
The Reality of Developer Burnout - kenneth_reitz
https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/the-reality-of-developer-burnout
======
zoeysaurusrex
> Not only that, but I found myself censoring my own private thought
> processes, in the silent comfort of my own home, because of the public
> opinion of people I follow on Twitter.

I deleted my Twitter account because of this. I realized it was an empty echo
chamber of inaction. If anything you say can be interpreted in a way that the
hivemind can destroy you over, they will do it, even with incomplete
information and little to no proof.

I've determined that the key for me is to limit the inputs. My inputs now are
a few cultivated social sites (this one, one or two tech sites), books, and
podcasts.

In my opinion, feeding my mind properly has lessened my feelings of burnout.
If you have the choice to feed your brain digital junk food, don't be too
alarmed when it starts taking of too much space, like fat.

~~~
treehau5
It takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bs than to create it

~~~
jamescostian
It took me the same (1x) amount of energy to refute your comment as it did for
you to create it ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
grive
Your comment however contains very little in the way of actual refutation, as
you missed the point and did not engage it in the least.

It is easy (1x) to create meaningless content, it is harder however to address
it and to explain properly why the point was missed.

Building a sound argument, clearly and in a straightforward manner is hard.
Understanding the non-sequitur of your interlocutor is hard. Extirping the
salient part of the inconsistency will force you to shave off the useless
fluff around it.

Adding that fluff is easier, as it only takes intellectual laziness.

------
paulcole
> It happens to everyone that writes code all day long

More like "It happens to everyone."

I know this is a developer-focused site, but this isn't a problem unique to
people in software.

An old joke, "Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support
group for that. It's called everybody, and they meet at the bar."

~~~
zzzcpan
It's different in software, people can't do their jobs when this happens.
Otherwise it shouldn't be called a burnout.

~~~
paulcole
You can say this about any field. A ditch digger loses "intrinsic motivation"
and chooses to not dig a ditch. The ditch digger can't do their job because of
burnout.

But somehow it is different in software development?

~~~
derefr
You can whip a tired ditch-digger until they dig more.

You can't whip a tired programmer until they write working code. You'll only
get broken code.

A good analogy might be to the division between rank-and-file soldiers in the
military, and military officers. You don't need to think to shoot a gun. You
_do_ need to think to decide where to send people to shoot their guns.

~~~
proto-n
I think it's all about creativity. When you burn out, your creativity dries
up. Most of programming (and generally thinking) is done by your subconscious,
and when it says 'I've had enough of this, I'm not helping any more', you are
SOL, no amount of willpower will help with that. That's why digging ditches is
different.

------
alexmingoia
I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I
think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110%
instead of 70% at your job accomplishes little but making things harder for
yourself. A software engineer doesn't get more money giving 110%, and if they
work to finish something quicker they're just rewarded with more work.

Often engineers (being human) will want to do a good job, give 110% on an
important project, and when its over and their pay and work hours are exactly
the same, they get angry with themselves for giving 110% instead of the bare
minimum. They have this "I just wasted a month of my life because I'm a fool"
feeling that completely zaps their motivation to do anything.

~~~
diegorbaquero
It is starts psychologically, but psychological problems can then turn into
physical illnesses. A burnout can be stressful and slowly consume you life
away with stress and anxiety until you hit rock bottom.

~~~
lobotryas
A million times this. Anything from ulcers, headaches, to heart attacks and
even cancer can manifest if you are over-stressed and psychologically
malnourished.

Getting enough or too little sleep is also huge so if you're reading this,
make sure you get your (average of) 8 hours tonight. Think of it as a small
way to unsure you live long enough to enjoy retirement.

------
matmo
The worst part for me was going from being a "rockstar developer" on the team
to having to explain why I suddenly can't meet the overly ambitious deadlines
handed down from above due to anxiety, depression, panic attacks and extreme
insomnia.

~~~
edblarney
Wait till you hit 35 and you have an actual life and you can absolutely still
jump through flaming hoops but you just don't care as much. It's one thing to
'step back a little' \- it's another thing to have people who've been coding
for for only 18 months, but willing to work 14-hour days and lick the testes
of the bosses move into 'status' position, because in the most short-sighted
version of a project, they can actually developed something resembling code a
little bit faster.

Sorry for the crude metaphor. :)

One option is to find an enclave that is not a fast-paced startup.

Do you know how many big dumb companies out there are starving for actual
talent? A lot! If you don't mind working with mediocre people and moving
slowly, you can find a job in 'not hot' industries where the pace is not so
fast. You might feel a little numb though :)

~~~
divbit
>You might feel a little numb though :)

Isn't that exactly what hobbies and fun side projects are for though?

