Burnout In Software Engineers: How To Get OUT Of It

burnout isn't unique to software engineering but it's one of the things that comes up a lot of the time next to impostor syndrome that I often talk to Engineers about burnout can be one of those things that's either very obvious for people or sometimes sneaks up and ends up having a really big negative impact and for that reason I think it's incredibly important to keep talking about it hi I'm Nick centino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft today I wanted to talk about burnout so we're going to go over to Reddit read through a thread that someone posted and have a little bit of perspective about burnout that this person's gone through this has a little bit of an interesting spin because often when I talk about burnout it's about trying to identify it it's about trying to prevent it but in this case we're going to be talking about once you've experienced burnout once you're in that burnt out stage what can you try and do to get past that if that sounds interesting just a reminder to subscribe to the channel and check out that pin comment for my courses on dome Trin with that said let's jump over to Reddit and read through this post all right so the op says I've had a tough year culminating in a very difficult project with a narciss is Tech lead a full-time pairing environment autocratic decision-making and a manager who spent last 3 months trying to denigrate and humiliate anyone who dares to have an opinion he's one and for it I have a new job lined up with a better pay and Technology ironically I should thank him so as we can see already the op has experienced burnout this seems like it's one of the many typical ways that I see it come up where someone's in an environment that they don't really enjoy they're probably working their butt off and they don't really have like a good manager good good people they're working with and everything is kind of just heading downhill as they're working they go on to say I should be thrilled but I actually feel completely crushed by my experience and I feel no pleasure in anything so this is one of those signals for Burnout if you've watched previous videos where I've talked about this or written about it I usually try and give a comparison that's kind of like depression and I realize that these are different things but when we see something like uh feel no pleasure in anything this is something that you would have like in a depressive episode but I do think that it's a very common experience when you're burnt out like you don't really have energy for anything you don't really have pleasure in anything so let's continue so none of my hobbies or relationships seem able to pull me out of this pit I'm in so that's again like I just said I'm not at the stage where I'm too faded to code but it's difficult to focus on more than simple tasks again another sign of burnout right where you're unable to focus so not only is there no enjoyment or pleasure but it's really hard to just like pay attention to stuff get it done make progress on it because it's almost like you know you need to do it but like you kind of just want to zone out and not really do anything at all there's a couple of months until the new job so I'm hoping I can get back on the saddle at least well enough to function so they do want to try and make the last few months sort of this upward Trend in terms of productivity because they're in a bit of a rut understandable they might not really care about the place they're working at anymore because they know they're about to leave but it's probably a good thing to focus on because if they are heading down Hill right now they probably want to try and make sure they can bounce back so that when they're at their new job they're kind of not trying to climb out of that pit when they start so for those of you that have been there how do you get out of it what did it take and how long until I feel like myself again specifically how did you remain functional and productive as a programmer while battling this so burnout is very real as we can see this person is talking about a lot of the symptoms that they have this absolutely resonates so I certainly have experience with this when I was burnt out it was a little bit of a different story because work was very much the thing I was interested in it was almost the opposite it was everything outside of work that was really taking a toll on me and I was realizing like I was getting social anxiety and things like that so uh I think everyone can have very different experiences but what this person's described I would say is is pretty common my advice for this person or anyone that's going through this I mean the first thing would be number one acknowledging that you're going through this and it sounds like this person absolutely is on that so I'm repeating that for you if you're watching this if you're going to have something like this in the future or you're going through it right now maybe it's a good opportunity to reflect and try to figure out like based on these symptoms like am I going through burnout is that why I'm not really enjoying anything I feel like it's not necessarily like tired all the time like it's kind of like a depressive type of thing but no enjoyment it's hard to focus right you're procrastinating because you're not really doing anything it's a bit of a weird spot to be in but maybe that's a good reflection for you to think about so identifying step one number two it sounds like this person's already doing it they're trying to look at their environment and the things that are impacting it so they've already I guess done this entirely because they went on to step three which is trying to see if they can change something about their environment now for me if I'm working with my employees on my team and I'm leading engineering teams if I have conversations with people and I'm doing things like uh check-ins with them I wanted to say like status update but I don't necessarily mean like you know tell me what code you've written today more like like hey like how is this project going for you are you still being challenged by it still learning is it still interesting these types of check-ins with my employees I would say that if you're not doing this kind of thing with your manager it's probably a good conversation starter so making sure you're not just reporting that you're writing tests or that you pushed code or something like that you want to make sure you can layer in these other types of things that are a little bit more like soft skills a little bit more like on the non-technical side like how is this work aligning with you and if I'm having conversations with people on my team and I'm getting a feel for like hey like they're kind of losing interest or losing a little bit of steam there can be a lot of different things that I do with them to try and get that back so you don't necessarily have to change your environment completely but it sounds like this person had a pretty crappy manager so I could understand if they were like hey this bridge is burned I don't want to try and solve it with my manager I'm going to go elsewhere I would love if employees on my team came to talk to me before this