You’re in an industry that values your skills and seems to always have demand. Whether or not that’s true in the future, it certainly is today, so the best thing you can do is put yourself first and worry less about work as a whole. Especially if it’s not your own company.

Spend more time on you, on activities with friends and family, on hobbies. If you don’t have particularly healthy hobbies, maybe start some. Getting away from your work more and more will make it all the more bearable.

These days work is close to the bottom of my list of concerns, which sounds really bad - BUT - I find I’m more productive than I’ve been in years because I’m not worrying if something takes longer than expected or is bigger than I realised. I can just enjoy the problem solving and shipping without the stress.

If you’re burned out this badly I’d suggest it’s your soul’s way of telling yourself “hey this isn’t working for me”. As someone who has been to some pretty messed up depths with the anxiety monster, I’d heed that voice. Life isn’t long enough to stay stuck in a rut like this for any amount of time at all.

I don't think it's "care less" but I think it's "care appropriately for 40 hours a week."

The concept of "quiet quitting" is a shameful, panicky fraud perpetuated by the power holders in the industry that see their power slipping. "Quiet quitting" has been known as "work to rule" or "fulfilling a contract." My paystub says 40 hours. My original contract says nothing about overtime. I'm not quiet quitting, I'm doing my !@#$ing job.

By being STRICTLY limited to 40 hours, I can do my job at full strength, providing consistent results and quality. And then I'm not so burned out that I go home and do whatever I please with my life. Sometimes that's more coding for me!

My job is a side quest, not a main quest.

Even if it were your main quest, I think the strategy you outline is worth following. Going all out is what causes burnout, and that applies to whether you are working for yourself or for someone else, and also whether you are working a job or working on your passion.

A career is like an ultra marathon -- maintain a sustainable pace, and run with people you like to spend time with.

I could retire now, if I had to, but I hope to do this for another three to five years. It is just far too interesting and fun. I had an older coworker that worked full time until he was 74. He also just enjoyed the work and the people he worked with.

It is a marathon, and change is constant, which makes it more interesting than a lot of careers in the long run. Plan for the long run, and make room to live your life all along the way.

Over time, I started putting more time into properly decompressing from work at the end of the day so I didn’t feel stressed about the next day.

I get burned out from time to time still, but it’s much more “in the moment” burn out vs systemic burn out.

Is it?

I always took "Quiet Quitting" to mean, "Lets see how long I can do nothing until I get fired", not "Work to Rule" or "work your pay", or whatever.

I've seen this "Work 5 hours a week sporadically answering slack and see how long till they notice I produce nothing" before, and it's surprising how long I've seen people get away from doing basically 0 work and continue drawing a paycheck.

I think it's largely because most companies don't properly manage a remote teams. It happens when they don't understand how to properly set results-based expectations and deadlines for remote work.

But it's also a huge middle-finger to your teammates who may still care about their work and job, and having dead-weight on the team is demoralizing.

So I imagine the percentage of role-playing in r/overemployeed is less than 50%.

That's a non-trivial number of people, and I'd bet if you work for a large company, there's a non-trivial of people doing this now. (See the thread about Experion firing contractors with multiple jobs[1])

1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33198708

I think there's a nuance in this that's easy to be missed. It's possible to care about the quality of your work but not care about the various forms of insanity in your management chain.

I think a lot of people fear that not caring means you turn into a totally useless person - that extremely unproductive person in the company that everybody hates but management and HR refuses to fire.

Not caring doesn't mean you have to become that person.

> I find I’m more productive than I’ve been in years because I’m not worrying if something takes longer than expected or is bigger than I realised. I can just enjoy the problem solving and shipping without the stress.

100% this. Care about the quality of your work. If you work for a place where that's never possible due to constant unrealistic expectations, start looking for another place to work.

I've actually found that some managers like employees who don't care so much because they need much less care and feeding. People who care too much also complain too much. And even if you do good work, constant complaining can overshadow that.

Yes, exactly! I've found this to be the main cause of my own burnout, caring too much about the background noise and not focusing enough on the parts of the job that I actually enjoy and do well. When I stopped caring so much about all the chatter in slack and jira, all-hands meetings, etc.. and spent all my time at my desk closing tickets assigned to me, and nothing more, things got better.

> People who care too much also complain too much.

I agree but I've also witnessed other devs burn out who just decided everything was their problem and tried way to hard to please everyone with a problem. Rather than complaining they imploded.

I'm on year 17 in the industry and year 5 of "care less" which has really turned into "care very little, if at all". I work for a FAANG and while I procrastinate like crazy (btw I have very bad ADHD, so factor that in), I still tend to complete my work on time or ahead of schedule. I do the bare minimum though and I don't give a damn about the job at all beyond that. I haven't put in an honest 40 hours in years. I try to cram all my real work into a 2-3 hour block of time each day. Somehow my managers are still very happy with my output and I still get offered promotions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My sole reason for working is to survive and provide for my family. I put most of my passion and energy into hobbies instead. All of this makes it so I don't dread work every day; it finally feels like I have equilibrium in my work-life balance now even though I still do on-call rotations and work for a massive company.

Funny thing is all of this started from me randomly finding an "e-book" called "The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to The Office" by Venkatesh Rao. It's a somewhat exaggerated take on things, but it got me to re-evaluate my career and life. Free to read: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Shit, I can't consistently do more than 3-5 hours of "real work" each day.

My wife just started a WFH office job, after years in a career where she spent a lot of time on her feet, working very socially and responding to things moment-to-moment (though not without planning in the mix). I felt validated in my capacity for staring-at-a-screen work when, after a couple days, she remarked to me that now she understood why I felt brain-dead in the evenings—she finds this way more draining than what she used to do, even though on-paper I think her old career should have been harder in many ways.

The fucking glowing screens are powered mostly by sucking out energy from the user, I swear.

I tend to do this too. Thing is, without the down time I couldn't do it consistently, so I'm really still putting in a full day of work.

I ended up for a while just "caring less" about work while still getting my work done and putting all of my heart and soul into my hobbies (mostly Muay Thai and Running). Ironically, I think the time of putting engineering on the back burner has re-ignited my interest in it again. So it's not like you have to "care less" forever.

I've come to realize that I think life is cyclical like that and we need to be able to drive our energy towards new and interesting things, or even our families and the burn out is a signal you need to turn your energy towards something else. Your craft will always be waiting for you on the other side.

Sometimes separation makes the heart grow fonder, even in tech.

This is the right and timeless advice. Indifference and equanimity towards your craft and output is the way I came out of my burnout. I can't believe that listening to your body has become a hated advice these days. Are we so deep in the pit?

They've failed to do so, now that you're taking care of yourself, consider that you're doing their job.

6 years ago, a COO once told me, "Employees are donkeys. You use a carrot and stick. If they weren't donkeys they'd be running their own business."

It seemed like such stuck up, pretentious 'advice' at the time that I ran far away from that social group. But parent comment made it click - people act like donkeys for a reason. And your comment made that click too, once the whole group acts like donkeys, they're treated like one.

Because it is pretentious and stuck-up.

Any non-trivial endeavor requires humans working together as a group to achieve it. Reducing the humanity of the group you're working with to "donkeys" is horrifying, and the best executives are the ones who understand - and respect - their people.

