Early on in my career (I was a late bloomer and already in early 30's) as a developer, I got burnt out pretty bad twice. After the second time and teetering on a third, I knew I had to do something to change what I was doing and how I managed my work load.
I just focused on getting MY stuff done and that was it. I stopped taking on other's people work. I stopped taking on more work once I got my stuff done. I would do exactly what a Sprint called for. Nothing more, nothing less. If I finished early with my tasks, I would stretch out the time and just tell the scrum master I was close, but not done yet, but always finished on time. I basically just did what was required of me. I wasn't out to impress anybody, I just became "Mr. Dependable" on any of the teams I worked on.
This was the approach that changed everything.
Now, some ten years later? I'm never too high or too low. I still do the same thing, I still just do what is asked of me and that's it. 5pm every night? Laptop gets turned off. Friday at 6pm? Laptop is off for the entire weekend. I turn it back on right before my meetings on Monday. Separating my personal life from my work life with a hard delimiter was paramount.
I found out that if you don't protect your sanity and your own well being, people will take advantage of you and your time and it will never end. Once you break the cycle and get that time back for yourself? You'll make sure you never willingly give it to someone else ever again.
Protect yourself. Protect your sanity. Once you lose it, like OP said, it's very, very hard to get back.
I hope this helps someone else struggling to break this cycle.
I'm really curious, how do you factor in time to learn ("up skill")?
I'm a self taught dev with 2 young kids. I've always had a healthy approach to work, but now I'm feeling quite a lot of pressure to learn new things on my own time, whether to make sure I'm prepared for the interview circuit if I get laid off, or to patch my skills that are needed at work.
I'm starting to feel burnout creep in, getting an hour of study in the morning, taking care of family, and then working 8 hours.
I appreciate your insight.
Unfortunately when it comes to preparing for interview leetcode is pretty much required at all stages. For that the way that works for me is to never let go of it. I will solve 2 3 problems over a week even when I have a job. That downtime at work when you are at home or waiting for the next meeting...just leetcode. I absolutely hate LC and hate the fact that it is omnipresent but now no longer fear it. Except Dynamic programming. That thing can go f*ck itself. But ya now when it comes to LC I am "always" or rather one week away from interview ready.
I have never had a leetcode-style interview in 40 years. (I may have had one such question, maybe - hard to remember for sure.) So, no, it is not required at all stages.
Disclaimer: I'm in embedded systems, which is very different from FAANG.
Also never interviewed at FAANG and never been asked to write code in an interview
I'm with you and the GP, but I suspect all three of us have pursued a balanced and satisfying career instead of the one with top of market compensation.
Some of the folks here don't see alternative options when FAANG compensation is some integer multiple of what the rest of the industry has been supporting for the last 40+ years, and I don't entirely blame them for that. I'm not surprised when some later find themselves miserable and feel like they're trapped by golden handcuffs and insufferable bureaucracy, but I understand how they got there.
As someone currently in the process of trying to move from a cushy, interesting startup job to a soulless FAANG for that compensation multiple, the ONLY reason I'm doing it is because I have a young kid now. I wish there was another way, but it is genuinely impossible to provide a comfortable level of family life on a startup salary, unless your partner is also in tech and is ok with not being a stay at home parent.
There are other companies, too. I work at, statistically speaking, Your Phone Company, and they don't pay FAANG money but they certainly pay a lot better than I was doing at startups.
Caveat: I don't live in the Bay Area, though the Boston area isn't exactly cheap.
I hope it’s a great experience there, have friends in the risk/cyber areas and have heard nothing but good things.
It's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? It's basically the top 1% speaking. And you can't tell me that the other 99% have miserable lives.
Stay at home parent is a choice, and a pretty expensive one. One does not have to choose that and can still live a comfortable life. Many women (and let's face it, we're unlikely discussing the man staying at home for the next 7-15 years, eh?) even prefer not to interrupt and/or basically end their careers because of parenthood.
Americans often look to Europe, claiming that these things are so much easier there, which might be true, but at least as much is it a matter of personal choice as well.
I did the same for the same reason , but I moved from a soulless FAANG to a high frequency trading company. This is another integer multiple.
