Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?
Earlier this year I burned out hard and spectacularly, having nothing short of a total breakdown and being forced to take many, many months of medical leave by my GP.
My job wasn't overly difficult, but the corporate environment I found myself in was something I'd never done before and it was completely unsuited to me as an individual. It is the worst working experience I've ever been through.
I returned to my job late last month and I find that I simply don't care anymore. My burnout was never really fixed despite the time off. I'm unable to accomplish even basic tasks at work now and truthfully I'm at a point where I don't even care if I get fired. In the time I've been back I think I've been able to close one of two tiny tickets, the rest of the time I've literally done nothing.
During my time off I've been poked and prodded by psychologists and they seem to think I have ADHD and that it was a large contributing factor to this, though I'm not completely sure I buy this explanation.
I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary, which I'm likely going to have to consider given my firing seems imminent at this point. I simply don't think I'm capable of maintaining this job anymore.
I really don't know how to get over this and how to move past it. I feel quite literally incapable of working. My mind knows what needs to be done, but my body says no and I am overwhelmed by apathy. I'm honestly not sure if I'm capable of working in tech anymore at this point and that's doing quite a number of any selfesteem I had.
Truthfully I didn't know things could get this bad. I'm trying to figure out what my future even looks like and how to move past this and any advice would be really appreciated.
231 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 224 ms ] threadBut I can fully understand you, I don't think I completely burned out, but I was somewhere along the spectrum. I was, and am, in a priviledged situation where I can afford to take some months of work. Initially it did not feel like it helped all that much, but on later reflection it at least "stopped the bleeding".
I am in a better place now a year or two later, but my perspective on work has probably changed forever.
When I ask myself the question about when I'll get back to the way I was, I also have to ask "Does that include being that person that let myself get burned out so badly in the first place?"
What I'm slowly getting back to is a different person than who I was. I have different priorities about how/where to apply and manage my curiosity and energy. If I can accept the person I'm turning into, then I feel like I'll be back one day.
If I want to be the person I was a decade ago who naively worked like a donkey until I burned out, then yes, I'm never coming back.
I changed careers and found the change fun. I may go back to coding at some point, I kinda miss the that deep thinking it requires .... but I can do that in my spare time if I really need to.
Or, if you need the money, just phone it in for a while.
I never got what was so great about travelling. Whenever I tried doing it, I was almost immediately bored and lonely. It proabably works much better for extraverts.
Tech prospects look bleak, I think the party will be over in 10 or less years as engineers are viewed more as a cost vs value add.
Seems realistic, though optimistic. I think the party will be over sooner than that, probably in the next 5 or so years, but we'll collectively be in denial about it for at least another 5 years following that.
Let's be honest here; a lot of what we do involves navigating the theology of software more so than actually performing valuable work. Take frontend, for instance. Frontend development is continuing to move towards Java-esque complexity all while providing no measurable improvement in efficiency or reduction in bugs. New features ship slower than they used to. Until someone can show actual evidence that "modern" web development is a measurable improvement over the old days, I'll believe it when I see it, and what I've seen for most of my career now is adherence to a bunch of clever ideas that don't really improve anything.
Yes, more tech jobs have been needed to compensate for the onslaught of bullshit, but much of that bullshit was invented by the holders of those very jobs. Much of object-oriented dogma alone invented a bunch of jobs that otherwise wouldn't have existed because it created more problems than it actually solved. When the going gets tough, economically speaking, no one's going to give a fuck about all the frameworks, all the needless abstractions, all the supposed "best practices", all the build tools, all the lint rules, all the devops, all the stupid ass containerization schemes, or any of that jazz. With some exceptions, machine learning probably being one of them, what isn't necessary will be culled. Companies that know better are going to suddenly become interested in what their engineers are actually doing, will remove the low-performers, and tell their remaining engineers to stop making things complicated.
I remember the Windows shrink wrap days and everyone predicting doom, and then the internet happened. Next is AI and then the metaverse most likely.
I think the future is bright.
I find it rather hard to generate 100s of millions of dollars of wealth through metal working.
On the flip side, which is harder to outsource? For metal trinkets it would be similar, for stuff that needs to be on prem.. metal working would be outsource proof.
Eh, there are some moats. For example around Law.
Imagine how much members of the US could save with offshored and outsourced law?
But lawyers have a strong guild protecting them. Software developers do not.
The worst that will happen is that some companies are chasing opportunities that aren't profitable enough to hire tech workers.
Most experts who have any data or solid reasoning agree that tech jobs won't get slashed permanently.
In terms of career change, I'm not sure that's possible without moving. I live very rural, there's almost no jobs here that aren't retail. If I stay here I'm basically forced to continue remote dev work. I actually want to move, but I don't think I'm in a good position to take such a risk.
> Or, if you need the money, just phone it in for a while.
One way or another I'm going to draw it out as long as possible, I basically don't have a choice.
I don't know your life situation, but it's possible you could travel to a city in your timezone and get a short-term rental of some sort and work from there as you investigate the city and its options. You could probably go a timezone or two away and still not need to actually make it obvious; of course swapping to the other side of the world would be more difficult.
