Burnout

http://kristinn.ghost.io/burnout/

by talmir • 12 years ago

274 131 12 years ago

kristinn.ghost.io

freebs• 12 years ago

As someone that has always found many things interesting, boiling it down to only a few things is very hard. Over the past year I've been slowly doing the same. I'm down to spending time with my family, web dev, marketing, and gaming. Choosing between web dev and marketing will be one of the hardest choices I make yet.

passfree• 12 years ago

I do not practice what I preach as effectively as I would want to but the best thing to do is to run them in sprints. In other words, a week worth of coding is complimented by a week of marketing regardless whether you employ people to do work for you or not. The same applies for life in general. You need to mix and match but also not to do too many things at the same time.

Some days you will finish your tasks sooner than you expect. Do not bother starting anything else cuz you will drift into something and then realise that you have almost burned out. Don't do it! Instead let boredom grow on you for a little bit. Getting bored is good for you.

EC16• 12 years ago

A few years ago I wanted to know everything. I spent the day at work thinking about what I would do when I got home and then spend the evening studying various things as hard as I could. I would stress over how there werent enought hours in the day to do what I wanted to do. There was rarely an hour in the day where I wasnt productive in some way.

Oou, this resonates with me. For the past year I've been trying to optimize my life as best I could. This meant cutting out time for food + commuting which were my biggest factors in sucking away time, as well as distractions. I moved about 10 meters from my place of work, and I cook all 7 days worth of food on Sunday nights. Now I can work 7am - 4pm at my day job, then 4:10pm - 11pm I can work on my own side projects. Been doing this for a year now and it's working out great, the revenue I make from my side company is almost level with my salary, then I can quit and truly be free, working entirely under my own vision.

I don't feel like I will ever burn out. I have a list of topics I want to know before I die, and they're sorted by priority. Any time I am distracted, I read a bit from the top item of my list. Now when I'm working and become distracted, my "distraction" is reading material based around the project I'm working on. If I don't want to get back to that material, I choose something else and drag it to the top of my list, I prioritize pretty much my entire life with the "Clear" app.

It's been going great, I'm thinking of writing a very in depth blog post about the way I've optimized my life and how it has helped me out. I've read more than 30 books this year, I have 6 developers working for me full-time, I have learned SO MUCH. I hope to keep going like this for the rest of my natural life.

I rather sacrifice my 20's to live it up in my 30's. I cannot stand wasting any minutes on anything, I don't know when the switch flipped, but at some point, it did. I used to love spending hours on video games or jerking around, now, there is absolutely nothing in this world that I wouldn't give just to buy me some more time. This mentality has engrained itself in my brain now.

I find myself ecstatic if I can make a new hour or free up some time somewhere just so I can read or learn more.

People often compliment me on how motivated and ambitious I am, but honestly, it's just how I am, I don't wake up every morning saying "okay you're going to be motivated today". It just is.

napsterbr• 12 years ago

Looking forward to that blog post

EC16• 12 years ago

Mine was mainly about nutrition, and how I formed a super rigid and efficient routine. I have recordings of all my daily commutes, how many calories I ate every day, when, how much, every macronutrient, every coffee, beer, everything. Every movie, every "distwraction", every second I'm actually working. All of these things I've been working to decrease to as small as possible.

I'll write it up ASAP.

teacup50• 12 years ago

From someone in his 30s for whom this also resonates:

The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching.

I've done great things. I've started sustainable companies, released a prodigious amount of code, and some of it has shifted the course of industry and secured my position in it.

At the same time, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of never taking breaks. My wife feels like she has to beg me to just go for a walk, or do something "non-productive". I view everythig through the lens of productivity, and barely know how to unwind anymore.

There are experiences I'm missing out on. Outdoor activities -- 20s and 30s are the best years for them. Making friends -- it's well known that this gets harder to do as you get older, and many friends you make when younger will be your friends for decades.

If I could give 20 year old me some advice, it would be to pick something off that list of mine, make my work on it economically sustainable, figure out how to get other people working on it, and live a balanced life.

People like us may be able to do the work of 10 engineers, but if you hire 10 engineers, you'll have an economic engine capable of hiring 10 more. If you have the level of energy I do for solving problems, treat sustainability and scale as a problem to be solved; don't try to implement your entire list yourself.

EC16• 12 years ago

That is exactly what I'm doing, thanks. I've realized slowly that I'm actually a huge extrovert, and that I need to see someone for at the very least a beer, every week or two, to fill that bar up. Once I feel it draining, I start getting a bit depressed and my productivity really takes a dive. I can actively notice this, and I know what I need to do to repair it. I need to be around people.

That's why I'm moving in with a buddy of mine who is part of a really awesome social circle. I feel if I live with him and we have people over once in awhile, that "meter" will never deplete and I can essentially live in a productivity vacuum.

It's also great that I live in a place that has crazy winter for most of the year, so there really is no option to even GO outside because in -20, the last place you want to be is outside.

I do however plan to travel for a few months and completely disconnect myself, something that I'm looking super forward to and acts as a behind the scenes motivational motor of sorts, a long term "goal".

equalarrow• 12 years ago

"The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching."

Well put. Just wait until your 40's. Or wait until you have kids! (If you plan on that). Sure, the list may get longer, but once you have that feeling of time is running out - that's when it gets freaky.

My wife and I had this discussion over the weekend. There's the rotten underbelly of tech that is overload and burn out. Personally, I'd love to walk away from tech. It has great money attached to it, but a lot of the time it's not worth it. If you're single with no responsibilities, it can be the best thing ever. You can meet like minded people who don't want to leave 'campus' and everyone can build their life around the job.

But if you have a family, it's probably not the best industry to be in. Sure, some places recognize this and allow for 'flexible hours'. But for most of the companies I've come across that are 'family friendly' this means working late into the night, which means you're tired the next morning. Rinse and repeat.

If I could give the 20 year old me some advice it would have been to apply at Netscape when I had the chance. :)

noja• 12 years ago

Being non-productive can be very productive.

