This is What Burnout Actually Looks Like

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Hey folks, I'm just headed to the office here on Monday. Driving in at lunch and then I'll just do the second half of the day in the office. Um got to talk about just like work life balance, burnout, that kind of stuff. Um it always feels so relevant after a couple of weeks of being on call. But uh I always think it's good to come back to this kind of stuff. I think it's good to talk through because I think a lot of people I think everyone basically experiences this in software engineering. If you don't then I mean awesome job. You're doing great. Uh but I think a lot of people do and I think a lot of people have it almost like I don't know how to say this like it's almost like it's silent. You have the right of way sir. You can't just stop traffic to let me go.

This is outrageous. Um, sorry. Waving me on. Okay, this is going to be the most outrageous. I can't explain how frustrated I am with this situation. I can't even explain it just yet. There's a crosswalk and we came to a deadlock at this intersection. Everyone was trying to be too polite and let other people go, but even the people that had the right of way. Two orders of it that weren't going through. Anyway, we're through. We solved it. Um, what I was trying to say was I think a lot of people, silent is the wrong word, but they kind of experience burnout, terrible work life balance, and like they're not sure what to do, and it kind of perpetuates. They get stuck until I don't know, like they snap or or they or they don't, right? They kind of just uh I don't know, go go go like numb to it and it's like probably not the best way to live the rest of your life.

So, I wanted to talk about this because I think it's relevant. I noticed that when I go through these periods of on call, um, it definitely adds up. I think when I've talked about this before, there's going to be some repeat themes that come up today. So, sorry if this you're like, Nick, you've already talked about this. Um, yes. So, uh, one of the other reasons I'm bringing it up, too, is because I think I actually mentioned this in a recent video, but in in the comments, cuz you guys are awesome. Someone wrote like, "Hey, I read your newsletter. You talk about work life balance and stuff, and then you also say in your newsletter like some of these things where you're clearly not demonstrating it, so like what the hell, man." Um, and I think that's totally fair, right?

So, I think when I last talked about this, I was saying like kind of I'm not saying that I operate the most effective way, but I'm trying to operate in ways that that I I can figure out and manage. And it's not perfect. And there are also not ways that I would prescribe to other people. So, it's not to say that I I think I'm better or an exception, therefore I I get to do it and you shouldn't. It's more just like I probably haven't figured out the best way for myself and this is me just you know my my life story of trying to to figure things out right it's not going to be perfect. So while on call um as a I'm going to layer in the fact that as an engineering manager I I have different sets of responsibilities obviously in my

day-to-day work but while on call sort of if you're on call you're doing the same types of on call things because we run a live service it's a very large platform and so your day is spent managing that. So one of the things that we need to make sure that we're doing uh as engineering managers and then this would you know be the case for uh leadership above me and also I would say the same for uh you know for anyone in some capacity to demonstrate some leadership around this but obviously core responsibility of mine is to to make sure that people understand the balance with their on call rotation and that means like there are hours for it and if you were to work all of those hours plus your normal working hours, you would be already at, you know, 60 hours before you hit the weekend and your on call shift is not done.

And then there's two weeks of that. So the sort of the guidance that we tell people is like that's not the expectation to go work, you know, the full normal hours after your on call shift. the guidance is like there's only a couple of hours left in your in your workday so like wrap up you know whatever else you were doing um but certainly we're not expecting that while you're on call you're making the same amount of progress it's just it's completely uh infeasible and and we need to acknowledge that as managers right so whether or not we do enough of that whether that's frequently enough in ways that uh uh people see clearly uh in ways that like here's the tricky part in like ways that we demonstrate that which I'm not very good at. Um that's going to change how that message comes through.

So I'm kind of bringing these pieces up because the individual who is calling me out for it is is very right. Right. It's uh it's one thing for me to talk about these things and say here's what you should be doing and you guys aren't even my direct reports. So this is like some guy on the internet me saying like here's how you should do things or here's like what you should uh you know focus on or how to avoid burnout and how to avoid bad work life balance. Yet here I am saying all the reasons why I have bad work life balance and why I reach points of burnout. So, it's it's important to talk about it. Uh, but like I said, I don't have it figured out. And for for me as a manager, my normal day-to-day responsibilities are not writing code.

Um there is some overlap like you know I'll be doing design doc reviews sometimes uh you know authoring parts of design documents um code reviews what have you right there's some operational things that I have to do as part of my role uh that that other engineers do as well. So, the tricky part though is that I need to make sure that for my employees, they understand, hey, look, when you're on call, Nick is not going to chase you down to say like, you know, why didn't your your work progress during the week? I know. Um, but for me as a manager, a lot of the work I do is not um it's not like specific deliverables that I'm that I'm the one delivering. There are specific deliverables that I am helping coordinate and you know people on my team or across teams are delivering but not necessarily me.