Even if you chose to return you'll at least have more knowledge about the options.
Anything else is ignoring the root cause. Which is not the Engineer thing to do. Your job sucks and you deep down know it.
I want this
i bootstrapped to avoid "working for" investors. and on some projects where i'm working with others, we've formed anarchist coop-like structures to avoid hypocritically subjecting others to the hierarchies i escaped. we're all happier and more productive for it. i would like to help more people try this through repeatable playbook-like resources.
Now into year 6 of bootstrapping a SaaS.. I am in the same exact boat as OP. And I can't take time off, at least not enough time off to "fix" the burnout.
Is there someplace we can find out more? I’m very curious.
I think you should give this idea more thought. The situation you find yourself in is not uncommon among high-functioning ADHD persons, and your life can truly get a whole lot better with a bit of therapy and medication.
While you're at it, you can use the therapy as an opportunity to probe why your job was such a bad fit, why you ended up in it, and how you can recognize and avoid such work environments in the future.
It may be a good idea to leave your current job, as others have suggested, but I think it would be quite dangerous for you to do this without also exploring the above more forthrightly. My advice, as someone who has dealt with a similar burden: don't overthink this. Just go to your GP, tell them you are suffering, and tell them you would like to investigate ADHD therapy. Approach this with a calm curiosity. You are in control.
I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not and I will just do whatever they tell me to do. I mean I'm not a psychologist, I'm paying them for their expertise on this and it would be foolish for me not to take their advice.
My friend, I truly feel your pain. I have been there, and I promise you it gets better.
>I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not.
They're going to ask you if you want to try medication. I would encourage you to be actively engaged in your therapy. You can start by thinking about how you would answer the question, "would you like to try medication?" I suspect you have conflicting feelings about it; being able to articulate them clearly is a good way to start.
Writing out things into a journal is good because you can write things that wouldn’t make sense to someone else and therefore you can see reality more clearly.
Psychologists have a tendency to overprescribe drugs and you have no idea how that will screw up who you are and what you think.
Even if you don't have to pay for those drugs thanks to some healtcare insurance (whether public or private), some money will still flow towards the maker of drugs and that means they have an interest in doctors overprescribing medicines.
Instead of drugs, why not try to change something else in your life? Change job, increase your autonomy, find another way to live?
The reality is that the effects of medication have been thoroughly studied, and prescriptions are obsessively managed.
Meds don't work for everyone, but they work reality well for most of us.
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No lifestyle choice is going to help me manage the chemical imbalance of my brain as effectively as medication does.
Even deeper than that, making an active lifestyle choice, or even any choice at all, is literally the thing my brain is bad at. It's called executive dysfunction, and it's the main symptom of ADHD.
If I have to overcome my ADHD in order to treat my ADHD, then I will never satisfy the circular dependency. Just like I literally cannot pick myself up by my own bootstraps.
They cover what it is that ADHD meds actually do and why certain meds work for some people but not for others.
One data point from me - ADHD medication (Elvanse specifically) has some gnarly side effects which meant my wife had a very rough time with it. I won't go in to detail other than to say we nearly ended up in the A&E a couple of times. By all means try medication but be prepared to switch to another or abandon it altogether if the side effects are overwhelming. Listen to your body.
I went through a 1.5 year long process to ADHD diagnosis and being prescribed first methylphenidate and later LDX (Elvanse) in the lowest available doses. It did what it was supposed to do and helped me focus better but the side-effects were to unpleasant for me, so much that I preferred to not take the medication at all. Seeing how my life spirals toward rock-bottom, every once in a while I give it another try but it always ends up in me regretting that I've taken the meds, as it ruins that day and worsens my insomnia. The doctor has no advice on what to do about it except for toughing it out.
And that really sucked.
But it was worth it.
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Whether or not you do have ADHD, the most important thing to know about is executive dysfunction.
ADHD isn't people who can't pay attention: it's people who can't choose where their attention goes. ADHD isn't hyperactivity, it's a vacuum of understimulation that - for some - is most easily filled with activity. For others, that void is filled with mental/introverted activity.
I think you know that you are still in the midst of burnout. If you can go a few months without a job and be okay, my suggestion would be to quit immediately and start looking for a new job in your own time. You need time to decompress followed by a complete change of environment. Recovery is not going to happen in this environment.
Feel free to contact me if you want to chat about your experiences. I went through something similar last year.
What so you do instead of completing tasks? Is it just a wall preventing you from completing tasks, or do you get distracted by other things?
I have ADHD and it’s been a lifelong struggle, however, as I’ve gotten older I found that it had a lot more to do with anxiety than the inability to focus. I was so wrapped up in failure, impostor syndrome, worried I wouldn’t be able to do some thing, worried that if I did a good job people expect more of me, etc. etc.
It doesn’t sound like burn out, it sounds like anxiety
> What so you do instead of completing tasks? Is it just a wall preventing you from completing tasks, or do you get distracted by other things?
