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Ask HN: 9-5 Burnout?

45 points by notoriousarun ↗ HN
I always feel a little strange among all the other 9-5 workers. It's really difficult for me to do that every day of the week.

Does anyone else feels the same way? How do you handle daily burn out?

55 comments

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zerr
Only [non-consecutive] 3 hours is a productive work out of holy 8 hours per day.
trcollinson
A number of people will probably tell you to be your own boss, try herbal remedies, change your sleeping habit, etc. And those are all really good answers. But let me suggest one other thing.

First off, if you think you are feeling burnout, you are. There is no checklist that makes burnout "real". It's how you feel about you. So, get with a counselor. Talk therapy is really valuable and absolutely excellent for helping with burnout. You may not need medication (though, you might) but a qualified mental health professional can help a lot.

I fought against this route for years. I wish I hadn't. When I started visiting my therapist, Rich, he really helped me a ton. I still have good days and bad days but now I recognize the issues and I can help to combat them.

Seeking professional help is a good thing!

logicslave
I took 18 months off, built a machine learning product and then sold it for a modest amount of money. It was very exciting for me. Then I joined a FAANG company, and I'll be honest, I am completely miserable. I feel like I am in a cage, and the time off only convinced me that I am happier in other modes of being. The unhappiness of working that I attributed to burn out was really because I actually just hated having a job, any job. But theres no easy answer, starting a company is financially very risky.

"They are born, put in a box; they go home to live in a box; they study by ticking boxes; they go to what is called "work" in a box, where they sit in their cubicle box; they drive to the grocery store in a box to buy food in a box; they talk about thinking "outside the box"; and when they die they are put in a box."

-Nassim Taleb

eamann
That quote was not quite the positive way I wanted to start my week, but wow. Very accurate.

Also curious about your experience building/selling an ML product. Because that's the dream :-)

logicslave
It was a bit of luck and timing. A model and system for real time classification of twitch gaming streams. Easily trainable by someone who doesn't know ml, with small amounts of data. Some very complex data augmentation and ml modelling went in to make the computation and system fast. Could be run on a cpu, as running on gpus is just too expensive. Found an esports company who was hiring for a role to built what I had, and they outright bought it
notoriousarun
@logicslave username and quote update in the comment, describe your's constant state of prolonged anguish.
hpen
What did you build? And did it help you get into FANG?
logicslave
FANG you just need to be good at algorithms with a good study plan, getting the interview isnt so hard
bob33212
A lot of people who say they enjoy their job at a big company only work 10-20 hours a week. They may be at the office or on their computer 40 hours a week but most of that time is spent doing things they enjoy ( chatting with friends, gossiping, spending time with people they find attractive, learning new technologies, browsing the internet, travel planning) They don't spend much time worrying about bonuses, promotions or what is best for the company.
pram
I’ve been doing practically nothing since February, plenty of time to work on my hobbies. This is about the third time in my overall career that this has happened, and all at giant companies. At Oracle I had a 4 month period where I did absolutely nothing and didn’t even have a manager lol.
wolco
That happened to me and I couldn't handle it. Then when I started getting work I resented the time away from my side projects. Handling time off is a skill itself.
cpach
Is that a common thing to do…?
amznthrowaway5
I haven't seen that. On the teams I've been on, you would quickly get put on a PIP if you don't work extra overtime (unless you are politically connected, then you get away with doing nothing).
mrfusion
Look how fun NBC’s “the office” looks. It sounds like a terrible and boring job but they have so much fun.
zalkota
To say that starting a company is too risky, but then inject that quote afterwards that summarizes being in the rat race... is silly. If you want to live outside the box, find a way to be financially independent. Living outside the box is the definition of risk. You’re missing the entire purpose of life. To live without risk, is to live in a box of comfort.

