I am BURN OUT... Should I Talk To My Manager About This?

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Hey folks, we're going to go to the experienced devs subreddit today. uh just kind of skimmed this post that was like um prepping for a 101 where this developer is kind of feeling like, you know, super burnt out, super kind of just tired of like uh I guess the way work is going in terms of bureaucracy, feeling like things are slow, like there's red tape, just um I don't know, like reaching this point where you're like you're so cynical about everything and they're kind just looking for some advice of like, you know, once you're in this state, how how do you have a conversation about it, right? It's um I think personally I think it's good that this person has this this awareness where they're they're like I I I think I need to do or say something. Um you know, obviously I would say it would have been great if it could have been sooner, right?

But I think that if you're at a point and you're you're having this realization, I think that it's good versus just continuing on uh indefinitely where you're like, you know, everything sucks. You don't it bleeds over into other parts of your life because like, you know, work's a big part of our lives and it's just like, you know, you just start resenting everything. And so they're mentioning things like um you know planning meetings taking too long um like red tape just I don't know I guess it depends on like for you listening or watching um where you've worked your different experiences and stuff like that. I think some people that have been around for a little while have probably experienced stuff like this.

I imagine even there's some people that you know new in their career either at big companies or little ones that have even experienced stuff like this and um it's it's tricky right so the I I think from my experience I noticed this more with um with a big like I work at Microsoft right now I notice it like at Microsoft there are absolutely things that uh the given what feel I'm going to use like you know red tape with air quotes given red tape or process like burns me out like crazy where uh I feel like there's something I have to do that I'm not overly enthusiastic about I understand sort of what has to get done and the amount of process and delay and steps like involved with doing something that I'm already not like super enthusiastic about the my feeling of burnout uh grows rapidly uh especially when you compound it across a bunch of things.

So totally get it. Um was I immune to this at a startup and small company? No. Um, I think there was I think a lot of the time there was so much going on at a startup and everything was moving so fast and it was so chaotic that uh like you kind of like I don't know how to say it. It's almost like if you tried to put process in place, it was like or too much process, let's say. You would you'd basically be fighting against it immediately with um like the rationale kind of like do you want this done or not? Like we we know what has to get done. So like up to you. You want the process or do you want it done? And so a lot of the time we'd kind of be, I don't know, like fighting our way through process and it would kind of collapse and we'd adjust.

But um it's not to say it didn't happen, right? Um I've talked about this in other videos where things like introducing sprint planning or introducing uh like Jira boards and stuff like that. There there were always times where uh throughout the years we would be doing things kind of in a chaotic way and we'd say how do we how do we or can we uh make an adjustment here with a little bit more organization a little bit more process uh and we try right point is that uh you know it's not like it's a big tech only thing there are absolutely situations like this but the to kind of rewind right like to bring it back to what this person is talking about. I often feel like this is a tricky thing because it build like it builds up over time. And when people talk about being burnt out, right?

It's not um it's not like, oh, it was a long day at work, it's not uh I mean, maybe you could say like, oh, it was a long week at work kind of thing, but I I I generally think the time scales for these things are much longer. to truly get burnt out. You can have a long shitty week at work and feel exhausted from it and then not say like, you know, your your weekend is kind of crap because you're just trying to recover from from feeling stressed and that kind of thing. But when I'm thinking about burnout, this is the kind of thing that is like systemic that is over weeks, months, unfortunately for some people years. Um, and because of that, because of the time scale we're talking about, it's kind of scary that it can creep up, right? Uh, just to give you a completely different example of what I mean about this being kind of scary is like take let's back at a tech al together for a second, right?

Uh for for some people you may or may not know like one of my hobbies historically has been like going to the gym and bodybuilding and now I do CrossFit instead of bodybuilding. But uh you know nutrition and that kind of stuff has always been a big factor for me uh after I was a kid, right? Like once I was like out of high school and stuff was thinking about this a lot. It was kind of in high school that it started to form for me more. Um, but I think like I think about weight as an example of one of these things on a long time scale. And for me, if I if I stop actively paying attention to what I'm eating, just as an example, for me personally, um, what will happen is that I have a a tendency to snack a lot more.

I have a tendency to eat when I'm bored. And as a result over time, it's not something that you notice for me at least on like a a dayto day or even week by week basis, not even monthtomonth, I will pack on weight like crazy and not in a good way. It's not slabs of muscle. It's uh no, I get fat uh pretty easily when I just stop paying attention. It's just that I don't notice. And that's kind of the scary thing on long time horizons. Um I think for some people you might have like it could be the inverse, right? Where based on uh how you eat and stuff like that, it might be that you get uh you know thin like almost like unwell from from just not eating enough. Uh but these types of things happen on a potentially like on a long time horizon.

