[HN Gopher] Burnout from an Organizational Perspective ___________________________________________________________________ Burnout from an Organizational Perspective Author : rustoo Score : 138 points Date : 2021-06-12 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ssir.org) (TXT) w3m dump (ssir.org) | philmcp wrote: | The best way to deal with burn out is to start offering a 4 day | week imo. | | I recently launched https://4dayweek.io to help normalise this - | Software jobs with a better work / life balance | rustoo wrote: | This is a great initiative. I hope the next phase of the | website also has job openings for non-technical positions. All | the best for this great initiative :) | imhoguy wrote: | I would take 50% paycut to get 3 day week, but it is quite hard | with constantly evolving SaaS devops. | | Moreover teams and dev work are micromanaged these days so much | with n-th incarnation of "Agile" and Slack 24/7 presence that | it is nearly impossible to get a week of autonomy and | hyperfocused deep cave work. I know communication is important, | but frequent interruption and progress reporting is killing my | productivity and creativity. I feel like drone gluing mudballs | to bring some success to daily sprint standup confessional. | | Anyway, I'm looking around for greener pastures. | Jcampuzano2 wrote: | I feel this. I feel even less autonomy with the advent of | slack and always on communication tools, and it has hurt my | productivity. And then when I try to say I'm going heads down | to get things done I'll get pinged anyway with claims of a | manufactured "emergency". We don't write medical software and | hell we haven't even released yet, there is no such thing as | an emergency! I work in consulting so the usual excuse is | always, "But a client demo" which in my head just means | management setting poor expectations. | imhoguy wrote: | This, and even when not pinged, only keeping Slack open 9-5 | makes me stay constantly alert and anxious of some fallout | from management meetings. | rc_hackernews wrote: | I had to reply to this because I've been feeling this very | heavily the last few years. Not sure what to do about it | either because it feels like it's everywhere. | | Specifically "Agile", the lack of autonomy, and the standup | confessional. | | I can appreciate communicating and keeping everyone on the | same page. At some point though, we're going to have to | realize we're all professionals and we can trust people to do | their jobs. | flatline wrote: | I find that about a 30-35 hour work week is ideal for me. I | have kids, a house, a social life, juggling all of that is | challenging and working straight 8-10 hour days just leaves | everything else to fall out in the mix. Even though I didn't | like working from home all day every day, the pandemic added | some slack to the 40 hour work week. I wish I could get that | slack back while being in the office, because I do believe | there is a productivity multiplier to being in person. | xupybd wrote: | I'd really like to develop better abilities to identify and | prevent burn out my self. I thought I was just too dumb to keep | up. Too lazy to keep focused. It wasn't that, constant quotes | that didn't land, unhappy clients and extreme hours that resulted | in unhappy management due to the project being over due. Hard | work over a long time with nothing but negative feedback left me | so drained I was very unproductive, embarrassingly so. I thought | I'd never be a good developer but a change in jobs instantly | changed that. Long hours, harder work but loads of positive | feedback. All of a sudden I could focus all day, learn quicker | and get so much work done. I thought I had more self control but | it turns out I require certain things from my environment to | perform. | bigwavedave wrote: | This really resonates with me. When I was just starting out, I | was assigned a mentor- a senior dev who refused to pair with | me, who would ghost me for days at a time, always promising | that "even though he was busy now, he'd get in touch with me | this afternoon" and then vanish until I'd ping him after stand | up the next day, where he would make the same promise. All the | while, I'd try hard to learn the codebase and fix bugs without | help (fairly difficult for a brand new, fresh out of college | grad) but without help from my assigned mentor, all I got was | shame and derision in stand ups for not producing enough and | for "being afraid to ask for help" (no one really believed that | such an amazing senior dev would refuse to give me the time of | day). This convinced me I was stupid, that I couldn't be a good | developer, and that I should go back to QA. Burned out and | dejected, I gave my manager a heads up, put in for a transfer | to another team as a QE, and tried to deal with the heart- | crushing reality that I was too stupid to learn something new | and that I needed to go back to what I was at least marginally | acceptable at. | | Turns out, my request to change teams was approved but my | request to change positions was denied and they kept me as a | junior dev. But this time, my team actually responded to me. I | found a senior dev who not only didn't mind answering | questions, but he actively got excited when I'd reach out for | help because in his eyes, I wasn't a nuisance, I was proactive. | And it was infectious. All of a sudden, instead of dreading | going to work or getting a ticket assigned to me, I got | excited! I learned more in just a week with that new mentor | than I had in three months with my old team. I never became a | 10x rockstar code god, but I learned to love my job and found | out a lot about myself. I