------
Humdeee
I've been burned out twice. The first and deeper of the two was right after I
graduated years ago. It made the whole process of going straight into the
workforce bittersweet, as I was mentally not ready to muster the energy to
endure the rigors of professional development on-boarding for a new grad. I
managed, but no where near at a potential I could of been. A brutal semester
of final projects and endless nights had left me somewhat poisoned, so to
speak. It caused the recuperation of my mental and physical state to be much
longer (over a year) than if I took a 2-3 week vacation like I should have
done, I imagine. I've always taken this as a likely scenario for a new grad
when being brought on within a company.

The second, like the author, was when I was gung-ho into a new technology and
went at personal projects endlessly for a solid 12 months before I came up for
air and took a breather, with similar but more superficial effects than the
first burnout.

I regret these mistakes, and I've learned the hard way to do work in
moderation. However, I am not an entrepreneur for these very reasons, and I
simply don't want that lifestyle for the long-term. I'm hoping my health will
thank me 30 years from now.

~~~
poikniok
You know the one about entering the workforce hits home for me, I feel like
this is about to happen to me, but I feel sort of powerless to stop it.

~~~
Jach
It's much easier to back away and recharge when you're close to the edge than
after you've already fallen off. So you should try and stop falling off if you
can. Take a real break after you graduate, if you can, it'll help. Otherwise
consider if you can last a few months at a new gig, that ought to supply you
with enough savings to take the same amount of time off if not more and then
look for a new gig.

I was excited to start working properly after school, regardless of what I
worked on, it would be something that mattered enough that I'd be paid for it
instead of paying myself. I started interviewing mostly after graduation and
while it was stressful (must find a job soon to pay bills, and start paying
student loans) I landed one after not too long. I was fortunate that my start
date wasn't until a month after acceptance so I was able to chill for that
whole month and really unwind after the stress of years of school. Looking
back I was telling people during interviews that I was basically available to
start "immediately" (because I wanted more money immediately) but I really
should have pushed for at least a few weeks lead time before starting in all
cases instead of lucking into it.

I recently came back from a 2 week vacation of just chilling, it's lifted a
lot of work stress that has been accumulating. But some times I've entertained
myself with calculations about how long I could go financially if I quit
tomorrow. I even did that at the start more for fun than stress relief, since
suddenly every two weeks you're getting a paycheck that covers 3-6 months of
expenses if you keep your college lifestyle. It doesn't take long to save up
for a year of goofing off and then a couple months of runway to find a job
after that.

------
coldcode
If you are developing software as a life, you don't have one; if on the other
hand you are developing software for fun, you are having it; if you are just
developing software for money; leave it at work. It's hard to be buried 100%
in software and realize the rest of life is more important.

~~~
pc86
The best thing I ever did for my professional life was acquiring new interests
that had nothing to do with software but were still intellectually and/or
physically stimulating.

Weightlifting is cheap, has proven physical and psychological benefits, and is
eventually fun (sucks for the first few weeks/months though). I just recently
starting taking lessons to get a private pilot's license. GA is expensive
(relatively - anyone on here who isn't a student can afford it) but it's no
more dangerous than riding a motorcycle and is a fairly rare skill. And it has
the added benefit of being pretty mentally taxing as I am still very new to
it.

~~~
dexwiz
What is GA?

~~~
Humdeee
General aviation I imagine.

