When I've been burned out or hated my job, I didn't take vacations, because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind. While on vacation, I'd start thinking about the countdown to the end of the vacation.
> Well, root out the real causes of burnout.
I'll offer the definition that's made most sense to me. I didn't come up with it, in fact some wise person here on HN stated it:
Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
You can work like a dog to release a feature, and if the feature does what it was meant to do, and you get recognized for your contribution, how hard you worked doesn't matter as much. You are energized, excited to be part of a great team, ready to move on to the next stunning victory.
On the other hand, if you work like a dog on a feature and it gets cut at the last minute, or its success is undermined by some VP's dumb idea, it sucks. If that happens over and over, without a win, you're burned out.
The solution is to get a win. Work on something that you can succeed on, and succeed at it, and get rewarded for it. Could be a big thing, but even a small thing is good enough. Sounds easy, but not always even possible in a badly-run organization.
Jennifer Senior's excellent article on burnout, "Can’t Get No Satisfaction" [1], contains this gem of a quote, from psychotherapist & burned-out burnout researcher Prof Barry Farber:
> [...] their level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results
> Farber often calls burnout “the gap between expectation and reward,”
Also:
> “My clients are perfectionists,” says Alden Cass, a therapist to both corporate attorneys and men on Wall Street. He’s young, about the age of a hungry broker, and he looks like the men he treats—strong features, dark teased hair, Turnbull & Asser striped shirt, nice watch. “They have very rigid ideals in terms of win-lose,” he continues. “Their expectations of success are through the roof, and when their reality doesn’t match up with their expectations, it leads to burnout—they leave no room for error or failure at all in their formula.”
> Yet ask Cass why his clients are burning out, and his answer isn’t any different for a banker than it would be for a public-school teacher; there’s a gulf between what they expected from their jobs and what they got. “I can’t tell you,” he says, “how many people come into my office and ask, ‘How come I have this money and I can’t find happiness?’ ”
> So what does he tell them? “That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.”
It's not even this for me, as much as it is feeling "trapped" in a situation. I like to keep my options open. When I feel trapped, I move on. "Rewards" can't keep me sane, and without sanity everything else loses meaning. Part of the reason why I got out of big tech: their MO is to keep you trapped, a compliant, good little cog wearing pretty, gold plated handcuffs. As an ex-Microsoft VP once told me: "it's a warm Gulag".
Ah yes, temperature is surely the big difference between - let me check my notes - work camps where people starve to death and an office job that you signed up for and are free to leave, with good prospects for your future career.
I like this model, but shouldn't reality be replaced by a person's subjective perception of reality? Various states of delusion (intoxicated, in love, religious, depressed, manic) can modulate reality as experienced by the person.
“That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.”
I really like this way to put it. Lots of people, who talk about how our happiness is driven by our expectations, are politically on the right and emphasizing the idea of personal responsibility. But putting the reality into the numerator, we can also recognize that there might be systemic problems with the "reality" itself, for example social inequality or lack of inclusivity.
What about people who build tons of successful things and get win after win after win, but are still feeling burned out?
For me, a "win" would be accomplishing something and then getting to bask in the success and take a fucking break and do nothing for a year. Shoot, even being able to take a break for a month after busting my butt on a project for a year would be nice. But nope. You never really "finish" anything in software development. You just have an endless backlog of tickets in JIRA. If you get something done faster, you don't get any reward or payoff for doing so.
I once finished my entire week's worth of planned work in two days and instead of being praised for it, I was chided for underestimating my sprint capacity. Did I get to take the rest of the week off? No! Of course not. I was expected to pull more tickets from the top of the backlog and just keep grinding.
Completely agree with this - I was totally burned out with work because I kept getting and finishing projects and all that would happen is I would get more projects.
I was burned out but then my boss dragged me in a room and told me I was doing a great job, that they appreciated me and that they know I prefer to work in evenings but get there at 9am every day because that’s my contract, so they said I didn’t need to do that in the future and can arrive whenever I want because they know I work hard enough and will work the hours.
That conversation was enough to completely reset the burnout. No doubt it will come back, but a little appreciation goes a long way.
A never ending backlog of work to be done. No rest. No jogging. Not even intervals/ladders (sprint a while, then jog a while and repeat). Just sprint. Sprint. Sprint. Until you burn out and collapse.
I think your last paragraph is the key here. You “got the win” without actually getting the win. Instead of praise, reward, recognition — you got more work.
I think the point above is that the win needs to be material beyond your own recognition.
Are there companies that would let you take the rest of the week off in that situation? If so, shouldn’t they also make you work overtime to finish some work that you underestimated?