And the the challenge with that is that you don't have a good feedback loop, right? You you notice a year in, two years in, many years in where you're like, whoa. And sometimes it takes other people that haven't seen you for a long time or, you know, in this case talking about burnout, people that haven't interacted with you for a while to to have these interactions and be like, "Hey, like is everything everything good? Like something's different, right? I haven't seen you in x amount of time. Something feels kind of off. And for us to do this with ourselves is tricky. And this is one of the reasons why when I talk about burnout and that kind of thing, I think it's really important that you you try to find things that give you signal for it. Okay? And you take periodically, whatever that looks like for you, you take the opportunity to do a little bit of reflection and go like, is everything good?

Right? Is this is this just a rough week? Is this a difficult project? Is this like does this have an end in sight? Because if you tell yourself yes, and then the next project, the next week, the next month is the same thing, and you tell yourself that again, is it a pattern? Is this something that you have to pro now get more proactive about? Right? So having these little feedback loops I think is a good thing for you to figure out for yourself. I can't prescribe how that looks for you and say that on a YouTube channel as like a general just follow these three the three simple steps that doctors don't want you to know about. Right? That's what I'll title this video. Doesn't work that way. I think you have to kind of find what works for you. But um the meta point being, you know, have these opportunities to check in with yourself.

Is this bus trying to get in here? What What's your thought, buddy? Okay. Interesting. Doesn't seem like a good thought, but it's a thought. So, for this person preparing for their 101, right? I wanted to give you some context, talk about burnout a little bit. And they're at this point where they're like, "Okay, like we be talking about this now, I guess." And so, they're going to go into this oneonone with their manager and they're saying, "How do I where do I start with this?" If you've watched other videos of mine, you'll know that I always bring this kind of stuff back to like your working relationship with your manager. What does that look like? It will be different for every single one of you watching or listening. Um, I often talk about my perspective as a manager working with people trying to acknowledge like how I operate as a manager is maybe not the same as yours, right?

It's always different. Things are very situational. Um, I guess with that said, I would encourage people to find ways whether it's, you know, in this conversation that we're we're going into about how do you bring up burnout? um or or through other conversations in one-on ones or otherwise to to build a working relationship with your manager where they trust you, they have respect for you and the other way, right? you trust them, you respect them. And I think getting towards that in a working relationship with your manager is very important because when you have to have difficult conversations, you have a like a what feels like a safe place to talk about it. Okay? So, I'm not the I'm not going to sit here and tell people that how I do this with my employees is perfect. I'm sure there are some employees that that has uh more naturally come up where the trust and respect kind of just forms more naturally through projects and stuff we're working on.

It may be others where that's taking longer for them to have trust and respect for me and therefore they feel a little bit more uneasy to bring up stuff. But it's always my goal to work towards that. And so I for me it's always a nice reminder like a a good litmus test when I have employees that either in 101 ones or between 101 ons you know if they have something that's really important to them that they want to talk about that I know might be a difficult conversation that they they can reach out to me and and feel feel like you know air quotes like safe to talk about it because they know that ultimately I'm just trying to to help them, right?

And the same thing where I've had employees that used to report to me and they're on different teams or I'm on a different team, whatever, and where they reach out to me and we have a conversation and they they'll say things like, "Hey, can we talk about this?" Like, you know, and I don't they always have a good way to frame it and I I'm I can never get the right words, but along the lines of like, "Hey, if you take your manager hat off for a second, could you talk to me about this?" And so those types of things are a little bit of signal back to me that at least in those working relationships that uh I I was achieving what I tried to achieve as a manager. So with burnout, my recommendation would be to um to try to go into the conversation not in a way that is a list of things that you want to just say like this is bad, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad.

And I understand that's how it feels and I understand you probably do have a list. And what I would say is the list is okay. It's not that having a list of things that you're upset with is bad. Okay. Um that's not the problem. I think it's the framing of it because ultimately uh a couple things need to happen. One is like you need to have like uh give your manager the awareness of these things. Some of them they might be aware of, right? Some of them might be like systemic things that and some of them might be systemic and outside of their control. Give you an example. uh some of the build and infrastructure things that that some of my teams have to use um they're a source of pain and friction sometimes, right? And like that is a a known thing. It's systemic and I can keep, you know, like they're doing raising feedback and awareness of it, but it's not directly in my control.

But I do think that it's really important that people highlight that to me, right? this is a s this is something that bothers me on a regular basis or you know I' I've started to realize that it does because when I have enough signal about that on the team I realize how much I need to escalate um even if it's not across the team if it's an individual and I'm like okay this this individual has challenges with this how can I work more specifically with them so awareness is a key part so having a list of things to go through is at least going to facilitate awareness of like this is something that causes me some friction, discomfort, disengagement. Okay, so list is okay. Going through a list and just being like this thing sucks, this thing sucks. I hate this. I hate that. Um, put yourself in the other person's shoes.

