I went from a FAANG to a twenty-ish person local business. I found out that what matters to me is not money or status. It’s a short commute, work that ends at the same time every day, liking my coworkers, and working directly with the people I help. Some mix of these might be right for you, assuming the bills are covered.

My job has less (no) global impact. What I did previously affected far more people. I told people what project I was on and they thought that was cool. But I don’t hate my life or job and I very much did before.

Im with you. Once the money problem is taken care of, there are far more important things to factor in.

Unfortunately US culture is very money orientated, and so, especially to young developers (and quite a few older ones) it's the only factor.

I remember a long time ago a local "big name" consultancy firm came to our Uni to recruit. He said all the right things, told us about international travel, great pay, good benefits, every material delight you could hope for.

But he looked tired. Like really tired. Turns out he'd been doing a consulting gig on thd other side of the world. 12 hours time difference. 2 weeks there, never left the hotel/office. Got home last night. Today is back at work. After 30-odd hours of travel.

That spoke to me, and helped me see that the company matters more than the money. I ended up with a good job, where we knock off at the end of every day. Where we didnt have multiple layers of management. And very few meetings.

Obviously I'm too old to work at a FANG now, but honestly, I think I would be a very bad fit for that environment.

The secret to avoiding burnout is to enjoy your work. Sure some of it is just work, but you gotta wanna go. I wish you much luck in finding as good a fit as I did.

Ye. A lot of these fancy jobs are not that well paid per hour. McKinsey or whatever.

The real payout at those places seem to be those that win the "up or out" stabbing contest and can coast at some semi sale semi boss position. Not as an IC.

> My job has less (no) global impact. What I did previously affected far more people. I told people what project I was on and they thought that was cool. But I don’t hate my life or job and I very much did before.

As I mentioned in my own comment, the root cause of burnout - be it coding or otherwise, is when expectations don't match reality.

For most people, especially the young, they attach their expectations to the job and work they do. There are also a certain number of people who have other expectations though - like how they can contribute to charity or the well-being of their own family from the money they make, from a job they don't necessarily like or even care about. One example is the popular Bain/McKinsey partner who is happy to sell absolute vaporware that will never be delivered ever, because they don't care whether their customers are happy - their own expectations are how bigger of a yatch or mansion they can upgrade to next year.

It all boils down to what the expectations are and whether they match reality.

It's very common. If you search hn.algolia.com you'll turn up lots of articles and discussions, but this one [0] is the one that has stuck with me. Particularly that top comment by markdjacobsen:

> One of my later insights was that burnout doesn't merely entail working too much (although that's certainly part of it); burnout often involves pouring too much of your heart and soul into something that does not love you back. I describe burnout now as a kind of "unrequited love."

> So many of us go above and beyond for our companies/projects/teams/whatever. The author here describes overcommitting at work. We might have the best of intentions, but at some point, we don't see the returns we yearned for and start to question what all this self-sacrificial giving is for. That is when burnout really sets in.

This has been my own experience—I burned out hard while working at a tiny startup as the primary developer. External pressure was actually very low—it was self-funded and the CEO didn't feel much pressure to move quickly—but I overinvested in the project and company and eventually realized that the company didn't love me back.

That's the best advice I can give for burnout—the company will never love you back. No, you're not the exception. Give what you're contracted to give and what will get you better opportunities, but don't fall in love with a project or a company, because there lies burnout.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28306750

> but don't fall in love with a project or a company, because there lies burnout.

One part of me agrees. The other part says: But if I wouldn't have fallen in love with what I was doing to begin with, I would never have reached the point of ability that I did reach.

Maybe the only solution to this is to take a break, then try to learn to open your heart again and risk being disappointed once more. Maybe this time, you will be able to recognize it before it's "too late". I don't know.

> I would never have reached the point of ability that I did reach

I think you're conflating skill and ability with impact and expectations.

Early on in your life, your expectations could have been to gain tremendous skill and grow your abilities. You probably didn't care that much if your work went into the trash because in the process, you learned some extremely important and valuable skills. That journey itself made it all worth it and met your expectations.

Over time, as you become more skillful and able, your expectations could change to seeing your work having real impact on the world instead.

This is perhaps, to you, now there's marginal return on being even more skillful and able. You ask "what's the end goal and did I reach it?"

> risk being disappointed once more. Maybe this time, you will be able to recognize it before it's "too late". I don't know

I mentioned in my own comment, the root cause of burnout - be it coding or otherwise, is when expectations don't match reality.

If you're a developer, your impact and outcome is beholden to management, so even through you might not realize it, part of your jobsearch now has to focus on ensuring you detect great management - and you make it a part of your interview to locate them.

The real solution to not being burned out: work with a team that actually knows what they are doing and have strong fundamentals.

> It's very common.

This is like thinking that most comedians are depressed. The average/happy ones make for much less interesting stories.

Yeah there’s lots of HN posts about “burnt out” developers but does that really mean it’s common? There’s lots of programmers.

I didn't make this clear in the original post I'm not just surveying HN queries to come to the conclusion that it's common. I'm currently in a management role at a highly mission-driven org, and helping people avoid burnout is a constant discussion because nearly everyone on the team has either been through it or at risk of it.

(The high burnout rates aren't because of external pressure, it's because the team is mostly here because they deeply care about the mission.)

If it is a constant issue where dedicated employees feel burnt out, then of course it is his business. I don't think the solution is to find less engaged people to work. It's not just about the employees, it is also about the general work and the value the team will bring. Maybe hiring low effort people will solve the problem, but then again so will no employees at all as well I suppose.

As a manager, you should work towards keeping people engaged, doing good work, while making sure they don't burn out.

If people are on the brink of burn out, it's not a "it's their own fault for caring about their work." It's because they're trying to do their actual jobs and care enough about the results.