~~~
bioapparatus
Makes a lot more sense to read it that way. Auto-pilot (...I guess I just did
that) caused me to read it as Google Analytics.

~~~
WalterSear
That's expensive, but it's also pretty dangerous :)

------
relics443
TL;DR I experienced massive burnout after ridiculous working hours and a
broken contract

I experienced terrible burnout around a year ago that I'm still working to get
over.

I had taken a pay cut to join a startup with the promise (contractually) that
I receive a raise to market value + bonus after 12 months. The latter 6 of
those months were spent working 16 hour days ramping up to a massive launch.
There were multiple times were I was in the office for 40 hours straight.
Throughout this entire period I was locked in and producing top quality code.

A few months after launch I approached my boss about the contractual raise +
bonus. After blowing me off for a few weeks I had a meeting with the president
and CEO where I was told that I would not be receiving either because I was
not coming into the office by 10 AM. Not only that, but they told me they
didn't appreciate the amount of work I put in, nor the fact that I had barely
seen my family and friends in that the period because "no one asked you to do
that." Mind you, our CTO had quit with 4 months to go until launch so I had
taken some of his responsibilities, and I was the sole developer on Android,
and one of two for the backend. All the while the feature requests kept
pouring in.

Within a week I was bedridden, and I stayed that way for the next 3 months.
I've been slowly recovering since then, but I'm not sure I'll ever be the same
again.

I know I could've sued for the money, but it was the lack of even a basic
appreciation that did me in.

Some people have told me that I have no one to blame but myself. I sort of
agree with them, however, I know that if I would've gotten my raise and bonus
I would've been fine.

~~~
RockyMcNuts
nah, you definitely have some other folks to blame, like the ones who reneged
on contractual obligations. yikers. and there's a lot to unpack, but I'd
definitely talk to a lawyer, and some kind of therapist/counselor. now go to
[http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/](http://thenicestplaceontheinter.net/)

~~~
relics443
I eventually got the money (a few months later), and they had enough decency
to keep me on payroll while I was incapacitated. I believe they learned their
lesson, and have made serious gestures to show that. But the damage is still
done.

------
madmax108
A lot of my friends working in the industry have limited interest in coding
(or computer science), but look at it solely as a job... something that
guarantees decent financial freedom to pursue other goals.

For me, it's the opposite. Since I first played Super Mario on the NES and
wrote my first line of C a decade ago, I've wanted to have a career with
computers. But that means I never get to switch off. If I'm not working on
something cool at work (and no, I'm not in a dead end job... In fact love my
job and team), then I'm at home trying to code something awesome (Was just
setting up a DCGAN when I saw this post).

I have no financial worries and should technically be living the good life,
but I always feel that if one day all computers in the world shut down
abruptly, I have absolutely nothing to do... for work OR for fun. And when I
got close to burning out a year ago, the hardest thing was to find something
to do.

The route back involved calling people I hadn't spoken to in years, Reading
(and smelling) a dozen books, Quizzing and quite a bit of travel. It was hard
at first, but since getting back, has provided a much clearer view of life!

So please, plug off for a bit. Don't wait till you start hating yourself/your
life. Life is about so much more. :)

------
walrus1066
I think the key is to not put pressure on yourself, and don't allow other
people to do so. One person can only do so much, you can't make a baby in 5
months. Work a stable amount each day, on tasks in descending order of
priority. I never work past 6 pm, and never work on weekends. If a deadline
isn't met, it's the fault of the people that set the deadline.

~~~
twothamendment
You are right on. I learned a long time ago there is always more work and it
always needs to be done last week. I work hard, but there is only so much a
person can do. I'll put in extra time, but only when it really counts. Some
deadlines were meant to be blown by and when you quit stressing yourself over
things that are out of your control and focus on what you can do - life is
better.

~~~
walrus1066
True true. With deadlines, if they're unrealistic, you've just got to
compromise and either

a) reduce the scope

b) fail to meet the deadline

c) compromise the quality by frantically hacking things together over long
nights and weekends.

Always go for option a), if you can't extend or get rid of the deadline.

------
gardarh
A few years back I had a short interaction with Kenneth Reitz. I sent an email
about some issue in requests and got a reply within a minute telling me that
the issue had been fixed in a release published a few hours prior.

Considering how hugely popular requests is I imagine my message was just one
of so many he answered on day to day basis and he did all this without really
needing to do any of it.

I guess I understand how he and other people in similar situations get tired
of it all after a while. For whatever its worth requests is an amazing project
and has made my life easier in my personal and professional hacking.

------
cossatot
One of the amazing things about software that we all write is how well it
integrates with many other aspects of life, particularly (though without a
doubt not exclusively) intellectual pursuits.

This is, of course, why it pays what it does: Software for software's sake
pays about like math for math's sake, with the same people paying.

But unfortunately it seems that despite the deep integration with other facets
of work and life, most professional developers seem to basically write code
80-100% of their time (including associated activities like meetings etc.).
Far fewer developers are also domain experts (or at least domain enthusiasts)
and spend, say, 30-50% of their time coding and the remainder working within
the domain or on integration.

I wonder if this separation between the coders and the domains contributes to
burnout. Maybe it's more economically efficient (specialization and all that)
and we all like our abstractions. But having a lack of meaningful contexts to
switch to, i.e. eating ice cream for every meal for lack of broccoli, can't be
great. Directly gaining the benefit of the software should also help with
perspective, motivation and an appreciation of the work invested.

But maybe it's too hard to find people who can fill what are effectively 2(+)
roles in given field? In what areas other than science/engineering do people
actually do this?