Mandatum• 12 years ago

You and your wife should try going out into the wilderness for a week. Here in New Zealand it's not so common as outdoor activities are so popular, so there's no point to it, however for those of us who never seem to cut ourselves any slack these can totally give your mind the break it needs and let you feel completely rejuvenated.

I've managed to get a few good ideas for side projects I'm truly passionate about that I'd really consider low-hanging-fruit in terms of work vs. satisfaction. Idea's I'd never in a million years think about if I didn't just sit down for a day and just think. And I didn't have to do that, because for most of the day we were strolling through forest, looking at trees and rivers, planning where we'd travel to the next day.

Plus it's pretty great to do this sort of thing with your SO.

jotm• 12 years ago

That sounds great - but don't you get tired? After 6-8 hours of mental work (incl. learning), my ability to understand things is severely diminished.

I can go on working on simple tasks, physical work or something that I already know, but not on something new or anything that requires extensive of thinking/planning. Using any drugs?

EC16• 12 years ago

My current day job is a mobile frontend developer. I'm not thinking up intense algorithms, doing crazy math, calculations, or whatnot. The hardest thing I do is performance optimization, and since the apps we develop right now are incredibly simple, it's by and large cookie cutter work.

It's not mentally exhausting because of my perspective on my job: I'm basically a construction worker, but in a virtual domain. So I'm doing construction, minus the intense physical work, with barely any mental workload as well. My day job just takes time. Dragging pixels. Uploading pixels. Shifting pixels. Zooming in on pixels. Deleting pixels. Asking for input on combinations of pixels. It's all pixels.

My day job is rarely mentally intensive, nor is my post-day job. Drafting contracts? Sending emails? Talking on the phone? I can't really remember the last task I had to do that wasn't purely just DOING. I can't remember the last time I had to bust some pen and paper out and seriously think about some sort of methodology.

So no, I don't find it tiring. I find it rewarding, especially since my hobby just so happened to turn into my career. I did UI/design on my spare time just for fun, then someone hired me, now I do it full time, and started my own company.

Yeah I use drugs. I use adderall (only used it twice in the past half year) if the previous night consisted of less than 6 hours of sleep (I always make sure to get 8 hours a night no matter what, doesn't matter how much work I have) and I smoke pot a few times a day, as well as a lot of coffee (2 strong in the morning - decaf throughout the day). It's not too bad right? I think my only "problem" is weed, and even then, I don't think it's a problem. I smoke because it's like relaxing WHILE working. I can smoke a bit, get this nice mild head rush for a few hours, and keep working, all the while enjoying the sun more, enjoying the tunes more, and generally being happier. Kills two birds with one stone.

biscarch• 12 years ago

I do something very similar (although with an approach that is different) and I find that doing harder intellectual work has to be balanced by doing harder physical work (roughly speaking).

As an example, some of my recent intellectual work (and "distractions") included writing a book on Haskell web development, building out a product, some Android contracts and casually reading new papers. This is balanced in my life by training to compete at a professional athletic level (beach volleyball/high jump training. Roughly: Oly lifting, sprint workouts, plyos, etc) and music (Playing drums, guitar, bass and covering songs on my own).

Both training for athletics and playing music have a mental states that lend themselves to "recovery" from intellectual pursuits.

mzarate06• 12 years ago

For the past year I've been trying to optimize my life as best I could. This meant cutting out time for food ... [now] I cook all 7 days worth of food on Sunday nights ... it's working great.

Have you considered intermittent fasting? I typically only eat 5 or 6 days out the week. Aside from the health benefits, IF lends itself to productivity; I love having days where I don't need to worry about food or cooking at all.

There are various IF approaches, and it does take some getting used to, but I've found it worth it.

EC16• 12 years ago

I heat up one meal after I get home. Then a second meal towards the evening. Each 1200 calories. Allows me to smoke weed and indulge for a bit, and not gain weight. It's great because I'm a coffee addict so during the day I get to look forward to coffee every few hours, with the added benefit of not having an upset stomach or taking a shit at work frequently.

tracker12• 12 years ago

I used to be fairly similar.. usually chewing through a book a weekend, and working on learning something new every other week. It gets old after a while. I actually make myself take lunches away from my desk most days. I try to live about 20-40 minutes from work so I can wind-up/down well. I tend to veg most evenings, but do a fair amount of reading still.

I actually took my first real vacation in about 7 years this past year. I left my laptop/tablet behind and my phone had no cell service most of the trip, it was actually in airplane mode most of the time. As an aside, it's amazing how long a cell phone will last with the antennas off.

I'm turning 40 at the end of the year, and still love programming. I'm still learning, and working with newer technologies, and now have the experience to see a lot of issues I may have glossed over, or ambitiously tried to circumvent when I was younger. My life is far more pragmatic now, and I assign value into down time. You should too.

My brain is still working through problems to be solved, and solutions to be worked through when I am at lunch, and in my off hours. The difference is that now I am much better prepared to deal with them during the on time.

_zen• 12 years ago

You don't make any room for exercise? That's going to hurt you down the road. Your health is all you really own in life.

falcolas• 12 years ago

I rather sacrifice my 20's to live it up in my 30's.

A quick bit of unsolicited advice on this life plan: Plan for tomorrow, but live for today.

The reasoning behind the hard-earned advice: How do you know you'll make it to your 30's? I've had too many friends die unexpectedly to take it in faith that I'll hit any particular age.

Relatedly, I know far too many people in their 60's who spent their entire lives working their butts off so they could eventually retire who now find themselves unable to stop working. The cost of repairing that 35 year old home is now more than their morgage ever was, their pension fund was plundered by execs, and their nest egg didn't grow at the same rate as inflation.

They're back working now, and wondering (typically bitterly) if all that extra work was worth it, or if it would have been better spent enjoying the time they were in.

agumonkey2• 12 years ago

Knowledge is probably the best time compressor, except sometimes only experience can teach.

SDGT• 12 years ago

I might not be as good today as I would have been if I had kept grinding away.