I find this trend where we're just blaming people that burn out for caring about the work they do interesting, what's the end result? Just a bunch of people playing politics and laying around waiting for the day to end?

I rather work with someone that cares and does a good job but just needs a break, give them support so they can do their jobs, rather than force them to quit 'because they're a pain in the ass' for giving a shit.

If somebody cares about their job more than themselves, that’s not a good thing either. If the business can get results with people who don’t require constant discussion of and attention to burnout, why wouldn’t they take that alternative?

A manager can’t keep people engaged. A manager can create an environment where a person can choose to be engaged, but it’s not something the manager can conjure up.

Sure it’s great for a company to create an environment that lets people care about their work and be 100% happy with their work-life-balance, but to say that it’s solely the employer’s responsibility is passing the buck IMO.

Personally, I look out for my well-being and I know nobody else will care about that as much as I do. I’m not going to blame my employer for burning me out, I’m going to accept some of the responsibility as well because I’m the one who suffers most.

It's hardly that black and white. If people are burnt out there is a reason for it, blaming them won't make the problem go away.

I've seen this in a few where there is certainly an environmental issue but it's easier to blame the individual. Removing them never helped and it just tears in a lot of places, especially the ones that was held up by the employee itself. Usually the employee is quite clear about these areas as well.

You have to remember that in these cases, the person feeling burnt out is taking on too much to keep the organization going. The issue isn't the person but the expectation and workload. I've seen employees try to make it work so they can have some semblance of work life balance.

With regards to your first comment there, some organizations don't realize the work that they are putting on to one person. I've heard comments like "why don't they just stop caring about the work?" for their own organization. You think founders and managers want people to stop caring about the work? No. They say it to put blame elsewhere and then know that the work will keep going like always. If it stops, they'll get pissed off and argue that the employee isn't doing their job.

It's great that you are looking out for yourself, but people being put in these situations shouldn't get blamed. They literally just care about the work, and usually they do amazingly. Without these people then I don't think most organizations would have gotten as far as they have.

I do agree with you though, that best is to make sure you don't put yourself in this kind of situation.

However, the most talented and driven people do care a lot about the work they do, they put a lot of pride in it. In this case it's important to put guardrails in place and I think many are doing this right now.

When I experienced burnout in my career, it was never from the technical work itself, but rather from people and process acting in ways that were entirely unrealistic and unfair. As in, it isn’t my problem that you oversold when this feature would be delivered, but somehow it is in fact now my problem without recourse. Cases where you know you or others are being mistreated will burn you out quickly.

Burnout is your brain giving up because it doesn’t think the benefit is worth the effort anymore. If you don’t have a purpose for what you are doing all your brain will do is obsess over the negatives. Every job in the world has massive negatives. You have to find a positive purpose for what you are doing to balance the negative.

Even a low key sane culture will feel like a soul sucking grey blob of a life it you don’t do it in service of something you care about: supporting your family, cabinetry side business, rock climbing passion or whatever.

> Burnout is your brain giving up because it doesn’t think the benefit is worth the effort anymore. If you don’t have a purpose for what you are doing all your brain will do is obsess over the negatives. Every job in the world has massive negatives. You have to find a positive purpose for what you are doing to balance the negative.

This is spot on and was exactly my experience at my last job.

The one thing I'll add is that for me it wasn't about not having a purpose, it was about not feeling appreciated for all of the time/effort/energy I'd poured into that purpose.

This may be good advice, but for some, finding positive purpose can be stressful in itself.

An alternative approach is to modify the scale or direction of the reward system. Lowering expectations may diminish both the positive and negative baseline values a bit. Then, when you're happy, allow for some extra positive feedback. When you're down, just wait for things to pass over.

I once heard a story on how depression can be viewed from an evolutionary perspective: A mouse goes out every day to rummage around, gather some food, hoping to run into a possible spouse mouse. One day, it spots a big eagle, and mouse gets terribly frightened and runs back indoors. If it didn't do this, it would be eaten by the eagle and die. Repeat these scary days for some period, and a handy system kicks in: mouse doesn't want to go outside anymore to party. It just wants to stay in bed and do nothing. If it didn't do this, it would waste energy and not get enough food, and die. Until, after some time, the eagle goes someplace else, and our mouse is happy again to go outside.

Replace mouse with you and eagle with society. Unfortunately, for most of us society doesn't go away, but we can attempt a different perspective at it and see if it becomes less frightening.

Well said! I'll be keeping this in mind when searching for my next job.

I worked at FAANG andhave burned out, and i know alot of friends who also have... with varying degree of severity.

I would say pretty frequent. I am not sure if the incidence of burn-out is higher for software engineer vs other profession. Anecdotally, both academia and entrepreneurship seems to also have a very high incidence of burn out.

My guess is that the mix of a highly competitive field, mixed with poorly defined evaluation metrics mixed with skewed(winner-take-most/all) reward system does create a lot performance anxiety and psychological pressure.

I have never worked at a smaller company, but i am not sure it's any better for the majority of people. You just get paid less for your troubles.

I don't think the size of the company truly matters. I think it's a proxy for one's position in the importance hierarchy within the companies. The higher one is, the higher one can command/shape its experience to include things like autonomic, interesting work, respect etc... etc... And those factor influence more the burn out situation

> This makes me wonder if finding a low-key, sane culture is the key to sustainability in the industry, and avoiding burn out.

Finding a culture where you feel that you are being treated as a human being and feel properly rewarded for what you do seems to be the key to avoid burnout long term. I think it's in the nature of SWE that there is a substantial pressure on everyone to treat themselves (and unconsciously their peers) as if they were machines. Depending on the context you are working in, the factors that play into that can vary. Start-ups are especially high pressure in my experience.