didn't realize it before all this, | but apparently I'm the kind of person who needs something from | my team too. | xupybd wrote: | Wow that sounds very similar to the culture I was in juniors | were left to flail and management was bitter at their lack of | performance. No mentoring existed. I think largely because | management there were extraordinary developers that didn't | need a lot mentorship themselves, or maybe after a few | decades had forgotten the amount of input they had. | | The attitude at the company I'm at now is amazingly | different. The owner is trying to step back so he sees his | most valuable work to be mentoring and teaching. The result | is a company that can't stop growing. Everyone is developing | their skill set and taking on new responsibility's. | | I think the previous companies management took on so much of | the day to day work they had little time for themselves let | alone training others. They're genuinely brilliant and harder | working than anyone I've met but just didn't build people. | cratermoon wrote: | The pickles/vinegar analogy is vivid. Certainly when I have been | burnt out it's fair to say I was well-pickled. | mkl95 wrote: | The bus factor has a lot to do with this imo. Every startup I | have worked for lets middle managers hold a ton of information | and power. Middle managers at companies with a high turnover rate | tend not to trust engineers too much if at all, and startups | usually have high turnover rates. This results in toxic | relationships between engineers and managers. It's hard to get | motivated at work when someone is -virtually or literally- | looking over your shoulder all the time, second guessing | everything you do, and delaying processes by withholding | technical knowledge. | | In some cases, this ultimately results in what I call the "empty | desk syndrome". This is when you visit your new employer's | offices, and most desks are empty because a wave of employees | just left or was fired. The cycle repeats indefinitely, with you | becoming part of the next wave. | w0mbat wrote: | The article actually doesn't tell the true horror of the | situation which is this: Companies burn out employees and then | deal with the consequences by firing them or bullying them into | quitting. Employees lie about how their last job ended and limp | into the next one, using the unemployment gap to recover as best | they can. | BeFlatXIII wrote: | I wonder just how prevalent the pattern of a perpetually burnt- | put employee shuffling to job to job like this is. I imagine | that some of them simply need a year off away from the world or | a lucky break with a good employer to get back into peak form. | However, my suspicion is that the majority of them are simply | not cut out for the field but insist on staying in because they | believe, correctly or not, that it's the only kind of job that | can give worthwhile pay. | | (Edit to add) It's also why I roll my eyes so hard at most of | the standard suite of job interview questions. When there is a | known and obvious correct answer, all it does is filter out | candidates who are too honest to lie, too stupid to know you're | supposed to lie, and candidates who cannot confidently sell a | lie. | dheera wrote: | > simply need a year off away from the world | | It's actually really hard (mentally) to do this if you don't | already have a shitton of savings in the bank that you're not | worried about paying rent, and aren't worried about getting a | new job. For a lot of people it's harder than it sounds. But | yes, gap years would be amazing. | | Another thing I wish was more encouraged is part-time work. | Working for a year at maybe 20 hours a week would probably | pay all living expenses while you have plenty of space and | time to recover and time to spend in the wilderness or beach | or whatever strikes your fancy. Everyone seems to want to | shovel you in as a full-time employee, and part-time seems to | be looked down upon more than it should as a transition and | recovery tool. | ipaddr wrote: | As someone with 20+ experience I can tell you burnout is | real. It doesn't make you not cut out for the field. That | burnout travels with you. | | Burnout doesn't happen everywhere. It tends to happen when | bad or inexperience people run projects. | | If someone feels like there company is burning them out they | probably are. Move on before it eats at you. You cannot | change bad management. | OminousWeapons wrote: | > Burnout doesn't happen everywhere. It tends to happen | when bad or inexperience people run projects. | | Definitely. | | I would also add that burnout at least for me is a function | of ROI. In my experience, teams are willing to put in crazy | hours if doing so regularly results in success and | favorable outcomes for them. If you force teams to put in | crazy hours and the effort results in failure more than a | few times, it decimates morale and very quickly leads to | burnout. | fsociety wrote: | +1 so true. Even companies with good intentions can tend to | lead employees to burnout. | bradleyjg wrote: | Companies that use the: recruit a lot of people, burn out most, | rinse and repeat strategy are fairly easy to identify. | | As an employee you should have your eyes open about this but | it's not necessarily the case that they should be avoided at | all costs. Properly used, time at one of these companies can | change the trajectory of your career. Depending on where you | are in life that can be worth it. | | Having a time boxed plan makes it more likely you can survive | the experience with your health and sanity intact. | eyelidlessness wrote: | This is tricky. I don't necessarily disagree, but