3 Flavors of Burnout As A Software Engineer (And What To Do About It!)

so today I wanted to talk about burnout because I think this is a really important topic not only for software engineering but it's applicable to other careers and even other areas of life and I've I've made content about this before in the past probably some of my first content that was not actually programming was related to this and I just wanted to like you know keep reminding people I'll probably you know continue to make some videos talking about burnout going forward but this this felt like a good opportunity just based on things going on in life for me and a good reminder for me to kind of re-share um you know some thoughts about burnout and I'm gonna Focus primarily on like a software engineering perspective but I want to kind of offer up some thoughts and generalizations about it that are applicable beyond that so I guess to start like what what do I mean by burnout and this is something that for me like early in my career actually it bothered me the way people describe this so people were like they seemed hyper focused like if you're basically it was if you're working a lot you will burn out and I think on the surface that seems to check out um but like you know what does it mean to burn out you know having not gone through it at the time it was like well I can only imagine it's just gonna mean like I'm tired and like uh I don't know irate like I don't want to do anything like I just have no motivation um but it was kind of like these two thoughts right like what what causes it and people would always say it was just working too much and then what's the effect of it and like I said it was it seemed like this you know zero motivation kind of thing but I think it's for context for myself and why I get kind of frustrated when people frame uh you know discussions about burnout this way I was very fortunate early on in my professional career that I had a job at a startup that like genuinely like even in hindsight I don't work there anymore I worked so much and I don't regret a like a minute of it and it's because like I say it was fortunate I actually had something that I was doing that I loved to do so sure there were like you know difficult things or some you know days in particular like projects whatever that I wasn't in love with but the the work I was doing in general like very much motivated to do so I could work you know I would wake up early get to the office work a full day go to the gym come back from the gym and work until 2 A.M and just repeat it and then I would work weekends and no one made me do it right so in my mind I was like people keep telling me you're gonna burn out you're working too much and I kept thinking like no I'm not like this doesn't even feel like work I'm enjoying this but I think the I want to touch on burnout from a few different angles and my goal with this is just to give you some different perspective about what that might look like for you because the the point the message I want to make in this video was actually that I don't feel like burnout is a one size fits all like you know follow these steps here's how you burn out and then you know these are the the list of you know five things that like absolutely will impact you when you burn out um it just doesn't feel like it's a cookie cutter kind of thing okay so for me originally and this is one flavor of how I would you know talk about burnout and in my opinion maybe not the one that's uh you know talked about a lot because it's it's gonna go hand in hand with this working too much thing um I think the focus people were making when they were saying working too much was like well actually I don't even know like what their their point was like you're working too much and you're gonna get sick of it or lose motivation but for me what burnout originally looked like was working so much and it was actually doing something I love like I said actually resulted in other areas of my life not being fulfilled and because this was happening over a long period of time like we're talking I think when I first noticed it was probably about five years four or five years of doing like of basically just working around the clock um there there were areas in my life where that were definitely impacted but I didn't realize until until they were happening so for me one big thing was like social anxiety I went from you know being someone who I felt like was very social in University we would have people over to our our house to to have parties I'd be able to go out and have fun and never really had an issue and basically after a five-year period of of only working and then going to the gym it was like I actually felt like I couldn't interact with people right um I would I would be anxious to go um you know friends would say like hey like come over like and visit and we're having some other people over and I'd be like uh in my head I'm like I don't want to go do that like I develop social anxiety because I wasn't socializing um there there were things like this that kind of built up over time and for me this first bout of burnout was a lot more about the other things in life that were lacking and me kind of realizing oh crap these things are lacking now they're a problem and they weren't before versus like I'm gonna lose motivation at work and like um suddenly like I can't be productive and all this stuff that part never happened in my first burnout phase so I just wanted to give you that first example for context and just a quick recap it was essentially all the other things in life lacking and not actually anything work productivity wise engagement wise lacking so that's one flavor I feel like not a lot of people talk about it okay now let's jump over to um what I would say is probably um you know a more common flavor of burnout and this is one where I want to talk about like basically engagement right so um depending who you are like where you are in your career maybe if you're like a you know a junior software developer this hasn't really happened yet uh folks that are more senior watching this I'm sure you can reflect on parts of your career that kind of felt like this but um there's periods where you can go working on projects I said in my my example that I just made that you know there were definitely times where I had particular projects that weren't super interesting or some days where I'm like ah this sucks but I think uh you can kind of experience burnout when you go like like repeating projects where you're like not super into this but like it's got to get done or like um it could it could look different ways right like maybe you're working on a project and it's frustrating to work with