>feel properly rewarded for what you do

For me, this is what made me dislike my (unstressful) FAANG. I could do the job well but when there are 2,000 other engineers fighting for "limited" opportunities for promotions and I'm told a few times that "it's not my turn yet", I'm outta there, goodbye.

I burned out hard during COVID. Prior to the isolation, I hadn't realized how much my coworkers helped me keep my sanity, and shortly after lockdown, I started to see my interest, my performance and my self care start to crash. At the same time, my first child was born, my MIL passed away, my mother had a brain tumor and my father had a heart attack. All in the course of around 3 years. I finally cracked.

It's been a rough road back, but after grieving and learning to be a decent parent and taking some space for myself, I'm finally starting to love code again.

Your mileage may vary, of course. Some folks I know burned out and stayed burnt. It's awful because you don't know it until it's staring you in the face, at least it didn't for me.

My career history (across different businesses):

- 4 years working in-house on software tools. It was not very stressful but also didn't pay great and the tech stack was out of date.

- 2 years doing boutique consulting. Lots of interesting challenges but very stressful and high pressure. Pay was surprisingly mediocre and there was a lot of sales involved.

- 6 years in series A/B startups. Lots of autonomy but the hours can be brutal, even at places that claim to value work/life balance. Pay is also not great unless you get a winning lottery ticket.

- 5 years in post-IPO "startups". There are pockets of good culture and pockets of shitty culture. As long as the stock is doing well you're golden for comp. The trick is to land on a good team where your boss is politically connected and can shield you from insane demands on your time.

Edit: I went through varying waves of burnout at all these places. For me the thing that helped the most with burnout was having customer interaction and knowing I was solving a real problem. Ultimately I left tech and started working with people more directly which is way more fulfilling.

> Ultimately I left tech and started working with people more directly which is way more fulfilling.

What do you do now, if you don't mind me asking?

I manage a niche retail store for a hobby that I'm passionate about. It's nice to be out of the house and talking to different people.

Big part of the problem is wrong expectations.

A business doesn’t owe you and doesn’t care about meaning, love, higher purpose, special respect and other things commenters here mention.

It just trades your skills and time for money. That’s it.

Unfortunately companies keep exploiting this basic instinct of belonging to something bigger for their benefit.

If this thirst is not fulfilled in other ways (for example, through faith, family, social life etc) - you tend to look where the light shines, not where it can actually be found.

Then you inevitably fail in this search => feeling of burning out, like you wasted you time waiting fore some spiritual fulfillment that was never there.

But it’s a fair game - employees have their own set of tools and tricks to maximize profits.

Well-stated! Once one understands The Game, one can see that playing is a choice -- sure, it goes against the grain of the hedonistic treadmill, but you can definitely craft (and play) your own game. Having a fulfilling/interesting set of things to engage in outside of work, can be very helpful for this.

> Having a fulfilling/interesting set of things to engage in outside of work, can be very helpful for this.

I'd say it is crucial and was always like that until less than 100 years ago (and in poor countires still is) - job (any job from delivery guy to CEO) was just a job, and meaning was searched for in community, church, family etc.

Strangely I see the opposite sometimes: the work is not so bad but constant politics, management issues (and lately layoffs) are affecting mental health a lot. That still leads to the burnout when you're not interested in coding anymore even for a side projects

After 16 years of work, mostly as a freelance developer for multiple companies, I have a burnout. Fortunately, it's not an "I don't want to work anymore" - last week I had the first day that I just didn't want to work. But it never happened before. So it's like 7/10 on burnoutmetter.

But what is the hardest thing for me is that I'm not able to mobilize myself to work on my projects. I have two good ideas. It's possible that I would be able to monetize these ideas. But I'm not able to move forward. Over the years I tried to work on more than 10 own projects and none of these projects were successful. Should I start work on the 11'th and fail again? I burned out on failings ;)

In my experience, burnout is EXTREMELY high for developers. My group of friends and colleagues that I started with in my early twenties have mostly left development and tech for the most part.

By the time most of us were turning 30, about half my cohort of friends and colleagues had given up as developers. By the time I turned 35 almost everyone had. Out of about 30-40 people that I have been somewhat associating with during my career, I can only think of about 5 right now that are still in tech. Four of those five are in management roles. Only one of those people is still a "true developer" (pushing code and commits all day). The rest have moved to infrastructure, security, and related fields.

The ones that left. A surprising number moved to rural areas to slow down their lives. Building homesteads (small personal farms). One actually built a large-scale mushroom farm (culinary/legal mushrooms). A few teach. Quite a few retired early doing the FIRE thing (wish I had been disciplined enough for that). Several are expats. So for the most part, most of them went off to do things that were less chaotic and less stressful.

I almost quit myself in my early 30s. But I was fortunate enough to get promoted into a senior management position, where I am mostly focused on tech strategy and not true "developer work" anymore. I also went back to school and joined a PhD program where I started doing research on encryption and security in something that truly interests me. So that kept me sane. At this point, I am "resting and vesting" at my current job, waiting for them to sell, which they are extremely well suited to do right now. As soon as that happens, I doubt I will find another job in tech. I plan on taking my PhD and staying in academia.

This is anecdotal experience. So your mileage may vary. The pandemic hit as most of us were between 30 and 35, which might have had a disproportionate affect of taking people out of the industry too. So my experience might be more extreme than the average. But basically, I have decided that the reason tech is mostly young people is because it breaks you down as you get older and people just leave. So burnout is a VERY real thing in this industry.

> I was fortunate enough to get promoted into a senior management position, where I am mostly focused on tech strategy and not true "developer work" anymore.