evaluating | these things can be more difficult for some people. | | For me, it's very easy for me to get attached because I care | about some combination of the problem and the team. I've had | some major wins improving things in those cases, but I've | also had some major losses. And it's very difficult for me to | recognize burnout symptoms until they're severe enough to | require extensive recovery time. | | Sure, the idea of timeboxing could be useful, but I could | also just let that slide given my motivation to improve | things. In the end, it's not worth it to me anymore to put | myself in that situation. | lordnacho wrote: | Easy to identify? What are the signs, save for things you | could only be told by a friend on the inside? | bradleyjg wrote: | High turnover, especially if there's a big peak at 2-3 | years of experience. | | For mid-career professionals, you should be able to tell | this from your second or third degree network on LinkedIn | or similar. For students, you should be suspicious of any | company that's hiring a lot of fresh grads unless they are | gigantic (in which case, consult the alumni whisper | network). | BeFlatXIII wrote: | Hiring loads and loads of fresh grads and then making | your campus feel just like college so your amenities can | trick them into working 60-hour weeks. | zikduruqe wrote: | Cerner in KC is like that. Grab all the college grads, | burn them to death for 3 to 4 years, cull the herd. | | https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/cerner-layoffs-part- | of-... | | Here is example of the culture: | https://www.bizcominthenews.com/files/cerner-1.pdf | mistrial9 wrote: | that would be from then-CEO Neal Patterson, from | Wikipedia : | | Patterson is infamous for an email[7] scolding managers | for not coming to work before 8 am and leaving before 5 | pm, now a prominent example used when discussing email | netiquette. On the day that the email was posted to | Yahoo!, the company's market cap fell by over 22%[8] from | a high of US$1.5 billion.[9] | | [7] "BBC News - AMERICAS - Boss's e-mail bites back". | BBC. Archived from the original on February 8, 2009. | | [8] .. | | [9] Flynn, Nancy; Kahn, Randolph (2003). E-mail Rules: A | Business Guide to Managing Policies, Security, and Legal | Issues for E-mail and Digital Communication. AMACOM Div | American Mgmt Assn. p. 45. ISBN 9780814471883. | netiquette. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neal_Patterson | xf1cf wrote: | This is highly sector dependent. I've worked at startups | for almost my entire career and a big peak of leaving | engineers at 2-3 years wouldn't even cause me any | concern. In the 10 years in industry I've worked I'd | argue the average engineer leaves around the 5 year mark. | This typically coincides with a failed seed round or | reaching a terminal title (senior, staff, etc) and not | being able to go further. | | The fresh grads case is a good point. The one company I | left fairly quickly was almost entirely powered by | intern/junior labor. Seniors left quickly due to a | combination of bad management, low advancement | opportunities, and constantly having to re-train people. | This, I think, is worth looking out for. | hinkley wrote: | If they are specifically recruiting people from out of | town, they are most likely doing so to get away from the | existing whisper network. | | That is one thing we are going to be writing extensively | about regarding remote jobs in the coming years. | scrose wrote: | For small companies, I feel like checking out how many | people used to work there(and when they left) on LinkedIn | vs. how old the company is works as a really great metric. | If you're looking at a 100 person company that appears to | have more former engineers than a 500 person company in the | same timeframe... we'll just leave it at that. | zuppy wrote: | i would ask what is their opinion regarding overtime. it's | a good measure of toxicity if overtime is expected | (excluding emergencies), whether it is paid or not. | nzmsv wrote: | Every one of your interviewers says they have great work | life balance while looking like an extra from a zombie | movie. Dark circles around the eyes, bags underneath. | myth_drannon wrote: | I find that Blind discussions are pretty representative, | but it's mostly abour larger companies. For every Amazon | there are hundreds of smaller companies. | steveBK123 wrote: | One is how much they expose you to the team you will join / | consistency of information about the size / location / | roles within the team during the interview process. | | I once joined a team that had 40% sustained turnover for | the 5 years I stayed on. I only stayed because they | basically golden handcuffed me. | | Despite interviewing with 6-7 different individuals 1-on-1, | only 2 of them were actually future team mates. | | By the time I joined, I discovered that on my team of 5: - | manager had joined weeks before interviewing me, replacing | the long time team lead who had been fired - 2 guys were | being fired & I was to take on their responsibilities along | with the other guy they just hired (who was a flake, so I | took on 2 jobs within 3 months) - I was the first person to | sit in-office, the rest were remote, this meant a | disproportionate support burden went to me immediately | despite being new and not knowing the platform | | It was also the first place I ever worked where it was | normal for people to get fired in their first year. Not | sure how you ask about that in an interview though, lol. | bostik wrote: | > _It was also the first place I ever worked where it was | normal for people to get fired in their first year. Not | sure how you