[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.
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