Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit
A couple jobs ago I got very burnt out, MSP where I was the only senior tech left. 60-80 hour weeks for many months straight. I was so burnt out, that I became extremely defensive and worried I was imminently about to be fired literally all the time. Here&#x27;s what my boss did relative to this list, it&#x27;s a funny parallel:<p>1. Disallowed taking vacation because they couldn&#x27;t afford for me to be unavailable. Overtime was switched to time off in lieu but couldn&#x27;t be used. I complained and got special dispensation to get overtime paid out.<p>2. Increased pressure, I was afterall the person who held the place together. New clients are needed to keep the business going right?<p>3. Regularly micromanaged and brought to light any and all mistakes like prioritizing my tasks incorrectly. I shouldn&#x27;t have worked on X, I should have worked on Y.<p>4. Hired fresh out of college people and expected me to train them. I couldn&#x27;t give anyone any work. I was expected to train them during lunch periods.<p>5. Certainly provided coaching, see #3 on how to prioritize tasks well.<p>6. Reminded me regularly that I was disposable. Even came out that he was actively looking for my replacement. Debian, postgresql dba, cisco and hp enterprise networking, MCITP, typical microsoft enterprise stuff, etc. My replacements were way too expensive for some reason.<p>7. They did have various things in the office like foosball lol. Very cliche at the time. They sold it because we were too busy to use it.<p>8. Absolutely celebrated progress. There was weekly meetings about salesforce metrics. Like how many hours each of us were billing out. I did very well here. Coworker who did get to take vacation came back to one of these meetings and got publicly chewed out for really bad numbers... because he was on vacation...<p>9. No sympathy. He explained that he was too busy doing sales and managing. He would regularly say that if he had the time he could go do my job easily.<p>10. Oh yes, he would affirm that he was the one working the most in the company. 100+ hours he said. I&#x27;m not sure what he did. He refused to cold call. He didn&#x27;t do accounting, there was people for that. He didn&#x27;t do tech work. Sure he spent probably 10-20 hours a week micromanaging.<p>11. Reduce hours? I remember this one time where I was headed out of the office to a client site but this was maybe 20 minutes before the usual end of the day. I got chewed out for trying to skip work and go home and be paid for no work. I stayed silent and took it. Anyone who would leave 1 minute after the hour wasn&#x27;t in the wrong but there would be comments made.<p>12. There was a small list of banned words. You would be punished if you ever accidentally said &quot;I&#x27;m too busy to do that right now&quot; Busy was a banned word.<p>Minimum wage about 10 years ago was maybe $12&#x2F;hr in my area. I only earnt slightly over $20&#x2F;hr for this job. The stress from this job got me so sick, eventually I ended up in the ER. While in the ER he had a coworker &#x27;find me and determine if I am still alive.&#x27; mind you... he knew exactly which floor I was in at the hospital.<p>After I got onto sick leave, he made the ultimatum that if I don&#x27;t get back to work I would be considered as quitting. I replied explaining that it sounded illegal to be firing me for getting sick. He backpedaled quickly on that. Few months later I got fired anyway for no reason.<p>I got a new job. He lost a significant number of clients. He assumed I was stealing his clients; of which only 2 actually followed me to my new job. I got sued for 1.1 million $ for poaching his clients but after they found out that none of clients he listed were even either of the 2. They didnt even realize they lost those 2 yet. There was no non-compete or anything, the assertion was that I was a fiduciary employee obligated to protect them even after my dismissal. They wanted to drop the lawsuit, ended up costing me $2000 for a lawyer.