That is my overriding problem. If I stop, it means possible stagnation. There is no greater fear than becoming irrelevant.

FLUX-YOU• 12 years ago

I'm struggling with being irrelevant right now. Not a fun thing, I assure you.

rwallace• 12 years ago

Yeah, but it's bollocks. Too much grinding dulls your mental acuity. We're not talking about World of Warcraft where your score depends on how many times you press the button in the Skinner box. We're talking about real life where progress depends on understanding better ways to do things. A few years at a healthy, sustainable pace with work-life balance will leave you better at your job than a few years of demented grinding will.

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

But solid, foundational skills in any area of life do not make you irrelevant. Learn those, and you can adapt to whatever fashion is currently en vogue.

Software is no different, there's only the clamor of employers refusing to train, along with the copious free time of privileged white males making you feel like it is.

The media loves to tell you that you aren't working hard enough. Western culture defines itself by work, regardless of the consequences.

shadowmint• 12 years ago

That's true... but there's also the flip side to the coin.

Finishing things is good; but if you have a project you want to finish, you'll never finish it if you halfheartedly look at it once a week for an hour.

If you spend more than certain amount of time not looking at something or not working on it, you forget how it works and it takes all of that available time you have to get into 'the zone' where you're actually making progress on the task.

So, I guess if you have an amazing forfulling job that is exactly what you're interested in, and you spend your days working on your interesting projects... sure.

I'll be over here with my cup of 10pm coffee and a pile of rust code; blissfully hacking (and reading hacker news while head compiles :).

talmir3• 12 years ago

If hacking away makes you happy, go for it :) I can only relate my own experiences. I do tend to code for hours on end on whatever catches my interest. The point was trying to make is to relax once in a while :) (Never expected this to reach nr.1 on hacker new, even if it is only for a couple of minutes)

krosaen• 12 years ago

I think it depends on how you feel when doing extracurricular work - if you're energized and excited, awesome. If you eventually find yourself drained and/or beating yourself up, take it easy on yourself and rest up.

JamesBaxter• 12 years ago

I'm nearly two years into my programming career and I'm really struggling with this balance. Every day at work I face a new programming challenge. Every night I feel guilty about not being able to motivate myself to work on either of the two side projects I've started.

Video games work well as something mindless that clears my head at the end of the day. The problem is stopping playing before I've wasted my whole evening and the pain I get in my fingers/wrists after a whole day of repetitive movement.

I need to find something less addictive that doesn't require much dexterity. I'm considering chess.

morganherlocker• 12 years ago

I have always found music good for this sort of thing. It is very relaxing, uses the creative part of your brain, and you get a skill that stays with you for the rest of your life. While it is engaging, it somehow gets boring after about an hour or two, so it is unlikely to suck away an entire evening. Over the years I have learned to play dozens of instruments just by devoting an hour here and there.

jscheel• 12 years ago

I am finding that it's better to just leave the stupid computer off when I get home. It gives me more time with my wife and daughter, and I feel more rested and ready for the next day. For example, last Saturday was filled with bike rides, walks, and playing outside. That's it. Yes, I have a list of about 10,000 different things I'm interesting in learning and doing, and another list that size of things that actually need to get done, but none of that will ever relax me or come close to the quality time I spend decompressing with my family and friends.

goalieca2• 12 years ago

Sometimes I find that instead of reading about tech and trying little hobby things at home, I'm better off trying to fit that into my work somehow. Even a full 8 hours of programming 5 days in a row can be enough to mentally drain you if you're actually working the whole time.

beebs933• 12 years ago

Excellent point. If you find yourself at a job where they discourage programmers from reading tech blogs once in a while then RUN. FOR. YOUR. FKING. LIFE.

mathattack2• 12 years ago

It's self development, and very few folks have 8 hours of continuous concentration in them.

a3voices• 12 years ago

I work for a Fortune 500 company as a programmer and I've spent probably 70-80% of my time at work over the last four years reading random tech news.

twstdroot2• 12 years ago

I came to the same realization recently. I have a lot of flexibility at work to work on personal projects that relate to my job. Unfortunately work doesn't provide some of the infrastructure I need/want. So now I have a decent lab at home and a VPN connection in. Work gives me the time, I give the resources. Good balance.

thu• 12 years ago

What do you do if chilling out is not an option ? If your day job is maddening (and you feel like any other job would probably be maddening too) and the only alternative you have is to start your own company ? What do you do if you need to keep the day job to pay bills and work on your own product in the evening and the week-end until it can bring money ? When it seems that you can either burn out or succeed ?

stevenkovar3• 12 years ago

Learn to enforce boundaries. If you let your job walk all over you, it will.

ihsw• 12 years ago

It's not that it will walk all over you, but that it will keep taking away from every other part of your life until there is nothing left to take away. You'll feel helpless precisely because you will have nothing left to give. Everybody has their limits.

You will be straining your mind all the time, never able to let your guard down for a second. The only hope you have is that someone else will save you by taking your job from you.

goalieca2• 12 years ago

If your job sucks, be patient and make a long term plan to improve it/get out. Find/make something awesome outside of work to look forwards to and focus on. All work ends up being boring to some extent, so focus on the good things in life like your nephew or perhaps that microbrew taste testing night with your old friends.

marcosdumay• 12 years ago

Well, first, you run away from fast growing startup business. You may want to start consulting first, instead of creating products. If you insist in products, do something that can be lucrative right at the beginning (Patio11 is famous for having lots of material on that).

Anyway, that advice is hard to follow. If you can't, I can't really blame you, I'm still unable to follow it either. But I've failed enough times to know that it's the right way to do it...

wprl• 12 years ago

There's nothing wrong with "going hard" to reach a short-term goal. Burnout comes when "going hard" becomes a lifestyle. You need to make sure to allow plenty of time for resting afterwards, or your intellect and will wear out.

stevenkovar3• 12 years ago

No matter how sharp your blade, your steel must be tempered.