A COO is an Employee too. Therefore he is a Donkey as well :)

He did call managers "donkeys with sticks", though. Just because they manage, as long as their motivation is solely tied to compensation, they're still no better.

But to go back to the parent post, what the COO said "If they weren't donkeys they'd be running their own business."

Maybe some COOs run small businesses they started where they call the all shots. But most big company COOs have a lot of obligations and have a different carrot and stick for the C-Suite. And a lot of them didn't start the business where they became the COO. So, yes, still Donkeys.

I don't want to run my own business because I want to be able to drift along and switch off after work. If I did run my own business then it would be better than anybody with this attitude.

How the manager responds to you having a burnout, however, is what’s important. A good manager will manage to accelerate your recovery, and come up with some plan to prevent it from happening again in the future.

I also believe that in the end, stress management is something that in the end, it’s best you take your own responsibility for. Learn to say no, learn to communicate about your limits, and learn to walk away / push back in case those limits are crossed.

I went through a few burn outs through various phases of my life, and almost always it was a combination of multiple things at once. While a manager can help, in the end I am responsible for my own mental well being.

I wouldn’t want to be a manager precisely for this type of thing, the ability to absorb stress / pressure from within the organization and relay it in an orderly fashion to your team.

Working now at a startup, there is little to no management and I find myself wishing for good leadership.

Work is a tool to enable your private life. Not the other way around.

So, totally in agreement. I don’t live to work, I work only to live.

I know people will dismiss this because of the reputation of the industry but I worked in video games. Teams were small (10-30 people). I was not just a cog but had a roll that let me feel the games I shipped were my project. I'm not saying I led the project but the way I might be proud to show off some art I made, I was proud to be making the game. It was mine, not just some item on a jira ticket. I rarely hated going into work. It was like being paid to work on my own project and with cool people I liked collaborating with.

Then I switched to FANG. Now I get paid TC of 2x-6x, I get 2x/2.5x more vacation. I have zero crunch. Lots of other perks. And..... I hate my work life. I have no interest in the work. It's not mine. I don't feel any attachment to what I do. The team is large so no sense of ownership.

Of course, maybe finding work you enjoy is as rare as being a rockstar. Maybe I just got super lucky. But damit, I miss enjoying work to the level I used to.

I'll chime in here with more of this.

1) Make sure all work related correspondence goes via specific email aliases, logins, etc, etc. And turn it off when away from work.

2) Probably, get a personal phone, and just turn off your work phone after hours.

One way to burn out, is to never, ever have work, and work related issues, out of your mind. Unless you are on-call, there is no reason at all someone needs to reach out to you after hours.

And one needs, absolutely needs to not think of work after hours!

Of course people will burn out, if every waking second is filled with work thoughts! Just glancing at status messages -- thinking of work.

Get rid of it. Decouple 100%, completely, totally from work when not there.

Finding a good balance and pride in the 1/3rd of the life you spend, without being scornful is worth while. Build a good robust career, become an expert, have passion and perseverence, foster discpline; make a career that rewards you. The world isn't set up against you as people on HN and media would like you to believe; the world is amazing and there are plenty of things to do that can sustain you and your family.

Being apathetic or scornful of "work" is a terrible long term strategy.

Get a copy of Adam Savage's Every Hammer is a Tool: https://www.amazon.com/Every-Tools-Hammer-Life-What/dp/19821...

You'll find better advice than this depressing apathy on HN and places like r/antiwork.

Advice presented by others in this thread would lead to worse spiraling effect where bad work ethics would lead you to be worse at mastering things which would lead to even worse work ethics. Sustaining a career for decades requires careful attention to balance between work and life, ideally if both are coalesced (which many people here would gasp in horror). Even after a burnout.

What did I do?? I did not take vacations or time out. I just changed companies, and made sure the job has variety, and a lot of customers, and asked for a good raise. All the symptoms disappeared after 1 day. Like magic.

I feel I am more respected and more critical in their team. If there are no customers, and they pay you a little, you feel worthless, and treated as a second class dev. Start looking outside, you may find a good opportunity

I used to be the sort of person who would stay at work until I got to what felt like a "good" stopping point in what I was doing. If something wasn't working, and seemed like another 30 minutes might fix it, I would often do it. Of course 30 minutes often turned into 3 hours.

Now I'm much more likely to just go home at the end of the day. I don't really care what fires are burning, they will be there tomorrow and nobody will die.

The real question you're answering is:

"What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?"

If I may: consider it an achievement to work for 60 minutes with heavy focus. Sincerely do so, and even reward yourself with some sort of token for it to represent the effort you did. Use larger tokens for milestones. Over the weeks, these tokens will help motivate you to pull yourself out of your slump and feel good about your work again

I will write an article series on why this works one day, but for now, give it a try? Tiny wins do a lot to help burnout

The absolute simplest version of this is just pomodoro timers with a tally

It sounds funny and weird, but benign neglect is sometimes an appropriate response.

Having your own life outside of work and sticking with it can help the burnout and dive into new skills that might lead to a new career.

Never give up your creative hobbies.

Cheers

There is also little need and sense in killing yourself, if you work for yourself.

I also found that regular physical exercise outside (running for me) is a game changer and totally allows your brain to disconnect.

Finally, don't guilt trip yourself on your free time. There is nothing you "should" be doing on your spare time. Want to code? Fine. But do you really? Want to just veg out and watch Netflix? Also fine. Want to do some "junk food" gaming? Do it. Hang out with friends family and loved ones? I encourage that. Don't pressure yourself about open source projects or side hustles etc.

Also - and I can't stress this enough - absolutely use your vacation time. And when you do, utterly disconnect from work. Turn "do not disturb" on your phone and other devices and not only don't answer work emails, don't even look at email, slack, etc.

I agree with the comment about doing whatever it is that will relax you. Sometimes that is just binge watching the latest Netflix show. But, if you work from home, I've found that absolutely nothing beats GOING somewhere for your vacation time. I - and friends who also WFH - find that just being at home on vacation can still be emotionally draining. Even a 4 day weekend away from home doing something completely different can be very recharging.

Even if I've come back to work and had to fix things others "broke" because they had to work around me not being there, I was much happier with that than if I did any work during my time away. And it also pointed out to me where documentation and knowledge was lacking or tools could be improved, etc. ;)

0 - https://twitter.com/thisritchie/status/1426215815175680001?s...

Code is code, but if you have a cool manager and coworkers it can make it enjoyable. Particularly, for myself, I liked management that gave me autonomy, trusted me to write a framework without feeling the need to hand-hold.

Exercise breaks (I started out running, switched to walking when I got older) were something I used to feel guilty about — going out for a run/walk in the middle of a work day. I always wanted to be the guy who always had their nose to the grindstone.

As I got older (and more seniority, I suppose) I got over the guilt by just saying fuck 'em, health is more important. In fact though my productivity and ... code fidelity? ... likely improved. Often I left on the 20 minute walk with my head in a programming fog, returned with a succinct plan on how to proceed before the next programming hurdle reared its head.

Start slow, throw in some yoga or tai chi and build up those joints and tendons - they don't increase in strength as quickly as muscles do.

> Finally, don't guilt trip yourself on your free time. There is nothing you "should" be doing on your spare time.

Don't you think these two pieces of advice are conflicting?

The term has roots in "seven", just like Sabbath, so with 14 years in the industry, you've skipped one.

