
Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout - micahalles
http://lyonheart.us/articles/regretting-the-golden-handcuffs/
======
brightball
This deserves every ounce of attention that it can get and I definitely know
the feeling. I worked about as hard as I could for a little over a year to
save a 15 year old company from going under. I was the only
developer/infrastructure person because we couldn't hire anybody else since it
looked like a sinking ship.

I worked 24/7 (with a wife and 2 kids) on this beastly mix of 10 year old Perl
and very inexperienced Rails code. Despite the hours, I was excited because I
thought this was THE big opportunity.

At my one year review, the owners told me I wasn't working hard enough. I went
from a high point to a low point overnight. Wrestled with it for about a
month. Then while I was riding in the car with my wife I got a snarky hipchat
message from the owner of the company and showed it to my wife.

She looked right at me and said, "Quit. Don't worry about the money, we will
figure it out. I don't want you working for people like that and it's obvious
what it's doing to you."

So I resigned. Told them I'd stay on for 30 days for transition but that it
just wasn't the right place for me. The weight off my shoulders from resigning
was ENORMOUS.

For about 2 months I struggled with what to do. All the experience I'd gained
at that job had virtually made my resume and after the experience, just like
you I wanted to find something MEANINGFUL to do. Something I could wake up
every morning and know that what I was doing made a difference for the right
reasons.

And the opportunity came 2 months later. I ended up turning down a job for
twice the pay for what I knew was best in the long run. So far it has been and
my wife and I have never been happier. This company treats employees better
than any I've ever even heard of. Not silly perks but actual, life balance, we
value you as a human being, feel free to move about the company if you want a
different challenge...perks.

The only downside is that I'm pretty sure my wife will kill me if I ever lose
this job. :-)

~~~
tzs
So what happened to the company you left?

~~~
brightball
I stabilized them over the course of that year and helped them transition to
new developers. Company is doing fine as far as I know and should be for a
while.

They've got a massive network effect which is why they were able to survive
months of chaos from a bad rebuild. That's the only reason I came on in the
first place. The network effect bought a lot of time to fix things and there
was no clear "Facebook" to their "MySpace."

Really the only thing working against the company is that their target market
is aging a lot.

~~~
gaius
Sounds like the owners played you like a violin.

~~~
brightball
Nah, it worked out. They had to replace me with 3 people. :-)

Besides, I didn't want the company to go under. I'd spent the last year making
sure they didn't and didn't want all of that work to be for nothing. Plus, I
didn't want the other people who worked there to be out of the job.

Eventually, everybody who worked there with me left on their own.

------
xhrpost
What are people's thoughts/experiences with burnout happening without
overtime? Over the past few years I've grown more and more bored at work. Even
switching jobs from different ends of the spectrum didn't fix this. I can get
myself into flow but it seems to take more and more will power as time goes
on. Different tech challenges help, but it's nothing like my halcyon days of
straight out of college. Of coming into work and just doing the job and
enjoying it with no use of will power. I go home and then fight to do the
"bare minimum", read, exercise, eat healthy, minimal home chores and decent
sleep. I've wondered if having a home hobby would help but I have none. I feel
like "burnout" describes where I'm at, but I have a hard time stating it as
fact because I rarely work over 40hrs a week on the job. So, thoughts? Could I
actually be in a burnout phase or is this something completely different?

~~~
saalweachter
Would you describe your problem as a lack of _fulfillment_?

Personally, I find my day job technically challenging, fun, and often
rewarding, but I don't really find it fulfilling in some deep meaningful
sense. I feel useful but not meaningful.

It took me a while to realize that this was the problem I was having -- and
that just switching from software engineering job to software engineering job
wasn't going to change it -- and I am still at a crossroads as to what to do
about it. I'm not sure if I should seek fulfillment from outside my career --
family, community, a craft, a cause -- or if I should change my career to one
I (think I might) find more fulfilling.

~~~
ethbro
There are a lot of kind of people in the world. With regard to life
fulfillment (in the sense of "doing good things"), I think there are two broad
categories: people who require their work to be personally fulfilling or who
require life outside of work to be so.

From personal experience, if you're the kind of person who tends to be more
invested at work (seeks out challenges, takes pride in your work, feels
pleasure at a job well done), I'd hazard you might not be happy doing work you
don't find at least somewhat fulfilling.

My thought process being that personal_investment_in_work +
fulfillment_only_outside_of_work = eventually resenting time spent at work as
unfulfilling.

Everyone can't work on cancer-curing, economy-stabilizing, poverty-
eliminating, food-scarcity-solving, gender-equalizing, minority-protecting,
free-speech-supporting things.

