I've been working professionally in IT for about 6 years now and the concept of 'working too little' has never come up from any of my managers. I have a strict personal policy of working the exact amount of hours discussed upon hiring, and never responding to calls or email outside of those hours. For example I worked at a Fortune 50 with a 37.5 hour workweek and always stuck to that. I even counted the time I spent at lunch. Issue never raised.
I am not saying cases exist where workers are asked to work more than their agreed hours. I killed myself in kitchens for a $25k salary before switching to tech. These cases are a problem.
My point is that this behavior is often self-imposed. People seem to feel a sense of importance when they overwork themselves. Simply stick to the number of hours you've agreed upon and tell your manager to discuss with their supervisor if they bring it up as a disciplinary issue. This all qualified by being in a position of demand as an engineer.
Point is, you'd be surprised with what you can 'get away with.'
For me it's not time per week worked that wears, but vacation time. Scheduling your life around the 2 or 3 weeks that US employers give is madness. When you do take the vacation, you're expected to be reachable by email.
But if you ask for more vacation when you're hired, you're told you're not high enough on some invisible seniority list despite all your previous years of experience working other places.
From what I've seen, its more of a culture thing than anything. I've never been explicitly told I'm not working enough, or that I need to work late, or anything like that. You just see your coworkers answering emails at all hours of the night, and working late, and in a constant state of crunch mode. A lot of this even seems self imposed, some people seem to get a thrill out of it, and seemingly brag about how much work their doing, or how late they work. Then they get additional praise for putting in the work. It's easy to get dragged in to this too. There's a sense of guilt that comes when you're only working your 40 hour week and everyone else around you is putting in 60 hour weeks constantly. You start to feel as if you can alleviate their suffering if you only put in an extra five or ten hours.
I don't think it is a matter of getting away. I can not be productive (truly productive) for more than 4 hours a day. The rest is just overhead my employer pays to keep me on hand.
I guess in theory they could just pay me for those 4 hours as much as they'd pay me for the 8 hours but that's way too much sense for most folks.
Couldn't agree more. At the beginning of my career, I used to do unpaid overtime because everyone did it, but that stopped after a year when I realized that I didn't have to do it in order to deliver my projects. It may have limited my growth at that company, but changing company every few years is a much better career plan salary-wise, at least until you get to a more senior position.
I have had startups expect more then the typical 40 hours a week, and yep, I burned out pretty fast. But that's an easy filter: don't work at an early stage startup.
Otherwise, it's amazing how little managers actually pay attention to their workers. You're right: you can totally get away with setting strict boundaries in most places, just set the tone early and be consistent and professional.
How has your career progress been in terms of promotions / raises? At my last job I was directly told that part of why my bonus amount was lowered was my attempt to self-limit my hours (which is a good part of why I left right after that review). They weren't thinking about it as a disciplinary issue, but it was clear that all the people who were doing well at the company were those who put in long hours, even if those hours didn't involve working.
I respond after hours but that's only because we're a small outfit and it's just me and one other guy on-call. We cover each other as needed, and generally we only really "work" outside hours if something really goes to pot and needs intervention, otherwise it waits until business hours.
In the three years I've been here, I can count on one hand how many times I've actually needed to work off the clock, and our boss does appreciate the effort in direct financial ways.
Simply stick to the number of hours you've agreed upon
From my limited experience, the employment contracts for us salaried people state quite clearly that availability outside of the "office hours" is to be expected in the vague but neverending "emergencies", "company deadlines", "business needs", "results-oriented tasks", etc.
What you're describing - for salaried employees - exists only in government as far as I've seen.
>Point is, you'd be surprised with what you can 'get away with.'
Two problems with that.
1. You get away with x until you can't. Lots of people don't have easy lateral moves to other companies like techies do, so being told to stay late isn't anything they can fight.
2. Advancement is still a thing. If you're the guy clocking out at 4:30 but everyone else stays until 6, your boss will notice and that might hurt your chances of advancement regardless of how "good" you think your work is. Those guys staying to 6 are playing the long game to be noticed and get promoted and a raise. Sure maybe at age 25, making low-end money is great, then you want a kid and a decent home and now you're wondering why you can't get promoted.