I think a solid half-year off every seven to ten years is an excellent practice for intellectually demanding labor.

What makes it a sabbatical is that it's a change of pace which furthers your career. I'd love to take a sabbatical and just work on building stuff, personally: from soldering, to designing boards, probing them, writing firmware, I'm a rank amateur, and I'd love to level up for awhile, while free of the burden of justifying my salary in the process.

It could be painting, there's a popular author who wrote a book about the connection between painting and hacking, can't remember his name but his stuff gets posted here all the time.

What it isn't, is a vacation, or a convalescence. It sounds like you haven't hit "can't work", just "sucks to work", which is a blessing.

If you can't afford it, that's understandable, there are ways to get some of the benefit from a new job, but "relieved of the burden of delivering value" is an important factor.

I've known people who pushed "sucks to work" until it became "can't work", and they don't all make it back to the profession, a bit less than half in fact. Whatever you do, I urge you to take burnout seriously, because at the limit it's a serious medical condition which can cripple or kill you.

Some context for the fun of it. Sabbath is the 7th day of rest that the God of Genesis took -- yes even God found rest to at least be good (if not needed). He also prescribed for the jewish people of the Old testament seven sacred feasts, which could be multiday if not weeklong festivities and breaks from work. Then there was the Sabbatical you mentioned -- One year off in 7 to rest the land and labor. Furthermore there was "Jubilee" -- a special sabbatical year every 7th sabbatical that went even further :)

Seems like ancient people (if not God) deeply understood the need for rest!

I simply fucked off and traveled the world. Half the time I didn't even know what day of the week it was.

It was glorious and it cured my burn out.

I feel like I forget so much about programming on a daily basis that I would probably have to re-earn a CS degree if I took 3 months off lol.

Skipping 3 years you wouldn’t miss anything, just read up on the latest and you are good to go.

If you are lucky, the PR you submitted to some sleeping library, months ago, might have finally been accepted when you get back.

So with a sabbatical now, just think that you're making time now so that you can have a better retirement later because you'll be ready for an enjoyable retirement as opposed to needing to take two or three or five years of your retirement, just calming down from your crazy career.

It's definitely not an easy thing to consider. Do evaluate with an extended pros and cons list and weight each item in the list.

Burnout for me weighed extraordinarily heavily.

You also have the concept of compounding interest. A year of savings at age 30 is much more valuable than a year of savings when I'm 60.

Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume. I'm not in the bay area, and even working remotely, competition is brutal. A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.

Not all of us are in the niches of software where jobs are easy to come by. Not everything is web dev.

Being responsible about the future is important, but let's phrase the goal as "savings upon retirement", rather than "retirement savings".

A sabbatical can help with that in a few ways, but first let's talk about the gap.

A sabbatical is not a gap in one's resume, it's a sabbatical. What's done with that time is open-ended, but one of the things it does is provide a useful line item.

This is in fact a class thing. People of independent means will take time off to improve their careers. Real talk, I can't stress this enough: don't buy a sabbatical, or a Porche, if you can't afford it.

They don't put this on their resume, but rather, on their C.V.

I'm not from those people, but growing up in a university town, one gets to know them.

A sabbatical is good if: you can write an open-source library in your niches which solves a problem, if you expand the breadth of your expertise, if what you're doing has a significant philanthropic angle. All of these can set someone up for a higher tier of job, something with better prospects.

It's good to have a comfortable nest egg, and it's even better if when you do, you have the kind of respect and stake in your field where you don't actually retire. Emeritus is a wonderful Latin loanword. May we all merit emeritus.

I understand where this is coming from, but it can be a trap. Maximizing your retirement savings for the distant future at the cost of your current health is not a good tradeoff.

All things in balance. One's current needs are just as important as their future needs. "Future you" can figure it out when the time comes. They're pretty smart :p. "Future you" would want you to properly take care of "current you".

I say this as someone who has spent most of my net worth -- over $100k -- over the past 2 years of not working as I've taken time to heal and grow and learn how to live life better.

It's been a difficult journey for me but it is something I needed to do. I have more hope for the future than I have had in many, many years.

> Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume. I'm not in the bay area, and even working remotely, competition is brutal. A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.

This may be a hurdle, but it's probably not as big as you think. You were taking care of your health -- no details required. The matter has since been resolved and you are excited and ready to make use of your skills again. Do they need someone with your skillset or not? Don't project your worry onto them :) They will sense that and that will be the actual issue.

What you contributed in years 1-3 are going to be worth far more than what you are contributing after year 7, see exponential returns.

>Also, even within software, I can't imagine trying to find a job with a 6-month gap on my resume.

Idk what field you are in but I get recruiter calls and emails daily, there is massive demand so I don't see this making much sense.

>A gap on your resume is a great reason to get immediately rejected by wherever you're applying to.

I don't think this actually bears out for people with in-demand skills that can interview well. Maybe you are overthinking how long people even look at a resume before interviews, hint: it's not long.

One could easily move past the gap by saying you took an extended break, were traveling, were working on a passion project, etc.

You shouldn't have gap in your resume. I took more than one year off to travel around New Zealand. I put this in my resume and I think it made it more interesting. After that I migrated from Hungary to the UK during COVID and didn't had any problem finding a job.

I also set up my next gig in the weeks immediately following layoffs, which I’ll be starting in November, so I’m excited to know that there’s financial security at the end of this experience.

It’s been a much needed break.

this is also a terrifying concept: what if I don't?

If you look for a job a bit later, it's actually easier than looking for it right after when you find yourself unemployed ;)

And importantly, I have space to think about work--what I like and don't--so that when I go back, I can be intentional about my next move. Rather than just climbing the ladder that's in front of me.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

I would definitely not want to have no income for half a year (or more). Especially considering the current economic downturn. It would probably stress me out even more.

Granted I was planning on doing this anyway (just a bit ahead of schedule for me), I needed to be ejected from the hamster wheel by force to acknowledge that it was the job and not me.

Then next year I will start looking again, but I will be way more picky. A job that you hate can wreck you.

A sabbatical is an investment in yourself, and by definition not a cheap one. Although depending on who you are and what you want to do with it, it doesn't have to come 100% out of one's own pocket.

A great sabbatical would be teaching children, or underrepresented adults. That will affray expenses, and gets you in on a group buy for health insurance, for those of us stuck with that problem.

Still, it's not available to everyone, I don't want to dismiss that. I'd like to see it possible for more of us. This is not an industry which is short of wealth, and a nonprofit which helps match mid-career software people with sabbatical opportunities, scholarships, and so on, would be a welcome addition to the landscape.

I recovered fine, but it was pretty brutal. For a while I couldn't even look at code without getting nauseous and a having a splitting headache. I'm not exaggerating here, it was like I had lost the ability to comprehend code at all. Code was just meaningless symbols randomly arranged without any rhyme or reason.

What helped eventually is about ~6 Months of completely distancing myself from Programming. No programming for work, no programming for fun, not keeping up with current developments, nothing. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford this, but I truly believe that a 6 month long hard brain reset was needed. Wouldn't have worked in 3 months. Other comments here echo a similar sentiment and you'll find other blog posts and personal experiences on the internet with the same conclusion.

On the upside, coming back after 6 months and discovering that I stopped getting physically ill trying to code was an amazing moment. I fell in love with programming all over again. Only this time I learned to listen to my body and started prioritizing health and happiness over a steep career and financial success.