But we can at least move a little closer to working on something about which
we can honestly say "Yeah, that does make the world a slightly better place."

~~~
saalweachter
In my case, my job isn't a drain -- it's useful, good work, not evil, good
coworkers, fat paycheck, good hours, lots of flexibility. From a practical
standpoint, I'm willing to wager that most people don't find fulfillment in
their day job, and my job puts me in a pretty good place to find fulfillment
outside of work.

On the other hand, at the moment I'm still young enough to start a second
career -- it wouldn't be completely crazy for me to go back to school, learn a
completely new skill set, grind up through the ranks, and try to have an
impact in some other field.

On the gripping hand, I'm not so young as to be in an impatient rush about
everything. I don't need to completely upset my entire life just yet. So I'm
carefully researching alternate careers to decide if I'd actually find them
fulfilling and have an aptitude for them (it'd be a shame to spend ten years
and realize I'm not fulfilled by my second career either). And I'm trying to
expand myself a little bit more outside my day job, so that my happiness
doesn't rest on a one-legged stool.

------
joslin01
I worked extremely hard at my last start-up to the point of being completely
burnt out. I'm happy because it made me stronger, but I'll never forget being
over and for about 4-5 months after, never looking at a computer. I didn't
want anything to do with them for awhile, and pursued a vicious "I'm gonna go
pro in golf" campaign (can't take the idealism/ambition out of a true
entrepreneur).

I'm really happy now, but I understand burn-out at a much deeper level than I
had before. There was a time when I would think "just get over it," but now I
understand it has very real effects. When you don't want to think, it's not
always a simple case of laziness. It takes work to switch into your "system 2"
(as called by "Thinking Fast and Slow") -- your focused mindset. Then once
you're in this mindset, it's no picnic.

What's fascinating is that if you stay in system 2 for too long, you begin to
show signs of paranoia and depression. You become withdrawn and isolate
yourself further from society. You might hypothesize this is a natural
reaction of an _injured_ animal, but it's hard for you to understand that your
brain is exhausted and needs to rest. Instead, you say "go faster!" and it
begins to try to come up with more & more schemes to prevent you from going
into system 2. Fantasies that would have meant nothing to you well-rested are
now of utmost importance because you're actually procrastinating because
you're actually fatigued.

Burn-out is a real thing. I love work and I work very hard, but there's times
when you have to say "You know what, this weekend is all mine." Those are the
weekends I sleep anywhere from 10-14 hours each night, and not because I'm
indulging, but just like muscles, my brain is resting and hopefully "growing".

~~~
woohoo7676
Do you have any tips for combating burnout that worked well for you? I'm
starting to feel the signs of burnout (which probably means I'm actually in
deeper than I think), and I'd like to try to head this off before it gets
worse.

I know setting hard boundaries for work/non work and taking chunks of time for
yourself is a good start, but would love to hear if you had any more advice?
Thanks!

~~~
joslin01
While this might not be the right thing to say, I feel compelled to say it
nevertheless: nothing can hurt you unless you give it power to do so.

When I was in the heat of it and naturally did not want to work, I eventually
reached a place of working zen -- I will try to do what I can, and forget
about my imagined needs of this or that. I simply stared at the screen if I
didn't know the buttons to press. This is the experience that I am proud of
and that makes me say "I'm happy I went through that."

Too often, we mistake our own fears for limitations, and limitations we do
have, we treat as if they were unmalleable. While I always want people to look
out for their mental health, I also want people to know what it means to give
it their all because I know that teaches you how to break through your self-
imposed limitations and grow into an even stronger wo/man.

My advice is to always keep one day for yourself. For me, it's Sunday. Sunday,
if I want to work, I work (and when it's that way, work doesn't always feel
like work). If I don't want to work, no one can say anything. This gives you
time to not think at all about work, which should give you time to stay in
system 1 and heal.

What's a real killer is all that unnecessary anxiety and general negative
emotions coming from _thinking_ about your work that is hurting you. When
you're away from work, stop thinking about work. It's not prudent or
responsible of you to be stressing out about something that isn't even going
on right now. When it's time to rest, you rest. When it's time to work, you
work. It seems simple, but it's the blurred gray area in between the two that
affects people the most. When I worked very hard and hit my "work zen mode",
it was here that I began to let go of things like what does my boss think or
what does my coworker think or some other-nonsense-BS-anxious-thing that has
nothing to do with actual work.

I hope it helps. I'm really no huge expert myself, but I am usually the
hardest person in the room.