To my pleasant surprise, the HFT is more rewarding (not just in comp) than the FAANG was. At least for now, or that's what I keep telling myself.
Yes, I’ve been in tech for 30+ years and just recently broke 6 figures in salary. But I live where a nice house is under $300K and I take satisfaction in living frugally.
That's interesting. What's your line of work?
Webdev in various stacks, database design, programming and administration, linux administration. Mostly in higher ed with a few forays into short-lived startups.
Funny enough, I just had my first LeetCode question ever... for an internal job posting. Wtf
That is dystopian level hilarious.
We normally do minor fizz buzz code screens internally. But that's just a small test to see how much of the tech you know, like if you were switching from say Python Lambdas to Angular front-end. And it's mostly to see about how you approach the problem.
But some of the internal postions do it differently. My favorite was a mock code review on a PR that had intentional flaws. Then you'd call put what was wrong and how to fix it - not just pure code but also requirements, tests, commit messages, etc.
LeetCode is different though. The rating and stuff. Even the interface... I still don't know what it's doing behind the scenes to run the code and feed inputs and what those inputs are. Believe it or not, this LeetCode interview wasn't my worst internal code screen. I once had one that HR said to bring my laptop and use any language I wanted. When I got there, the manager handed me a Mac (which I've never used), told me to use Angular to create a page with a table (hadn't used Angular at that point), and told me to do it in Webstorm (most teams were still using Eclipse at that time, so no experience here either). I managed to Google my way to a working table, but cut the interview short when he wanted me to style it. It's and internal posting. I clearly know the basics and got something working, even in the worst possible interview scenario where I didn't know the tools at all. Surely I can learn the rest (this was a midlevel posting, not even senior).
Can't they just look at your code commit history ...
They absolutely could.
On the opposite side, I usually skip teams for their repo so I can review them. Are there test cases built out? Do they have east to follow code design, or descriptive comments? Do they have a normal level of abstraction, or are there multiple layers of interfaces for not real reason? I recently declined a position because the team was building a UI, didn't have a CMS, didn't have any real rests, and the code looked like a bit of a mess. It didn't help that the languages (Go, React) were completely new to me, so I wouldn't be able to make an impact on improving these issues.
Interesting, I had the same thing a few years ago while interviewing internally for a manager position, and from a VP
I’ve run into a leetcode once over the course of five job hunts. There’s always some sort of screener that may use a leetcode style interface, but the problem is something like fizzbuzz/write a function to say if a number is prime/etc.
The interview is about finding the obvious resume frauds and seeing if they can communicate their problem solving process, not finding a genius that’ll invent new algorithms
The weird thing is I've gotten everything from no code to entry level to ultra-hard coding questions in FAANG-level interviews.
I also have a hunch I've gotten easier coding questions when an existing team member referred me to hiring for their own team.
Funny enough I had an interview today with a dynamic programming whiteboard problem. I feel like if I hadn't been putting in my leetcode hours I would have totally bombed
You do it during work hours. Period.
Your brain only has so many truly 'on' hours in a day, and it's already less than 8. Trying to burn even more in the pursuit of complex knowledge isn't just robbing Peter to pay Paul, it's eating the seed corn and wondering why your harvest failed.
It's a scary thing to realize, and can be hard to stick with. But limits are real, and respecting them gets more work done in the long run than not.
100%
This is so important. I have a 3yo and wife, I currently work for a series-A startup - It's incredibly easy to do things out of hours, answer messages, train, lab things up, etc... But at the end of the day that is a part of my career.
So except for when I'm traveling for work, I don't do a GD thing past 5pm, unless i choose to. When I choose to, it's likely because a lot of my team is in IST time zone rather than EST.
When you're a family person, your job is to be there for yourself first, your family second, your other commitments after that.
I have a weekly 4:30p friday call. Would i rather have that at 1:30p? Yes. But i've chosen to work remotely in Ohio instead of move to Cali like the last four companies have asked. So I take that friday 4:30p call.
But you better believe that i check out until monday after that.
During the week I'll take odd hour calls for my counter-parts in IST, but that's nearly entirely out of courtesy than necessity.