>People seem to feel a sense of importance when they overwork themselves.
This goes against everything I've seen. People act a certain way because they feel presured to. Everyone is busy with their self-interest. We don't want to stay late or remote in at night. We do that because we more or less have to.
As someone who has worked in both hardcore and lax environments, I can guarantee you none of this is optional in a former. Getting into a latter took me 10 years. Good jobs where you're seen as a professional with a life outside work are sadly lacking.
All depends on the leadership. In some places, working 9-5 won't get you in trouble, but if you're not around to kibbitz with the management at 6, you're not going anywhere.
> I've been working professionally in IT for about 6 years now and the concept of 'working too little' has never come up from any of my managers
It wouldn't come back to you that directly. Sure, people don't get fired for doing the bare minimum. It takes the form of other people seeming more engaged with their jobs than you do, and the consequences you'd expect. There's a middle ground where you don't sacrifice quality of life but don't do the bare minimum.
Just this last week my boss strongly suggested I should stay far past forty because it'd look bad if only one team was going home on time. I've had several jobs where it was strongly implied I could work unpaid overtime or never get promoted.
I cannot put the blame on workers who have the fear of God put in them that, if they don't kill themselves for their job, they won't be able to provide for their families. This is a management failure, full stop.
I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness. Work, like God, is dead. Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off, and people pretty much realize that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.
> Even for tech workers, the novelty has worn off,
Watching most of what you build—which often wasn't exciting or very important-seeming to begin with—be discarded in short order, having benefitted few (i.e. not enough to justify the effort) or no people, after all kinds of false or semi-real urgency to get it done, year after year after year, will do that. It's a testament to how much money is sloshing around that we get paid so much to spend huge amounts of time building soon-to-be digital garbage, I guess.
It feels like there's an exceptionally stupid monkey smashing shapes against one of those children's shape-in-the-correct-hole puzzles, but larger, extending forever into the distance, trying to get some of them to fit, which they mostly don't because the monkey's so damn stupid. And we're the shapes.
I can't speak for everyone, but as someone who has definitely burned out several times, for me it's never the work - it's always the workplace. After going through the whole process a few times, I've come to the conclusion that my own burnout is mostly attributable to the following factors:
* Lack of voice in the direction of the company.
* No personal investment in the success of the company.
People respond to incentives. If someone has no say in where the company is going and doesn't share in the companies successes (or failures), it's only a matter of time before any rational individual is going to just stop caring.
the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.
Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire.
Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this.
What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.
Unless you're born with all the resources you'll ever need, you have to put in one kind of effort or another to secure them. Work never had to have meaning beyond being a way to stay alive. One just needed to accept that life wasn't going to be all leisure.
I have a pretty comfortable job/career. I have a hard time saying I'm being exploited just because my work makes someone else richer to a greater extent than it makes me richer. It's engaging (enough) and I live well. I'm not putting my own resources at risk or making personal sacrifices. 20 years into my career and I've never burned out, probably because I never told myself I needed to, or was going to, change the world. And I made it my goal from the start to just find a job/life I was happy with.
Yeah I think I agree on the meaninglessness of work these days. And I don't mean that the individual task isn't perceptible as some part of a larger goal but I mean that much of the work I've done was utterly worthless or outright scrapped after the business decided it wanted to go the opposite direction. Not only is this frustrating from a personal point of view but it's also wasteful professionally. I'd rather have unpaid time off while the business finally figured out their strategy or goals for me before stepping into the office. At least then I would have time to do something else (paid or otherwise). Plus, it wouldn't be a waste of other resources such as purchasing licenses for third party software we'll never use in part or in whole or wages that could've been part of another budget for a viable product. All in all, it's this kind of wasteful nature that means the meaninglessness more painful to me since I can't point to a product or service with my fingerprints on it. I can't say "I helped make that possible" or "I helped that company add value to their client's experience."