~~~
woohoo7676
Thanks, I appreciate the perspective! I definitely agree with the real killer
being thinking about working while not working. The concept is simple like you
said, but actually sticking to it...quite hard. Also, keeping one day a week
for yourself seems like a good place to start as well.

------
klenwell
_> The sad thing about the metrics-driven performance culture the Times
describes at Amazon is studies show overworked people perform worse._

I'm glad the author made this point and backed it up with a reference. It
reaffirms something I already believed (whether on the basis of personal
experience, something I'd read before, or mere wishful thinking, I couldn't
tell you so the reference helps). It is a sensible constraint that came to
mind in reading all the tech workplace horror stories that the Times's Amazon
piece inspired.

While reading that Times article I checked out the link to their 14 sacred
principles. The funny thing was that I agreed with most of them. They were all
ideas that occurred to me over the course of my career working independently,
with small companies, and especially now in corp.

The one thing that was missing, I felt, was a Rule #15: Never work more than 8
hours a day.

Without it, it's no surprise you end up burnt out or living in the sort of
dystopian workplace documented in the Times' Amazon article.

But then I suppose, as has been pointed before, long work hours are more about
cultural signaling and penny-wise-pound-foolish accounting than really
improving productivity.

~~~
shostack
But what if "8 hours a day" isn't the magic number for everyone?

What if for some people, the magic number to avoid burnout is 4 hours a day?
Or the other end of the spectrum...12?

~~~
hessenwolf
I'll not lie, I'm a 14, 14, 6, 4 kinda guy. Then Friday through Sunday is for
playing, thinking, and reading, but mostly meeting up with people to exchange
ideas, potentially with beer.

~~~
brianwawok
And for a job that isn't customer facing, we should allow if possible.

I can understand why the cashier at the store needs to work 8s.. how would I
schedule people based on how many hours they feel like working?

For programming with delivery at the week or month level.. people should be
able to slice the work how it works for them.

(I think my ideal work is like 12 - 7 - 7- 6- 6- 3 or something)

------
CuriousSkeptic
It seems to be a common sentiment that burnout is largely driven by how many
hours a day you work. Why is that?

From what I've been taught burnout is the result of continuous stress. Where
stress is more or less defined as a continuous sensation of being threatened.

I've seen people with perfectly normal workours become burnt out. I've even
seen people working ten hours a week getting burnt out. The common factor thus
not being the objectively measurable amount of work.

My own formula for diagnosing a work environment is more like Risk of Burnout
= perception of expectations / perceptions of means to deliver

But a more useful model might be the SCARF-model presented in this tech talk
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJSXfXep4M)

It seems to me that hours worked relates to issue of burnout more like lack of
sleep to the risk of catching a cold. Potentially a big factor, but only
incidentally.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Such a great comment.

My happiest times were from a startup where we worked 80 hours a week.

Another startup we were in the process of selling, was such a hostile place it
literally gave me work related PTSD and I was only working 40 hours per week.

------
x0x0
Random thoughts:

It's nice to hear about a situation closer to most startup outcomes. When
Matthew notes that someone sent him the acquisition terms and the founders
made out well while line level / low level managers basically got nice
severances, it's something everyone here should keep in mind. It's great if
founders make out well as long as everyone else does too; it's when those
outcomes diverge that it rankles.

If a potential employer tries to put nonsense like a 2-year noncompete --
during which of course they don't pay you -- plus ownership of side projects
into your contract, it's a sign you're dealing with assholes. If you can, you
should just walk away. Many of us live in CA, so some of this can't happen,
but a startup here tried something similar: their 16 page (!!!) employment
contract specified that if I used my personal media device or laptop for any
business purpose, they had the unlimited right to inspect/search them on
demand. By my reading, even something as tenuously related as two factor auth
on work gmail being sent to my personal cell, or taking a business call on my
cell would have counted. The founder tried to blame it on boilerplate their
lawyers inserted; he couldn't even take responsibility for what was, after
all, the contract he was asking me to sign. I walked away. Read those
contracts.

~~~
adamc
These are the kinds of things you would hope would get reported on a site like
glassdoor. (I have no affiliation.) I realize they often don't, but if they
did, it would generate more pressure to clean up their act.

~~~
x0x0
I thought about that, but frankly, I don't want to get sued. And the founder
certainly remembers the candidate who told him "lawyers work for the company,
not the other way around, so stop your bullshit".

------
danielweber
I have never said to myself "I wish I had stuck around that company longer." I
have often said "I should have left much sooner."

I'm sure there are some examples of someone leaving when lightning was about
to strike and make all the insiders rich. Those instances are even more rare
than start-up successes making employees rich.