kind of thing happened I hope I'm not the bad manager but I want to make sure that I can have these types of conversations sooner so if this person came to me and I wasn't the bad manager and we could talk through this I would try to either find ways to encourage them about the work they're doing so reminding them about the why the impact I think that could be beneficial uh if they've been on a project for a long time maybe I can help bring someone else in and transition them to something else so that way they have a different opportunity to learn about new interesting challenging spaces they can have some opportunity to coach someone as they're being brought on so there's a lot of good things that can come out of this and I want to make sure that people are engaged right like just because someone's been working on it for a long time it's not like oh no if we have to switch gears and someone else is doing this the whole Project's going to fail like I can find ways to make this a positive thing for multiple people but we need to be talking about it in the first place now this person has moved on from that right so they've they've actually gone like one step further and they're like I'm just going to change my environment so now they're in a spot where they are in the same environment but they know that the end is in sight they got a couple of months left what can they do to start trying to get out of this and this isn't really an easy thing to answer in a general sense because it's going to look different for everyone but something that I think is common that could be applicable is trying to look for incremental wins and this is really just about habits in general right so if we're listening to what this person's saying they're saying it's hard to focus right they're not really getting enjoyment out of anything and there's probably a lot of things that are influencing that still from the outside like the crappy manager having a bad Tech lead to work with just like the whole environment's not very good but if they can start to look at the work they're doing if they can start setting little goals for themselves that they can kind of be accountable for and feel good about accomplishing that can help to start build momentum if they're you know unable to focus they're feeling like they're not being productive like okay you got this uh you know set of work items you're trying to do make sure that you're setting a goal for yourself to say look like I know that like the rate I'm going it's probably going to take me a couple weeks to get this done but you know what instead let me set a goal for myself still achievable but let's try to make that like by the end of the week I'm going to try to get this Cod up for review I'm going to get a PLL request ready and that way I can set my sites on something that's a little mini objective and this is just one example you can spend this a million different ways but try and give yourself something to work towards something that you set up for yourself and something that's also achievable you don't want to go setting a goal like this making it like hey I'm going to finish it by like 5 minutes ago and then you're going to fail it and then you're not really going to build the momentum so we want to set something that is achievable and something that you set that way you work towards that we're not talking about these external factors this person's already checked out from their job we just want to start focusing on building some momentum for the individual and to be honest I would just keep building on this type of thing so finding smaller things like setting little mini goals and then just trying to build on top of them and then once you keep doing this you can start building more and more momentum and hopefully find a little bit more interest in what you're doing now in terms of how long that can take that's going to be wildly dependent on the individual and really how burnt out they are they might find that there's still too many distractions at work that even with setting some of these mini goals building some momentum on their own that it only takes one really crappy inter action with someone and it's all reset again so this is something that will take time and you do need to focus on it but in my opinion it's the same types of things that you would go through for building habits but let's go have a look at what other people in the comments had to say about burnout and this person's situation this person says I've learned that only time and proper rest heels burnout and sometimes it takes months to recover 100% agreed it can take a very long time it's not like hey you're going to have a couple days put your head down feel productive and all of a sudden it's cured unfortunately no doesn't work like that you can still switch jobs and keep working while recovering but you need to dedicate time to rest and sleep 100% so uh something else I want to mention and I wasn't very clear about it but just switching jobs in this case isn't necessarily going to correct the situation it will be helping because we're removing hopefully removing some of the external factors that are putting this person into a state of burnout so hopefully they have a better manager hopefully they have better people around them they're working with but but the damage has been done right so we're just removing the things that would keep making this worse but this person's already in this crappy state so the work isn't done yet we're just removing some of the things that are making it worse with time you'll see that you're getting better and are able to work more effectively and do coding learning outside of work when I'm burned out I can't even learn new things outside of work yes because when you're burnt out right you're not getting enjoyment out of anything for a lot of people right so even if you were like hey like I think it's really cool to learn about pick some technology outside of work you want to learn Blazer you want to learn Maui awesome stuff cool but like you're doing it outside of work and now you're just like I don't care like I'm too tired I can't focus I don't even want to learn this new stuff that was exciting it's it's really like that so having time with family and friends also helps a lot so yes these are things that you can again it's going to be sometimes challenging because you might not feel motivated to do it like you don't want to do anything but if you treat almost like an escape from some of the things that are keeping you burnt out I think that can be very beneficial and obviously spending time with your friends and family is a very good thing but I think uh removing that focus on these other things that are kind of keeping you down can help a lot as well don't feel bad if you are more inclined to procrastinate while being burned out so yes this is something like be aware of it it's going to happen it's very likely so I think awareness is key if you're noticing that you're procrastinating it's something that I think it's good to be aware of and you want to see if there are things that you can try and do to improve it but don't beat yourself up for it it's kind of like the symptom of all these other things going on this person says rest