Life is about balance. You will break if you don't give your mind and body the rest it deserves. Often, great ideas find me when I am cooling down.

vvvVVVvvv• 12 years ago

I'm sorting my day out when in the morning shower. There's no better place / moment to think.

No distraction, just your mind clearing up the midst.

snarfy• 12 years ago

Burnout is a syndrome that happens from a series of failures, resulting in your brain automatically associating work with failure.

The cure for burnout is a series of successes. You need to retrain your brain to associate work with success. Start small. Don't take on more than you can handle. Quit trying to make the uber server app and write a few simple command line utilities that work and work well.

stupejr• 12 years ago

This, I'm so sick of hearing burnout stories, you're responsible for how you're feeling. When you take the stance of the "victim" all the time you set yourself up for failure.

I see countless people attribute "failures" that had nothing to do with themselves to them just so they feel like they have some control over the situation and then wind up feeling burnt out when they're accepting the responsibility for the entire companies success or doom. Then they're asking why they're feeling so burnt out and can't completely their daily responsibilities that they actually have.

stevenkovar3• 12 years ago

Burnout is like being sleep deprived; you can be wildly successful and still burn out if you don't give yourself time to mentally sort through all the ideas and toss out the trash, even if just subconsciously.

When you've been working too hard for too long, small problems can feel like big issues because the cumulative weight of all the stuff going through your mind.

Clarity is tough to maintain.

beebs933• 12 years ago

Good post - short, sweet and to the point.

It's important to find that balance between what you love and what keeps you healthy. Some people here may go on the defensive and read it as "I don't work every waking hour and you shouldn't either", but hopefully they'll take a deep breath, release the kung fu grip on their copy of "Design Patterns" and remember to just grab a decent night's sleep every so often.

daGrevis• 12 years ago

Here's a theory — an ideal job is a job that fulfills your desire to code to a level in which you don't want to do any coding after work hours. There's so much challenging tasks and new things you learn right away by doing things you are paid for that you don't need to search for something new after work.

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

Indeed, this is far more sustainable than burning the candle from both ends. It may seem like a bit of a unicorn job; but the current SV boom tends to overvalue inexperienced engineers so much that it can seem like there are no interesting jobs in tech left.

After ten years, you start wanting something different from work. Nothing wrong with that, you just need to find somewhere that will keep you intellectually fed.

chadillac2• 12 years ago

I've found the contrary to be true lately. I was a serial burnout case. I'd crank hard for 3 or 4 months and it'd take me 6 months to recover. I've found more recently that it wasn't the projects at home or at work, it was a lack of diversity. Doing the same thing when I got home that I did all day burned me out because it wasn't any different. Coming home and working of stuff I can't work on at work be it new languages, games, new ideas, whatever, just so long as it's different than what I did for 8 hours then I don't get burnt. Now the problem is I don't have enough hours in the day to do it all and working until 4 am and being up at 7 isn't sustainable.

jonalmeida• 12 years ago

Quite true in terms of my work habits. At the end of the day, you want to learn something new, but you've given it 110% during the day that you can't get yourself to start a new hobby project.

In my case, I always seemed stuck back at the same mindset and mental "data structure" in my head, so it would be difficult to push it aside to make room for something new.

It might sound stupid, but it could also be the fear that I would lose said structure, and the next day would go entirely into rebuilding it.

mattwad• 12 years ago

You missed his point. His ideal job would give you enough diversity that you wouldn't feel you had to get that from outside work.

beebs933• 12 years ago

I somewhat agree.

I'm fortunate enough to work in such a job, but keep in mind that it's those "holy crap I didn't know you could do it that way" moments that get you excited and can't wait to tinker with in on your own.

There's a difference between being a bored conveyor belt developer who feels unfulfilled at the end of the day and someone whose been given a new set of "lego" and cannot contain their curiosity.

groovy2shoes• 12 years ago

I recently changed jobs from one where I felt underutilized and bored to one where I get to code more and I feel much more satisfied. I've found that my interest in coding after work and on weekends is actually gotten higher since the switch.

Maybe I'm just in a better mood now, or maybe it's some sort of "productivity momentum". It used to be that when I got home from work, the thought of looking at a computer screen made me feel sick. Now it's fine. It's not that I rush home and code every night (I still take the time to unwind and relax), but I actually feel like I can go home and code now whereas I just couldn't bring myself to do it before.

sdegutis2• 12 years ago

For the first time in years I had time to do silly stuff like playing video games, going out for a walk or watch movies. For the first time in years I didnt grit my teeth and churn out that little bit of code that would help me develop my skills further.
It feels great.

I can totally relate. A few months ago, I started giving up on my open source projects, as a side-effect of burnout. Admittedly part of the solution was working hard to give up the hubris inside me that made me think my code and my ideas were vital to the world. But now that it's given up, I really do have a lot more free time. Last night, I was under a blanket on the couch, reading two full Sherlock Holmes[1] stories to my wife and children, who were just drawing or cuddling on the couch or whatever. We just kicked back and relaxed, and we all enjoyed it.

The downside is that I now have a hard time keeping the motivating excitement going for new ideas I have. Just the other week I had an idea for a node-webkit-like idea based on JSCocoa, but it involved rewriting major parts of JSCocoa to get it to work properly. I've gotten pretty far[2] but I'm losing steam quickly and falling back into the "meh" state of life in which I'm now more interested in playing Starcraft 2 for an hour or two, or drawing some doodles. So it's a weird balance that I can't figure just yet.

[1]: Later that night I read The Purloined Letter to my wife as she painted some walls, and we both enjoyed it but thought it was a little bit long-winded for what it had to say.

[2] http://github.com/sdegutis/chaos

mattgreenrocks4• 12 years ago

That's a pretty neat project. Since it's a big effort, you shouldn't beat yourself up about it.

You should be honest with yourself about motivations and reasons for doing open source. Do it because you like tinkering, not because it's a resume-builder. Truth is, open source is not a meritocracy, it's more of a lottery. I've been mildly successful (as in, entranced a nascent community) at it for a time, but I found it a bit stressful with expectations and all.

