[HN Gopher] Burn-out, daunting work, overstretched, and it's jus...
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Burn-out, daunting work, overstretched, and it's just too much
Author : mathgladiator
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-01-18 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.adama-platform.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.adama-platform.com)
| revskill wrote:
| I only register for some new service only if it shows runnable
| code directly from homgepage. Sorry this is not for me.
|
| But thanks for sharing the experience.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| The problem with modern work and the associated burnout is that
| it's so monoculture. This is fundamentally at odds with the
| natural human experience.
|
| Work is typically performed to achieve some end result. Either an
| outcome or a material gain.
|
| Until relatively recently in human existence the work performed
| to derive the output was varied and specific to the desired
| outcome.
|
| For example: I want to eat carrots. I plant carrots. I want a
| shes. I build a shed. etc.
|
| Now all work passes through the same point. Perform professional
| duties. Collect money. Buy outcome.
|
| I get that it's not efficient to do many of these things but from
| a human fulfillment perspective there's a lot to be gained by
| doing them yourself.
|
| The Task: "Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all
| its flavor."
|
| ~ William Cowper
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm starting to think that we, as humans, are collectively brute
| forcing the world around us. Each of us has the things we see in
| front of us, the things we think are important, and if they turn
| out to really be important the solutions we come up with spread.
|
| Because each of us has different experiences and perspective, we
| all explore a different part of the solution space. Of course we
| think what we're doing is important, that's why we do it.
|
| The big problem is that we all deserve to live a good life, even
| if only some of us are lucky enough to find these difficult to
| find solutions.
| lp4vn wrote:
| >The big problem is that we all deserve to live a good life,
| even if only some of us are lucky enough to find these
| difficult to find solutions.
|
| Unfortunately this world you talk about doesn't exist anymore.
|
| Now we live in the world where "it is possible to commit no
| mistakes and still lose".
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose".
|
| I've long liked this Picard quote, even though it can be
| equally discouraging as it can be encouraging, depending on
| how it's taken.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We should make fixing that a priority.
| DMell wrote:
| Out of genuine curiosity, what are some areas you think
| could be improved do you have any examples of people /
| teams working toward improving them?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Social safety nets primarily, along with effective
| delivery of government and social services, universally
| available. Vote and or run for office, it's mostly what
| will move the needle. You will never get more leverage as
| an average citizen, and the odds are you will never be
| wealthy enough to get this leverage with fiat (wealth is
| a function of opportunity and history, startup failure
| odds, etc).
|
| Social Security keeps almost 22.5 million people out of
| poverty, for example [1]. Minimum wage increases helps
| millions of workers at a time.
|
| Startups are great to get rich and cash out, but not for
| the improvements we're discussing at scale. Arguably,
| most startups have made things net worse (the gig
| economy, real estate price inflation, gambling on digital
| tokens, etc).
|
| I'm tangentially fond of several parts of government
| including functions like the US Digital Service; maybe
| start there if you're a technologist. Less policy and
| politicking, more code, but you're still getting to wield
| the resources government has to offer.
|
| [1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-
| securit...
| luckylion wrote:
| I disagree. A small subset of us sees things around them and
| says "I'll come up with a solution for that". Some of them work
| on problems that aren't really problems for most of us. Others
| work on problems everybody would love a solution for and fail.
| Neither of them are likely to not have a good life, because we
| extremely reward the successful search, but we also reward the
| search if it wasn't successful. Founders who ran companies
| don't transition to the gutter when they fail, they transition
| to a senior project management role where their skills are
| useful.
|
| We don't reward hedonism, not even trying to solve any problem
| and avoiding the search for solutions. I haven't heard an
| argument why we should, why individuals not trying to
| contribute at all is desirable to a society.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Of course we think what we 're doing is important, that's
| why we do it._
|
| We think it is important... or we think it is fun? I expect a
| lot of us are, for example, guilty for diving in and creating
| software (or whatever your craft is) that we think others will
| like/pay for, but don't actually ever stop to talk to people to
| see if that's the case because collecting data isn't nearly as
| enjoyable. Maybe you will get lucky and there will be
| interested parties aligning around your random guess. But more
| likely nobody will care and you'll go back to the drawing board
| to commit the same mistake again and again.
| fsociety wrote:
| 100%, your comment puts it in really nice words. Plus, the
| requirements for a good life are so low compared to the
| lifestyles which the rich lead. It is frustrating that we
| haven't got there as a society yet.
