Ask HN: How common is developer burnout? Have you ever been burnt out?
When I graduated from college I found a job working for a Fortune 500 where I completed a pretty complex project. I was there for two years and it felt like a stressful meat grinder. The experience was so bad that I quickly pivoted to a less stressful role, and have been there for quite some time now.
This has got me wondering: how stressful do people find the software industry at large? There seems to be a big draw for young developers to try to go FAANG, but honestly, these companies just sound like another high-performance meat grinder. You get paid a lot but are constantly under scrutiny. And smaller companies are all going pseudo-agile to try to squeeze every last ounce from their developers.
This makes me wonder if finding a low-key, sane culture is the key to sustainability in the industry, and avoiding burn out.
97 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadFinding 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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?
One or the other will get you
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?
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.
> 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
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 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.
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.
(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 somebody's "burnt out" (for whatever definition of that you want to come up with), then sometimes it's just better for them to quit. It's not a great use of your time as a leader to be constantly discussing this.
If you've enacted change that allows motivated people to work where you work without "burn out" or you believe those changes are impossible to enact, what else is there for you to do?
If the root of the problem is that people are too wrapped up in the mission, look for people who don't care quite as much the next time you're hiring.
Or keep talking about burnout forever. That's an option, too.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
- 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.
What do you do now, if you don't mind me asking?
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.