~~~
aoeu345
I really can't make sense of this post. Perhaps you should re-read it and try
to type it out in a more fluid manner.

------
bioapparatus
Not sure how I should feel about this, reading a post about no longer reading
posts, while I should be writing code.

------
Animats
This is not developer burnout. This is Twitter burnout. "So, I unfollowed
everyone on Twitter" he writes, which apparently fixed his problem. That has
nothing to do with development.

~~~
lukaszkups
IMHO not exactly. I feel the same and decreased list of following people
couple times. Couple days ago I've thought about switch to HackerNews &
Publish only mode because I feel like everybody around has great life, skills,
projects and work for awesome companies.

There's too many successful stories around that sometimes can cause depression
more than stories about failures. It's a bit hard to explain properly in
single HN comment. I'll try to blog about it during the weekend. If You're
interested - follow me on twitter (@lukaszkups), cheers!

~~~
wott
When you're depressed, the last thing you want to see is happy people. They
are infuriating and depressing. It is much better to see other people with
problems, because it makes your own look less terrible in comparison, and
because you're not an odd beast in their eyes, that one should pity or avoid
as if you could be contagious. The problem, then, is not to stay locked in
this circle forever.

It's like all the suicides in springtime: that's the time when the people and
the nature are full of energy and joy and life and everything. And you are
not, so the contrast is extremely painful and hopeless.

~~~
lukaszkups
Yes, exactly - not only depressed but also just in 'bad mood' or something -
in my case it is often caused by feeling that I have too less time and want
too much to do (and partly because of reading lots of social media news, so it
is somehow related).

Very often I catch myself of being angry because of lack of time, but instead
do something with that I mindlessly scroll through my news feeds.

------
kaffee
> So, I unfollowed everyone on Twitter. Every single person. I stopped paying
> attention to tech trends and reading hacker news. I went into publish-only
> mode.

The "publish-only mode" is a great, pragmatic solution to this problem. We
need some sort of revision to the Tao of the IETF: "Be conservative in what
you send. If you have time and energy, be liberal in what you accept."

------
SadWebDeveloper
I solve developer burnout by playing videos games and paying for hookers.
Alcohol only causes more depression.

~~~
justinclift
Not sure "solve" is the right term there. ;)

~~~
lukaszkups
yeah, not sure about hookers, because I've never met any (and I think it
actually CAN cause depression in some way IMHO), but playing games can help -
especially multiplayer ones.

~~~
SadWebDeveloper
> not sure about hookers, because I've never met any

WHAT? 2017 and you haven't met or saw a hooker in your life? you are kidding
right? well if you want to meet some without leaving your room you could just
search escorts in your area, it's pretty much the same as an a hooker just
more expensive, don't be afraid to try! just remember to paid them after not
before.

------
Perceptes
I work in software and also run some pretty active open source projects, so I
worry about this happening to me. I've felt somewhat burned out, or felt close
to a more serious burn out, on a few occasions. What has helped me is to
remind myself that ultimately I don't _owe_ the open source community
anything. I do it because I enjoy it, and want to create things for people to
use. But if it's creating stress, I take some time off, spend a few weeks
playing video games or spending more time with my partner, and that in turn
reminds me that the world does not end when I stop programming for a few days.
In other words, I haven't stopped, I've just slowed down, and participated in
free time open source development with better moderation.

------
altitudinous
This describes me well, today, right now. I have dev'd software my whole life,
chucked it in to dev apps, have been successful, I _love_ developing apps but
for the last 4 or 5 months I can't do it, sit and write code - I don't want to
do anything to do with writing code. I can't stand that I have to sit in front
of a keyboard to do anything these days - even research a non computer related
activity! So this is a real thing and I'm happy that others experience it too.
I interviewed for a casual customer service related role yesterday simply
because there are no keyboards involved and I have the time!