PS: do you work at 8th Light?

sdegutis2• 12 years ago

That's a pretty neat project. Since it's a big effort, you shouldn't beat yourself up about it.

Thanks.

You should be honest with yourself about motivations and reasons for doing open source. Do it because you like tinkering, not because it's a resume-builder. Truth is, open source is not a meritocracy, it's more of a lottery. I've been mildly successful (as in, entranced a nascent community) at it for a time, but I found it a bit stressful with expectations and all.

I was initially motivated by it being an interesting problem to solve. But I quickly ran into it being more difficult than interesting, so my steam started running out faster. I may be able to salvage it if there's any community interest in it, but it's difficult to get anyone interested without having a working prototype to demo, which is actually the hardest part of this project (i.e. dealing with libffi and boxing ObjC objects, etc).

PS: do you work at 8th Light?

I used to. Now I work for http://www.cleancoders.com/

pfortuny• 12 years ago

Yes, try and look for happiness, which means a life you have control over, for a meaning of life much richer than 'the one with the greatest income to be had with my skills.'

One needs a definition of happiness which

a) Is appealing

b) Is a long-term (lifelong) project

c) Is valuable (in the sense of 'personal values')

Usually, this means sharing your 'life' with other people first and foremost.

And yes, burnout should not be a dirty word ever.

quaffapint6• 12 years ago

I've got a crappy dev job that I've been in for over a decade that only gets worse with less pay. I don't bring home enough money and have my family living paycheck to paycheck. I stress over it and keep trying side stuff to bring in more, which mostly fail. I'm working hard right now trying to get this next side project out the door in the next month.

I'm in my 40s and no one in the area has raised their dev salaries since the 2008 drop. Given my age, it's only going to be harder to find jobs if it comes to that. I'm stuck. It's stressful and it sucks.

But, I still make time for the family. I go to their school functions, and help with their homework. I play games and watch movies. I'm doing it for them. I just wish I could do more. Someone once said they were jealous of me because I seem so content. My poker face must be pretty awesome.

jshen3• 12 years ago

are you in a big city? All the devs I know make good money, and their salaries have been steadily rising for over a decade. Also, all the devs I know can get a new job in a week or so.

Then I hear stories like yours and wonder what the difference is. Maybe location?

tracker12• 12 years ago

Location has a lot to do with it... It also factors in heavily with cost of living differences, and quality of life for a single guy vs. a family.

I'm in Phoenix, which has a lot of developer work, though most of it is fairly boring line of business stuff. Compared to say San Francisco, which has a little more developer work, but the pay is the same or not enough more for most positions I've looked at and the cost of living is a lot more. There are other trade offs as well that favor SF over Phx, for example Phx is hot 3 months a year, and hotter than hell another 4.

There's a few more rural communities in southwest Oregon I'd like to live in, but there's not really any tech/dev work near what I'd need to make there. Being a software developer outside the top 10-15 major metro areas in the U.S. is a lot harder, and the pay is significantly less.

I'd honestly suggest the guy consider relocating... it's rough for everyone, but Houston, Austin, Phoenix and a few other spots have a pretty nice income to cost of living ratio, and plenty of developer work.

quaffapint6• 12 years ago

It is most certainly location dependent. I'm in a standard suburb in the mid-Atlantic region (it's pretty much all the same, just different cities). I would be destitute if we lived in San Francisco.

It's a very interesting, albeit depressing, time to be a dev around here. Jobs are plentiful - I get contacted by recruiters all the time. The difference is they are offering senior devs what they offered junior devs way back when. It doesn't seem to be language or such dependent, I'm seeing the same thing in all the big corporate level and startup level languages. I used to be able to move jobs and easily get more money, not since the downturn. I guess companies decided they don't need to pay us what they used to (which was still just national average) and are sticking with that.

We don't go on any big vacations, we don't go out to dinner, our cars are old, I have a pre-paid cell phone, and I'm typing this on my 8 year old home built computer. The point being, I know what I need my salary minimum to be, and I'm really below that minimum now all too often (ie, come saving for property taxes). If I was single, maybe I'd move somewhere, but it's not really an option now with the kids in a good school.

karterk2• 12 years ago

Depending on the terms of your employment, this might not even be possible, but you should try augmenting your primary source of income with some part-time consulting. While the lure of the profitable side project is hard to resist, it's much easier to become financially independent by doing consulting than through a side project. Bootstrapped SaaS projects grow very very slowly in terms of monthly recurring revenue (also known as the Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death [1]).

[1] http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...

quaffapint6• 12 years ago

Any suggestions on how to find part time consulting gigs? I know I can't compete with the odesk rates, not sure of non-spammy places to find em. I'll have to check on terms, as well.

cfontes2• 12 years ago

I know it's not for everybody. But sometimes moving to another city is the best option.

I've done it myself 2x and it payed of somehow. My job is boring like hell right now( it wasn't like that some months ago), but the paycheck for my country standards is ok. Also the city I am at right now has plenty of other jobs so if I get pissed of I can get away from it.

Think about it...

aintnoprophet• 12 years ago

I hear you. This is the burnout that I was hoping to read about. Not some guy that gave up all his free time to become a corporate zombie. I want a solution to our burnout not OP.

quaffapint6• 12 years ago

If you figure it out - please share it with us.

Maybe if we stop reading about these 300K jobs on HN, we'll have more contentment. Won't help us at all, but it's one less piece of stress :-).

badman_ting• 12 years ago

Jesus, that is my absolute nightmare.

jwmoz• 12 years ago

I got burnt out on a contract a few years ago, was a horrible feeling, continually tired and falling asleep, no enthusiasm for the role. Switched to a different contract and halved my commuting time and turned into a different person.

Now when I finish work I'm out of here, no more coding or hacking at home, instead, I train at the gym or go out for food or more recently chill a lot.

jtbigwoo• 12 years ago

I've discovered that a commute over 30 minutes, even to an interesting job, just destroys my ambition both at work and for an hour or two after work.

dkhenry2• 12 years ago

I am not happy doing nothing. I don't understand how you can be do content just "chilling". Now don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with recreation and spending time with your family, there isn't even anything wrong with doing nothing, if its for a purpose, but just wasting time because you can is a waste of time. You should be optimizing your time to get the most value out of it.