It's a shame that as a society we have so many of our brightest minds devoted to relatively meaningless work when they could be working on things that they not only want to work on, but are better for humanity.
I don't have trouble focusing on my work when I'm in a good company. The problem is that if I take a look at the grand scheme of things and think about the that I'm devoting the majority of my waking hours to coding apps that would get done regardless of whether or not I existed (this space is largely zero sum in that there are more than enough developers to go around), it's kind of depressing. I'd rather be devoting my life to solving the meaningful problems in the world that not enough people are working on (eg. like what Elon Musk is doing).
On another note, it surprises me that long breaks from work (eg. sabbaticals) aren't more common. Doing the same thing every weekday gets repetitive and draining.
Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game.
>that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.
The core feature of my job is to make money for me, and the guys above me doing better don't diminish from my salary. The same way my salary isn't diminishing from the guys below me. We tried forced equality recently in human history and it didn't work, so here we are doing the only thing that does. I think if you just see employment as this bitter zero-sum game you're destined to be unhappy. I'm not happy with work, nor unhappy. I understand what it is, its a compromise like much of life. I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west.
Perhaps your life lacks moderation, chance taking, and criticism of what you've been taught by authorities who don't deserve your trust because they're just winging it with desperation just like you. Maybe your attitude is the sum total of decades of the blind leading the blind in our culture. Having a 'I might as well kill myself because everything is so meaningless' attitude is absolutely not normal regardless of how hard you try to normalize it.
> I wouldn't doubt overwork as a factor, but the elephant in the room is meaninglessness... people pretty much realize that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation...Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature.
Oh god, if you're feeling theatrically unhappy with your job, it's seriously time to make a move.
The core feature of my team is making something we think is awesome and missing from the world, where my role as the head of the startup is to do what needs to get done and make sure my team feels like their work and lives are fulfilling. If any member on my team felt like their work is meaningless or a source of emotional pain, I would not be able to sleep at night.
Fulfilling other's people dreams is not meaninless. We all should be slaves of wishes of others. It is called contribution and serving needs of other poeople
While companies should definitely be doing something about this, at the end of the day it is our responsibility to look after ourselves. Too many people tolerate this type of treatment out of fear. I understand that this is easier said than done, but I do not think the situation will change much unless people start standing up for themselves.
Remember the number 1 regret Bronnie Ware observed while caring for people in the last 12 weeks of their lives: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
Some of the best life advice I got from my Grandmother:
You are always working for yourself. You may have an employer, but you are still working for yourself, not them. You're trading your time for money, like any other business. If you don't like the deal, then walk away.
None of this is surprising if three elements are considered:
1. Productivity has soared
2. Wages have stagnated / wealth gap has widened significantly
3. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "Let the Boomers Retire, we have a Hiring Freeze"
There are too few people doing the work of too many, which chokes the upward mobility of the youth, increases the wealth gap between Working and Investing class citizens, and essentially is masochism in the "modern era" of US Consumerism as an economic engine.
Don't believe me? Do some math on stock buybacks 2015-2016 versus publicly announced hirings and layoffs. You'd be surprised how easily this amounts to justification for putting Greenspan and Bernanke in jail. Those guys stole from tens of millions of Americans to benefit a few hundred.
Only #2 is affected by the Fed/QE, points 1 and 3 would still be true. And look at Europe for an example for what would have happened without our Fed's intervention.
The ECB did too little too late and this led to massive youth unemployment; on the other hand our unemployment rate is nearing historical lows.
Not being able to get a job (which happened to a lot of grads in 2008) is devastating to people's careers. The employment rate matters!
First, the unemployment rate numbers are fudged by UNDERemployment, especially by millennials. It's a BS statistic and more people need to realize this.
Moving on, I'm a millennial that doesn't work as an engineer/developer/programmer/etc. I make less than $100,000 and I live in a major US city because that's where the jobs are.
As noted in the article, it really also comes down to wages just as--but perhaps more than--hours put in. But there's just so much more that is contributing to burnout and the inseparable turnover.