1. Did your find doing the "developer work" itself fulfilling in the first place?

2. If given a choice between your management position and the "developer work", which one would you pick?

3. If you could go back in time and redo everything, would you have started off in management to begin with?

4. What would you have done differently?

I ask these questions because I have a hypothesis that you currently work for bad management and that made the developer work really unfulfilling in part because it gave you no to little agency over your impact. By moving into part of the management layer you got some agency over your impact and managed to disassociate yourself from the unfulfilling developer work, but I would like to learn more from you directly

    This makes me wonder if finding a low-key, sane 
    culture is the key to sustainability in the industry, 
    and avoiding burn out.

They are exceedingly rare.

The only way these can really exist is within a small bootstrapped (self-funded) venture or perhaps within an open source project that has both autonomy and outside funding.

The paradoxical nature of commercial software development is that the entire fucking industry is a contradictory anti-pattern.

What most of us would consider "good engineering" (elegant, maintainable code that is correct, maintainable, and relatively resistant to bit rot) is explicitly at odds with nearly every commercial software development situation.

Management wants you to be visibly "working" at all times, cranking out tasks/stories/code/whatever. So you are explicitly discouraged from writing code that "just works" and doesn't need constant heroic fixing. If you get it right the first time, and kick back and relax, they'll think you're a lazy piece of crap.

Even if you work for a place that "gets it" from an engineering perspective, they are almost always going to look at your relatively high salary and want you to constantly produce new things. And once you have multiple levels of management, you can absolutely forget about them "getting it" -- a manager two levels above you can't be intimately involved enough in your code to understand when you are writing shit code and when you are writing true 10x code that will save countless hours of headaches in the future.

I agree with the above, but have you looked public sector? (e:g gov't , academia) low-key, sane culture can be found there. Simply because the org is not constantly chasing the next quarter's profit. Its not utopia, but in my experience (mostly private sector but a fair chunk of public sector) , public sector is so much better, less stress, and ironically, more productive because you can make long-term decisions, fix broken processes etc for the benefit of everyone. You won't get paid as much headline salary.. but you might get a better pension so needn't put as much aside, also, burning out can cause lost earnings anyway, so unless you're some kinda rock star with millionaire potential, it probably comes out in the wash .

For my next role, I think I'll definitely look at this. Thanks!

I wish you the best with finding such a role :)

My experience is that burnout comes in two forms:

Fatigue - too much stress and/or effort over an extended time.

Disillusionment - company doesn't have your back or love you back.

Honestly, most burnout is mostly caused by managers and culture that just doesn't care about people. A good manager will get an employee who is approaching burnout to take a break/vacation or even change up what they are working on.

> most burnout is mostly caused by managers and culture that just doesn't care about people. A good manager will get an employee who is approaching burnout to take a break/vacation or even change up what they are working on

Agreed and a great manager won't cause burnout because they fundamentally understand what the expectations of their employees are!

I explained a bit of this in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

I heard burnout is casued not (only?) by stress but about the feeling of little of no impact of our job.

I've been in high pace job before being cuite young and eager and I felt no burnout.

Currently being in a moderate paced one (still not a laid back one, we are well paid staff expected to perform), but I am burned out now due to the feeling it makes no difference. Why am I wasting my time here?

I worked for a small contracting company that did work for several larger (but not FAANG) companies for >10 years. I quit 1.5 years ago after being burned out for quite a while, and I'm enjoying life for now. The thought of going back to work is a little stressful, and I'm holding out for as long as possible :)

Reasons for my burn out:

- Unreasonable expectations from stakeholders. "We need x, y, and z done by Friday" with no regard for developer input on what that actually entails. Not all projects are like this, but some are. It's fine when it is rare, but the more frequent it is, the more burnout it causes.

- Frequently changing requirements, or total shifts in what needed to be built from one week to the next.

- Working on projects with outdated dependencies and never given any time to refactor to support updates (i.e. working on an Angular 4 project when Angular 12 is out).

- As a contractor, it always feels like you need to perform, or the company you're working for will drop you.

- As a contractor, the clients' internal FT devs have seniority and will make decisions that are not always in the best interest of the project.

- Abruptly being moved (without much input) from one project to another takes a toll, especially when you care about what you do.

- Not enough vacation time. For most of my 20's, I got two weeks a year. For most of my 30's, it was three weeks a year. That's not really enough time off to enjoy life.

Being in contracting for software is rough. All the crap rolls down the hill to you from both the customer and internal stakeholders.

I think this is a good Q and the right analysis. FAANG often = mega stress. It needs to be treated as a temporary step, boost your c.v / resume / LinkedIn, save significant £/$/whatever / pay off student debts etc then G.T.F.O. to somewhere sane. Sane places do indeed exist. Public sector I've found the best. There are other "unexciting" industries outside tech, which employ tech workers, which are actually OK. As a Brit that worked in the US, the biggest issue I see, is US workers simply don't get enough holidays and breaks to properly recharge, and while you can take breaks between job-hopping, that runs into issues with continuous healthcare coverage. I did have a US colleague who every year said "I'm going travelling for 3 months", his somewhat irritated employer said "well no guarantee you can come back", he said "fine", 3 months later, desperate employer (who of course is short-termist): "when can you start, production is on fire". But I dunno what he did about healthcare those 3 months. Maybe bought it privately?

I recommended "Loyal workers are selectively and ironically targeted for exploitation". [1] From the general discussion:

> Across four studies, we found consistent support for our hypotheses. First, we found that loyal employees are selectively targeted by managers for exploitation in hypothetical scenarios (Studies 1–2), and that the targeting of these loyal workers is mediated by the expectation that loyal people are readily willing to make personal sacrifices for the objects of their loyalty (Study 1). These effects were specific to targets with reputations for loyalty (Study 2)."

"Organizations Weaken the Norm of Reciprocity" [2] from the follow on citation work is also interesting. Basically, a lot of math and surveys to show that diffuse organizations and the "workplace interaction" mentality, tend to result in people helping you less when you help them, work deserving reciprocity getting lost in the organization (it's just business), and business interactions always being viewed as a "what are they gonna do for me?".