~~~
ryandrake
I left a company to go back to school (took on massive loans). A few months
later, the company closed up and people got extremely generous severances.
Would have probably covered half my tuition costs. I definitely wish I had
stuck around THAT company longer!

~~~
thothamon
Which illustrates the original point: that scenario -- generous severances
when the company is going out of business -- is incredibly rare. A much more
likely scenario is your options become worthless and you're laid off. If you
can leave a bad environment, I recommend leaving ASAP instead of letting the
golden handcuffs keep you -- unless the golden handcuffs promise a huge
return, and there's little or no doubt about getting that return.

------
johngalt
Passion _causes_ burnout. Have you ever noticed that the people who just punch
a clock and go home never experience burn out? Even if they end up working
overtime? It's always the people who identify with their work that get burned.

~~~
eastbayjake
YES. And to an extent, just punching the clock is a defense mechanism in work
environments where low autonomy + high demands are creating an environment for
burnout. But I've seen bright-eyed 23-year-old engineers suffer vicious
burnout by trying to tackle the low autonomy part ("Hey boss, what if we did
X? Hey boss, I put together this slidedeck for this feature that would be so
cool! Hey boss, check out this mockup I did of a site redesign!") and then
after hitting a brick wall enough times they become embittered and
disconnected.

I think it's because equity creates a belief in young workers that the company
is "theirs" \-- but after you've realized that startups are like any other job
where you trade time for money while implementing the Highest Paid Person's
Opinion, you lose that passion quickly.

~~~
jschwartzi
I checked out about halfway through my run at my current job. I think after
the third time I suggested a tool or process change and the reply from the
lead was "we've never done it that way" at a startup it dawned on me that this
company will never accomplish anything technically interesting.

Incidentally, there's a bonus coming up for a major milestone and I'm
seriously considering handing in my two weeks notice after the direct deposit
clears. The CEO tried to sell the whole equity angle, but I honestly don't see
any resume improvement potential here and that's all I really care about.

I've worked at companies that gave a shit and I just don't think this is one
of them.

------
Permit
>The vendor abandoned their technology, and our generous free services
attracted people who proved hard to convert to paying customers.

This line rings very true. At my company our first product was offered for
free. We had thousands of users, but after months and months of work we
realized only a small fraction of our user base was going to be converted into
paying customers. (Like OP, I began to feel burnt out at this point)

When we launched our second product, we realized we needed to answer the
question: "Will people pay for what we build?" as fast as possible. We charged
users to pre-order our alpha and when we realized people were willing to pay
for it, we poured ourselves into the product.

I think many founders are scared to ask for money (We were). But if you're
building a product that you would eventually like to charge people for, you
really have to force yourself to ask those hard questions as soon as possible.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
>The vendor abandoned their technology

Don't forget the other half of this statement: I've always been concerned with
basing a product on a locked-in technology from an unproven vendor.

And vendors _do_ shut down. I've seen it happen many times. Sometimes they get
eaten up by a "bigger fish" that wants to use their technology internally, and
they then shut down the external service you were so fond of.

~~~
lyonheart
Author here: In our case the vendor was very proven, but the tech and their
approach to it was not. What actually happened is a bit more complicated than
_abandoned_, but those words got the point across without delving into the
irrelevant.

Needless to say, I am _very_ leery now of the motives of open-source products
that aren't run like open-source projects.

------
veritas3241
I'd be curious to hear from employees who have worked for Elon Musk either at
Tesla or SpaceX. I'm currently reading Ashlee Vance's book on Elon and the
descriptions of the working conditions for Tesla and SpaceX employees sounds
both exhilarating and completely exhausting.

Does working on something as truly world-changing as space travel or electric
vehicles make up for the 80+ hour work weeks? Is it easier to work so hard
when there's no doubt that what you're doing matters?

~~~
uxp100
as truly world-changing as [...] electric vehicles

EVs have been around for a long long time, commercially, and conversions. I'm
glad tesla is doing what they are, but world-changing seems like a stretch to
me.

Anecdotally, I've heard from employees that Tesla is having attrition issues,
so apparently not. They've recently added a few minor perks to try and keep
engineers.

~~~
robryan
The world changing part might be getting them to the mainstream. Which is a
combination or funding infrastructure, lowering prices and spurring
competition from the other car makers.

------
rusabd
I worked two jobs - one full time during day and part-time during evenings and
weekends. Both were dev jobs. I lasted only 10 months. The last months were
really ugly - I was abusive, harsh to others, really unpleasant person to be
around. I quit both jobs and moved city. It took me 4 months of doing
absolutely nothing to recover.