the different people or you have ex you know third-party dependencies that make it not enjoyable but when you go from Project to project or just one really long project and you're feeling like you're lacking autonomy you're feeling like you can't actually be productive um and this just goes on for a period of time I feel like this is another sort of flavor of burnout because back to the point I made about engagement I think that this is where you'll notice and or maybe you don't and that's why it's kind of dangerous over a period of time your engagement starts to basically plummet because uh whatever the the conditions were that kind of put you here right like I was saying it could be the people you're working with maybe the Project's not interesting whatever it is that's not that's not kind of getting you that fulfillment and you're repeating this over time this is going to put you in a situation where like you could be an awesome programmer you could be an awesome software engineer but like instead of operating at like a hundred percent Effectiveness you're now like it's like 85 now it's 80. now it's 60 now and it just keeps going down because you're like it's almost like a why does it matter or uh you know you're just not being fulfilled um this is in my opinion it's a really dangerous thing because I think you you need to be aware of um sort of these signals for yourself when this kind of starts to happen right and this has happened to me several times now and I still don't feel like I have uh you know like an expert tip on like oh here's the three things that you do and you'll just never burn out because you'll be able to check these off but you know part of me thinks like having a good support system with your manager is is really important um this could also be like support system with your your partner at home if you're in a relationship um sometimes you know being able to have clear and open communication with your partner at home especially like you know you don't want to make everything you're discussing outside of work with your partner about work but um you know if they're able to pick up on things like yeah like oh that project you're still on that a or oh that was a Canadian thing um or you know you have another project hey that sounds like that other one you were working on that you know you weren't very happy about and if you have like a support system with your manager your partner um and then on top of that like self-reflection to be able to kind of identify these things I think that can help a lot so okay I want to go into a third example um again probably another obvious one which is the I think this comes primarily from like the startup world and us or probably even for like video game developers I hear this a lot um and I think it's in my first example what people were trying to drive at which is basically you have management or leadership trying to be like you have a deadline and like here's the stuff you have to fit and basically that window of time continues to shrink as you approach a deadline but the amount of stuff that has to go in is not shrinking at the same rate and this results in you trying to find ways to to create more time where you can basically um you know program develop whatever you happen to be doing right I said this could apply to things outside of software engineering but you start finding time and the only you only have 24 hours in a day so where do you find time right you have to go pick it from the other things that could mean not sleeping that could mean not spending time with your partner that's number two it could be you know any hobbies or extracurricular things if you have kids like you're not spending time with your kids right like the list goes on of all of these other things that you're not doing because you're finding the time from there to go work more and the important distinction I want to make with this example versus my first one because they're similar is that one in my example no one told me to work more it was self-motivated so that's a big difference and number two is that when you have someone telling you to do all of this work and here's the deadline if it feels like work to you because it's not something that you love doing then that's going to create friction it's going to create resentment and it's going to make you disengaged in the work you're doing so I think those traits make it a fundamental difference between my earlier burnout example where that was self-motivated versus someone kind of being like um you know like kind of driving you to just get more done um regardless of all the other circumstances so those are three examples uh that I wanted to touch on today and I just wanted to kind of summarize this video with you know like a maybe a quick description about like what does Burnout feel like because I mentioned to that we were going to talk about what leads you to burnout and we kind of gave those three examples but okay now like if you're experiencing burnout what does that look like because I also don't think that's a cookie cutter thing so the way that I like to think about burnout now after I don't know how like I've been working professionally for 10 plus years now um 11 years 12 years and I would say that I equate it more to like depression and early on in life um and I don't know maybe some people still have this perspective but I feel like I always thought that Depression was something where you are just sad I I don't know like that was my only experience with like okay like you have people that are sad because of a circumstance whatever some scenario but then depression is just like I don't know like uh you just continually get sad about things but that's really not what depression is and I when I think about burnout and some of my first you know introductions to burnout and people describing it to me it was similar it was just like oh you're lacking motivation so like therefore you're burnt out but it's not quite like that so if we look at something like depression again I'm not an expert on depression I'm not pretending to be I just want to make that clear but I think for people that have experienced depression it's like sure being sad is could be part of it but I think um when you're truly depressed it's almost like the the lack of motivation can be so significant that like you can't get out of bed there's no drive to do anything um you know like any any small task brushing your teeth getting out of bed to like to shower to go to the you know to go to the restroom to wash your face like anything right to go get groceries um like to even leave the house right like any thing that you try to do could be it seemed like an impossible task and you