Not directly answering your question, yet evidence that Fortune 500's and FAANGs, as large organizations, generally shift towards exploitive, or at the least, behaviors lacking the reciprocity expected. Which tends to burn people out.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00221...

[2] https://aom.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/AMD/How%20Organiz...

> Fortune 500's and FAANGs, as large organizations, generally shift towards exploitive, or at the least, behaviors lacking the reciprocity expected

1. What could be causing that?

2. What are the chances of this same behavior happening at a Fortune 500000?

3. How would an employee detect that behavior, potentially as early as when interviewing for the job?

1. The first paper's rationale, is: "agents/entities with less power may not feel free to decline the more powerful agent/entity's request". The second paper would probably argue that "the diffuse nature of large organizations reduces reciprocation so it's lack becomes normalized" (my paraphrase).

2. The second paper would probably say lower. Closer to a small friend / family group, with more obvious reciprocal behavior.

3. Maybe if they ask you to do a bunch of weird stuff on the interview? Give you a bunch of homework that feels like "off the clock time". I donno. With the second, only that maybe it all feels super hands-off in hiring, like you're just being handed to someone.

Stress within the industry (or really any industry) occurs (IMO) most often in roles with a disproportionate amount of responsibility/autonomy: i.e. you are responsible for doing X but you must do it via Y. Typically this happens mostly within senior roles, where you can't affect much change but carry all the burden, but also management too.

When I've gotten burned out it is generally from one of a few reasons:

- I'm learning less at work. I feel like for me the fun part of work is learning new skills by learning a new technology, working in a product/business space that I haven't before, or a project of larger scope. If I feel like I'm not learning it can feel like groundhogs day.

- There is a mismatch between what I value and the company values. For example you could value shipping velocity and iteration speed and if you are working at a big company they might have very long dev cycles with internal politics. This can end up being a boil the frog situation as you or the company slowly change over time.

As others said reducing workplace stress can be mitigated by enriching your life outside of work. Hang out with friends, exercise, pick up hobbies. Have something to look forward to at the end of everyday that isn't work.

Yes. I work at a very comfortable job with decent pay and benefits.

What burns me out is the bureaucracy, politics and having to deal with people who simply aren’t curious or interested about anything in the slightest leading the charge.

I’ve been working on a startup on the side with my friend for almost a year now and the work has rarely ever burnt me out.

> I’ve been working on a startup on the side with my friend for almost a year now and the work has rarely ever burnt me out.

Well done! I explained this paradox in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

I think this would apply to most people but really it’s just how capitalism works.

I think for some people the value of starting is business is having control of who you surround yourself with.

I want to work with ambitious, smart and kind people who actively want to build a better world. I wouldn’t mind working at a company like that even if the job was tough.

Unfortunately most companies are ran by greedy ambitious people with no wisdom or care for tomorrow. Long term is end of the year for these people and big picture expands only to the business they work in. The people you work with aren’t any better either typically.

So really the only option is to build a company.

At 45 I got laid off from a startup in June 2023 after trying to push through burnout for over 2 year. After 4 purely cosmetic redesigns of the product before we were even public, I just stopped caring. Our none existent customer base isn't going to suddenly buy the product if primary buttons are purple vs blue.

The next six months of trying to find a job were completely demoralizing thanks to all the other layoffs in the industry. I gave up looking and downsized my life so I could take 2 or 3 years off.

I'm slowly letting it go, but I'm still dreading having to go back to writing software. Unfortunately I haven't been able to come up with many similarly paying options to switch to. Maybe management or technical sales I guess? Maybe just getting away from frontend dev will help as well.

I think burnout, to some extent, is the norm for most people working a 9-5(+).

I think most SWEs that don't get burnout either have an extreme passion for the work such that they don't mind thinking about it 24/7 or opt to go into lower pressure jobs. There are a lot of people finding ways to have lower pressure work at the FAANG level firms as well, although that is harder with the current market crunch for tech.

Many people are willing to grind it out for a couple decades, and some people working FAANG type jobs have been able to build generation wealth doing it, so that's a tradeoff they made.

I think you just have to go into it clearheaded about what you want, and avoiding getting sucked into situations where you're not optimizing properly for anything (i.e working 60 hr weeks for a mid-sized company that doesn't pay that well).

>> I completed a pretty complex project. I was there for two years and it felt like a stressful meat grinder.

For years I was doing high pressure projects and getting them launched. I loved it. I hated the part after, where I stopped giving a fuck about work.

I moved to consulting. I only do the crazy parts (and get paid for it), take my praise, and my check, and go home. I dont stick around to do the part I hate.

Give me the high pressure replatforms, the years late projects the burning fires where you need a fix.... I'll grind that to dust. I dont want to be there to ad PM feature 247 so they can get a better gig, for bug fix 80072 cause a customer has some odd behavior from a tool bar they installed... Do call me back if 80073 is data corruption and a rebuild it over the weekend project.

I'm becoming more and more this way as the years go by, not less. My thirties are going to be interesting if my brain can keep up with my newfound stress tolerance.

At my first salaried position, burnout was so common that the studio heads just made a point of giving the team a month or two to relax after major deadlines (so basically, something like 5-10% of every year on average was 'slack time'). We still showed up and did work but I'd estimate our productivity was 50% or worse. There was seemingly no alternative, because burnout did hit me there and there was probably a period of over a month where I could barely do my job despite the fact that I was only 18 and hadn't accumulated decades worth of fatigue. No idea how the people in their 40s kept up with us.

I like it mixed, periods of high stress, challenging work, followed by periods of mellow coasting doing simple jobs (even repetitive jobs).