Take calculated risk.

blablabla123
I think there's always a time and place to do something risky. For example when boredom sets in, financial freedom is present to some degree and an idea fun and worth pursing is there. For me that's definitely not right now, but at some point in the future I'll give this a shot again.
cjoelrun
I remember hearing a similar line about boxes from Kanye West's Yeezy Campus GQ interview.
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peruvian
I take breaks regularly. By this I mean breaks during the day and actual vacation. We have "unlimited" PTO and I usually take ~5 weeks off a year total, give or take.
giantg2
Can I please have 51 weeks off?
quickthrower2
Unlimited is a euphemism for limited of course.
giantg2
I know - all companies are pathological liars.
demygale
Most 9-5 employees work a lot less than you think. Coders tends to think of productivity as all day long. Any task that isn’t coding is not productive. Look at a day in the life of management or administrative roles and you’ll see why the burn out a lot less.
giantg2
I'm a coder and I can say that I sit in about 3 hours of meetings per day. It's brutal.
tmaly
I feel the worst kind of meetings are those without an agenda. The best kind of meetings have an agenda sent out well in advance.
giantg2
That is a big help for the meetings that are necessary.

We could avoid 75% of our meetings if the business knew their processes. If only they could make a business process map...

brutus1213
Hmm .. I moved to management and have to disagree with you. It is a shit ton of work dealing with so many people, projects, technologies, etc. It feels not worth it from a dollar perspective or a sanity perspective. To summarize, burn-out is a very real danger for managers and founders. I know of some founders who made it big .. in their early days, we'd joke about back-up plans when it all crumbles. To give an example of someone I don't know directly .. even Elon Musk had a backup to move into his wife's parent's basement when his company collapsed (per my recollection, this is in the Ashley Vance book). Speaking of Elon again, it seemed he did burn out post paypal .. his send a rocket to Mars seemed like a crazy idea to get him motivated again.
andor
I have to disagree.

Coding can be quite satisfying. I make something, I can see it working, I know I contributed something useful. In management roles, both contributions and feedback are much more indirect. Often it's not clear whether the work is useful and what the work even is. If something is not right, as an engineer I can just fix it, while as a manager I need to convince other people to fix it for me.

Also, managers generally stand between teams. While as an engineer in a team, interactions are generally positive if the team is working towards a shared goal. Managers on the other hand typically liaise between groups that have conflicting goals.

me_smith
I completely agree with this.

It isn't just managing the day to day or the current project, but it's managing the growth of the team for the future. Seeing the results of your work may take days, weeks, months or even years.

Also, dealing with conflict (and there will be conflict) between team members, teams or other managers can drain a lot of energy out of me. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I just want to do absolutely nothing.

Spartan-S63
I think part of the burnout is the fetishization of "coding." This concept that you have to be cranking out code to be productive is frankly untrue and unhealthy. The thing that software engineers do is solve problems and a lot of their day can be spent thinking about solving the problem and that's perfectly productive. I'd rather spend six hours thinking about a problem and an hour implementing it, than blindly write code for hours because I haven't spent time considering how to approach the problem.

Management and administration, though, can be just as taxing. It's a lot of people interaction, which can be draining. It's also a job where you have to keep a bunch of balls in the air without dropping them. I've done a little of both as anchor/lead in previous roles and it's draining to do either and especially draining to do both (but extremely rewarding).

tmaly
I agree that a lot of non-coders see a coder not typing on the keyboard as not being productive. Thinking is one of the most underrated skills in the world.
Spartan-S63
Going from a culture where I pair programmed all day and mostly just pulled stories from the backlog, working from home in an org where pairing is less prevalent (but not non-existent), it's taken me time to retrain my personal expectations that it's okay to count work time as time spent thinking about how to solve the problem.
grawprog
9-5 is just kind of a lousy schedule in general. I preferred 8-4 or even 7-3 when I had the choice. 9-5 cuts too much of the evening out and makes even being at home feel like a chore and the extra hour in the morning doesn't really make up for it. Having an extra hour or two after work ends up making a big difference. It gives you some time to just relax or do something else before making dinner and stuff. You miss the worst of rush hour, the grocery stores are still not packed up so even the commute and after work stops go faster.