Maybe I am just odd, but I would much rather be hacking on my side projects then playing games and watching movies. I guess that the difference between your vocation being your passion and it just being something to pay the bills. Perhaps the author needs to find a different career that provides some fulfillment to him so he doesn't feel the need to waste his life decompressing from his job.

ddoolin• 12 years ago

No. I can't speak for the author, but I can empathize. I'm VERY satisfied with my career. I honestly couldn't imagine doing anything else...but I couldn't do it anymore either. The late nights, always being in front of the computer, always working on something. People burn out, even doing things they love to do. I still do what I love, I just have more of an appropriate balance.

I think you're just odd, like you said.

talmir3• 12 years ago

Talk about taking every single word I wrote literally :) Thats ok.

I do regularly work on side projects. But being 100% productive 100% of the time, in my mind, is not healty. This is my personal opinion.

The assumption you make about your vocation being your passion and for me it being just to pay the bills could not be more wrong. I have been a coder all my life. It is my job now and will continue to be as well as my passion. I will continue improving and working on all kinds of things.

The difference is that I allow myself some breathing room to be a person, not just a machine, on a regular basis.

dkhenry2• 12 years ago

Here is how I see it. If your going on a drive and you have three choices, one of them is the most direct route its on the freeway and you will make it there is the shortest amount of time, the second is a winding country road it takes twice as long, but you get to enjoy the country road maybe listen to the radio maybe roll your windows down and enjoy the fresh spring air, and you have a separate freeway that is underground and always has a traffic jam. Doing nothing as your described is to me the third option, your just wasting time for no reason whatsoever and your telling yourself this is nice because I am not stressing out about whatever, but your still wasting you time. Relaxation doesn't have to be fruitless, for instance I relax by gardening. It is both calming and productive. After watching that movie or playing that game _most_ of the time all you have is three less hours to do something productive. You have just sat in that underground freeway when you could have been enjoying a spring drive or getting to your destination faster.

Dewie• 12 years ago

I guess that the difference between your vocation being your passion and it just being something to pay the bills.

Or maybe it's a passion, but not to the degree of being able to sustain that passion for much more than 40 hours a week. That's a whole lot of time doing one thing (let's not get into the details of how many of those hours are really programming, technical work, etc.). Maybe you won't call it passion since yours seems to be more "intense", but it's still much more than just-being-something-to-pay-the-bills.

heurist• 12 years ago

"You should be optimizing your time to get the most value out of it."

Why? What makes that lifestyle any better than the lifestyle where you sit back and chill?

agentultra3• 12 years ago

My theory is that "burnout" is a symptom of the endemic "hero" meme of our culture. Think about all the movies you've seen since the 1980s, the shows you've watched, the books you've read. Embedded in the majority of them is the simple idea that there's something special inside you that can set you apart from everyone else. It whispers seductively to that part of your brain that lies to you about how important you are. Any story or idea that fills the need to feel different, special, and unique passes through our scrutiny without a second thought. We want to believe it's true even as we examine our motivations for doing so because it's hard wired into our brains.

The problem is that this weakness is easily exploited. Writers, motivational speakers, game designers, poets... they're all in the business of hacking our brains. We've been doing such a good job of it since the sixties that our popular culture is unconsciously driven by it.

And it manifests as burnout when it clashes with other popular memes like the Protestant Work Ethic. If you just put in a little elbow grease and work harder you will stand out. If you write that amazing library to make programmers' lives easier they will shower you with praise on the Internet and invite you to speak at conferences so that you may shower the masses with your brilliant message. Burnout happens when all of the rewards of those fantasies fail to materialize despite all of the effort and hard work you've put into chasing them.

Worked 60 - 80 hour weeks for the last six months and still got overlooked for that promotion? Burnout.

Put off investing time with your family in order to work on that semi-popular open source library and pimp it out at every conference you can submit a proposal to... and you STILL aren't getting the accolades and recognition you deserve? Burnout.

My advice for avoiding burnout? Figure out where your desires and ambitions are coming from. Why do you want to work so hard for recognition? Why do you feel you need to be recognized? What's so important about it? Start from there.

gamegoblin• 12 years ago

Hanging out on sites like this definitely doesn't help. In every thread it seems like there is someone who is a perfect expert on whatever being discussed.

Need to diagnose a problem in a defunct modem using only an oscilloscope? Someone can. Strange behavior of the JVM? Oh, someone has implemented their own JVM on a 4kb machine as a hobby project.

Then you get username delineation and there is this idea of some abstract "hacker" of hackernews (or whatevertechsite.com) that can do everything with ease.

Because after seeing all that I think if I can't debug modems with oscilloscopes or implement the JVM I'm behind and subpar.

michaeleloftis• 12 years ago

One of the things to keep in mind is that the guy who can implement the JVM, the girl who debugs modems, and the dude who has a PhD in theoretical physics, are (usually) all different people. Sites like this are good at surfacing the expert in threads, so that you spend time seeing people at their best. It looks like everyone is brilliant in everything, but in fact what is really happening is that many people are brilliant in their domain.

ZenoArrow2• 12 years ago

You could see things like that, but the only reason I read comments at all is to get insights from people that are more knowledgable in a particular subject than myself (or to engage in debate with those that have an interesting point of view). Every time I learn something I value from a comment I've just broadened my horizons. You could see these people as competitors, but in reality we're all eternal students.

npsimons• 12 years ago

There's two good reasons to hang out somewhere like HN:

1) It gives you perspective - yes, you're not "the best" and neither am I. Learn to live with it.

2) It helps you get better. There's a saying that goes something like "if you're the smartest person in the room, leave - there's nothing you can learn there." While pithy and not entirely true, it tends to push you in the right direction by making you push yourself. Maybe you never thought some of those things were possible, but if others can do it, there's a good chance you can too (whether you want to or not is another question), and you can learn a lot on HN.