------
exelius
The author speaks of passion a few times. I think that's the key here; he
forced himself to feel passionate about the end goal when in reality he didn't
care. You can't do that. If you're not passionate, faking it will kill you.

There is a middle ground between signing and not signing here: set boundaries
up front. Let them know "Hey, I'll sign this and help with the integration,
but just know my heart won't be in it. I don't know that I can promise you
more than a solid 45 hours a week. But I can't deliver that passion I had
building the product because I'm really not passionate about this."

And yeah, those employment contracts are bullshit. Before you sign a contract,
you are under no obligation to do anything. A good tactic is to just redline
anything you want thrown out and send it back to the lawyers without comment.
Also realize that many companies throw these bullshit clauses in just so they
can negotiate them away later (as opposed to having to offer you more money).

If it's important enough to the founders, they will find the money to make it
worth your while. An extra hundred grand out of a big payday to ensure a
critical employee is present to handle the sale is just a cost of doing
business. Unless you would go out for drinks with someone after you stop
working with them, it's not going to hurt your relationship (they may even
respect you more for it).

------
mattzito
One of the things I always encourage people to do as part of an acquisition is
to handle the transition gracefully (1 year-ish), and then start looking
around for what else you might want to do inside the acquirer. Often there
won't be anything, and you can just bide your time or flee the scene - but
other times there might be a perfectly interesting job elsewhere in the
organization that you can use to build your skills, beef up your resume, and
live out your golden handcuffs.

But too many people that I see just sit there, quietly miserable, while their
product dies around them.

------
xacaxulu
I remember trying to describe burnout to my step-mom who is French. I kept
trying to figure out how to say it in French and she joked that they don't
have much of a phrase for it; the just say "le burnout" which I find rather
telling. It seems like such an american problem that so many articles like
these have to be written.

~~~
bengalister
It is true that we (French) say "le burnout" but it does not mean we are not
affected too, contrary to popular belief ;-) A few years ago, it seems that
workers of ex-publicly held companies (France Telecom for instance) were the
most affected with a few suicide cases that made the news. Recent studies said
2 workers out of 10 felt affected. IMHO, the white collars of big companies
feel affected because they have to do more than before to stay in the
international race in less time since they usually have 6-10 weeks of holidays
per/year (no sick days). Having so many holidays is really challenging for an
organization, especially in the summer, period of the year when people are off
for 2-4 weeks. It means also long work days for workers. Personally i'd prefer
to have less holidays and come back home earlier.

Having said that, on a yearly basis, white collars work much less than their
American counterparts on average.

------
studentrob
> Be careful with passion and those who would use it against you.

The problem is he let someone else define his passion. Nobody can use your own
passion against you. Passion is just a word and anyone can say it. But you
alone are the one who decides what you believe in, how much you are willing to
work for, etc.

------
beachstartup
_> because tech is a small town and I shouldn’t burn any bridges_

to anyone out there listening - it's not. technology is a huge, huge, huge,
huge established industry. think about it - what does "tech" even mean? it's
an umbrella term for 4 or 5 classifications that all kind of bleed into each
other - including finance. in addition, every non-tech company has a shitload
of tech in it. gee whiz. it's almost as if technology is critical to the
functioning of the modern business enterprise!

this is fear-based thinking at its worst. this is the kind of silly thing
scared, gutless engineers say to each other by the watercooler while the
business guys laugh out loud and backslap each other in the proverbial smoke-
filled room.

the most powerful thing you can do in technology (and all business, really) is
not give a fuck what the other guy thinks (the "guy" being your negotiating
counter-party). stick to your guns or just take the money and run. if you
waffle, you're sunk by your own torpedo.

~~~
norea-armozel
I think it's more that the startup scene in SV is much smaller than say
working from some random company throughout the United States or the world at
large. I can see that reputation and being known by name could be a reality in
startups for sure. Outside of that? I would be completely floored if anyone
knew me just from the random jobs I've had across multiple industries that
write software for internal/external use.

~~~
joesmo
Even the startup scene in SV/SF is so huge, this is not a problem unless you
do something notorious / egregious (like crash and burn your Ferrari into the
CEO's office) and even then, people will forget in a few months. Totally agree
that is such bullshit advice.

------
joesmo
Some psychologists consider burnout to be depression, not just depression-
like. In my own experience, I'd have to agree. Luckily it's generally brought
on by stress and most people recover within weeks or months if they are able
to rest or be removed from the cause.