|
| Imagine a world where you could YOLO into a Ph. D research
| position, and if you burnt out be able to have a bed, food,
| clean water and access to medical care. It's not much but seems
| utopian compared to the world today.
| weakfortress wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| reducesuffering wrote:
| That world does sound nice, but will it work if the same
| applies to every doctor, farmer, and construction worker?
| Everything you want provided while your burnt out is because
| someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for decades.
| mxkopy wrote:
| Tragic few are waking up at 7am to provide clean beds, food
| and water. And if they were able to use that system,
| there's incentive to maintain it. I feel like so many
| people who work fast food do so because it literally
| provides them with food.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Everything you want provided while your burnt out is
| because someone else is getting up at 7am everyday for
| decades."
|
| That is a hypothesis.
|
| So sure, someone needs to get up, so the hot water comes
| out of the wall, but it is not at all clear that it needs
| to be always the same guy grinding, while next door someone
| else is dying of boredom and watching netflix until he
| passes out. Give him a real chance to qualify and maybe he
| will be happy to do useful work. Remove the whip of
| existential threat and maybe he get up on his own again,
| because he wants to and not because he must.
|
| Also there is so much energy spend on fighting for basic
| ressources, or fighting regulations, or other arbitary
| constraints, that in theory we could reduce the work needed
| by a lot.
|
| But of course the question is - will society work at all,
| with the basic competition removed? Will it make population
| explode, until there are literally no ressources left to
| share? We don't know, but I am open to try out more
| experiments in that regard.
| fdgsdfogijq wrote:
| I just took three weeks off and sat in my apartment. I was
| borderline close to quitting my job due to some sort of burn out.
| Prior to my vacation I had a discussion with my manager about
| what was causing me frustration. She took steps to fix and
| restructure my work to relieve stress. For instance, a more
| senior engineer was micromanaging me and it wasnt adding any
| value at all. She stopped him from doing that.
|
| I came back from work and now I actually feel great.
|
| But I literally did nothing on that time off. I just watched TV,
| hit the gym, slept.
|
| You can recover/avoid from burnout if people at your job are
| willing to work with you to change the situation. The big issue
| is most people in a work relationship are not even capable of
| changing work patterns. They dont have the management skill to do
| it, and will have the conversation, but continue down the same
| path. Thats when you leave.
| luckylion wrote:
| And it's important to do what you did: talk to someone about it
| that can do something about it. I have a friend who'll complain
| to me, not to the people he works with & for. He's too shy for
| that and rationalizes it as "they wouldn't understand/wouldn't
| want to change anything/couldn't even change" and suffers while
| the people who define the processes he suffers from don't know.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Burn out not usually presents with the full "i cant work anymore"
| symptoms from the onset. It usually starts with a "i cant take
| this main projects stress" anymore. Better switch to a side-
| project that is not so stressful. Something small.
|
| A website. A framework. A library.
|
| Something to feel the magic again, of creating, without getting
| crushed alive.
| zomglings wrote:
| Your last sentence is poetry. Melancholic, beautiful poetry.
| firebaze wrote:
| If you consider this being poetry, you're on the way to burn-
| out in my eyes. Try to avoid to expect "feeling magic" in a
| job altogether - if it is there it's a dream job, if not,
| it's just a job and you should look for the next gig as you
| go.
|
| Don't invest that much emotion in a job to feel the absence
| of magic. It won't be there by default.
| cpsns wrote:
| > Burn out not usually presents with the full "i cant work
| anymore" symptoms from the onset.
|
| This is true, but many don't actually recognize it until that
| point if they've never dealt with it. I sure didn't, but here I
| am, horrifically burnt out.
|
| It took me a very bad mental health episode to realize what was
| occurring and I'm no closer to actually recovering seven months
| later.
| boredemployee wrote:
| I completely agree. Problem is, I get so tired after work that
| my "intelectual energy" goes below zero.
|
| I think it's urgent to change the working hours model. I want
| to engage with my kids while they care, I want to enjoy my
| mom's health while she is alive, and I don't want to wait for
| my vacations to only then do that.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> I want to engage with my kids while they care_
|
| Interestingly, some of my fondest memories are a kid were
| going to work with my parents.
|
| This newfound fascination with steering completely clear of
| work until one is deep into their 20s is a big problem here.
| Not only does it result in things like the parental
| separation you allude to, it also means that the child isn't
| making money during their most important earning years,
| requiring even harder work and less play later in life to try
| and catch up.
