Thanks for sharing this. Right now I'm burnt out beyond words, having delivered a phase of a huge project, followed by upper management actions that make me feel extremely devalued and dehumanized.
I've already written a list of personal development tasks for the three weeks' leave ahead - I need to up-skill, then find a new employer - which I'll restructure into little wins.
> Right now I'm burnt out beyond words, having delivered a phase of a huge project, followed by upper management actions that make me feel extremely devalued and dehumanized
I quit over something like this. Best decision of my life. I was the lowest paid engineer, I won/led/only person that worked on a major contract (20% of revenue) and they said I was bold for asking for a promotion that would put me equal pay with people that brought in no contracts. Don't work for toxic management. It just isn't worth it. It takes a huge toll on your mental health and honestly no money is worth that. I was burnt out for over a year after that experience. I learned that when applying for positions you should also be interviewing your manager. That's become one of my top criteria.
For a second I thought I wrote this comment, then I realized I didn't, but it's just so familiar.
The burnt out feeling is coming mainly from the feeling of how much prep is required to switch jobs even. I'm just hoping the promotion actually comes through and I don't need to but at the same time I'm preparing now so that 6 months from now I can leave on a dime if I want.
You should prob just completely take a break during the 3 weeks. Go hiking, biking, etc and let your brain rewire so that you're not in a flight or fight mode. Something like "just walking hard for 5 hours gets me to the top of the mountain" and then you'll be so fresh after 3 weeks of that. Work won't seem as stressful or important in life.
It's amazing what a bit of exercise and a head clear of problems to solve can do for you. In my experience, it's unfortunately the case(for me at least) that the harder and longer you push before you burnout scales linearly with the length of the break you'll need to take in order to recover.
I learned this lesson the hard way and ended having to take a multiple year hiatus from even looking at a text editor. I wouldn't be surprised if it was in a way a form of PTSD; for a long while, even thinking about programming elevated my heart rate. I ended up working as a bike mechanic during that time away, and the combination of a low stakes environment and working with my hands did my mental health a lot of good.
Damn crazy. Why did that happen? Moderate burnout situation that went on for way too long? Or intense burnout in a few months?
Yeah I mean going off of the great burnout comment before, it's that the negative mental pathways are being carved super deep every day by your continued effort -> failure (or perceived failure by you or manager).
I wonder if mushrooms/acid/mdma can help cure professional burnout faster?
How's being a bike mechanic money-wise? If you have a solid amount of capital built up from grinding as a soft engr, that could be a nice segway for a time.
> Damn crazy. Why did that happen? Moderate burnout situation that went on for way too long? Or intense burnout in a few months?
Basically a combination of both. I was at a medium sized startup fresh out of college, and I was the only one working on a completely new project using a language nobody else at the company used (I was doing NLP stuff in python). There was no code review and next to no mentorship, and every other developer was working in Java/Scala, so they had almost no clue what exactly I was working on. Early on I was actually able to deliver on pretty much everything asked of me, and had one of the models I had trained being used in production within six months. It was this terrible combination of me feeling completely out of my depth, yet everyone else only sees that I'm delivering, so thinks I have everything under control.
I knew very little python or machine learning when I started, but was able to get fairly competent in the problem domain quickly. But as things progressed, my severe lack of experience in developing a large project started to slow progress down and take a toll on me. I felt like I had to keep up the pace I had set expectations with early on, so I just started working longer and longer hours trying to meet deadlines that probably didn't matter anyways. Near the end I was secretly working nights and weekends because I had this mentality that If I didn't someone was eventually going to find out that I had no clue what I was doing. Pretty classic imposter syndrome fueled by perfectionism.
> How's being a bike mechanic money-wise?
Haha, not good. At a shop that pays well, it's around $20/hour after base pay plus commission. It was a nice change of pace though. It made me enough where I didn't have to use too much of my savings. I quit soon after Covid started and have been doing some portfolio projects and brushing up on my interview skills.
Take a break, you must. I know it always feels like you can’t, but you can’t keep working, you will snap.
Programmers are hard to replace, it hard to find a good one, and it takes time to ramp up a new one with a codebase. You have more negotiating power than you think.
Your comment struck me because I have been in that position before, and I know it really really hurts. But you gotta look out for yourself. Please take a week or two off