Rant incoming.
EVERY educated and skilled millennial I know like me (non-"STEM") is job hopping like crazy for that ever-so-slight raise and hope that the grass is greener on the other side. Our resumes are getting PACKED with 6-month and 1-year gigs.
Nearly every day on my LinkedIn feed I see someone leaving somewhere and getting a new job.
There are just so many things wrong with the workplace resulting in burnout and turnover today for millennials (humans):
- We're sick of being paid poorly; a dog-friendly office, free snacks, hip lighting in the lobby, standing desks, and free Friday lunch doesn't make up for poor pay
- We're often sick of overpaid-and-often-less-skilled supervisors above us and especially the even more bloated and overpaid management above them
- We're sick of positions where we have no opportunities for growth or development of skills or discovering something new
- We're sick of working with fellow millenials who give even less of a crap than us so they're just lazy and don't pull their weight until they find the next gig--and we often have to pull their weight for them
- We're sick of interviewing in-person and never hearing a word back from crap recruiting and human resources teams
- We're sick of being hired on as "freelancer" or "contract" employees so that we're denied benefits even though we dedicate 40+ hours per week to a company
Once I accumulated so much rollover vacation time I decided "I'm not working Fridays anymore" which lasted for many months. I found out later someone had complained to my manager about this, since I was unreachable. That same company had experimented with a 7:30 - 11:30 schedule on Fridays (7:30 - 5:30 Mon-Thurs) which was great: you'd miss heavy traffic coming in and get a head start on every weekend. But someone in the field complained about corporate being unreachable and they ended that too.... The problem is the "flexible thinking" people always come up against the "Bill Lumberghs" of the world and everyone is pulled down to the lowest common denominator.
I am getting paid to work 40 hours a week, and for the most part that's what I do.
I do respond to calls and mails outside of work hours, because we are a 1.5 person IT department, and when e.g. email does not work, it is kind of a big deal. But that does not happen very often. (I used to have that colleague who literally called me every day, even when I was on vacation and sick, but he quit; the guy who replaced him is great though.)
Once a month, servers need to be updated and rebooted, and I do that, too, but I don't mind. It is kind of soothing, in its own way. ;-)
I have no problem working long hours when it is necessary. It happens, even in the best of places; but in places where it is the rule, in my experience, it's because management is too cheap to spring for a decent IT department.
And having been through a case of burnout (which, IMHO, is just a euphemism for depression), you really can't afford the amount of money it would take to make me go through that again. Or maybe you can, but you don't want to. Either way, I am happy to make a modest living working reasonable hours. My boss seems to agree, so we're cool.
(Full Disclosure: I am living and working in Germany, in case it matters.)
I've suffered severe burnout so many times in my career, resulting in taking years off from work because I dreaded going back. I want to switch careers, but can't think of anything else I'm qualified for that I'd like to do, and it's really hard to switch careers when you're older. I envy people who can do what they love, or at least not hate, for a living.
If you are a skilled employee working in IT and you have experienced burn out, it is likely something you have done to yourself. Do some companies have ridiculously high expectations of their employees: yes. Do you have to live up to those expectations: no. As a skilled IT worker your knowledge and experience are valuable commodities that can presumably be sold elsewhere. The reason that managers can get away with having ridiculous expectations is because their employees let them. Capitalism rewards those who can wring out the most value for the least cost. Many people will take advantage of you if you simply let them.
> Companies need to do something about this burnout crisis now because otherwise, they will pay the high price of turnover.
No, because it's a tragedy of the commons. Companies who take on extra short term costs to deal with it will lose out to companies that don't; even if long-term, overall, it's a better outcome of companies do deal with it.
The existence of things like this is pretty much the reason for government.
If I didn't have to work for shelter and food, I'd be an artist. I'd be a photographer [0] and a podcaster [1]. I do both already, but I feel that I never have the time to do both thoroughly and as often as I would desire. I'd need some money for travel actually, so I could photograph and interview people who are interesting but do not live where I do.