If I stay too long on the high stress, I burn out and tend to snap at coworkers (it brings out my aggression), if I stay too long on the coasting phase, I get bored and get an urge to do something else (I miss the highs of the high stress situation).

As I advanced in my career I get a bit more control on what I do, so I get to pick most of my battles.

In any case, as I got more experience, situations that used to be stressful no longer feel that way to me, so the next challenge needs to push me further from my comfort zone.

Check out the book, "Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle".

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/42397849

I found it helpful in understanding the underlying causes of my own feelings of burnout. Also, don't be put off that the book says it's for women. The core lessons seem to apply to everyone.

(comment copied from earlier conversation on a similar topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35849384)

I'm self employed as a developer maintaining my own project. I think I am facing burnout for the first time ever. I am not sure if it's burn out, or just me getting older, etc.

I just can't push myself to be productive anymore.

Meta grinder is the right word. These companies absolutely extract value from the sacrifice of the lowest level workers. Too many managers, all just nitpicking and penalizing their reports. The stress is entirely artificial and arbitrary. It is all about "what does my boss think for the next perf review. Will I be thrown on PIP?" This kind of environment is not healthy.

The smartest people do their stint in these companies and then jump to startups, or start their own businesses these days. The $400k at a FAANG is undervalued for the stress of the job.

It depends.

Compared to miners, firefighters, lumberjacks and even health professionals we have it easy.

Compared to accountants and lawyers we do need to handle tough pressure that can lead to burnout.

It also depends a lot on the culture of both the company, the bosses and even the country. In places such as Latin America, Asia or most of 3rd World you're expected to give everything to the company, even your family time and health.

In North America and Europe this abuse has consequences.

The bottom line for me is that you need to be aware of it and find ways to avoid it.

Nowadays there are places in the U.S. where the tech staff are largely from (what used to be?) the 3rd World, and it definitely has its effects on the workplace culture. There are teams who rationalize being spoken to like they're garbage, and who cannot be persuaded to push back. If you don't choose wisely, you could find yourself stepping into a self-contained Calcutta every time you enter the office building.

I don't get burn out from work in the way some people describe. I never get stressed out about deadlines or expectations or pressure from management.

I do my work during my work hours, and if I don't get it done I don't get it done. If work expects more from me, oh well. So far in 20 years I haven't been fired for it.

There have been a few times where I had trouble getting motivation because it felt like my work wasn't important or mattered, but that just made me slow, not burnt out.

Yes. Multiple times. Senior software engineer. Still recovering from last burnout after being laid off last year. I tend to get a job, work there for a number of years, then we either get acquired or I get laid off and I take a year or two off to recuperate in between...

I've started seriously starting coding again though so there is light at the end of the tunnel. It sucks to not do what you enjoy doing because you're burnt out from doing it for pay for the man.

I've been sort of burned out a few times for various definitions of same. A couple were just pretty intense phases of projects--both in tech and non-tech--where I just needed a bit of a break afterwards.

The other was I was just ready to check-out late career. Didn't have the interesting earlier career work any longer. I sort of made it work but really didn't care and timeframes were such it didn't make sense to go elsewhere for a bit.

When I have burnt out, it has been due to the people/politics/environment around me, not the work itself. Lucky for me, I had a lot of good will built up, and could go on coast mode at work for quite a while until I got some air under my wings again, or the conditions changed.

>This makes me wonder if finding a low-key, sane culture is the key to sustainability in the industry, and avoiding burn out.

In my experience, this is everything.

I obstinately focus on engineering, technical, programming, and math problems in my work. It affects my performance reviews, because I am told that I am a high-performing individual contributor who “lacks” an eye for the bigger picture, because I show little interest in the business side of things. This has kept me sane at work thus far. We’ll see how long I can keep up this approach.

> a high-performing individual contributor who “lacks” an eye for the bigger picture, because I show little interest in the business side of things

If focusing on engineering, technical, programming, and math problems is really what excites you and you truly have no interest in the business side of things, you should start looking for companies that will only want you to focus on engineering, technical, programming, and math problems and there are a lot of them out there.

If your current place of work complains you “lack” an eye for the bigger picture, and that might be true, that means they dont have good management at all, because a good manager would immediately understand what you value and align you with that or ask you to leave explictly if that's not what they wanted.

Bad management takes no initiative and lack critical decision making skills, stay away.

Thanks. Maybe I’m not senior enough to have reached the breaking point with this company, but my current career goal is to advance as far as I can as an individual contributor. I’m interested in going down the “Principal/Staff/Distinguished” route, not the people/project management route.

No burn-out here. I've worked in a software developer role for a non-tech company for the past decade. Pay is adequate to pay my bills, and I can work limited hours on basically any part of the tech stack that I feel like. No real pressure and because the pay is simply "adequate" I'd just leave if the non-comp conditions worsened.

Some of the best career advice I ever received was to work for, and with, people in the same phase of life that you’re in.

The only times I’ve experienced burnout were when I worked with, and for, people who were in different phases in life.

When I was young and single, the meat grinder was great. Trial by fire, learned a ton. Wouldn’t be where I am now without those years.

How I'm personally seeing it, the sole reason for burnout is doing stuff you're not enjoying, for too long. Then, the solution I'm trying to follow is to organize my life in such a way that I never feel the pressure of deadlines, as well as any need to communicate with people I dislike.

I think it's really common. If you search burnout here on HN, you'll find so many posts about it. I don't know what the answer is. I've worked for startups, larger companies, contract work, medium sized teams, etc, and I always eventually get burnt out.

I burnt out after 4 years at my first job. It was at a startup.

I have been working 5+ years at my current job at a much larger company and burnout is unlikely. I get paid better and have less responsibility.

I'm undecided if the burnout was caused by the job or my inexperience. It was probably both.

> I'm undecided if the burnout was caused by the job or my inexperience. It was probably both.