Honestly I don't think many people would be impressed by my professional output (especially not on this site), but I can honestly say that I've never loved it as much as I do now and I can rest easy knowing that it's sustainable and doesn't negatively impact my mental health.

This doesn't match my decade+ of experience. 35-50hr weeks and open communication on project statuses and timelines. I've had two or three crunch-times. Worked at a startup that went unicorn.

Oddly enough, it probably wouldn't be that hard, or even trivial if you are already a contractor

My point is, there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. One would not expect that playing dota all day for a year would lead to the next phase of your programming career. But it did, and (acknowledging luck) I firmly believe it was because of that brain reset you mentioned. So I wanted to underscore your words with an example.

Bu your last paragraph is why I’m writing to you. My professional output wasn’t too impressive either. My first manager said “If you were a Carmack, I think we’d know it by now”; I forget how it came up, but I remember how disheartening it felt to hear.

Fast forward to present day, and I’ve done a bunch of stuff I’m proud of (including collaborating with Carmack for a few weeks on AI). The reason I got here was because of the other rehung you said: you love programming, and so did I. (Also Prozac was pretty important, in hindsight.)

So please don’t stress about whether you’re impressive or whether you measure up. You impressed me. You’re good enough to do whatever you want to do. And you’ll find your path if you keep looking.

Ditto for whoever’s reading this wondering if they’ll ever recover from burnout. You will. Don’t worry. It ends.

Saying that others would not be impressed by my professional achievements doesn't mean that I'm not proud of my work. I have many valuable qualities, being a 10x Developer is not one of them. You're right, I am good enough to do whatever I want to. But I am very happy that post-burnout I want different things.

Striving for a stable life with a healthy mix of meaningful work and a good social circle is not what my teenage self envisioned for my future, but it has made me much much happier than striving for an impressive resumé. I'm sure there's lots to come in the future, but I'm proud that I had this realisation relatively early in my professional life. Without this change in perspective I would've been miserable forever. Because in the end, I really am no Carmack. And that's totally fine :)

I think you’re selling yourself short. Don’t count yourself out as someone who can impact the areas you want to.

I’m glad your life is stable now — if you ever need some encouragement in the future, DM me! Always happy to.

I thought I was starting to experience burnout this year, but I've never had physical symptons like yours. Before that happened, did you note something particular? I don't think it came out of the blue

I recommend reading the whole section on burnout. Although burnout isn't really the topic of the article this is the most enlightening writing I have ever read on it. Hoping it might serve you.

This quote brought to me how naive that view can be:

> I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent tangible benefit to people, market prices represent the true value of goods in society, and wages represent the value that a worker provides to others. Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects, a man receives from the free market what he gives to it, his material worth is a running tally of the net benefit that he has provided to his fellow man. A high income is not only justified, but there is nobility to it.

Truly believing that free markets have some inherent morality in its mechanisms was not something I considered before, probably because I came from a poor background and have seen how flawed that assumption is in reality.

Thanks for sharing it, definitely worth the read much more than just the burnout section.

Naive almost doesn’t capture the essence of this for me… Willful blindness maybe? I’m a pretty free market kind of guy, not because I believe it is the ultimate expression of human morality, but because I think for most industries it produces the best practical results of the various economic systems that have been tried at scale. But, here on this particular planet, negative externalities and monopolies are ubiquitous. I don’t get how people can’t see that. I also came from a poor background - by USA standards anyway - but found financial success in my adult life, so maybe that has something to do with it?

This disclaimer carries a lot of weight, and puts yourself into pure theoretical modeling:

> Absent negative externalities or monopoly effects

Anyway, we are biologically inclined into doing commerce. So you will find out that people have a great deal of easiness into adopting pro-market beliefs.

It's amazing how fast a single person can flip that motivation versus work load into the wrong direction.

For me, switching to 4 days a week was a huge improvement in my quality of life. Now I've switched to 3, and have a completely different second job 2 days a week. And two days of rest.

I love both, for different reasons, but could never go back to a full week of IT, or switch to a full week of my new job. They balance fine, but I don't think they can exist on their own.

After going through 7 different jobs in 12 years, I realize the only thing that keeps me happy is the team itself. Great team? Great job. Bad team? Bad job. Your mileage may vary, but if you're in a rut, maybe try finding a better, more humane team.

And by all means, scale back to 4 days a week. You'll have way less disposable income (especially because some costs are fixed: rent, food, health...), but you'll have more time.

Essentially, you're trading time against money. What's most valuable to you?

It took me an embarrassingly long time for this to sink in all the way. I worked in crunch-time-heavy jobs like filmmaking and video games, sometimes doing 12 hours a day for 7 days a week for stretches. The problem with working that much is that it’s essentially using 100% of your time: after eating and sleeping, there is not enough left to have time for friends or family or much of anything else at all. I finally realized that when I trade all of my time away for money, I’m effectively putting a dollar amount on the value of my life, and it turns out that the number wasn’t anywhere near high enough for me.

Nobody says you have to be a manager, or take a permanent role. This time is a gift - an opportunity to sidestep whatever "career track" you thought you were expected to follow and instead figure out your own values and priorities - it sounds like you've already gone along way towards that, at least you know what you don't want.

We are uniquely blessed in this business with such a wide range of opportunities and modes of working. The rise of remote work has only made that better. Be kind to yourself, and remember that despite whatever kind of imposter syndrome may be lurking in the back of your head, you most likely have an extremely valuable skill set that continues to be in demand around the world.

I've procrastinated writing things down because it would take more time and effort than its worth -- If I just think a bit longer and harder, then the solution will come, and I won't have to waste all the time it takes to write everything out.

Recently, I have noticed this usually fails, and when I end up writing things down, then I come to the realization that actually writing things down would have saved more time in the first place. It was merely my assumptions, laziness, and arrogance that cost me more time.

This worked for me. I had to first admit that I wasn't okay, then I had to change the expectations I had of myself.

I had to get comfortable enforcing boundaries (i.e. say no), which was made easier by changing jobs (because I had an opportunity to set expectations with my employer). I also had to gain some better soft skills to make 'no' sound more reasonable, which was a challenge at first, but has served well since.

The other huge factor that made it possible for me was financial stability. It is much easier to set boundaries when I have money to survive an unplanned job hunt.

Good luck.

If I ended up in the same situation again, but say, without that job, I would tell my older self:

- take a big break, and reconnect with your enthusiasm. The book “Unmasking Autism” has a lot of concrete ways to do that, since it can be hard for us. It also talks a lot about autistic burnout

- go back to freelancing, or find a job where I have lots of freedom to follow my routine, and where I am valued for my thinking and communication style

- reconnect with writing code for fun. Programming is legitimately the one activity that fully calms me and replenishes me. I stopped doing any side-programming for 10 years, and reviving that atrophied part of myself has been absolutely invigorating.

- get monster ear protection. This has to be one of the revelations: noise stresses me out sooo much, and I have been repressing it for so long. I now have -35 dB + noise cancelling earplugs and can basically live in complete silence, in the noisiest environment. I can finally think things true the way I want to.

(edit: formatting)

I'm struggling with this right now. I have not worked on hardly anything on the side in many years as well. Either I find some excuse not to, lack the confidence/knowledge to do it, or I just do not have any ideas on what to work on.