That said though, it doesn't really stop burnout in the long run. You still end up going through that same cycle you do with a 9-5 and it still ended up getting to me.

proverbialbunny
For me, if I'm working a 9 to 5 and am forced to do lunch at noon, it is pretty brutal. I don't handle longer than 3 hours of sitting in a row after lunch. Sitting from 1 to 5pm is just too much.

If I work a 9 to 5 and my lunch hour starts at 1pm or even 2pm, it works out quite well. One remedy I've done is working an 8 to 4.

Imho it's just better if lunch starts a bit later in the day.

blendo
I was able to find a job that was 9am to 4:30am, with an hour for lunch. That, and being able to read on my train commute, went a long way towards reducing burn out.

Then, I negotiated a 4 day work week, along with a 20% pay cut. Loved having a 3 day weekend EVERY WEEK!

[Edit] I meant to say 9am to 4:30pm.

secondstring
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you meant 4pm...
non-entity
> Then, I negotiated a 4 day work week, at a 20% pay cut

This irks me when the discussion of a shorter work week / day. Why is a pay cut required as long as I maintain as much productivity. By that logic shouldn't I get paid more for working longer days or weekends?

kohtatsu
Yes, that's called overtime.
non-entity
Aren't most salarie positions not exempt though?
sparker72678
This happens to me regularly. Any time we have a long-running project, or I end up on something with a lot of sucky work for a while, I feel at least modernly burned out at the end.

There have been other times in my career where I was a lot more than moderately burned out.

And all of this while working basically 9-5 my career. Never 100 hour weeks.

For me, the minimum is to take some time off. Get away from the drudgery and have some time to think about other things.

If it's bigger than just a need for a vacation, I'd echo the other comments here to try to find someone to talk to about it. Have someone talk through it with you, especially without having an agenda, can be extraordinarily helpful.

parasthinker
Explore the alternatives, Do what you love for life. ( cliches are true )
mips_avatar
For me the guilt gets to me. I feel guilty for not imparting 40 hours of focused time in the office, I feel like I'm a slacker or don't deserve to be in my career. I don't think this guilt is helpful, as I only really do work I'm proud of when I've had good breaks to regain myself.
potta_coffee
I don't know anyone that puts in 40 hours of focused work.
wh-uws
I make my own schedule doing remote software consulting now and have previously worked with startups and FAANGM+ after an acquisition.

Over my career I seen many different types of schedules from 9 to 5 , 10 to 6, basically 24 / 7 (people just starting or working on scaling startups pulling 80 hr weeks)

You have to decide whats right for you and do what you can to shape it the way you want.

I explain it like this, work life balance is a spectrum.

On one end I know some people for whom work is life. If you contact them at 3pm on Saturday they'll be in the office happily on the grind. Its their everything.

On the other end you have people who do just enough work to not get fired even in the middle of the week and focus on their hobbies in their spare time.

I used to think poorly of either extreme and now I've come to the conclusion that who am I to judge? You make of life what you want to.

I personally have chosen to strike a very strong balance. So there are some weeks where work is everything and others where personal life is and I work a max of 8ish hours that week or just take it off all together.

The hard part initially is finding work that is conducive to this.

Startups are not and though larger companies can be the tough part is finding an organization that has enough trust that people will be respectful of when to work harder and also when to make sure to take time off or slow down.

I find the right balance of happiness and productivity for me is

- Full time M, W, Th (usually start between 10am and 12pm) - Half time Tues (and Sundays on occasion only when I need extra time to plan out the we ahead).

Off on Saturdays and most Fridays as well.

I also workout regularly Sun, Tue, Fri. its huge for energy and overall wellbeing.

I've been toying around with trying to build a community around people who value schedule flexiblity and strong worklife balance.