So, in your in your manager's shoes, right? Uh, and it it's a genuine question. And I want you I want you to think through it. Uh and try to do this in a headsp space where you're not just like angry or uh I don't know like already agitated by by thinking through it. But if you put yourself in your manager shoes and you raise this, what is the like what's the expectation? Like I said, it's a genuine question. Do you do you want your manager to just be aware? Are you expecting your manager to solve it? Are you telling your manager because you're expecting someone else to solve it? Like what truly like what what is the what's the goal? And it's not a trick question. It's not me trying to be facitious. Like I I genuinely want you to go through your list and think about if this is a painoint like what are what are you hoping to accomplish?

And the the answer might just be like I don't know. Right? That's okay. I'm not telling you that you you need to have all the solutions. I'm just saying that I want you to think about when you have this list of things to bring up to talk about burnout. What is the goal? For some of you, that might just be, hey manager, I'm really starting to feel disengaged through this stuff. I'm starting to realize that there, you know, I have a list of things that I think are contributing towards that and I just wanted to start raising awareness with you because I'm I'm realizing that it's starting to uh cause me to be disengaged or it's starting to cause me to have uh resentment or interactions in a certain way. It's okay to raise it as awareness, but I would communicate that to your manager.

And this goes back to expectations because if you drop a list and say, "All these things bother me," but you're not communicating what your expectations are about that to your manager. I like I I think that leaving that conversation after without a lining on that stuff is probably not really going to help at least. Uh I mean it could almost accidentally but I I I think that you'll likely continue to be disappointed. And the reason I say that is because like well you know for each thing in your list are you expecting that your manager goes and fixes it? If that is your expectation, like communicate that because they might be sitting there going like, "Oh, I could see why that would be a pain in the butt." Like, "Yep, makes sense." And maybe they're thinking, "Glad this person's identified that." And they're going to find a way around it or address it.

And then a month later, 2 months later, 6 months later, you're still totally burnt out from one of these things contributing. your manager is like thinking that you've gone ahead and dealt with it. There's no alignment, right? So, I think it's important to to express that if it's just here's me communicating. I'm still learning about this stuff for myself and wanted to give you a heads up. By the way, if you have any thoughts on this to start with, let's chat about that. If not, this is me sort of raising a flag to say I'm thinking about this stuff and I'll be paying more attention to it over the coming weeks and I'll keep bringing up things in more detail as I understand them better. Totally fine, right? Or hey, like hey manager, the way I just wanted to share with you like on for status updates, right?

I think one of one of the examples this person gave in the Reddit post was like whether it's standups or planning meetings like taking too long like maybe you want to focus on that for one of the conversations, right? So you could introduce this topic of burnout and instead of the saying you can't boil the ocean, right? So instead of trying to address everything all at once, it's raise awareness. say there's a you know this handful of things but one of the things I wanted to start with is I want to talk about planning meetings and uh or standups or whatever it is and and say like I'm finding that uh they're really disengaging for me. I understand the purpose but I don't think we're achieving that. Um, and if you can like do you have like potential solutions to propose, right? Like can you offer suggestions?

My god, this vehicle is going so slow. I should have went I could still go. um you know can you bring some solutions so that um you're framing it to like I want to partner with you like to your manager can we can we work together on this is this something that you want me to take like are you giving me permission to have some responsibility to improve this this could look a bunch of different ways but again like what what is your expectation so I think when it comes comes to talking about burnout. There's so many different ways that you can approach this. But high high level, I think a list of things is important to have so that you're doing this inventory for yourself. I think raising awareness is important.

Please, you know, get to a point where you're comfortable with your manager talking about this kind of stuff because if you just sit on this and and dwell, um I don't know, like I feel like it doesn't just magically get better and no one wants to be working like that. No one wants you to be working like that, right? So, bring it up, raise awareness. Um, ideally, you find some of the things that you can start um focusing on, but you're sharing your expectations for for how that's going to improve, right? I Hey, manager, I need help with this. Is this something that, you know, I can bring to you, and I I want to say I expect this is something in your control that you can influence. Is this something that are you uh going to give me sort of permission to try and uh come up with solutions and drive?

Uh is this something that uh you can connect me with other people and we can work on it together? Like share like share these thoughts and um I think ultimately you know chipping away at those things is is the the path forward. Um, I would also say that if you do this kind of thing and there's no movement, there's no support, might be time. Um, I have been there at different times in my career and uh I always I've said this in other videos, my my gut is always to lean into uh if I want to be here, I want to drive change. And if I'm trying to drive positive change and I'm not being supported, then that's okay. not the environment for me and that's just how it is for me might look different for you. So, if you got questions, leave them below in the comments.

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