Early in my career, my then really good manager taught me to say no, Which was initially difficult for me. But, I am really thankful for that lesson. Learning to stand your ground and say no to excess work is very important if you care about a life outside work.
People from India, like me, especially have a hard time saying NO to being assigned something that, either you have no time to work on or something you don't want to work on. It's a cultural thing combined with the golden leash of H1b visas.
I see a lot of my colleagues from India accepting more and more work and end up having almost no life outside of it.
One of the biggest things that kept me from burning out was realizing that companies (or branches of the service) are neither good nor evil, they're just big. As a result, they'll take whatever you offer and not blink an eye.
A lot of people in technology sector think that showing up and writing two lines of code is more than enough to deserve six figure salary now.
The same people will make a big deal about staying late or having to work on a weekend once in a while. The sense of entitlement is pretty mindblowing to me.
I was laid off new years. I've been doing development for 10 years and specializing in salesforce for 7 years. I haven't found the right position yet, but I know I've been burned out for a little bit now. I've been considering low-paying metal-working jobs, but the sad reality is unemployment pays more. Unemployment runs out in June. I'm kinda indifferent whether I find work. I've started the foreclosure process on my house. This may be the perfect time to just take some time and explore the US. So while I haven't found work yet, the work I have done has put me in the mentality that that's ok. Thanks for reading.
Companies lie about worker burnout so to not seem inhumane when they're well aware of the conditions they create. Short of a statutory or federal law, this isn't going to change. The fact that the salary loophole exists and we refuse to pay even hourly workers overtime if they make too much money (depending on the state and industry) doesn't bode well for our chances of fixing this. Do these same companies wonder why most of their employees are disengaged? Or is that still such a big "mystery" to their blind management?
A big problem today is that managers and executives are optimised for short-term gains at the expense of everything else (including long term outlook, ethics and even sanity).
People move up the ranks by making random, crazy one-off bets that turn out great in the short term. Nobody notices people who consistently make good long term bets.
This is compounded by the fact that people who have power these days tend to overlook failure and only consider good outcomes.
[+] [-] jressey|9 years ago|reply
I am not saying cases exist where workers are asked to work more than their agreed hours. I killed myself in kitchens for a $25k salary before switching to tech. These cases are a problem.
My point is that this behavior is often self-imposed. People seem to feel a sense of importance when they overwork themselves. Simply stick to the number of hours you've agreed upon and tell your manager to discuss with their supervisor if they bring it up as a disciplinary issue. This all qualified by being in a position of demand as an engineer.
Point is, you'd be surprised with what you can 'get away with.'
[+] [-] CoolGuySteve|9 years ago|reply
But if you ask for more vacation when you're hired, you're told you're not high enough on some invisible seniority list despite all your previous years of experience working other places.
[+] [-] lojack|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkarapetyan|9 years ago|reply
I guess in theory they could just pay me for those 4 hours as much as they'd pay me for the 8 hours but that's way too much sense for most folks.
[+] [-] hamstercat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr_tristan|9 years ago|reply
Otherwise, it's amazing how little managers actually pay attention to their workers. You're right: you can totally get away with setting strict boundaries in most places, just set the tone early and be consistent and professional.
[+] [-] geofft|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FussyZeus|9 years ago|reply
In the three years I've been here, I can count on one hand how many times I've actually needed to work off the clock, and our boss does appreciate the effort in direct financial ways.
[+] [-] lr4444lr|9 years ago|reply
From my limited experience, the employment contracts for us salaried people state quite clearly that availability outside of the "office hours" is to be expected in the vague but neverending "emergencies", "company deadlines", "business needs", "results-oriented tasks", etc.
What you're describing - for salaried employees - exists only in government as far as I've seen.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|9 years ago|reply
Two problems with that.
1. You get away with x until you can't. Lots of people don't have easy lateral moves to other companies like techies do, so being told to stay late isn't anything they can fight.
