I originally posted this post on my blog a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
In 2023, I burned out.
I checked all the boxes for the first time. The burnout boxes. It wasn't a good thing. And it took me almost an entire year to recover.
I know I'm not the only one, of course. It's all over the tech industry.
In recent weeks, I've been exchanging emails with another senior software engineer who went through a burnout season. His take? The tech industry is unsustainable.
These days, I've also been chatting with a group of colleagues and friends. Most of them claimed to experience some sort of boredom at their jobs. OK, boredom isn't burnout, but it's a warning sign.
We're privileged to work in the tech industry. But, it has its own challenges:
YMMV, of course
- We work long hours.
- Coding is mentally exhausting.
- AI threatens us to take our jobs.
- Layoffs are always around the corner.
- Agile and SCRUM take control away from us and trap us in "ceremonies."
- We're problem solvers at heart, but often we don't get to solve problems.
- We're expected to code after hours just to prove we're "passionate." Side projects and open source contributions.
- We have high standards for quality and development practices. But stakeholders' expectations don't align ours. They care about different things.
The toll? Our mental health. Burnout.
The solution? I don't have one. Sorry!
My best idea?
- Detach our sense of meaning from our jobs
- Recognize there's nothing wrong with coding just to pay the bills
- Set boundaries between work and non-work
- Diversify our sources of joy
Do you think burnout is inevitable in tech? Are you actively doing something to prevent burnout? If you have faced burnout, how did it get over it? Let me know in the the comments.
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Top comments (5)
Thank you for sharing such an honest take on burnout! this really resonates. Setting boundaries and detaching self-worth from work feels key, but it’s easier said than done. Would love to hear what small daily habits have helped others prevent burnout or recover faster.
I think you need to find the right company to work for.
I believe a burn out is as much of a you problem than a company problem.
Lets go over the challenges you mentioned
We work long hours
Do you work long hours because you feel the pressure to do that? I think that is a company problem.
A good company should know we work best when we are well rested. Ten, twelve hour days of thinking leads to exhaustion, we are not machines.
Coding is mentally exhausting
I think it are more the long hour that make coding exhausting.
If you think coding in general is exhausting, maybe you want to do too much at once?
AI threatens us to take our jobs
If you believe the hype AI threatens to take almost all the jobs.
When a company make you afraid of AI, they just want you to work for less money. It is just a scare tactic and a sign the management doesn't care about their people.
A good company will let you experiment with it and lets you access what the usefulness of AI is in your current process.
Layoffs are always around the corner
If layoffs are a frequent thing in the company, to me that is not a good sign about the companies' health.
Of course there are many factors that makes a company change its path.
I think getting fired is more about your image in the company than a personal failure.
Agile and SCRUM take control away from us
If a team/group agrees it is not the best way of working, they should be able to find the best method.
we don't get to solve problems
I think this depends mostly on you skill level. When you solved problems in the past people will let you take on bigger and bigger problems.
I think talking to the client is not always necessary. If you have a project manager that knows enough about the problem space they can translate customers requests. Sometimes customer requests can be vague, and then you need the people skill to come to the essential problem or feature request.
A good project manager knows when they need help from developers.
We're expected to code after hours
I think what is expected is willing to keep on learning. If you keep using old knowledge it will become obsolete.
Open source contributions can help you to get a job and show how you are working and thinking. But I think it is not requirement.
They care about different things
I think it is normal people have a different perspective.
I think the iron triangle is a good way to show how different forces create different consequences.
As developers I think we have to be flexible as well, not everything need to be in the highest standard. If people need something fast you look for the solution you feel comfortable with to make public.
I think high code quality has more to do with the maintainability of the code than the method of coding that is popular at the moment.
I think the ideas you have are mostly about balance. It is the balancing that is the hardest part.
For some the balancing line is higher than for others. it depends on how well you are supported when you fall off. I think other people make you more resilient when you fail. And we all fail.
There are other times when you need to pick yourself up. And from what I learned is that is starts with little things.
Great take on choosing the right place to work. It definitely makes a difference being in the right place, doing something we truly care about. Thanks for your detailed answer, you should make it a separate post.
I always try to find something in my work that excites me; something unexplored that could spark my interest. When I do, I enjoy tackling it, and this helps me avoid burnout. I focus on the aspects of the task where I can apply more creativity and learn something new.
100% Learning new things helps to keep the spark alive.
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