Take care of things in the following order: 1. You, as a human, holistically 2. Your family, spouse first, kids second 3. Your work 4. Everything else
It's reduced a huge portion of stress from my life by doing this.
I am trying to move to a country where this is a reality... I just need a life outside of work (and some quiet and peace and fewer people around me all the time) I want to be able to sit down in the park, stroll around the neighbourhood, ride cycle, swim, cook, etc without the worry of job looming over my head all the time. I want to live for myself.
I say this as a person who emigrated away from the US in my late 30's...
The hedonic treadmill exists in all countries, stepping off it is a personal priority and discipline regardless of where you live.
You've said it twice, and I'll reiterate it a third time. Your own well being has to come first. You can't deliver on the rest of your commitments if you neglect your own needs. Being a martyr does not serve those who depend on you.
If you can’t love yourself how are you going to love someone else?
All hours spent with kids under 5 is basically 'on'. Which would leave most mothers I've met at zero 'on hours' left for work. A reason for the 'gender pay gap'?
Childcare is skilled, necessary labor, and should be subsidized by the government at the level that food production is. Maternity leave and paternity leave in the United States are also woefully insufficient.
Very high value, lucid advice.
My experiences were similar, however I must add when your day job is not related to skill building activities, you may find your "on" time to be greater.
Still, be careful.
In my case, my day job was manufacturing and I was an effective prototype mechanic. Loved the work, hated the pay, so...
I used a percentage of my free time learning more computer related things.
When the time was right, I was ready to take the jump.
Landed nicely, and have no regrets.
Now, later in life I find the dynamics above are in play and we all ignore them at our peril.
Advice from another thread : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41462980
If you’re learning a thing that you actually do for your job (eg, new language or tech), do the studying and training during work hours
I'd agree with what others have answered (do it on company time if it's company related), but although I don't have kids, I've burnt out quite badly 2 or 3 times. Apathy is the scar tissue you get from burnout, it's helpful in avoiding it after recovery, but it's best if you don't include your family in that. If possible (probably if you try hard enough) I'd suggest separating the things you want or feel you should learn into the things you're learning for yourself and things you're learning for your job, and then allocate a deliberate day or significant block to just that. Ask for help from your family if possible in letting you occasionally just isolate and immerse. Jon Carmack does this, and although I'm just an average guy or w/e, I've found it to be the only way to give hard subjects the attention they actually require. For example, the Nand2Tetris project, Swift programming, Postgres, they really take some tinkering time and deliberate practice. Nothing super valuable comes from passively digesting podcasts while driving imo either, or walking down the street, or buying groceries, so take those airpods out if you're doing it, and let your brain take a break in those moments.
That sounds like a good philosophy for work-life balance. I sometimes work evenings or weekends, but it might be a bit different since I don’t work at a company but at a university, so my work hours are a bit flexible. I have had burnout before, especially during Covid home office.
A big improvement for me was:
- Regardless what’s going on, have at least one day per week when I don’t work at all (usually Saturday) and never pull all-nighters (no work after midnight);
- Stop syncing work email to any mobile devices, and close the mail app on my laptop outside standard working hours. (This does wonders for destressing.)
- Track the amount of time you “try to work” (e.g. how long you have your work laptop open). Note that this is not the same as tracking e.g. “focus hours”. Keep an eye on it and don’t let it accumulate too much per week.
Why are you working during the weekend and after work hours?
This is my reason for burnout, opposite of your example. There's a thin balance doing more work because you enjoy, and doing it because managers are pushing you to do it. And now that I JUST do my job and what I'm asked to do, I have lost a lot of the drive that I loved about being a developer and engineer, making life kind of dull. Weird thing is that it is the job description that put me into this place, with no room for growth, and the search for new jobs has been dry, year after year of searching.
I traded my sanity for a big chunk of my life's enjoyment. That ain't great either.
My theory is burnout comes from a lack of autonomy.
If your "do the minimum" is having complete control over a module and implementing features as slow as you can without pissing anyone off too much, you're going to have a great time.