2. Advancement is still a thing. If you're the guy clocking out at 4:30 but everyone else stays until 6, your boss will notice and that might hurt your chances of advancement regardless of how "good" you think your work is. Those guys staying to 6 are playing the long game to be noticed and get promoted and a raise. Sure maybe at age 25, making low-end money is great, then you want a kid and a decent home and now you're wondering why you can't get promoted.
>People seem to feel a sense of importance when they overwork themselves.
This goes against everything I've seen. People act a certain way because they feel presured to. Everyone is busy with their self-interest. We don't want to stay late or remote in at night. We do that because we more or less have to.
As someone who has worked in both hardcore and lax environments, I can guarantee you none of this is optional in a former. Getting into a latter took me 10 years. Good jobs where you're seen as a professional with a life outside work are sadly lacking.
[+] [-] Spooky23|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] gdulli|9 years ago|reply
It wouldn't come back to you that directly. Sure, people don't get fired for doing the bare minimum. It takes the form of other people seeming more engaged with their jobs than you do, and the consequences you'd expect. There's a middle ground where you don't sacrifice quality of life but don't do the bare minimum.
[+] [-] thescribe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] st3v3r|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theothermkn|9 years ago|reply
Burnout, like all pain, may be a feature.
[+] [-] ashark|9 years ago|reply
Watching most of what you build—which often wasn't exciting or very important-seeming to begin with—be discarded in short order, having benefitted few (i.e. not enough to justify the effort) or no people, after all kinds of false or semi-real urgency to get it done, year after year after year, will do that. It's a testament to how much money is sloshing around that we get paid so much to spend huge amounts of time building soon-to-be digital garbage, I guess.
It feels like there's an exceptionally stupid monkey smashing shapes against one of those children's shape-in-the-correct-hole puzzles, but larger, extending forever into the distance, trying to get some of them to fit, which they mostly don't because the monkey's so damn stupid. And we're the shapes.
[+] [-] ryandvm|9 years ago|reply
* Lack of voice in the direction of the company.
* No personal investment in the success of the company.
People respond to incentives. If someone has no say in where the company is going and doesn't share in the companies successes (or failures), it's only a matter of time before any rational individual is going to just stop caring.
Fortunately, these problems have solutions. Several hundred year old solutions, no less: https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b...
[Disclaimer: That's my own blog post.]
[+] [-] kirse|9 years ago|reply
Ugh, I know, being "economically exploited" is so rough -- making six figs in a top-tier profession with low single-digit unemployment that provides for a home/apt, family, regular health insurance, a warm bed and heating for the winter, cooling for the summer, multiple cars and a motorcycle (and maybe even a home for those too), an entire closet full of clothes, multiple pairs of shoes, regular healthy meals, spontaneous travel and vacations, hobbies, movies, TV, games, and entertainment nearly to our hearts' desire.
Worse, at work I have to deal with shiny new gadgets, laptops, desktops, servers, giant monitors, a desk and chair to my liking, HVAC, plumbing, and free filtered water. And wait a second, did you say you get paid while taking a bathroom break!? Life really does suck being exploited like this.
What's dead is not God, nor work, and the elephant might just be painted on the mirror on your wall.
[+] [-] gdulli|9 years ago|reply
I have a pretty comfortable job/career. I have a hard time saying I'm being exploited just because my work makes someone else richer to a greater extent than it makes me richer. It's engaging (enough) and I live well. I'm not putting my own resources at risk or making personal sacrifices. 20 years into my career and I've never burned out, probably because I never told myself I needed to, or was going to, change the world. And I made it my goal from the start to just find a job/life I was happy with.
[+] [-] pdelbarba|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nibstwo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] norea-armozel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdietrich|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JDiculous|9 years ago|reply
I don't have trouble focusing on my work when I'm in a good company. The problem is that if I take a look at the grand scheme of things and think about the that I'm devoting the majority of my waking hours to coding apps that would get done regardless of whether or not I existed (this space is largely zero sum in that there are more than enough developers to go around), it's kind of depressing. I'd rather be devoting my life to solving the meaningful problems in the world that not enough people are working on (eg. like what Elon Musk is doing).