and sleep are so important rest being times when your brain is not preoccupied with Reddit Tik Tok YouTube right have a coffee and look out a window go to a gym pick up heavy stuff do other things right you want to take a rest from the stuff that's keeping you burnt out let's keep going though this person says I want to emphasiz this rest is not on social media right I found that when I am most burned out and just Doom scrolling endlessly I was not healing from the burnout right like you're just you're seeking dopamine to try and correct something again I'm not like a psychologist or anything here I just think this is how it works so you're not actually correcting the situation you're just kind of giving your brain what it wants but there's other things that you want to be doing to correct systematically what's going on moving on to some other threads of comments here is quitting an options you have a couple of months before starting the new job just to reset your brain um so this person says that this is what massively helped me spent a month doing anything but being on the computer so yeah if that is an option right instead of um you know being in the environment that is bad for another couple months can they remove themselves completely that way maybe they can get some other focus on different things and try to restore themselves before starting their job so perhaps if they can afford that uh in terms of finances and all the other stuff like maybe that is an option this person says found random places to visit local to me spent a day at a local game store watch four films at the cinema 80 whatever just different things right again if you're finding that it's really hard to do anything to focus on it nothing's enjoyable if you start to sort of force yourself into these other things like going out to watch movies spending time with friends and family hopefully that doesn't feel Forest right but when you're doing these other things that can really help just take your mind off of all the other stuff the other side effect of that is that that will start to help build momentum you'll start to find more enjoyment but you have to spend time doing it this person says I learned to disconnect things for myself my job isn't a statement on my abilities and potential and long-term goals very true right my livelihood isn't a statement on how I should treat my other hobbies and my family exactly right so being burnt out from work ideally should not carry over and affect the other things that you love in life I understand that that's very much going to be the case for a lot of people but this person person saying like hey this is a realization I had that's trying to get them out of that state what I earn from does not make sense if it somehow dissuades me enjoying what I actually like and doing it repeatedly right so I think this is really good advice it's really good perspective but it's not necessarily like a step by step on what to do right so I think it's it's still good to kind of help hear this framing though this person says carrying less that's the solution ultimately right so have you heard of the MVP so minimum viable product well you need MVC see minimum viable caring out with the minimum viable product in with the model view controller yeah that's exactly the solution right okay let's keep going struggling to generate insights from your ga4 data that's an ad I wasn't paying attention what I was reading we shouldn't include that one this person goes on to say I'd estimate I've been burnt out for about 14 of the last 17 years that is absolutely staggering they say it just becomes normal State at some point jobs keep promising that after this one or two years of critical projects things will get easier but that never happens I try to recover by taking a week of vacation every so often and doing nothing but it never fully helps I think only retirement is really going to do it this is a pretty scary thing to read and what I mean by that is that I don't think that this person is necessarily alone but like that's pretty scary right if that's like something that other people go through having one person like this is already too many people right you don't want your whole career be like that I obviously don't know this person so I'm not trying to criticize their choices or anything but I would say like if it's been 17 years and 14 of them they felt like they're burnt out um either like I don't want to say like software is not for them but like maybe they're just working in places where they really should be trying to get out of them sooner because I don't think that that's a I mean obviously a good spot to be in one of the last ones I'll go through here take as much time as you can complet completely off in between your current and new job so again this uh original poster was saying they were going to try and see if they can try to find ways at were to get that momentum back but this is yet another person saying just disconnect get out of there if you can right I notice a lot of people don't recognize burnout until it's late very true this is one of the things I said near the beginning it can really sneak up on you it doesn't sound like you're near burnout to me it sounds like you're already there I would agree it sounds like this person is burnt out uh could it be getting absolutely so I think it's good that they recognized it but they're very likely already burnt out so I think it's good that they have awareness and they want to start taking some action and the last one they're going to read is I do nothing for 3 to 6 months managers can't tell the difference anyway well maybe the manager that you have isn't paying attention to anything at all maybe not a good manager so that's going to wrap up burnout from this Reddit article again I think some of the meta points here are being able to identify that you're going through burnout that's critical I think having awareness understanding some of the symptoms understanding that this can look different for other people so just having like a checklist of yep I'm burnt out kind of thing maybe not going to apply to you but there are some common symptoms like not finding enjoyment in anything procrastinating a lot like it can kind of feel almost depressive so something to think about for you if you're going through this my personal advice in terms of uh this person situation I think a lot of people were saying disconnect if you can try to do other things I think that is great however I do think that aside from that you still want to try and find ways to build momentum so yes if you can disconnect from the environment and the situation that's causing you to have burnout excellent and I think on top of that if you can set little mini goals for yourself build up some like micro habits right build up some micro momentum and keep iterating on that you'll start to get out of that hopefully procrastin a doom Loop and that way you can start feeling motivated by the things that you're doing remember burnout is very real for software Engineers so do take this kind of stuff seriously it can sneak up on you and you don't want to find yourself in this situation and not really know what to do thanks for watching and I hope you found that helpful