Majorly distracted. Put me in front of a boring task at work and I will immediately try to shift to something I find more interesting. It's always been a huge struggle to focus on my work tasks, but combined with "burnout" it's now just impossible.
I don't have imposter syndrome, I know that of my coworkers I am the most technically skilled. The problem is being the best technically doesn't matter when you can't deliver consistently.
Adderall doesn't help consistently.
I have a good paying job and a stock vesting schedule for another 2.5 years worth almost 100k on top of salary and I'm still thinking "what if I just quit today?"
I am so stressed. And every time I take even one workday off, when I am free to do whatever I feel like and not care about work or even other people, it's magical.
The dam breaking on my recovery from severe anxiety really began with depression.
I underwent ketamine nasal spray therapy and it completely removed my depression, and that allowed me to focus 100% on my anxiety.
Things are much better today
His youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AndrewHubermanLab His website: https://hubermanlab.com/
Is the heart of your problem your career or this specific job / company? A change of scenery can do wonders to re-motivate and reinvigorate.
I don't have the exact answer but to me this needs to be focused on.
Psychological safety is paramount. Workers need to know that they won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Not having that safety for a health issue shows there's something severely wrong with your place of employment.
USA: totally different.
At the end I see burnout as very positive thing what happened to me. I am much better professional and better person. It brought me the understanding that I am not more than excel row for big corp and I must take care of myself by myself. Loyalty does not pay off.
Take your time, try keeping a job somehow. Looking for a new job while being mentally off track is very very hard.
Changing job may have a temporary positive effect, it lasts roughly 6 months for me.
Do the absolute minimum at any job you need to so you don't starve. Don't try to makes sense of it. It is indeed BS and you shouldn't care. Don't care.
Meanwhile, try to figure out an exit strategy. Build something you enjoy doing, start building passive revenue streams which may support you and replace your daily job. Hope you can escape the BS soon, we're all in this together.
Good luck
Sorry, wrong group, that's the one down by the docks later tonight :)
Yeah, can probably just find a different company, or line of work.
I was diagnosed at 32. Extremely high functioning but prone to burnout. I was hesitant as well, but embracing my diagnosis was life changing. You don't have to make ADHD your SINGLE core attribute like some people do. But ignoring what might be a core part of yourself isn't beneficial. Remember that it's just information-- what you do with the data is what's important. Meds can help but learning how to have healthy interactions with work and in my personal life was key.
You're not alone in this. I've found that there seems to be a higher concentration of ADHD in Dev/Security work. The constant newness of things keeps us interested-- but can also be dangerous.
Also, consider therapy. Even if you think you don't need it. Not a psychologist. But an actual factual therapist. I would prioritize this over medication, but honestly pursue them both. Therapy isn't what you think it is. It's a great way to have a sounding board.
But you have to be willing to change. YMMV, but the first thing I would do is stop doing things that don't work. Change your environment and change the people you see.
Office life not your thing? Try construction or landscaping. Determined to stick it out? Make selfless service and love you primary values. Seek to hear and serve.
Psychologists can't help? Try talking to an older relative, religious leader, or try an altogether different kind of therapy.
Get involved in a group doing something. Anything. Play or coach a sport. Volunteer at your local homeless shelter. Get involved at a local church and help with parking, food pantries. Bake cookies for your neighbors and just show up and say hi. Don't escape with drugs, sex, video games, etc... and don't kill yourself with self-judgment with the plethora of readily available self-help productivity porn on YouTube either.
Lastly, you aren't alone, many people suffer this way, myself included.
There are a lot of different groups online dealing with this problem. Personally I've found a lot of help from the likes of John Verveake's Meaning Crisis and Johnathan Pageau's Symbolic World. It has helped me greatly to be able to see things that are bigger than you and be involved in them. It helps a lot.
https://youtu.be/gRPBkCW0R5E
Burnout is usually a result of the workplace environment, but it can cause you to experience effects that last even when the job is gone, namely depression.
I submitted my 2 weeks notice and am taking 6 weeks off, then spending the Spring semester focusing on graduate classes before I re-enter the workforce.
I think the time off itself will do wonders, but the key is to uncover how you burned out in the first place. The work environment can be a major factor, but your relationship, attitude, and habits surrounding work can all contribute as well. For me, I should have learned to say no and pushback on expectations much earlier on in my career.
Having been at the same job for eighteen years I felt it was time. I don’t know if it was a burn out but maybe it was. Almost everybody at work was surprised.l though. Boss suggested I take leave of absence. I said no because I know I’m not coming back. For me, things at work changed so much in the past two years that it was not the job I signed for or career progression I wanted. Also so many of my coworkers I cared for had left for other jobs.
My dilemma now is I don’t know what I want to do next. A few folks reached out offering me a job. But it would be similar to what I’d been doing but at different yet similar sized companies.
So while taking time off was great i still have homework to do.
I think as software engineers we don't always consider the social element much, we tend to focus on the problems we are solving day in and day out, but the people are a critical piece of the puzzle as well. I similarly had a lot of coworkers I cared for leave for other jobs, and that ended up hitting me harder than I thought it would.
Best of luck to you.