On another note, it surprises me that long breaks from work (eg. sabbaticals) aren't more common. Doing the same thing every weekday gets repetitive and draining.
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|9 years ago|reply
Maybe being forced a "life is a meaningless accident and determism means you're just a flesh robot" message since birth is the problem? I follow a basic spritual path of my own doing and its very fulfilling. Its buddhism-lite with a fair bit of meditation and more estoric stuff like lucid dream practice and engage in my own form of 'right speech' and 'right action.' I'm so much more alive than I was before when I just bought into the typical young man's nihilism game.
>that the core feature of their jobs is their own economic exploitation.
The core feature of my job is to make money for me, and the guys above me doing better don't diminish from my salary. The same way my salary isn't diminishing from the guys below me. We tried forced equality recently in human history and it didn't work, so here we are doing the only thing that does. I think if you just see employment as this bitter zero-sum game you're destined to be unhappy. I'm not happy with work, nor unhappy. I understand what it is, its a compromise like much of life. I see lots of extremist messages passed on to young people about how awful things are but almost never a message about compromise, being realistic, moderation, and finding a path that works for you. Its always "the man is out to get me, so I can't win" stuff that's fairly dramatic and completely demoralizing. It ignores the massive middle-road open to those of us in the wealthy west.
Perhaps your life lacks moderation, chance taking, and criticism of what you've been taught by authorities who don't deserve your trust because they're just winging it with desperation just like you. Maybe your attitude is the sum total of decades of the blind leading the blind in our culture. Having a 'I might as well kill myself because everything is so meaningless' attitude is absolutely not normal regardless of how hard you try to normalize it.
[+] [-] mjolk|9 years ago|reply
Oh god, if you're feeling theatrically unhappy with your job, it's seriously time to make a move.
The core feature of my team is making something we think is awesome and missing from the world, where my role as the head of the startup is to do what needs to get done and make sure my team feels like their work and lives are fulfilling. If any member on my team felt like their work is meaningless or a source of emotional pain, I would not be able to sleep at night.
[+] [-] hamilyon2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobbington|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TobyGiacometti|9 years ago|reply
Remember the number 1 regret Bronnie Ware observed while caring for people in the last 12 weeks of their lives: I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
[+] [-] itgoon|9 years ago|reply
You are always working for yourself. You may have an employer, but you are still working for yourself, not them. You're trading your time for money, like any other business. If you don't like the deal, then walk away.
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
1. Productivity has soared
2. Wages have stagnated / wealth gap has widened significantly
3. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "Let the Boomers Retire, we have a Hiring Freeze"
There are too few people doing the work of too many, which chokes the upward mobility of the youth, increases the wealth gap between Working and Investing class citizens, and essentially is masochism in the "modern era" of US Consumerism as an economic engine.
Don't believe me? Do some math on stock buybacks 2015-2016 versus publicly announced hirings and layoffs. You'd be surprised how easily this amounts to justification for putting Greenspan and Bernanke in jail. Those guys stole from tens of millions of Americans to benefit a few hundred.
[+] [-] gthtjtkt|9 years ago|reply
I would add:
4. US Corporate Culture is currently rife with an attitude "If you're not sacrificing your life for the company, you don't deserve your job."
[+] [-] surfmike|9 years ago|reply
The ECB did too little too late and this led to massive youth unemployment; on the other hand our unemployment rate is nearing historical lows.
Not being able to get a job (which happened to a lot of grads in 2008) is devastating to people's careers. The employment rate matters!
[+] [-] saboot|9 years ago|reply
> Companies need to do something about this burnout crisis now because otherwise, they will pay the high price of turnover.
Hm, what on earth could they possibly do? It's a mystery shrouded in an enigma!
[+] [-] workerexploited|9 years ago|reply
Moving on, I'm a millennial that doesn't work as an engineer/developer/programmer/etc. I make less than $100,000 and I live in a major US city because that's where the jobs are.