Likely the job as in the management - I explained their role in my root comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39809297

Curious to hear what your thoughts are

A big problem in this discussion is agreeing on what "burn out" means and entails .

Is it when you feel too stressed or when you dont feel motivated anymore? Or Is it once you smashed yourself into a brickwall and you cant work anymore?

I feel burnt out every year, it's a cycle and it's a small startup

There are two types of burnout; physical and mental. Mental occurs when you're bored. Physical occurs when you're too excited. Seek a middle ground to avoid either.

There are two types of burnout in my experience. Super high demand short term and repetitive long term.

One or the other will get you

I think the problem is the constant performance reviews and comparison/competition with other coworkers.

Not a dev, but in healthcare. Burnout is everywhere. “Physician wellness is key for a happy physician” but in the decade of practicing medicine, I’ve learned that this phrase is nothing but words out of people’s mouths when you are interviewing. No one cares more about your wellbeing or mental health than you. Like you said, corps will try to squeeze every last penny out of you.

Key to burnout to me, in my opinion, is follow your gut. My first job out of training was in primary care at one of the many clinics of a local health corp (advertised as a local small town nonprofit hospital) but CEO ran it like a for-profit, going so far that he stated in one meeting that he plans to run the hospital and primary clinics like “Chick-fil-A”. Healthcare isn’t a combo meal and has to be tailored to the individual. That solidified my plans to leave once my contract and noncompete was up. They kept increasing my patient numbers despite me telling them I want to do more quality work and not quantity like others in the surrounding clinics. Those complaints landed on deaf ears. I left after feeling burnout for 2 years. I was stuck legally/contractually. Worst acid reflux I ever had that led to ulcers in the end. I entered this field to help people and not see patients as dollar signs. After I left, I was told by the CEO and his Admin buddies that I wasn’t worthwhile to hold on to because I didn’t see 25-30 patients a day. I was a “loss leader in primary care”. My goals since grad school were to provide quality work and spending my time with said patients when they needed it most. Their goals were pure volume and more money and not so much in the actual health care.

I jumped from job to job 3 times until I found my place with a company that semi/mostly-aligns with most of my goals. I’m in hospital medicine now with a side gig of concierge medicine. It’s not perfect but my mental health is exponentially better since I moved on. No amount of money or possibility of accumulating generational wealth is worth it in my opinion like some of the comments about being in a FAANG job. Being able to live a comfortable lifestyle and have time for my wife and two kids is what I care about most and with my current job I’m able to do quality work and still have an amazing amount of time with my family compared to the previous jobs.

Sorry this is a bit of a rant. TLDR We all burn out at some point. Up to you to take care of yourself and find you niche so you live happy and comfortably. No perfect job out there but keep searching until you find one that doesn’t cause you stomach ulcers and aligns with what your goals are as a dev. Life is truly short.

Everyone in every industry is overworked unless they actually properly say no and manage things properly.

A lot of this is speaking from personal experience and I've made all of these mistakes at one point or another, and other people might have different advice that's also useful.

I think part of it is also learning how to be assertive and not allow companies to dictate your sleep schedule 24-7 for 365 days per year. Not knowing how to do this tactfully can be compounded by how a lot of developers haven't fully developed their social skills. The lack of balance can also be due to a lack of individuals communicating with managers, for example.

I'm also not blaming individuals for garbage work environments. Definitely not every situation can be solved or even improved with good communication skills. Incentives often such that people are going to try to squeeze as much work out of you for as long as you can shoulder it.

But when you find yourself with a place of employment that doesn't respect pushback or seems to manage people poorly, it's going to be important to be willing to walk away before you hit burnout.

> FAANG, but honestly, these companies just sound like another high-performance meat grinder. You get paid a lot but are constantly under scrutiny.

That's just part of the deal and at least they pay a lot, unlike many other places that work people into the ground. It is much easier to prevent/manage stress/burnout if you have a bunch of money sitting around. But I've known a lot of people who make a lot of money and just have no life and grow bitter over time.

This is in addition to having to always keep advancing your knowledge. If you stop you can end up stuck at a shitty place without a stellar resume or a good network.

I could go on, but tl;dr: It's always better to be proactive and avoid burnout before it happens, and however you solve that can be specific to the individual/environment.

I couldn't say honestly if I haven't been burnt out for the last 10 years. I sort of cope with it and drag it on with short bouts of motivation that keep me floating. The only time I see a sliver of hope is when I switch jobs and take some months in between them to focus on ... life. But the bills start piling up and the reserve starts dwindling so I join the rat race again.

Butnout is possible in each job

burnout for me was not because I was "over worked" but rather the work I was doing was very boring. It was the exact work that didn't get me motivated. This particular company was known to hire the shittiest of consulting groups, and farm out "talent" to low bid offshore contracting companies.

Onboarding these people every quarter knowing they will likely get shit canned the next quarter was a tiring position. The level of incompetency of some of these people was similar to doing support type work for boomers (ie, instead of "did you turn your computer off and on" type deal. It's literally having to point these people to existing documentation and having to read it out to them like they are in elementary school. Basic reading comprehension is not a skill these people are required to have apparently).

I also remember a consulting firm trying to migrate system to some proprietary shite. Asking basic questions about the system, I always get the "we will get back to you on that" and never get it. Follow up, is basically hand waving magic, throw some generic bullshit buzz words ("ItS iN tHe ClOuD, mIcRoSeRvicEd OrIeNteD, DiStRibUtEd"). I remember management eating that shit up.

When push comes to shove, I finally black box test the system and its fails on even the most basic performance tests. Too many scam artists in this industry tbh, and too many incompetent idiots that somehow got into the C-level suite. I think in the end they were able to get the vendor to throw in an extra product or reduce cost to close the deal. Fortunately, I left that shit hole before it was implemented.