ask about that in an interview though, lol._ | | There is a way, actually. | | One of the things you want to ask when joining a non-tiny | company is about the overall retention figures. | Average/median tenure is a good start, especially coupled | with a question on what the company does with their exit | interview data. You could also ask for a rough bucketing | on the tenure: how many people stay beyond 1y/3y/5y. | | It's going to be a rare company who can (or will) share | even semi-accurate figures, but you should be able to get | a decent grip on the fractions. Also, if those in the | company who are supposed to know this are evasive about | the question, that's a red flag all on its own right. | rustoo wrote: | I hope all people start asking such questions. It will | bring more accountability and will make it difficult for | toxic companies to hide their issues. | | Maybe candidates can start asking for a company's | "resume"? | AlexCoventry wrote: | > _Companies that use the: recruit a lot of people, burn out | most, rinse and repeat strategy are fairly easy to identify._ | | How? | w0mbat wrote: | Easy to indentify because it's all of them. Not everyone | burns out at every company and some people really do switch | for a better opportunity, but burnout is very common and is | everywhere. | hinkley wrote: | I was working at such a place when the 2008 recession | happened. That was brutal. I still have health issues from | that experience. | | The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Your plans to | get out quick may run into economic epicycles and then your | clever plan ain't so clever. | 0x4a42 wrote: | I had a similar experience at the same time. | ardit33 wrote: | Yup.... for me it was Amazon. And I was in H-1B back then, | so I just put it up with it for a while, until the economy | improved. The company had such a weird culture. It was | pretty stressful. | | The most insidious thing they did was delay the green card | application as much as they could, and just drag things out | on purpose. Since I am Albanian/European, I could get it | faster as my country is not on the per country cap that | Indian and Chinese applicants are. They knew it, as they | kept dragging out the first stages of the applications on | everything. It was mental abuse. | | By 2011, the economy was recovering, and I did switch, but | I had to redo all the green card application stuff again. | mavelikara wrote: | Not many realize this, but having the green card process | drag out long has a detrimental effect on the whole job | market, not just for the specific immigrant. | ardit33 wrote: | Yes, It creates serfs/indentured servitude. Both the H1B | visa and GC application should belong to the | worker/applicant, with conditions (as long as they are | employed with the given salary, pay taxes, etc...). | | The employee should just be able to do the process | themselves, and handle it the papers with their own | lawyer. | | It is clear that the H1B is setup to maximize the | benefits to large corps, and not necessary the american | economy/people. | rhexs wrote: | It'd be nice if there existed any forum that collected | these anecdotes. Glassdoor is heavily censored, teamblind | requires tying your identity to the account, etc. Lots of | toxic workplaces exist and remain unknown outside of rare | Twitter threads. | georgeecollins wrote: | There is a lot of reporting about companies in two areas I am | familiar with: video games and entertainment. Both industries | are aware that there are a lot of young people really | desperate to break into them. Not all companies take | advantage of that, but many do. | | Some game companies that have only really young workers below | senior management and explain this by saying older people | don't get what they are doing. They say it quietly, and | indirectly because it opens them up to discrimination | lawsuits. But what it really means is experienced people | aren't putting up with something about the company.. the | hours, the management, something. And unfortunately this does | not really seem to be an impediment to their success. | StandardFuture wrote: | But, we as a community should get better at calling these | companies out _publicly_. Especially if they show up in a | comment on the monthly hiring post. Don 't let your fellow | engineers get burnt. More community cooperation in this | regard would go a long way. | Retric wrote: | You don't need to go public, companies that relying on | burning people out simply deserve zero respect from their | employees. | | Remember as critical as everything seems it's no longer | your problem once you move on. Sure, moving on to your next | job might seem to be leaving them in a lurch, but lack of | redundancy isn't your problem. | | PS: The best thing you can do for your teammates in that | situation is convince them to find a better job. | xf1cf wrote: | Cancel culture doesn't have to be used for everything (and | IMO should not be used for _anything_). Mob justice won't | fix the company, and if the company is big enough (perhaps | some SV companies who shall not be named), it won't have | any real effect. Burnout is often an acceptable "work | hazard" for the CV reputation gained. A good parallel to | this is finance where burnout is practically built into the | program. Medicine also crosses my mind when thinking of | fields where burning yourself out could, counter- | intuitively, be considered highly beneficial as a long term | play. | | Outlets for this already exist in the form of Glassdoor but | much like every other review service once it reaches scales | the usefulness of the reviews falls precipitously. | | You also open