If your "do the minimum" is picking up the bare minimum number of Jira cards in a sunshine and roses "teamwork makes the dream work" team where everyone is responsible for every line of code but nobody knows more than 5% of the codebase, your mental health is going to go straight down the toilet, because nothing is more stressful than working with over-complicated code you didn't write, and the less cards you pick up, the less code you're going to understand.
Any words of encouragement to a 32 year old considering a career switch to software development? I have a CS undegrad and have been working in the industry, although in strategy roles and never as a developer.
Where do you live?
I transitioned to software development in the age of ~30 and am based in Austria, Europe. The way I did is was to work on a project in my free time, and use that to a) LEARN, b) demonstrate that I can aquire skills myself and c) can stay motivated and push through. I wanted to show that I'm worth being given a chance. It worked flawlessly, I got hired on the first try.
Just try it, what's the worst that can happen? :)
I've got the feeling good software engineers are a bit more rare here, though, and Whiteboard interviews are not a common thing either.
You really do have to protect yourself. I think at some point I felt like if I set boundaries I'd get fired, then I realized if I didn't set boundaries I'd go insane which seemed worse than fired so I started telling people "no," and logging off on time. It's been an improvement.
"Will the fight for our sanity, be the fight of our lives?" - flaming lips
I don’t know why this is a revelation to so many people.
Who cares about you more than you do? Nobody — especially not anybody at work.
I have a slightly different aspect (as I was the complete opposite of that) of this from my life - but it's not a disagreement.
So I have always had such a nice (some would say epic) work-life balance as far as "hours" and "availability" go. After a (forced) break from work, and exploring health related help professionally, I came to know I was clearly burnt out. I was told high number of "hours" working or "visible or quantifiable work load" don't necessarily have to be present for a burn out. There are other factors at work which cause stress/etc and they are often more insidious than the typical "load" (not to reduce the ill effect of the typical load^). And were those signs abundant in my life and work!
It was quite shocking. I always used to think that with my kind of work-life balance at least burn out was never going to be a problem.
^ It was added by them - those typical load/etc almost always cause mental health damage so I should not consider them okay all.
Your comment is very vague to the point of not containing any information. I would sum it up as "there are factors other than hours spent when it comes to burnout". What are those factors?
This sounds depressing. I’m sorry that you had that experience.
It’s a frustrating position to be in, and you can feel quite helpless.
In my experience, it’s less about “do only what’s asked”, and rather “say no”.
I.e. explain “I can do X, but if I do that then Y will suffer, and Y is a priority”. (Y being another company priority, or even your own mental health). Stated in these terms, it’s easier to negotiate your time with your coworkers.
Thing is that may not depend on you.
I did this but I was surrounded by coworkers who were stupidly running straight into burnout themselves and said yes to anything.
Well, upper management felt I wasn’t doing enough in comparison and pressured/harassed me. Ultimately, I were the first to burn out.
Of course, in hindsight, I should have left way before it happened, but when you are in, you have no hindsight. Sometimes you can’t grab the surrounding toxicity before being hurt.
A PM at my company told me a few weeks ago "if you finish your work early, we can always find other things for you to work on" and I told him "you understand that my incentive is not to do that, right? If working faster only gives me more work to do, then why would I work faster?" He told me that fast workers are repaid with bonuses, promotions, etc., but I don't think most people believe in that kind of upward mobility anymore. I certainly don't
It’s worth pointing out that the people you need to protect yourself from aren’t necessarily doing anything malicious — they just don’t know your limits and will keep feeding you work as long as you keep saying yes.
It was a revelation for me when I realized I could tell people “no, I’m swamped right now” and they’d be “ok, no problem”
Thanks for sharing and really appreciate the "break the cycle" mindset. A lot of people feeling stuck is holding on "strong work-ethics" as their identity, but it is an endless cycle and you are going to lose as you age.
And your sanity is only yours to keep, protect it at all cost.
You might as well be narrating my own experience. This is the definition of work life balance.
This feels impossible for someone who is early career. How could you balance growth with this? You could say "if your job isn't providing you with opportunities to grow, look for a new job or talk to your manager". But that takes extra time as well. You need to work on portfolio/side projects with in-demand skills you don't currently use, talk to managers, apply to jobs, network, read, etc.