 50s.

------
ressetera
Burning out is definitely a taste from hell, if hell exists.

Exactly a decade ago I found myself talking to my mother in foreign languages
on the phone, thinking I was talking to my clients. I even got used to lucid
dreaming as it happened at least once per week.

Took me three weeks to get back any desire to (even think to) code again.

------
Geeek
It's an ad. the BBC has become increasingly more clickbaiy and unreliable as
of recently.

~~~
cpncrunch
Yeah, but if you ignore that part of the article, it's a pretty good
description of burnout.

------
mgarfias
I felt like this, thought for a long time it was work. It wasn’t.

Turns out I had a tumor on an adrenal gland, that was over producing
aldosterone. That cascaded into a bunch of other weird health issues.

Don’t assume it’s work, get checked out. Connect the dots.

~~~
hummo56
How did you find that out?

~~~
mgarfias
I initially went in looking for help coping with stress from exwife+custody -
its been a fucked up ride. ANyway, BP was high, so they started treating that.
Then diagnosed as diabetic. I was sent to a clinical pharmacist to handle
that, and he was looking over my bloodwork and saw the low potassium, and
thought it might be an aldosterone issue. Aldosterone being a hormone that
controls K/Na balance which controls BP.

Anyway, blood tests showed low K, high Na. Further testing showed aldosterone
was out of whack. follow up testing confirmed it. CT scan found a tumor. Then
a years worth of testing to be sure the thing wasn't a pheochromocytoma - it
wasn't. Finally had it excised and have been getting better since.

------
zeckalpha
Origin of the phrase used in the title:
[https://www.thenation.com/article/fannie-lou-hamer-tired-
bei...](https://www.thenation.com/article/fannie-lou-hamer-tired-being-sick-
and-tired/)

I think the circumstances mentioned in the article need corrective action, but
they are orders of magnitude different than what this phrase was referring to.

------
tempsy
For me burnout is less about overworking in a white collar tech job and more
this feeling that I'm not necessarily wired want to constantly think about
some narrow goal in one of millions of companies out there for 40-50+ hours a
week.

------
icpmacdo
Anyone have recommendations for dealing with burnout early(3 years) into their
career?

~~~
cpncrunch
It really depends on a number of factors and how severe the burnout is. If
there are other factors involved (stressful commute, interpersonal problems),
make sure you deal with those.

If the burnout is mild and you're just working too hard, the solution is to
take a break and reduce your hours.

If you're starting to suffer from CFS, then the best solution is a long-term
break from work, and a serious re-evaluation of whether you want to continue
working there.