yourself up to libel claims. Assuming your | canceling actually works I would not be surprised if the | company spent significant effort to take you to court and | financially ruin you. Even more so if the accusations | aren't entirely true (perhaps it's just one division and | not the entire company). | | Instead, it's probably more useful to _train_ people to | notice these things and ascertain the risks. Burnout can | often be worth it if the net-gain-after-burnout improves | your prospects to advance in your field, confers a | pedigree, or any other number of small things. Returning to | the finance example this is certainly why people risk it. | At the end of the day, in the US at least, a little over | half of the states in the union are right-to-work. This is | the safety valve for companies who deliberately churn | employees - just leave. Ideally after you've already lined | up a new gig in your field. | eyelidlessness wrote: | I can attest to this from experience. What's shocking is that | I've even seen such a company deliberately ignore my mitigation | requests, only to fulfill them in my wake when I gave notice. | | And it's not as if my work wasn't valued, I had just been given | a rather significant raise a couple months earlier. As far as I | could tell, they were happy to throw money at extracting every | bit of value out of me until I was completely empty. | dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: | Having gone through two of these (one shorter and the recent one | much larger), I think the best thing anyone can do for themselves | is make a "break glass in case of burnout" plan where they save | up margin during the good times so that when the famine hits part | of the stress isn't the painted-in-corner feeling of "I need a | break but have no margin to take one" | | Ultimately the answer is always simple and involves protracted | rest - deload, de-stress as much as possible, and recover. 6 | months preferred, but 12 months for major crisis' is nice to have | in your back pocket. | hawk_ wrote: | somehow that's judged by paper pushers, bean counters and hr. | how do you answer questions on gaps in your CV? | dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: | Well, if you can avoid it, I wouldn't recommend full-on | unemployment unless the situation is really that bad. Work | provides an intrinsic sense of daily purpose and routine that | does help with psychological recovery, regardless of how one | feels about it in the middle of burnout. | | A part-time schedule could always be part of the burnout | plan. Or a planned sabbatical. Like I said, do the creative | thinking now so it's not when you're in the firefight. | tomjakubowski wrote: | You were working as an independent consultant. | ghaff wrote: | I'm not even sure you need to pretend you were working. | Especially mid-career, taking 6 to 12 months off to | consider your options, do some learning, etc. isn't | something I would think twice about as an employer. | mistrial9 wrote: | "gaps in your resume" is actively used to cover over-40 | hiring discrimination in tech jobs | instance wrote: | A very good point. Having the freedom to quit at any time | without completely jeopardizing one's finances is liberating. | ghaff wrote: | I was talking with a friend about this the other week. Fairly | close to retirement, I gather financially comfortable, and | they like where they are but they're also in sort of an | unusual position and have been through a couple of | organizational changes. | | I was struck when they told me they felt really liberated | because they could honestly tell managers when various | shuffling was going on that, if it made more sense for them | to go somewhere else, they were perfectly cool with that. | hermannj314 wrote: | As someone that has been unemployed for 6 months, dealing with | burnout, I was tremendously grateful that a younger me saved | and lived well below my means. | | I was mocked for going to a state school, mocked for driving a | 10 year old car, mocked for living in a cheaper home and now | told I am lucky and privileged to be able to take time off to | deal with burnout. Ok. Sure. | | No matter how you live or what you think, half the internet | hates you. | | Months of meditation helped me realize I can be happyand avoid | stress by not caring so much about other people's opinions of | how my life is wrong. | lowercased wrote: | Was just told the other day I should get a better car. I | 'deserve' it, as my Ford Focus... "that's a car for college | kids... you deserve better". (I'm mid 40s, fwiw). My wife and | I have lived _mostly_ at or below our means for a while now. | Years ago I got in to some bad debt and it took years to work | out of. Kept working out of it, and now have... a lot | (relatively speaking). | | I'm burned out, and I need some time 'off'. My wife injured | herself about 18 months ago and can't work anymore (well, | nowhere near what she could, so she's effectively 'retired' | at this point). I feel like I can't really be 'off', but | realistically speaking, we have... probably 2-3 years of | 'runway' of regular monthly expenses available, plus | moderately adequate savings. This _shouldn 't_ be a problem. | Forcing myself to do it is the problem. | | But yeah, I have got the joking/mocking (good natured, | usually), but the savings are real. I actually feel guilty at | this point that I _could_ just take off some months and coast | (even though I don 't) because I know there's people that | can't. And I used to be one of them. It's hard to adjust to | 'enough' when you spent a long time without enough. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-06-12 23:00 UTC)