How to Recognize Burnout Before You’re Burned Out
I used to think I occasionally suffered from work burnout, but then my SO became a medical resident, and I realized &quot;oh, that&#x27;s what burnout is.&quot;<p>What I used to &quot;suffer&quot; as a programmer was the ebb and flow of productivity. As described by books like &quot;Drive&quot; and &quot;Flow&quot;. This state-of-mind was perhaps best described for me by my colleague (also a programmer) in this public essay, &quot;Find the right routine to surf productivity&quot;[1].<p>What my SO suffers as a medical resident is <i>true</i> work burnout. They work 6 days per week, nearly 80 hours per week, for weeks (or months) on end. Their work is not only challenging intellectually, it&#x27;s challenging physically and emotionally. Their work also buckles under the weight of administrative bureaucracy, which removes their sense of agency.<p>Recently, after my SO got off a 5-week &quot;night float&quot; block (where she worked 6 days per week on an inverted 6pm-6am night-time schedule), she finally got a day off. It was really a day to re-adjust her schedule back to working &quot;normal&quot; daytime 6am-6pm hours. During that day, she said to me, &quot;Can we look up Maslow&#x27;s hierarchy of needs?&quot;[2]<p>Looking over that diagram, we realized her work had her floating around in the first couple levels of that pyramid, whereas in my work, I was very much at the top. My &quot;burnout&quot; feelings were really &quot;not feeling perfectly self-actualized&quot;. Her &quot;burnout&quot; feelings were actually &quot;not having access to basic physical needs (e.g. sleep) and emotional support (e.g. daylight, friends, family).&quot;<p>I am very much in favor of Jason Fried style &quot;Calm Companies&quot;[3], and I think in software&#x2F;tech, we actually have the ability to &quot;work hard&quot; without burning out, usually hovering around the &quot;self-actualization&quot; level in the pyramid. One of the wonderful things about software engineering, in particular, is that since it is the art of automation, we can actually save ourselves labor, and think carefully about the notion of employee leverage. That is, one employee&#x27;s code can do the labor of hundreds or thousands.<p>It&#x27;s really sad to me that the medical profession, at least during its training period for new medical school graduates, there is an epic contrast: the near-guarantee of burnout, with basically no recourse for residents except to &quot;suck it up and power through&quot;.<p>For those of you who feel your are in jobs in tech where managers &quot;put the screws on you&quot;, you should recognize that you have all the power in the world to change job. Employers in tech should be fighting over you, ensuring you feel fulfilled, productive, <i>and</i> balanced. &quot;All of the above&quot; is possible; this isn&#x27;t a &quot;pick two&quot; engineering trade-off. If you don&#x27;t feel that way, it&#x27;s bad management or bad culture -- period. In medical residency, it&#x27;s &quot;pick zero&quot;, and even worse, there is no way for those folks to change jobs (at least, not without derailing their entire career).<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;5955115&#x2F;find-the-right-routine-to-surf-productivity" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;5955115&#x2F;find-the-right-routine-to-surf...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;timvandevall.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;Maslows-Hierarchy-of-Needs.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;timvandevall.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2013&#x2F;11&#x2F;Maslows-H...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.signalvnoise.com&#x2F;the-calm-company-our-next-book-d0ed917cc457" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.signalvnoise.com&#x2F;the-calm-company-our-next-book-d0...</a>