I actually enjoy programming, but I just struggle with motivation and focus issues which makes things much harder to get started.

I have ~40 years experience delivering software around the world in a variety of industries. I have found that whenever I get burned out on the subject of software, its usually because I haven't had a good hard look at my users.

The people whose lives will actually be impacted by the value I provide in the software I write.

If you can't conceive of how you're going to see your users, or get a feel for the way their lives are improved by your work as a developer - there's your problem.

Everyone needs to have their work acknowledged - everyone, no exceptions. If you can't get access, fix that. If they're unhappy - fix it. If their lives are not impacted positively by your efforts - fix that.

I took a job in an education setting, a much more diverse role, hardware/software/networking, very little coding, much less hours. I arrive at 8am then leave at 5pm on the dot everyday. I walk to and from work. I work very hard, but not at all when I'm at home. I only look at email when I am sat at my desk. I don't think much about what I've done on a given day, or what I'm going to do - just do what I'm told.

The scene in American Beauty where he finds a job with the least possible responsibility reminds me of my life.

I look forward to each day. I don't dread Sundays. I have a good nights sleep every night. It can be done with variety!

I think there are a few things that I've found that always help:

* Removing the source of frustration or the thing that is burning you out -- this might mean quitting a toxic job, reducing hours, whatever. But be honest with yourself, ask for somebody who you talk to a lot to give input on what they think it is and listen.

* Rest. This doesn't have to mean "do nothing" but it can. I think a lot of people do nothing for not enough time. A 2 week vacation and then back to the grind, you may find yourself feeling fresh and re-burnt out in less time than you were gone. I'd say rest more accurately means "do something that is easy but keeps you active" or "do things you've neglected, but don't push the area you're frustrated". I find that working on something that's lower stakes or requires less back and forth and allows me to think through and fix without questions of my dedication or intention are most helpful for me, but for you it might be something else. If burnout is around coding, managing a complex, non coding problem might be helpful. I have friends who have done home improvements or setup beer brewing etc to focus their skills on somewhere lower stakes.

* Do recovery "exercises". If big projects or coding has burnt you out, slowly introduce it in a healthy manner, accounting for the changes you made by removing frustration. This should feel like the most difficult part, because you're attempting to do something new. Introduce the thing you want to do but you've been prevented because of burn-out and try slowly to do it while addressing any strains the source of your injury immediately. This might mean having more candid discussions with managers or team members to prevent toxic patterns from emerging. This may mean tempering expectations early or setting clearer boundaries. Do the hard thing and prevent re-injury. Taper, and don't increase capacity until you're sure you're gaining energy rather than losing it again.

* Be patient. I've been burnt out pretty badly with projects and it's taken several months of healthy, quiet coding in the back seat of a good team to feel well rested again. It's given me a lot of time to assess what went wrong, what I liked and what I have missed about my time resting. I'd say probably 6mo for just a single terrible 2 months of work. Be patient and trust the process.

I think sometimes the unfortunate news you'll learn is that you did something during your career path that felt right, but put you in the wrong situation down the road. The type of change that's needed to correct that might be learning something new, applying to jobs you'll love more that are perceived as "beneath your ability" or simply changing trajectory.

Stop killing yourself for their profit. You have no downtime, you have no peace, you have no time to 'do' anything else.

70hrs a week (assuming you sleep 8hrs) only leaves you with 10hrs a week. That's just 2hrs a day! AND I bet most of those 2 hrs is used up in "morning routine, and food preparation".

You need to cut back A LOT.

Stop working at 40hrs. Stand up for yourself. Don't let your company bully you. Pre-Industrial revolution, the average person had more 'time off' then we do. A peasant, living subsistence farming lifestyle had more free time then you do.

I experienced major burnout after a 4 year stint in an early stage startup, and I walked away. I had a six week break which was wonderful, but the next step I took after that was essentially a similarly stressful (but rehigh profile) job. I lasted a year.

Now I have a less prestigious job, at a less recognisable (but much more compassionate) company. I've moved out of the big tech hub city and now I work remote. I'm much, much happier, and have something approximating a healthy work life balance. I can walk to quiet woodland from my house, where I work, which helps.

The hardest step, which still troubles me from time to time, is stopping striving. I could be earning more, have a better job title, etc. But I remind myself I don't want those things more than I want a fundamentally comfortable life with ample time to spend with family and friends.

For the first few months, time just passed while I was at home, and I thought it would get better but it didn't. I realized I needed to change environments, so I ended up doing some traveling in Europe but staying at places for longer, not just hopping around(I also have been wanting to visit forever). It was cool, and fun, but also realized I needed to work to change habits and mindsets in order to totally feel recharged.

Habits like checking my emails, and social media, are very hard to turn off and were draining me of my mental energy and being able to enjoy the present moment. I wanted to travel without my phone, and to just get a not so "smart" phone. But, I ended up ditching that idea as I'm dependent on it even for travel. It's a work in progress, but I'm starting to notice changes in habits, and I hope to carry those forward with me. A lot of it has honestly been me working on emotional intelligence, and figuring out how to manage my emotions, which in turn will help me manage stress, work/life balance, etc, and in turn avoiding burnout.

Finding hobbies I enjoy, and spending time on it, like Art and drawing has also been rewarding. I think a lot of it is un-learning bad habits, and learning good ones, like taking care of yourself better. Wish you good luck on your journey!

I do not have the money for a sabbatical, and I sadly work in the lowest-stress programming job possible (which is reflected in the relatively low income: 6 YOE @ x < 80k). I feel like I am suffocating and can't get out.

just wanted to vent

What you need is a change at work and the exercise to heal the mind. So as you make adjustments at work, also make sure you're setting aside time for any amount of exercise and vitamin d.

Every time I've changed jobs it's been a total reset for me. It takes a while for a job to reach 100% workload and that honeymoon period is usually enough to recover.

I believe that once you feel an unhealthy personal connection to your job it's time to move on. For example, you're upset and exhausted every day because a project you spent two years on isn't gaining traction and may be cut. Or you find yourself regularly checking in while vacation because you're worried.

I find it really hard to exercise during say an extended lunch break or heaven forbid in the morning. It always feels like I’m missing important work stuff and basically don’t “deserve it yet” (that sounds dumb). Also my mind was either at work or preparing for it. I switched to exercising in the evenings, when I’m “done” with work for the day. Bonus points if you manage to do this with kids… it’s hard, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I was lucky that I had money to quit working completely for about a year and go backpacking.

When I started again, I did so in a different company but in the same field.

The biggest change I made and which I think was key to find a balance was to enforce boundaries.

Before I had a job that had lots of midnight on-call wake ups and no set hours.

In the new place I forced myself to show up at the office at 9am so I could walk out at 5pm without anyone having anything to grumble about. This was not the norm in the company but as I started doing that from day one, it was accepted.

Whenever anyone asked me to stay late I referred them to my manager for them to approve paid overtime. Most of the time the discussion stopped there, but there were a few times when they decided to pay.

It's incredible how much time for yourself and friends-family is left over when you clock-off at 5pm always.

In my experience, it's much easier to learn to be good at something you enjoy than it is to learn to enjoy something you're good at. It's okay to not enjoy programming like you once did, find and do what you enjoy now.