have no motivation to do it so the easiest thing to do is just to lay in bed and basically sleep and I when I think about burnout sorry one more point I guess about depression is like I think that that's something that sneaks up on you and what I mean by that is not like you know you're you know Monday you're doing great Tuesday you're doing great and then Wednesday you're like oh I'm depressed like there it is there's the depression and it happens on Wednesdays and maybe Thursday and Friday I'll be okay again it's like it's not it's not like that it's it's something that will kind of um creep up slowly over time um I kind of imagine it like on a spectrum right where you keep building up um these things that lead you to this point where when you reflect on it you go oh I'm depressed burnout I feel is the same way um depending on what factors are influencing your burnout could change sort of the rate of the curve of you know how burnt out you feel but I do feel like it's something that kind of sneaks up on you um maybe I don't know for people that are into psychology and stuff perhaps there are like I don't know Concepts around like micro burnout where on particular days like um you know maybe you feel like burnt out after a day like I know I'm very introverted if I have a full day of meetings I have to sleep at the like at the end of my work day I need a nap but that's kind of beside the point I wanted to kind of discuss like this feeling of burnout and I think that I was trying to equate it to depression in terms of how it sneaks up on you but it's another similar thing is like is is motivation right an engagement when I compare it to depression I don't feel like it's like I can't get out of bed kind of thing but it's almost like it could be resentment for the projects you're working on or the people you're working with um it could be like I have personal projects where I've burnt out on them um you know I've been in some uh one of my YouTube comment threads I was discussing with someone a video game that I've been writing for literally 20 years and why is it taking so long it's because I burn out from it I I find periods of time where I go all in on it and then and then I just burn myself out and it gets to the point where as much as I'd love to see that completed I I have zero motivation so I I think that the similar parts that you have with depression and burnout are around this lack of motivation lack of Engagement and then ultimately uh when we look at burnout your productivity and this isn't something where I'm trying to say like oh you have like make your manager happy make sure that you're being productive but like you won't feel good about your productivity because you'll be on projects doing things and you're kind of like I just don't want to be doing this I would rather be doing anything else and basically you start to dread work because you know you're just not engaged with it so I think that that's probably how I would describe being burnt out um I know this is already kind of a long video but when it comes to you know what you can do about that some things especially with work aren't directly in your control but I think the most important part about burnout is like is trying to recognize when it happens right um in scenarios and this I brought up the video game industry like I don't have any I don't know anyone personally that works in that space But I hear about these um you know these releases where people are working very very long hours like that that might be an environment depending on the company where that's not in your control but the thing that's in your control is whether or not you choose to work there in other in other working environments I think that having that awareness of burnout and feeling those those symptoms kind of coming on um you can have conversations with your manager to say like Hey look I've been noticing that I've been on this project for a while um it was interesting or um you know someone else came on the project I feel like maybe things have slowed down in terms of my engagement as a result like whatever it is it's being able to critically reflect and share that with your manager that might afford you an opportunity to say like could I could I try working on a different project after after I wrap up this portion of it to kind of reignite your engagement um something like that and then for like hobby projects and stuff like this is a big thing for me outside of work because I burn myself out a lot I'm the type of person that hyper focuses on one project I will do it you know around the clock until I'm like I hate this what am I doing um but having other projects to kind of go between and making sure that I can have checkpoints allows me to basically make a lot of progress and go okay like I'm feeling burnt out oh but this other project I have like that's actually a cool one I haven't worked on that in a little bit and then I can switch over I think for me personally I'm trying to get better at this where I can identify even for myself as I talk about this identify those symptoms earlier so that I don't reach the point of like working on something and being like I really don't like this I'm I have zero engagement because I feel like the recovery from that even to go to the next project it's still a bit of like a ramp up where I'm like okay like you know I need a bit of time to to kind of clear my mind whereas if I could identify it earlier I might be able to kind of save that ramp up time and just be like cool like I think we're getting to a good spot on this project like let's park that and let's take that momentum of like you know programming building things and then go apply that to the next project and and come back to the first one when it's time so I hope that was helpful for some perspective we talked about three different examples of of what burnout could look like and how you get there we talked about a couple of different ways that you might be able to identify some symptoms of burning out and then I kind of gave you my example of like comparing burnout to like depression um and to say it quickly again I don't mean to like equate them in terms of like severity but I just mean like similar symptoms so for anyone experiencing depression I'm sorry I don't mean to like you know try to say these are the same things but I just wanted to call out similarities for people to understand maybe some some symptoms that they've never gone through burnout so I hope that was helpful um thanks for watching I try to create some content like this outside of programming just to to give some of their you know perspective on different things in software engineering so thanks and we'll see you next time