There are plenty for the 80hr week startup crowd but less for the lifestyle business crowd.

feel free to reach out if you are interested

jamesnyc
Stop everything for few days. Decide and design your life the way you want. Then execute ruthlessly toward that direction.
yesburnout
I have been feeling burned out for last 5 years or so. I keep working because I have responsibilities, wife, parents, kids, mortgage etc.

If I didn't had responsibilities, I would have quit my job, spend a few months relaxing/traveling/reading, and find something more meaningful. I fantasize about this a lot.

Unfortunately, I have to keep working. A few things that help me are:

1. I started to side-hustle as Realtor. This helps by making me feel like that I can quit software dev whenever I want to. The feeling of having choice helps make shitty situation less bad. Also since it is so different from programming, that I feel refreshed doing real estate stuff on weekends.

2. I spend a lot of time to figure out my passion/purpose. Your passion may not earn you a living but once you know your passion, you may enjoy your work because it lets you pursue your passion/purpose. Someone will say that my kids should be my purpose. I spend a lot of time with them and enjoy it but it still doesn't feel fulfilled. You should set an example for your kids that it is okay to pursue your happiness as long as you are meeting your responsibilities.

3. Reading too many books on this topic. They have helped me feel calm and I feel whatever happens, I will figure out my passion/purpose and get/make a job that makes me feel happy.

tamersalama
This resonates - what are the books you've read so far?
jlokier
> You should set an example for your kids that it is okay to pursue your happiness as long as you are meeting your responsibilities.

I think this is a really great point by itself, that I don't often see articulated so clearly.

kugelblitz
I work freelance contract, usually 3 to 12 months at a time as an extension of a dev team. This keeps it technically exciting for me, get to meet new people, and depending on my mood, I might look for projects that are more laid back and chill (BigCo with many junior / midlevel devs, who need a couple of new features), or where I need to learn new tech quickly (small team with only senior devs), or where I can set my own hours (remote team with very few meetings) and work from 5 AM to 1 PM if it fits.

It's really nice, the first years might be a bit more risky until you've built up a good network of clients and the current climate might not be the greatest (maybe wait a few months), but this might be an option.

If you can book yourself continuously at a decent rate, 4 days / week @ 10 months / year should be able to replace your employed income (broad generalized calculation).

sfgweilr4f
You are either a duck or a swan. They are similar. But not the same. Neither is essentially better.

It doesn't matter how you define them. The only important aspect is that once you realise you are one and not the other you know you don't fit.

You can swim with the others, even eat and socialise with them but understand you are not the same. You may need to adjust your methods and expectations. Consider your presence and possible exit strategy carefully. Even how you interact may need to be adjusted lest you offend them even accidentally.

proverbialbunny
Most people I know who experience burnout have not learned how to make their own deadlines. They feel pressured by management's deadlines and blindly do what they're told instead of what is healthy. Mental and physical health always comes first. If you're regularly working 50 hours a week to meet a deadline, you might want to stop and ask yourself why you're doing that.

For me, I've had burnout but it's been from 1) not being treated well by coworkers or management or 2) not being given the right workload and not knowing how to express that to management.

maxlamb
I know people who feel more burned out at a job with no deadlines and very little work to do. Some people burn out because they feel their work is meaningless, and so in a way their life in meaningless. Add to that the feeling that they are still subjugated to their boss's whims, so they are not in total control over lives. I think finding a company with a culture/purpose/product that fits your personality is definitely worth the effort in that it can alleviate those issues.
UglyToad
Yes, I've felt this for years. By the end of the typical day I have absolutely no energy for anything. It seems to have been getting worse as well, the scope of my life becomes surviving the workday and nothing beyond that; no energy to see friends, go anywhere, do anything. And the scope has become increasingly circumscribed. This has persisted between changes in diet, job, location, exercise regime, etc.

By chance I happened to see a comment on fibromyalgia on HN the other day and I'll be damned if I don't meet every symptom exactly. It helps to know that's the likely cause (every previous attempt to achieve a diagnosis for the fatigue from doctors ended nowhere) but obviously there's no real solution so it's just about accepting those limitations.