Apart from that, yeah, HN can be a time sink.

derefr• 12 years ago

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

--temporarily-embarrassed millionaires who, I might add, all know that it is their "destiny," their Heroic Tale to tell, to "regain" those millions through Hard Work, Grit and Stick-To-It-iveness. (But not Cunning. Cunning is for villains, like that guy who got the promotion instead of you.)

sitkack• 12 years ago

The feutalism of a you-can-be-anything you want society. Only if you try hard enough. If you aren't successful, your fault, didn't try hard enough.

dpcan2• 12 years ago

I've reached a similar conclusion lately in dealing with burnout. I'm trying to figure out who I really want to be, rather than what I thought I was supposed to be.

It wasn't so much movies,books,etc, but as a 34 yr-old ex-computer geek of the 90's, I'm dealing with my own "expectations" complex.

I spent day and night back then on computers, building them, fixing them, coding, fixing them at schools, local businesses, for parents, friends, friends of my parents, etc, and I heard over and over and over again that I was "a genius" or "the next Bill Gates" and so on.

Well, turns out I'm not "the next Bill Gates". But I sure have spent the last 10 years trying to figure out how to live up to those high expectations.

As a result, I've become relatively successful in my business, but I'm always combating burnout as I wonder if what I'm doing is really what I should actually be doing with my life - or if this is just a response to all the praise I had as a teenager because I had that natural knack for computers back in the day when people still thought CD-ROMs were cup holders (joke).

I'm sure I'm not alone in this HN crowd. Many of you in your 30's must have had a similar experience. At least I know my own friends back then did.

And yes, I do feel that need to be "recognized" for some reason. Why the heck is that?

mgkimsal• 12 years ago

"Well, turns out I'm not "the next Bill Gates". But I sure have spent the last 10 years trying to figure out how to live up to those high expectations."

Last year, I had to come to grips with the fact that I'll never be a Beatle. ;)

alaskamiller• 12 years ago

When you go to heaven, and St. Peter asks you what have you done with your life. You don't get past the judgement by saying, I'm sorry I didn't get to be the next Steve Jobs, the next Bill Gates, the next Elon Musk.

You'll get asked why didn't you become the best you possible.

hashberry• 12 years ago

You're not alone. I'm in my 30s and daydream about having a post on the frontpage of HN with everyone "recognizing" how awesome my projects/thoughts are. How can anyone be satisfied with mediocrity?

thewarrior3• 12 years ago

Your theory explains half the story , atleast in my case. Programming is getting increasingly competitive and so some of the anxiety is motivated by worries about my future job security.

There has never been a better time to be born as a driven and prodigious individual. There are lots of young kids today leveraging technology produce music, code , draw and animate all through the power of the internet. Eg: Today I was amazed to learn that EDM producer Madeon is only 19 years old.

People might be burning themselves out by falling for the "hero" meme , but on the other hand , I feel that in a few years this will lead to an explosion of quality and output in every field as more prodigies are created.

Just imagine , there are 10 and 12 year olds browsing HN right now and they're being exposed to levels of ambition and mastery that they could never even imagine if they were restricted to their local peer group. So it starts young but on the other hand we might start seeing more progress than ever before.

petitev• 12 years ago

I was one of those 12 year olds hanging out on usenet and slashdot about 15 years ago. I was exposed to technology, computational/mathematical language/jargon, the social pressures of continual growth and development, and so on, at a very young age, and it is most certainly a part of my core identity.

I still burnt out. I was working on my PhD in computer security and it took me 2 years to recover from 8 years of straight schooling and essentially no social life, or at best, a negative social life.

Growing up, I did not learn how to relax. I did not learn how to balance my mental and social health needs with my desires of who I wanted to be when I was 30. I did not learn how to balance my need to constantly be praised by my peers for my hard work and intelligence, with my need for social support, compassion, and understanding for when I failed (or was in the process of failing).

I burnt out really bad. I didn't have anyone to turn to because I was ashamed. I do have to say HN helped me look at failure in a different light, as a learning experience that I would likely value forever, but I still don't know if given the choice again, I would choose to experience it in the way I did.

I don't like to believe that learning trade offs are the same, generally, for each generation, but my experience tells me they are. Now I spend my time learning other things, like how to talk to people without turning into a frozen ball of nerves.

objectified• 12 years ago

While reading your great comment, I was hoping you'd continue explaining where these desires and ambitions would come from, and why they can cause burnout. But yes, people will have to figure that out for themselves. I've found that the patterns you describe come very close to conversations I've been having with people about playing music (which I've been doing intensively for quite a while now):

I hear a lot of people "wanting to play guitar", or "wishing they could play like <player X>". I often ask them whether they want to a) be seen as a great guitarist, or b) actually play guitar. There's a big difference between a and b. A revolves around the idea that you "are" something, and often, where others can see you as being something. B is about actually enjoying to play guitar, for no other reason than playing guitar. No recognition, no fame, no secondary intentions.

Everything you invest large amounts of time in should come from nothing but enjoying that thing you do in itself. But it's not easy. Motivations always get distorted by psychological influences (and that's what you meant by the last line of your comment, if I understood it correctly). There are many people who haven't received much validation or acceptance on a personal level while growing up, for instance. These people will keep reaching, but they'll never reach actual self acceptance. Burnout.

It's really important to confront yourself with issues that you can identify inside yourself, and keep (re)defining yourself. Not what you do, but who you are. What you do should be a consequence of who you are, not a reaction to personal shortcomings you're not looking in the eye directly.

I'm not a psychologist, this is just my take on things.

agentultra3• 12 years ago

people will have to figure that out for themselves.

... that's why I didn't go on about my own personal experiences and lack of answers.