As noted in the article, it really also comes down to wages just as--but perhaps more than--hours put in. But there's just so much more that is contributing to burnout and the inseparable turnover.
Rant incoming.
EVERY educated and skilled millennial I know like me (non-"STEM") is job hopping like crazy for that ever-so-slight raise and hope that the grass is greener on the other side. Our resumes are getting PACKED with 6-month and 1-year gigs.
Nearly every day on my LinkedIn feed I see someone leaving somewhere and getting a new job.
There are just so many things wrong with the workplace resulting in burnout and turnover today for millennials (humans):
- We're sick of being paid poorly; a dog-friendly office, free snacks, hip lighting in the lobby, standing desks, and free Friday lunch doesn't make up for poor pay
- We're often sick of overpaid-and-often-less-skilled supervisors above us and especially the even more bloated and overpaid management above them
- We're sick of positions where we have no opportunities for growth or development of skills or discovering something new
- We're sick of working with fellow millenials who give even less of a crap than us so they're just lazy and don't pull their weight until they find the next gig--and we often have to pull their weight for them
- We're sick of interviewing in-person and never hearing a word back from crap recruiting and human resources teams
- We're sick of being hired on as "freelancer" or "contract" employees so that we're denied benefits even though we dedicate 40+ hours per week to a company
[+] [-] mti27|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krylon|9 years ago|reply
I do respond to calls and mails outside of work hours, because we are a 1.5 person IT department, and when e.g. email does not work, it is kind of a big deal. But that does not happen very often. (I used to have that colleague who literally called me every day, even when I was on vacation and sick, but he quit; the guy who replaced him is great though.)
Once a month, servers need to be updated and rebooted, and I do that, too, but I don't mind. It is kind of soothing, in its own way. ;-)
I have no problem working long hours when it is necessary. It happens, even in the best of places; but in places where it is the rule, in my experience, it's because management is too cheap to spring for a decent IT department.
And having been through a case of burnout (which, IMHO, is just a euphemism for depression), you really can't afford the amount of money it would take to make me go through that again. Or maybe you can, but you don't want to. Either way, I am happy to make a modest living working reasonable hours. My boss seems to agree, so we're cool.
(Full Disclosure: I am living and working in Germany, in case it matters.)
[+] [-] pmoriarty|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imchillyb|9 years ago|reply
When greed for profit over product viability or employee considerations is the /only/ goal of a company, this trend will /always/ be the end result.
Profit is what drives markets, but it is employees that drive companies. Or, it is employees that ruin said companies.
Businesses beware.
[+] [-] jm__87|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
No, because it's a tragedy of the commons. Companies who take on extra short term costs to deal with it will lose out to companies that don't; even if long-term, overall, it's a better outcome of companies do deal with it.
The existence of things like this is pretty much the reason for government.
[+] [-] chollida1|9 years ago|reply
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-12/how-to-av...
If you subscribe to the theory that burn out is all about resentment then it gives you a whole new set of tools to deal with it.
[+] [-] jeena|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeena/albums/72157677196990660 [1] https://jeena.net/pods
[+] [-] openforce|9 years ago|reply
People from India, like me, especially have a hard time saying NO to being assigned something that, either you have no time to work on or something you don't want to work on. It's a cultural thing combined with the golden leash of H1b visas. I see a lot of my colleagues from India accepting more and more work and end up having almost no life outside of it.
[+] [-] vogelke|9 years ago|reply
One of the biggest things that kept me from burning out was realizing that companies (or branches of the service) are neither good nor evil, they're just big. As a result, they'll take whatever you offer and not blink an eye.
[+] [-] korzun|9 years ago|reply
The same people will make a big deal about staying late or having to work on a weekend once in a while. The sense of entitlement is pretty mindblowing to me.
[+] [-] milge|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
People move up the ranks by making random, crazy one-off bets that turn out great in the short term. Nobody notices people who consistently make good long term bets.
This is compounded by the fact that people who have power these days tend to overlook failure and only consider good outcomes.