Isn’t the trick to just work at a sustainable pace, day in and day out, and celebrate the wins along the way?
All that said, in the last five years my longest holiday has been a week. The work really is endless.
Vacation is still important even with a sustainable pace. Personally, when i’ve managed teams i’ve always included vacation as part of our 1:1 career talks. Especially with new engineers. If people aren’t taking vacations it’s a dealbreaker to me — taking a real, long, no calls while out vacation is to me as core to professional engineering as fixing bugs and shipping features.
> All that said, in the last five years my longest holiday has been a week. The work really is endless.
Sometimes, even the week off doesn't mean less work, because the few weeks before the vacation you have to work harder to compensate for your coming absence.
This seems horrific to me. Why do people let companies do this to them? Let me guess.... US health insurance? (i:e the need to always be employed to be covered)? A former (US) colleague I had, every year after 9 months he quit the same job to go round S America on his motorcycle. Then after 4 months travel he got hired back. They couldn't manage without him. Eventually they started saying he wouldn't be able to keep doing this and return next time, so he smiled sweetly, said "OK" then 4 months later said "do you need anyone?" and of course they snapped him back up. Part of why he was so good at his job was having a decent break and recharging. In fact arguably he was far more use to his employer by doing this, than what they "wanted" him to do, i:e stay there all the time only 2 weeks annual vacation get burnt out. Sometimes people have to turn to this sort of extreme behaviour to have any sort of life outside work, in the USA at least. I suppose he risked no health insurance for 4 months, or bought some. Maybe now he's older that wouldn't work. Well, please people, look after yourselves.
Yes, having worked in a FAANG I actually enjoyed the fact that you're measured in a somewhat standardized way. After delivering enough impact I usually took a step back and chilled for a few weeks. Didn't take vacation, just arrived to the office to chat with friends and play ping pong.
Sometimes when I felt like it, I continued to grind towards the next expectations level for the cash bonus, but most of the times it wasn't worth it and I just preferred taking a rest.
The grind is eternal, so adjust your pace accordingly, IMO.
I do think that many orgs don't have any sense of pacing when it comes to software dev. So, don't set expectations too high for an org if they don't have PTO in place to compensate for hard work.
Yes and no. Am I surprised that a human resource extracting paperclip factory would stive to optimize every last minute of the employee's time? No I am not. Do humans need rest and rewards, to feel special, loved, significant, and appreciated, and do they work better for longer periods of time when they are getting all that, and is it a supprising waste of long term value for short term gain? Yes!
Yes humans need rest. Which has nothing to do with situation in which estimates turn out too low and thus estimated work is done faster.
I don't see how it should imply that employee don't have to do anything rest of the week. Likewise, if estimation is too small at the beginning I don't pull 80 hours long week nor I consider it effective.
Had the complain was about overall lack of rest or overwork, that would be understandable. But it is not about that.
It is about expectation that original estimate is measure of how much you should do and if the task turned out faster, you can watch movies rest of the week.
> Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
There's a lot to say about that.
Sometime contexts creates obligations that render reward impossible, you only get a stream of wrong imperatives and lack of benefits.
Sometimes people simply forget how to go for stuff they want. I lived a lot of my life conforming to others orders.. until nothing made sense emotionally. You forget what 'pay off' means for you. Very subtle, very hard. A lot of things in life are negotiating obligations and knowing how to recognize bad deals is key. Freedom is a rare asset :)
Kids have this well set, all they care about is their internal sense of reward.. they'll move relentlessly from rewards to rewards until they're chokeful of them. Social structures blur this into innane amounts of duties that often are invented by morons higher up.
I’ll add a small insidious realization of what stress is. It’s one thing to work hard and feel tired after working hard, the causality is natural. It’s when you feel fatigue before you even start the work. Why am I tired before I even begin? That to me it’s a dead giveaway something is wrong.
How do you solve that? We mythologized grit, the strength to overcome this preemptive fatigue. But even that, is fatiguing.
Life’s a sport no matter what they say. Whoever doesn’t get tired of it, wins.
If it's something you love doing, then it energizes you. When you see your job as hopeless, that's where the pre-existing tiredness comes from. Just like the dread of even logging on.
> How do you solve that? We mythologized grit, the strength to overcome this preemptive fatigue.
Grit and flexibility are in tension with one another.
Being able to accept an approach is unproductive and find another is valuable, in moderation (in excess you flit from task to task without completing any).
Grit is the opposite; being unwilling to give up in the face of adversity is valuable in moderation, but in excess it prevents you from realising when your approach will never pay off.
"Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off."
Exactly.
Yet most people mistakenly attribute the feeling to other causes. OP quote what people think are the causes of their own burnout, and took those at face value.
When you're burnt out, you're probably not in a good state to determine the cause.
Speak for yourself. Sorry for being blunt, but you clearly know very little about burnout (good for you). If people say that they are burned out because of a bad manager, believe them instead of saying they don't know what they are talking about.
There are many reasons for burnout. Working on things that don't pay off is just one of them.
But you yourself made the same error, claiming that lots of people are simply mistaken about the causes of their burnouts and that you know their condition better than themselves.
Our statements were qualitatively different. Compare:
A) Each living human has 2 legs
B) Sharlin has 2 legs
Taken literally, B is a subset of A, so A is the stronger statement.
But in normal speech, it's clear that when someone makes a claim about members of a large group, they're making a statement that usually applies to members of that group. And not claiming to have specific knowledge of every single member.
Because statement B is more specific, I probably need more specific data before I make it.
Can confirm, recently went from a great manager who always had our backs and celebrated our successes to one who offers zero support, plenty of blame and zero recognition. I’ve been surprised how devastating it’s been.
Does the amount of blame and recognition vary with the amount of effort you put in? I've seen situations like this, and seen people feel burnt out when:
1. However hard they work, they do not get blamed less or recognized more, or even
2. They are blamed more than people who contribute approximately zero. Because those people doing nothing have no output, hence nothing to be blamed for.
I've seen plenty of 2 and find it fascinating how instincts for feedback, including my own instincts which I need to improve, can be so counterproductive towards the hardest working, most committed and effective people.
Not just critical feedback, but assistance, resources and support also follow a similar pattern.
If someone's working hard on something and making clear progress when others are not, from time time they slow down or even just appear to. It's inevitable even if just due to random events.
Occasionally I've seen someone with a history of conscientious and effective work, going through a rough time, a difficulty, or whatever it may be, and be offered straightforward, non-judgemental, kindly meant assistance. That's really nice when it happens for real. But it's so rare. Not many people seem to have it in them to just offer simple agenda-free help to someone without creating more burdens.
Much more often, I've seen the conscientious high performer given gradually increasing harsh feedback even while they are still ahead of others around them, mixed with offers of "help" which are more of a burden. And other people looking for opportunities to "replace" the high performer in various minor roles, perhaps with themselves naturally, due to mistaking results and effort with status and petty-political influence.
The most insidious and ironic of these I've seen weaponized burnout itself: "You seem like you may be heading for burnout. Why don't you step down for a while", said by someone who had been politically maneuvering to take over the role and whose public dramas were a significant driver, perhaps the only driver, of the burnout they purported to care about.
It is a rough social regulation cycle for the person committed to conscientious and effective work in an environment where people say they want one thing but act to produce another.
There's one job in the US that is currently experiencing extremely high rates of burnout.
ICU Nurses.
What can we learn about burnout from them in this current situation?
I don't think "Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off." applies for them in at all. They are constantly saving lives and constantly seeing the positive results of their actions.
My first guess is that there's just too much work for them in the regions where ICUs which are overburdened. Many ICUs have had to up their nurse-to-patient ratio above 1:2, often to 1:3 and in some places even 1:5 or 1:6. Moreover, many ICU nurses are forced into picking up extra shifts.
I would argue that working really hard to keep people alive through covid while society continues to totally ignore and neglect precaution, thus causing further illness and death, is exactly fitting for "working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off".
I don't think it's fair to say that society completely ignores precaution, in fact large swaths of society are sacrificing a lot in order to prevent covid. Especially when you compare to other causes of death, like mobility or obesity. People are willing to sacrifice 100x more to prevent a covid death than they are to prevent a traffic death.
"I don't think "Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off." applies for them in at all. They are constantly saving lives and constantly seeing the positive results of their actions.
"
That's not really a payoff after a while. I work at a medical device company. When I started I got a kick out of all the great patient stories. Even my girlfriend's life changed from suicidal to pretty good because of our device. But after a while never-ending the deadline pressure got to me and no amount of patient success was motivating anymore. I think it's the same in the ICU. After a while you get numb. Only off time and less pressure can reset your emotional gas tank.
From working in the nonprofit space, the mission is motivating, but it's also the thing you are sacrificing for. You are not working towards your personal benefit, but towards an abstract benefit received elsewhere. The pay is low and the opportunities for advancement are often limited. Burnout is very common. You must also work for your own benefit, otherwise you will eventually feel like a sucker, no matter how many lives you are saving.