------
JTenerife
I've had several periods in my career where I "felt" like I just couldn't get
things done. Some weeks ago, I faced panic attacks and anxiety for the first
time of my life due to unmanageable workload combine with nastiest politics
going on a my workplace.

This actually changed it for me. I still feel fear that I'm broken
permanently.

So, yes, another anecdote. Everyone just needs to really take care by managing
themselfes. Working fixed hours __only __instead of trying to get features by
the end of the day / week has done did it for me.

------
foota
Last spring we had a few developers leave from my student development team at
my university and I had to do 30 hour weeks on top of school in order to
finish our projects.

My summer internship was a much needed break but even now it's hard to go back
to work.

------
freework
Its much easier to avoid burnout when your projects are popular. Whats really
hard is to avoid burnout when you put hundreds of hours of effort into a
project that only you yourself uses.

------
zachrose
Does the Gary Bernhardt quote about ice cream come from one of his talks or
something? (I thought I'd seen them all.)

------
teabee89
It was an interesting read but the solution reminds me of pyramidal "scams"
(of course the scam part is where the analogy breaks): the way you avoid burn
out, is by delegating it to others and once they too get burned out they have
to delegate too. Or they quit and you have to find someone else or let the
project die. I'm not disagreeing nor judging, just sharing the thought.

~~~
scrollaway
In a reasonable setup, going from 1 dev to 3 devs will alleviate the workload.
A more apt analogy would be with a load balancer.

------
LyalinDotCom
am I the only one who read this and didn't really take anything new away? yeah
social media, like anything else is not always a good thing. okay, sure... but
i'm sorry developer burnout happens for a lot more reasons then stated in the
write-up.

------
Terr_
Huh? This sound more like _social media_ burnout than _developer_ burnout.

I expected something more like maintaining a big ball of mud or dealing with
unrealistic expectations or struggling against the inertia of a large company.

------
profalseidol
If we all just listen to Epicurus. And of course, Marx too.

------
q-base
In my experience a huge part of burnout also comes from deriving all your
sense of identity from one source. If you only identity yourself as a
developer then you will probably sooner or later start questioning whether
what you do is all that meaningful. You will also be seriously exposed to
criticism as questioning your abilities becomes questioning of your worth as a
human being.

You are also someones child, maybe a father or mother and only one step away
from being a pianist, boardgamer, hiker, traveller or whatever.

Identity diversification.

------
cjbenedikt
Interesting subject. When WWII was over women in the UK and Europe who had
lost their husbands often had to rebuild their homes, look after their
children and had to put food on the table each day. All that after having
lived/suffered through 6 years of war. However, none ever mentioned burnout
except perhaps when referring to their homes...just saying

~~~
MrLeap
This is a provocative piece of information, but I think there's some truth in
it.

When I burned hard out at my last job, I resigned and decided to take some
time off. Writing code felt disgusting. I had a timeline when I was going to
get back in to work and the hope was that I'd be good.

Welp, the one month I gave myself turned in to two, and that turned into three
and I still felt just like garbage. I normally work as hard as anyone and yet
the inertia to write even the simplest code was insane.

My cat got sick and was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and the vet trips
and treatment obliterated my savings. Within _two_ days of this starting I
found the mental blocks removed. This is fortunate because I was starting to
get pretty scared I'd end up homeless and starve to death.

Necessity caused by crisis seems to have cured my burnout. I've paid the rent
on GARBAGE upwork jobs, most of them have paid minimum wage or worse while
looking for full time work. All my clients have given me 5 stars and, while
it's not fun, rewarding work, it's necessary and I can do it. I can say with
100% honesty that I physically could not have done it back in September when I
was flush with cash and still reeling from my last work experience.

------
rdavl
> Burnout is, unfortunately, a very real phenomena in software development

These people sound like they are bomb technicians not software developers...

> "I'd rather do anything else than this right now" — even though writing
> software is one of your favorite activities in the world.

So? Does this mean you have burnt out? How does this compare to jobs like
algorithmic trading or mission critical software?

Burning out over stress of writing a web site? I call BS on all these burn out
blog posts.

You have other problems in your life that make you depress, coding might be
little part of it but I don't see what levels of stress can you be under while
doing mostly non interesting jobs.

~~~
dwaltrip
You are calling bullshit based some vague feelings of "job difficulty"?

Do you have a robust mental model of the day to day experiences of these
people who you are calling bullshit on? If not, I would be careful with your
words. It can come off as fairly snide, ignorant, and callous.