Motivations always get distorted by psychological influences

And if you start investigating the source of your ambitions and desires you may suspect, as I do, that many of them are not your own.

why they can cause burnout

I hope I explained that. In highly reduced terms it boils down to anticipating the outcome of an endeavor based on an idealized version of reality. When you put in the effort to achieve those outcomes and are disappointed by the results you get burnt out. The hard part is figuring out where your idealized reality is coming from.

noname1233• 12 years ago

I'll start. I want to work so hard because I want to get up on a podium someday at my high school or college podium and make a "f-you all" speech like Jerry McGuire in "Jerry McGuire" (1996). I want to make all of the guys who bullied me or dismissed me wonder looking at me how they got where they are now. I want to make all of the girls/ex'es who spurned me or laughed at me wonder why they didn't see the diamond in the rough and where they are now with their faded beauty.

I want to make all of my co-workers/bosses/peers who droned on smugly about their "weekend project" or play politics shameless/gunning for promotions that I was passed up for or social networked and got lucky and got funding because of BS skillz, feel jealous in their deepest of their hearts and acknowledge my technical prowess for a moment despite every ounce in their masculine alpha-geek conscience begrudging the idea. Like Conan the Barbarian, "What is the meaning of life? To Crush your enemies, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of their woman!"

But my conscience tells me that I have to tone it down a bit because I'm not a jock, I don't want to stoop down to the same level of those who've bullied me. I'm a sensitive hacker in every sense of the goodness and owning that word, I live in Brooklyn (but not Williamsburg); I'm not a hipster and I take my gf every weekend to the indie movie theatre and we discuss the scenes and snuggle afterwards. But then I get on the Ubuntu laptop and hack on my github repo. I'm not a jock and I'm not a hipster, I'm a sensitive hacker.

I want to start a company not for the money because once it gets big, not only will give me financial freedom but will give me an opportunity to give back to the open-source community (after all, isn't what social networking is originally about, finding an connection). I'll start a blog with a side-bar with me as the Founder of X. I'll give the traditional old media/education/gov't and even tech establishment a piece of my mind, information is suppose to be free, college is dead, employee's are companies not employees, bitcoins is the future and the establishment is just afraid of change. I'll work hard, I'll code and code some more until I ship, in between the late night hackathon and late afternoon coding hangover, I'll tweet for a break, I'll share on your FB wall, I'll reddit and share my thoughts with the community (after all, that's what coding is about, finding a connection),

I occasionally come across article about burn-outs. Of course, I've had that for sure, no correction, I've had many mental breakdowns. It makes me pause, think and re-evaluate. But I've grown wiser and stronger, I'm not that same person. I know what's important in my life. My friendships and my SO. I'm going to book a ticket on Stubhub for a show next weekend that I and my GF can go to, starred artist on her Spotify. And just booked another trip to Austin to visit my college friend, just in time for SXSW. (After all, that's what life is about, finding a connection). I and my SO taking salsa lessons and I bike on weekends to find another positive outlet to vent my frustration and energy (after all, that's what life is about, trying out new things and discovering yourself). I'm saving money consciously for a down payment for a house after reading more about passive income because I'm growing to become an adult.

I'm an responsible adult now, a sensitive hacker who hacks; And I'll code and code some more and then I'll spend some quality time with my SO.

And I will ship, that's for sure. Ship or die trying.

hackerpolicy• 12 years ago

I'm printing this.

route66• 12 years ago

Considering the first half: your are playing their game, isn't it? (something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEv1L4MCHj8)

lawnchair_larry• 12 years ago

Why do you care about those people?

I suspect that in a few more years, you'll revoke their license to occupy your brain and control your path in life. That's true freedom.

Some people don't realize this until it's too late, and all they can do is look back and say, "for what?"

If your ego doesn't kill you, it will rob you of your best years, so be careful.

csmatt• 12 years ago

This is beautiful. I feel like it describes past, present, and future me and gives me hope and some nice guidelines.

ehl• 12 years ago

Nice meta-comment! Your facetious meter is up to eleven, although I don't think they will get it.

crucialfelix• 12 years ago

It whispers seductively to that part of your brain that lies to you about how important you are. Any story or idea that fills the need to feel different, special, and unique ...

And yet this gets harder and harder on a planet of 7 billion people, more and more of them coming online; entire previously invisible countries of hackers popping up on the global screen.

We've gone through this already in music where the number of musicians and releases went exponential. It became harder to get heard, and your 15 minutes gets shorter.

We are not unique - that's a relic of the age of the individual. Perhaps we should leave that behind as a relic of the 20th century. Crowd intelligence and emergent behavior could be the place to put our energies.

ZenoArrow2• 12 years ago

Very well put. Thank you.

Bahamut• 12 years ago

As much as I'd like to constantly be productive, I know that it's not healthy for my mental balance. If I want to be sharp in the long term, I find it ok to take a break every once in a while and chill out from being laser-focused & super-productive.

YMMV

dubeye• 12 years ago

In my mind, the term burnout is incorrectly used as a synonym for 'overworked and stressed to the point of collapse'. Whilst for me burnout means an expiry of enthusiasm and motivation which is a subtle difference perhaps.

dceddia• 12 years ago

This post really got me thinking, because I feel exactly the same way. The sequence of events described mirrors my own life so closely it borders on creepy.

I've been falling further and further into the trap of "optimizing" lots of little things. Spending 5 hours reading Amazon reviews to buy an $11 guitar tuner. Trying to leave the house at exactly the right time to arrive at my destination on the dot. And then, becoming very frustrated when traffic does not cooperate or someone on the road is being less efficient than I want them to be.

This post made me realize that thinking this way is almost like an addiction. The more I worry about how to squeeze productivity into a day or which tasks to work on to provide the most benefit (80/20!), the more anxious I feel. And it compounds. Because the next thought through my mind is "I can fix this anxious feeling by planning things out better!"

I'm beginning to think that maybe the best way off this train is to stop trying to optimize and control for variables entirely. It's not enough to pick-and-choose, because then you're just meta-optimizing ("I'll just figure out which of these to-do items is the MOST important!") Much akin to an alcoholic having just one drink, I think any sort of optimization thinking might be enough to get the cycle started again. Maybe the only way to tame it is to avoid it entirely.

Burnout

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