You end up thinking these bigger questions like, "why is this only my responsibility to sacrifice? I don't see anyone else making sacrifices!" And "Why is it my responsibility to clean up this mess? Those other people are creating the mess for their own profit but somehow I'm the one that has to fix it?"
It's basically inevitable to recoil at being the one always stuck with the bill while everyone else stops even noticing you paid for them.
The payoff for ICU nurses is a new critical patient right now. They don’t get to see the lives they save reunited with family or recovering at all. They just get a transfer to a lower level of care and a new patient in. They are also seeing a lot more deaths than usual. 10% mortality is in the ballpark normally. With COVID they are seeing 50% mortality. That’s a lot to deal with, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a major factor in burnout.
I will always marvel at nursing as a profession and nurses as human beings. My sister just became a nurse and I dated a nurse as well, and while it is a rewarding job, it is also incredibly taxing...no less in today's circumstances.
Burnout can come from many different directions though, but everyone has a limit at which no incentive provides enough benefit to outweigh the cost.
The payoff is the critical patient goes away and is replaced by a new one. More work for all involved. Never ending work. In my country, they say it's like wiping down ice. There's less water now but the ice doesn't ever stop melting.
> Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
You know, this might have something to do with why I gravitate towards doing "user" (really other devs since I tend to work on internal tools more than outside facing products) support type stuff. Devs trying to figure out why something isn't working are usually grateful when someone can help them get things working so they can do their job.
Yeah, I’ve routinely found work on internal tools to be the most satisfying. It’s rare to find product work where you’re directly in touch with users who care, and whose expectations you can routinely meet.
Burnout is something that is discussed quite a lot, but people talk about it as working so hard that you fatigue.
When we're working on something we enjoy and find interesting, when we have a plan and a goal, we find that we have infinite energy.
Burnout on the other hand is when no matter how much you seem to work, it has no impact. You don't seem to be making any progress. Burnout is the loss of momentum.
“Improved productivity also helps drive better employee work/life balance and reduces burnout“ - The State of DevOps 2019.
According to the DORA research program, avoiding heavyweight change processes and creating an environment of continuous delivery go a long way to reducing burnout.
Oh definitely. Worked in a large company with so much money they didn't know what to do with it. But the number of experienced people leaving weekly was staggering. People would just burn out. And the management didn't give two shits about that. I wonder when this mismanagement will catch up with them as they are still growing.
> because the crushing realization that I'd have to return to work was almost worse than losing myself in the uninterrupted, repetitive, dead-eyed grind
I feel this so much. The anxiety of not working while dreading it on the horizon is often worse than the work itself.
This is me. I just quit my job this week to take time off because of burnout. It's exactly because I worked like a dog and haven't had a payoff in years. I want to make the best product/feature that I can. I want to give it my all. But I don't have control over the areas where things go wrong. Not having a win - and missing wins from my past - has led me to just take a break from it all.
I think this could be exactly the correct definition of burnout. I'm sure a lot of us care about a lot of things in our lives... until we realize that no one else does.
>You can work like a dog to release a feature, and if the feature does what it was meant to do, and you get recognized for your contribution, how hard you worked doesn't matter as much. You are energized, excited to be part of a great team, ready to move on to the next stunning victory.
Gross. All that overtime is systematically stamping all the things that are good for the soul out of life. I'm not going to cheer it on because a feature works.
If your purpose only comes from work I find that kind of depressing. Work is something most people are coerced/forced into to survive and avoid a life of desperation, life has a lot more things in it than work.
If someone's purpose is work it kind of makes me think they're not really creative, lack imagination and have had purpose given to them from external sources rather self decided and internal. They didn't really choose a purpose, they just adopted one they fell into. Kind of sad.
> Well, root out the real causes of burnout.
I'll offer the definition that's made most sense to me. I didn't come up with it, in fact some wise person here on HN stated it:
Burnout is caused by working hard at something for a long time and not having it pay off.
You can work like a dog to release a feature, and if the feature does what it was meant to do, and you get recognized for your contribution, how hard you worked doesn't matter as much. You are energized, excited to be part of a great team, ready to move on to the next stunning victory.
On the other hand, if you work like a dog on a feature and it gets cut at the last minute, or its success is undermined by some VP's dumb idea, it sucks. If that happens over and over, without a win, you're burned out.
The solution is to get a win. Work on something that you can succeed on, and succeed at it, and get rewarded for it. Could be a big thing, but even a small thing is good enough. Sounds easy, but not always even possible in a badly-run organization.