Its like playing a video game with a leveling system and you have an aha! moment where you recognize a grindy pattern from the past has come back and are sick of it. The difference here is your employment is directly linked to being able to eat, etc.

Be more disciplined, put in the hours, slog through the work and also be more disciplined about stopping the work when the day is done and taking vacation or time away to recharge. Discipline is something you will need to build up but is much more reliable than waiting for passion or motivation to stop by (they still will). Find hobbies or interests outside of computing/digital things.

I have made the commitment to myself, from that time, that I only work 40 hours a week. I'll occasionally work a little overtime if I am on a roll on something interesting, or if there is a short term panic at work, but very infrequently, and never, ever, more than fifty hours in a week.

I make that clear when I interview, and I will admit that on individual jobs that has been a deal breaker, but those were the small minority of interviews.

The twenty four years since then have all been good. Four different employers, all in embedded development, all interesting challenges.

I wrote an entire book that was basically "I'm fed up with the world and my job right now, there's got to be more to life than this".

I found more meaning in my work as I got to know myself better. Similar to an oxygen mask in an airplane, I had to put myself first before I could for others(or work for that matter).

The only advice I'd give someone in this situation is to work on yourself everyday until you gain enough clarity to make your next move. Don't panic or do anything drastic until you're in a stable mindset.

I don't know how much useful advice I can offer but I think my own problem is lack of self discipline. I end up working when I should not be. Whenever I can muster the self-discipline to stick to a proper schedule things seem to get better.

Try to manage artist, designer, song writer, actor, or stand up comedian and they will burn out as well.

Schedule regular one on one with an actor!

I've burned out a couple of times and the fix was to stop working and do other things (e.g. travel, music, photography, pottery, sport) until I naturally drifted back to coding. Obviously not an option for a lot of people, but with 14 years of experience maybe you have money in the bank.

Finding enjoyment in work feels like a slightly different topic, I try to find some sort of interesting technical challenge or new learning opportunity in every project - though not just adding unnecessary stuff for the sake of it, of course. I kind of disagree with people who say "get a meaningful job", there aren't nearly enough of those to go around. Redefine "meaningful" instead.

What I think it actually was - strong negative emotions. About the tools, about the organization, about the tasks. And these emotions only got stronger over time and could not be rationalized away.

And looking back, quitting and looking for things I still like was the only solution. Need a certain percentage of work to be exceptional match with what I like to do.

I'll be playing cat and mouse with it for the rest of my life probably. So yes I think you sort of can aka getting bored with burnout...

The trajectory that took me there was acutely unpleasant but I would not describe any of it as boredom. You ain't getting bored on your death march.

Can't imagine several such experiences, I'd rather change career.

It's unsurprising people burn out when their job is about optimizing ads to enrich some billionaire and stuff like that.

Find jobs that are meaningful to you and you can improve.

Exercise. Sleep. Reduce your workload to something manageable.

Say No.

Meditate, active meditation is ok (yoga, some martial arts, even running)

Stop having hobbies that look like work and involve obligations, at least until you recover.

Clear your todo list. Clear your inbox. Like, just empty them.

Rest. Take back your evenings and weekends. Vacation if you can.

Above all, this is going to take a while. I don't think there is magic bullet.

I got really burnt out at the beginning of the pandemic. Ended up quitting my job and taking some time off. For a long while, just thinking of doing coding projects would fill me with disgust.

After about 9 months, I decided to make an app for the workout program I was following (5/3/1) as I didn’t like the ones out there or using spreadsheets. Working on something where I was user 0 was tons of fun and reminded me of why I liked coding in the first place. The fact that the response to the app was great did help too.

Can’t say that it would work for everyone, but this got me unburnt out. I just started a new job now and am loving it.

https://fivethreeone.app/

There's an oft-used expression: do what you love, and you'll never work another day in your life. (The meaning, for non-native English speakers, is that if you love what (the work) you're doing, then it won't feel like work and you'll be naturally motivated.)

I was in bad mental shape during my last gig. When the company decided not to renew any external contracts due to economic fears, my contract expired and I was without a job. I decided it was time to finally do something that I cared about, and do it my way. Maybe money would come from it, or maybe not. My runway is fairly short, but it's enough time to maybe build something.

It took at least two weeks of doing nothing computer related (other than reading HN, I'm sure) for me to start to see sunlight. And when I was tempted to look at jobs, it would only take reading one job req for me to feel sick. So I decided to make my own reality and stick to my belief that if I build something, something good will happen. We don't know how that story ends yet, but I know I'm infinitely happier and certainly healthier. My alcohol consumption is near zero now, down from a very excessive amount. My weight is down too. Bonus!

My advice is to take some time and try to discover what your interests or passions are. Then start making connections with people who have similar. If you don't know what those things are, then start doing new things which don't necessarily have anything to do with work or projects or money. Take some latin dance classes (much fun!). Take some fitness or sport classes. Travel and enjoy good food, and meet strangers.

Just maybe you will start to see where you can do things which make you feel energized, and just maybe it will become profitable.

Even mediocre managers are valuable. Some of us need a manager sometimes to keep us from falling into too many rabbit holes or to help us map goals and plans and stay on them. The way to find those people seems unclear or random, but it certainly seems that the more you connect with others, the better the chances are.

Long answer: after a long time in the technology sector with a single employer, I felt that I had grown to hate the entire tech industry. I left the sector for a couple of years, working various freelance / self-employment roles outside of tech. Finally, after the prolonged break, I decided to consider going back in, but with some very serious requirements: I had to have highly competitive pay and 100% remote work with a flexible schedule, or I wouldn't go back. After a long hunt I finally landed a role that fits, and I'm actually happy with it.

Why did I go back? The camaraderie. If you leave the tech sector, but you're still passionate about the field, you're going to find that there is a major part of your intellectual life that you don't get to share with other people. In other words, my main motivation to return was not the income, but to get that kind of cerebral interaction again. The high requirements are simply my minimum standard for dealing with all the horrible, soul-draining aspects of the industry (and I'm under no delusion that they've changed).

What eventually worked for me, was switching from operations to infosec, and switching to a new (to me) company, where I was able to pre-vet my chain of command, making sure I wasn't going to run into the previous problem, that of working for someone or someones who have squandered their chance to earn my respect for various reasons. Thus far, it has been highly successful. Not only do I not feel burned out, I am relatively excited to start working when I wake up, and kind of have to restrain myself in order to maintain personal life boundaries. At night, I'll spend time thinking of new ways to solve work problems, because it's fun, not because I'm stressed out or obsessed with completing a given project or task.

My advice would be to do what you need to do to weather this period of your employment and not give yourself a hard time about it. you don't NEED to be doing anything. If your job is still coding, do some coding while you are at work, go home and then do some hobby that you have been wanting to do. Learn to play the piano or fly racing drones or whatever.

If you have a long enough career, having a six to eight month slump of not being into coding is nothing, so don't sweat it. Just make try to make it through it without making it worse.

I'd say that having realistic expectations about work (you're not "changing the world", you're just building a product that's useful for some people and makes you and your employer some money) and having reasonable working hours (no more than 40 or whatever is in the contract) can be more important.

If you identify too much with the product or company, that can be a sure path to overwork, caring and investing too much time and effort without getting any recognition and neglecting your own needs.

But of course, given equal conditions, prefer working for a company with a good mission. Just don't expect too much.