|
| And for what? More time at the babysitters? That does not
| seem like a win. It seems quite silly, really.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Work takes my drive to do anything after work and just
| crushes it. I understand that I should get up after work and
| play with my kids or do something but I am almost unable to.
| I want to I just cant. I just sit mindlessly staring at the
| screen. I envy people that have a job that doesn't drain them
| of everything. I watch the guys on the garbage truck with
| jealousy.
| kneebonian wrote:
| Honestly one of the best days of work I felt was after I
| spent a day helping a guy in my church lay new sidewalk in
| front of his house, it was hard labor for like 5 hours, and
| afterwards I walked home and felt so exhausted, but I also
| felt complete, like I did something good.
|
| It's the damn golden handcuffs man.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| It's sitting staring at a screen... all day, every day.
|
| Like you, I know for a fact I'm not lazy. Not at all. I
| _love_ working and dive into it enthusiastically. This is
| a consistent and effortless experience of mine,
| throughout my life. It 's natural and rewarding to work
| hard.
|
| What makes me _seem_ lazy a lot of the time is that most
| jobs are just a few types of activity, focusing on just
| one or two major ends at a time, repeated over and
| fucking over for 40 hours week after week. Programming 's
| fun, but it's not 40-hours-a-week-every-week-for-all-the-
| best-hours-of-5/7-days fun. Not one year after another
| after another. I fucking dread it and, sure, I slack off.
| Because it's _literally_ an in-human thing to ask of
| people.
|
| But, economics. So, we optimize. And here we are. Hooray.
|
| [EDIT] Like, truly, most things I do _specifically for
| pleasure_ stop being enjoyable well before the 40-hours-
| a-week mark. A particular kind of work might be outright
| fun, maybe even for 40 hours in a week, hell, maybe for
| 80 hours in a week, but by the second or third 40-hour
| week it 's probably gonna be something I would much
| rather stop doing in favor of something else--even other
| work, ideally as different from what I've been doing as
| possible (been programming three weeks straight, need a
| break; got any firewood that needs splitting or square
| bales that need gathering?).
| wonderwonder wrote:
| And the endless context switching. I just can't get
| people to leave me alone long enough to get anything
| done. Constant requests from people above me and below me
| and no resources to get anything finished. It's
| exhausting and it all takes place on a stupid monitor in
| my office at home. I've never even met the people I've
| worked with for the last 3 years. I live at work and it
| bleeds into everything.
| [deleted]
| b1gnasty wrote:
| The author is yak shaving to the extreme, leading to burnout.
|
| I don't see how any of the projects on this list are requirements
| for building an online board game.
| yboris wrote:
| Many of us _need_ a _4DWW_ - _Four Day Work Week_.
|
| I am consistently frustrated that I don't have enough energy
| after work to spend time on my personal projects, so I wait for
| the weekend, at which point I just want to rest. Two-day weekends
| are not enough to balance life and work!
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The author lists an incredible 17 different projects they're
| trying to build or maintain at the same time. This ranges from a
| new cloud platform company to a game runtime to a custom IDE and
| more.
|
| This isn't just about burnout, it's about spreading yourself too
| thin.
|
| This reminds me of a lot of the enthusiastic juniors I interview
| who want to tell me about their 10 different side projects, none
| of which got further than a quick proof of concept before they
| moved on to the next thing. If you hire them, guess what you're
| going to get? Someone who wants to build proof of concept work
| and then move on to the next thing as soon as it gets boring. The
| rest of the team doesn't want to spend their careers picking up
| the pieces after someone did the fun part and got bored.
|
| Personally, if I'm reading an official company blog where the
| author is bragging about working on over a dozen different large
| projects simultaneously, I have zero interest in adopting the
| platform. It's almost guaranteed to be abandoned for the next fun
| idea, with features left unfinished. When I click on the
| "Pricing" page I'm given a placeholder that says it's free until
| the author gets around to building to billing part of the
| company.
|
| I know the author wants to position themself as a "monastic code
| machine", but I think the biggest thing missing from this
| person's life is some diversity of activities. My recommendation:
| Put all but one of the projects on a clear, definitive pause.
| Focus on the business first. Then use your free time to get out,
| try new activities, and meet new people.
|
| So many of the burnout stories I read online start with people
| who code all day at work and then come home and try to code all
| evening on side projects. That can be fun for a while, but if
| that's the entirety of your life you're going to burn out
| eventually. Get outside and do something else. You'll be more
| refreshed when you come back to these projects.
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(page generated 2023-01-18 23:00 UTC)