The root cause of burnout - be it coding or otherwise, is when expectations don't match reality.

In most cases, people want to do meaningful work and see their work having real impact on the world.

If you spent all your waking hours, eating ramen all the while, building something that has outsized impact on the world, you won't be burnt out - quite the opposite!

OTOH, you can even get burnt out doing almost nothing all day, getting paid six figures if your work got thrown away into the trash can regularly (had no impact at all on anyone).

Burnout happens when that expectation doesn't match reality.

> these companies just sound like another high-performance meat grinder

> but are constantly under scrutiny. And smaller companies are all going pseudo-agile to try to squeeze every last ounce from their developers

As bad it sounds, high-performance, being under scrutiny, squeeze every last ounce aren't really the root cause of burnout - these are great symptoms of a broken process that leads to unmet expectations that then causes burnout.

The broken process usually are:

Scenario 1: At big company, BigCo, your work rarely has a direct impact on the customer, or when it does, it could have been years since you actually made the change that makes it way to the customer if it ends up that route at all or you have no way of getting customer feedback.

Result: You question yourself whether working so hard or putting in that overtime was really worth it because you have no idea where that effort ended up

Scenario 2: Someone ambitious, NewGun, at BigCo figured out a shortcut to a promotion - build a new product which is "better, faster" than an existing product CashCow. BigCo is too afraid to make major changes to CashCow (because it is the cash cow) and there's already a layer of management that's known to steward CashCow. NewGun is an outsider so even if NewGun pulled off those major changes to CashCow, they won't get most of the recognition - the CashCow stewards will.

Action: NewGun convinces BigCo to give them a bunch of devs, works them to the bone (because they need results yesterday), skips actual customer research and discovery (because that takes too long and they need results yesterday), makes up usecases and fictitious users

Result: Product flops badly because it doesn't appeal to anyone real. Devs question themselves whether working so hard or putting in that overtime was really worth it

Scenario 3: This is a very close cousin of Scenario 2, except that NewGun is a fresh entrepreneur who convinced some investors to give them money. Result is the same

Micromanagement, scrutiny, squeeze every last ounce are all symptoms of bad management. They by themselves aren't a strong differentiator - great management can do scrutiny, squeezing as well when it's tactically critical, but that's the exception, like pulling the handbrake to avoid an accident, than the norm.

The real solution to not being burned out: work with a team that actually knows what they are doing and have strong fundamentals. How do find those teams is perhaps a separate post as this one's way too long already

> The root cause of burnout - be it coding or otherwise, is when expectations don't match reality.

When I've been the person suffering from burnout it's often because I've been led to believe something is important and it turns out that it was both unimportant and extra. I put in tons of extra work, and then the whole project turns out to be worthless.

AWS?

Burnout can be as much about what you do outside of work as what happens during working hours.

In some cases it’s easy to identify a workplace as the cause of burnout: Companies that require 50-80 hour weeks, bosses who yell and scream regularly, psychologically manipulative situations, and environments where people are prevented from having control over their own outcomes are going to take a toll on anyone. Getting any new job is statistically likely to be an improvement.

But I talk to a lot of developers who say they’re burnt out but who go on to describe relatively comfortable working environments. Some people even manage to get “burned out” at every company they’ve ever worked for, regardless of what it’s like. For these people, I think blaming the job for burnout becomes a cover for different problems.

For some, it’s because they haven’t built much of a life outside of work. As we grow up it’s easy to fall into routine of going to work, going home, and repeating. Some people I talk to haven’t met up with friends for months. Others haven’t taken a vacation in years. Some people can’t name a hobby that doesn’t also involve sitting at computers at the end of the day (gaming is common). For people in this group, changing jobs does very little beyond the initial excitement of meeting new people. If you’re in this group you really need to start getting out and doing things, even if you don’t feel like it initially. Rebuilding a life outside of work can improve one’s stress resilience in the office tremendously.

I’ve also noticed a lot of developers describing classic depression symptoms but calling it burnout lately. Despite changing attitudes toward mental health, people are still resistant to admitting depression in themselves. I’ve had a few friends in recent years who self-diagnosed as being burned out and took time off of work or quit their jobs to recover. Then in the absence of daily routine and social engagement of work, their depression became even deeper. I think the overlap between depression and burnout symptoms has created an opening for people who dislike the idea of being depressed to blame their jobs for all of their problems, which can delay treatment for a long time. For people in this situation it’s best to explore all explanations and be open to the possibility that maybe there’s more going on.

A good heuristic might be to look around you. If many of the people at your company are unhappy, burned out, or turning over rapidly then it’s probably your job. On the other hand if you’re one of the few people who seems to be struggling or of you’ve felt “burned out” at every job since college, maybe there’s more going on that can’t be explained by work alone.

Finally: Different jobs fit different personality types. Some people get bored and drained by slow-moving companies. Other people have difficulty handling any pressure or unpredictability at work. What works for someone else may not necessarily work for you. Match your job to what suits you best.

> Companies that require 50-80 hour weeks, bosses who yell and scream regularly, psychologically manipulative situations, and environments where people are prevented from having control over their own outcomes are going to take a toll on anyone

If you got paid $250k/yr to work fulltime at Bain and all that work was to shred a single piece of paper, any paper, a day and that is it, no crunch time, no yelling bosses, nothing - would you eventually burn out?

A big part of the problem is that everybody just makes up their own definition of “burnt out.”

Another part of the problem is that people who were good in school or good at passing interviews get frustrated when the real world is nothing like school or job interviews. They just don’t know how to handle uncertainty and a lack of the next external validation of achievement.

Another part of the problem is people thinking that they deserve to be happy at work. They can be happy at work, but it’s on you to make it happen. Your employer’s got goals and making you happy isn’t very high on the list if it’s there at all.