The company mission exists to guide decision making. Employee motivation and happiness comes from understanding that a job exists to pay for a fulfilling life

High performing people can choose where they work. Here's how you can attract them to your company:

- Make their job reasonably challenging. Their accomplishments should look good on a resume.

- Give them reasonable autonomy on how they work and who they work with (hiring).

- Enable a fulfilling life, whether on the job or out of the job: Reasonable and predictable work hours, good working environment.

- Don't make them pretend to drink the kool-aid. In fact, keep the kool-aid in a corner where people have to go out of their way to drink it. Having guiding principles on how to do business is fine, just don't pretend like someone's life motivation is to change the world through quantum-AI-enabled-crypto-retargeting-adtech.

- What makes me in particular go to work everyday? I like my coworkers and becoming better at my craft.

- There's no shortcut for a good working environment. Focus on having the right people/incentives/culture. Perks and offsites only go so far and won't fix your company.

It's hard work but it will pay off both for you and your near ones :)

I think once you hit burnout, you need to completely stop doing the activity entirely to really recover. Switching to a less draining variant helps before you hit full on burnout.

If you are in a position to do so I'd recommend taking 6 months out of work, and go and do something where you have no pressure to be productive. That might be personal projects. It might be travelling the world. If you have any hobbies or interests that you usually don't get as much time as you like pursue, then that might be a good starting point.

A 2 week vacation might also help if such a long break isn't practical for you.

In the beginning, we routinely worked 60+ hours a week and it didn't really bother me. But when it felt like no matter what I did my efforts wouldn't matter, I lost all my motivation and burned out. But I still couldn't bring myself to quit. I was emotionally invested in the company, our team, and our customers.

The second round of layoffs in a year (a 67% staff reduction) was the final nail for me. After I left I didn't work for at least six months. The first two months, I basically did nothing and got a lot of sleep. Then after that I decided to start doing all the things I never had time for. I cooked all my meals, I exercised, I traveled, I spent more time with family and friends, and I developed some hobbies outside of tech.

That was about five years ago. I've had 3 jobs since then, and I left each of them before a year was up. If the right amount of balance is just to have a job you punch in/out of that pays pretty well, I'm just not that interested. But I also know that there's no way I have another startup in me. For awhile now I've actually made more money with my "side hustle" than I can as an engineer, even though my cash flow is very uneven. So I think I'm basically done with software.

I took a break and a hard look at what I wanted to do and came back the other side thinking I wanted to learn something new and apply it to make the world a better place.

I took a job that paid the bills and allowed me to have (long commute) time to learn AI. Fast forward 5 years, I now work using AI to help doctors do their job better and I love it.

I should say a big part of it was promising to myself to separate work and life. 9-5 is work. Weekends and other times are for my family and I to enjoy, recharge, and make sure I can back to a job I love.

Good luck on the journey.

The idea that that some motivation circuit in your brain has fried. This happens when you spend too much time forcing yourself to roll the proverbial boulder up the hill just to see it come back down again. Your brain will heal itself, but you need to stop rolling that boulder first.

Burnout also manifested itself in health problems with no explanation. I suffered epileptic-like episodes on a plane a week into my leave from work. I spent a year getting tests, unable to drive until cleared by a doctor, which were all inconclusive. The timing of this, and the fact I've not experienced this before or since, makes me think stress was the cause.

It took months of doing practically nothing at home, and a year or so in a new job, to understand a few things.

  - There are external and internal stress factors that can influence burnout. You might have external workplace factors you can't influence, or you might also have unrealistic expectations, be a perfectionist, have an intense work ethic, or unbalanced work-life balance.
  - After burnout, you can recognise these stress factors, and how to mitigate or avoid them. Some you can control, some you can't. If you need to leave somewhere, then leave. Before I suffered burnout, I saw a therapist and they said that leaving was the best option. They were totally right.
  - Once you recognise stress factors that you can control, you take steps to mitigate or avoid them. You change your attitude towards work. You time box between work and life activities (if your work allows). You make meaningful boundaries, which can be physical, time-based, or mental.
  - It's ok to feel defective for a time. For a year or two after my burnout, I felt like I was "damaged goods". Certain situations were triggering, I would not apply myself to work in the same way as before. I wondered whether I would "find my mojo" again. This is temporary, but it's a crucial time for reflection and learning.

I do think it's important to work with a psychologist to understand what aspects of your work are making you burn out. Simply taking a break and then diving back into a similar environment is a recipe for failure.

I should really have just stayed away from my computer altogether, you made the right choice.

2. While there, consider if burnout is partially your subconscious telling you something. A lot of people, myself included, have gone through phases where we later realized that the joy in learning how technology is made has faded and the mission that we're attached to doesn't actually align with what we actually want to do. Sometimes it's ok to quit a six digit position and take a five digit one if it means it fulfils some longing in our life, like help a friend, help the poor, or safeguard the world in some way.

3. See if there are aspects of your life that you may, deep down, want to change but that you're avoiding changing. For me, it was excitement. Note that these are different than mission in that they're self or at least family directed. Be clear eyed about the risks, because ultimately you are responsible for the choices you make, but don't be so cautious as to be cowardly. If you want to fire a gun at bad guys, first understand that they may fire back, but ultimately if you still think it is the best call, to not do so is cowardice.

4. If nothing above works, just start helping the least fortunate. It has a double effect of reminding yourself, viscerally, just how bad it can get[0] while also providing your mind with a sense of community and purpose.

[0] I met a former programmer at a soup kitchen who just had a run of bad health and life issues.

I also do at least 2 hours of cardio almost every day and strength exercises with my own body weight. This helps very much both physically and mentally.

Some things that were useful when I was thinking about quitting:

1. Auditing my assets to see what I could pull from on short notice without impacting my tax situation or retirement savings.

2. Reviewing this guide (https://www.academia.edu/9672192/MDD_Major_Depressive_Disord...) to verify that I was burnt out and not depressed; I didn't want to quit if I was depressed and not burned out. Had I been depressed, the move would have been to get on therapy through my company insurance.

3. Journaling about how I felt, what I didn't like at my job, and what I was looking forward to on break.

I don't know if I'll go back to the same type of work or industry, but my time spent reflecting on my goals, enjoying hobbies, and sleeping is already paying off tremendously.

I see some people mentioning the stress of not having a job during an economic downturn, but I find there's a certain amount of peace to it; I've already lost my job so I don't have to worry about that happening in the future.

I wouldn't say I've rediscovered my love for coding, but I have periods where I do enjoy it again (if I limit the time I spend in front of the screen and balance it with other activities). Also what was important was to really focus on simplfiying my own life and also achieving that through my work/product for others. You could say the crisis helped me to shift my intention regarding my purpose and to really appreciate simplicity.

I was appointed the role of team lead on top of my normal team member role. The major issue was that management told me not to hold team members accountable for their performance or actions. So suddenly i was responsible for everything within the team but could not do really much about issues within the team or its clients. Trying to solve everything myself made me very tired and depressed.

I long ago came to terms with the fact a lot of problems when working with technical systems arise out of the human side of things. People saying they did this, but they actually did that. People staying silent out of fear of looking daft, or hoping to $deity they don't attract attention to themselves. People saying they understand when they demonstrably do not.

I guess I had a slight shift in life goal. I'm no longer all about just learning/driving/using computers, but actively trying to get at the root of what makes it so difficult for people to bridge the gap/learn them well enough to use them.

Particularly since there are so many problems with other complex systems you can't even recognize until you've had the epiphany that nothing is magic, and if you didn't do it, it's not a safe assumption to think it'll just work, you can't even begin to approach trying to understand that they are fundamentally broken.

Changing jobs really helped me. Gave me new perspective on what matters and what didn't matter (and I had inflated some things needlessly in my head).

One thing that really helped me was that I was trying to be a hero in the past - I realized that systems built on the back of heroes is not healthy because eventually the hero has to leave and the system decays rapidly. Rather, it's much better to have a system that works well when it's operated by average people doing a reasonably good job. That really took the pressure off of me when it came to my own mind.

That advice may or may not apply to you - it sounds like you've done some thinking but I would try to isolate the problems into a couple different categories: is the people? is it the domain of the work (e.g. are you making games, or e-commerce, or saas, etc)? the type of work (you mentioned you don't like coding)?

Lastly, remember that it's a big world out there. You don't have to pick between 'coding' or 'manager'. You can always move to a beach in Indonesia and be a fisherman or something. The world is wide open.

Since then ive started on carpenter school which all though fun and "real" also has made me poor.

I picked up the computer two weeks ago and coded some badly written code to do visuals for a friends techno gig, first time coding for half a year and i liked it. I dont know if i would be able to go back to full time coding but the idea of teaching others sounds interesting to me.

Good luck!

I sold my flat and was planning to move into a van to become a surf-bum. I handed in my notice and was working on autopilot/coasting until it was done. Then it all happened very quickly, that start-up contacted me, I had an interview, did a trial week (which I loved) and I decided to join them.

It was the best decision ever, I very quickly got my passion back for programming & creating products. Plus the job was remote, so I could move somewhere closer to the beach/mountains to surf/snowboard more.

I think what helped me was getting away from the stuff I hated, i.e; meetings/emails/'chats'/story points/jira and just focusing on programming and the product I was working on. Combined with the fact that it was much easier to peruse my hobbies, it cured my burnout (if you can call it that).

I took night classes to get my real estate license and was planning to change careers. Seemed like a good idea. After going through the training, getting the license, seeing how brokerages worked and what was involved in the field...I knew I could do it but I realized pretty quickly that I hated just about everything around how the industry worked. It honestly seems more designed to extract money from people who decide to get their license than anything else. Fees on top of fees on top of fees. My favorite was a Keller Williams speaker who looked like he was on drugs and told us all how to trick rich people into being friends so they would refer people to us. Scouting doctor's offices decorations and inviting them to do things that they seemed interested in, etc. Creating shopping or tennis groups for ladies to hang out where you can mention you're a realtor next time one of them says they are looking to sell. It was all so sleazy.

After that, I took a step back, realized that I was in one of the best fields in the entire country. Decided to suck it up and move forward, realizing that my worst days were better than most other folks best.

Since doing that I've done a lot more training and tried to ensure I get stronger and the things that interest me the most. I do scaled agile training and consulting to help create environments that will help organizations work more effectively together and prevent programmer burnout. I started focusing my energy on finding ways to fix the issues that caused my initial burnout.

It's going well so far. Picked up a good bit of consulting work and will probably be teaching some training courses fairly regularly in the future. It's nice to have an outlet to fix things that matter to me.

I've also left jobs that burned me out for no real reason. For example, I was on a project where there were two of us holding down a critical piece of software. After hearing we will get more engineers for the Nth time I just gave up and left. I couldn't do the constant on-call, being the liaison for bugs and everything, etc.

I also deliberately avoid going into management to fix my burnout because you simply just transmute your burnout into a different form. What you need is a break. You may not wish to quit your job but it is important that you minimize your work as much as you can possibly and focus on yourself. Given you are working double a normal schedule you may even consider saving up enough money to take a month off and then looking for a new job.

Option 1: Pivot

You need to analyze what you still enjoy, if anything, and what areas you would like to pivot to and hopefully excel in.

Management is a clear option, but not everyone's cup of tea. Maybe you could utilise your analytical skills in a completely different area outside of software development? For example, I've recently moved from a developer role into the company's Learning and Development manager - it's a dream (especially because nobody in this area has an engineering mindset).

Take what you're good at, see where you can grow, add value and find joy and then put a plan in place to aim for that.

Option 2: Break

People take sabbaticals for a reason. Maybe a complete 6 month break is an option. Or if not now, then in a year's time. It depends on your financial and personal circumstances of course.

I burnt out playing piano in my youth (I was aiming for concert training at the time), took a two year break after university, couldn't listen to any Classical music during that time, then one day turned on the radio and fell in love with it again. Now it's my favourite hobby. Breaks help if circumstances permit it.

Option 3: Less is More

During the lockdowns, I started to burn-out in my role because I was not speaking to anyone in person anymore. So I made it a deliberate practice to meet and talk with people as much as possible. 5pm - laptop off, talk with my family, meet friends, go for a run, place soccer with the local club, anything to get away from work, switch off and talk to people. Just listening to their complaints somehow helped me deal better with mine.

The cult of constant productivity is strong in this culture. Try to recognize it and resist it. Don't rest so you can be more productive (I often hear this) - rest because you are a human being who has worth regardless of how productive you are. Rest because you realize you are finite and have a finite amount of energy to give. Rest because you need to. Consider practicing sabbath - sure that's a term usually associated with certain religions - but the concept is applicable even if you're not religious. Pick a day to disconnect. Don't try to be productive. Get out in nature and let your mind wander. Disconnect from social media. Try to connect with yourself, others and nature again.

Switched careers to dev work and enjoy it a lot more. As others have said enforcing a healthy WLB and 40 hour week has helped a lot.

I dont dread going to work anymore. I view work as part of my day rather than my entire day. I also try to do something with my lunch break other than sit at my computer. I go to some type of exercise class, because I enjoy it, many days. Bike/run with my dog others.

So Monday isnt, ugh the start of another week of work. Monday is a day where I do some work, go to a jujitsu class in the middle of the day, do some more work, walk my dog at 5, make dinner with my wife, play a little video games or read, and then get to wind down for the day.

Nothing work related on my phone. Notifications shut off on my computer. Slack gets closed at 5. Laptop gets closed at 5. Once in a while I need to do something extra for work but as long as that is rare then its easier to keep the balance.

I am working again for almost 2 years now, but I dare to say my burnout is not yet over, but ather under control. I have a very good manager and he teamed me with a coworker that acts as a buffer between me and the other departments. I have daily meetings with my co-worker and let him decide when solutions I develop are 'good enough', even if I see plenty room of imporovement. I work 95% of my time from home, but I have a seperate working room. Closing the door of that room means end of the working day for me. This really works.

From my first week out I have been visiting a psychiatrist and have been practicing yoga. 2 activities I would recommend everyone, even to those not (yet) in a burnout. The psy sessions really helped a lot, not only to identify what were the real causes of my burnout, but also working towards a solution for each of them.

I can really say, I do enjoy my work again, although it will never be the same as it once was. Even now I make progress every week, little things I wasn't able to do anymore are coming back bit by bit.

I see lot's of 'care less' advices. I'd like to adjust this a little: Only care when you're in control of it, and even then try to balance.