So a lot of what I end up doing is meeting with people. It is conversations. It is sort of these things that like almost by definition take time. So, for example, if I if I have 10 employees and I have to do one-on- ons with uh 10 employees every week and each oneonone is 30 minutes, right? That's already five hours. And I'm to be clear, I'm not this is me not complaining about it. I'm just saying like time allocation. Uh if we factor in that some of these 101 ones are not 30 minutes and some of them are uh sometimes an hour because things go over um you know this this is basically a full day right so this is a full day of what I do but like I spread it out uh through parts of the week. So, if I'm on call and I like have to move that around, like what I really don't want to do is defer that.

I mean, if I have to defer it, I have to defer it. I don't want to cancel it, I should say, because I don't think that's fair. Um, I have obviously employees that are, you know, super able to miss a one-on-one for the weekend, you know, wouldn't bat an eye. And I have other people where I think that is a lot more of a an important meeting for them. So truly like I need to make sure that I can't just like drop that. Now people get it, right? Like people get it. If I'm on call and there's stuff going on, they'll know the stuff's going on. And if I say, "Hey, sorry I have to move or cancel because whatever," they get it. they're on call, too. Um, you know, at different times, so they'll they'll understand what that's like. But I I don't I don't like doing that because I don't think that that's uh fair for for trying to lead a team.

I mean, it's reality. I just don't think it's fair to my team personally. So, this is like a a disconnect, right? I'm trying to illustrate that this is a disconnect for me because that is my role. I understand that there's not enough time in the day necessarily to do the full on call shift plus that, but that's something where I really feel like I need to. And I think that I think there are people who are engineers on the team, whether it's my team or other teams, right, who are in this situation where like like I get it. I'm being told I don't have to, you know, work these other hours outside of my on call shift, but like the the work's not getting done if I don't do it. So, so what, right? Like what's going to happen? So, I can understand that pressure because like I'm saying, I'm doing a very bad job of uh of being a role model for it.

But um you know do I do I then consider hey like maybe maybe it is because my role maybe my role is uh different in this sense maybe 101's are a bad example and there's other things right um one of the things that was brought up for you know in response to what I was talking about someone wrote this comment was uh I think I was on vacation right my air uh air quotes here like vacation uh I was just, you know, my wife was back in Canada for the week. Uh, so I was working from home. Well, was on vacation, so I was just at home taking a week off to to relax. But I had to work. Not and not in the same capacity, but I did have to work. And I had to work because some timelines for some things at work got moved totally out of my control.

And these are hard deadlines that cannot be moved, right? and they do have to do with managing and leading my team. They have to do specifically with rewards and promotions and things like that. So that's not a oh whatever like I just won't. It's like no it like it literally has to get done. So um to me that's that's very different um than some of the other say code deliverables that don't have a you know concrete hard timeline. So that is an example where I'm like I'm going to, you know, park my vacation for a little bit for a couple of hours each day, maybe not every day, and to to take care of that. And I think there's I don't know like I think there's enough examples where in my role where I'm like there are certain things that I feel I just need to do.

And um yes, I I would argue some of those things could be delegated. Maybe there's some operational things that um I could have uh you know tasked someone with and said, "Hey, I'm going to be on call." So like uh putting this on you now, right? I think I think there are some things like that. And I think also in ways that aren't necessarily like me dumping work on people where they're like, "Dude, what the hell? Like, I'm already underwater and and you're giving me this now." Um, I think there are some things like that, but at the same time, I also think there's a bunch of that. It would absolutely feel like me just dumping people or dumping things on people. And again, like not only do I think that's unfair to them, but I know what's going to happen with that. Like I know the side effect of overloading people with things like that.

And I know that that's going to sort of perpetuate problems that I am already trying to like navigate with people, right? A core part of my role is trying to make sure that my team is able to find good balance with things and then talking through challenges and stuff like that. So, it's kind of like I know that if I'm someone who's specifically contributing to it, that's also like more work for both of us to try and and work through and be like, "Hey, like why why do you feel burnt out?" And they're like, "Dude, because you just gave me a ton more work to do." Um, so there there's got to be a balance. I get it. Um, but this is sort of my my mental model. Uh, and it's it's challenging for me to find that balance. So there's often times where I'll do my on call shift and then and then, you know, have to hang around and just do more work.

And this this past week was interesting because uh I got pretty lucky. There was no like nothing I would really consider a fire or consider such a fire where I'm like all the pressurees on Nick like Nick you got to go save the world. Uh love having on calls where I don't have to try and feel like I'm saving the world. Uh but just it's just it's a lot of pressure when there's something going wrong and it's like everyone's like well you got the button to press to go fix it. Like press it. Um, so there wasn't anything like that, which is good, but there was a lot of lowgrade things and a lot of low-grade things that required attention and investigation and energy, right? You'll hear me say energy a lot, by the way, and I I use the word energy because it's like this, I don't know, this mix of like time, effort, um, I don't know, level of complexity, right?

There's a whole bunch of different things I'm going to factor in when I say energy. Truly just to mean like I don't know a bunch goes into it. I don't know how to actually quantify it, but there's some type of energy that needs to go into it. So, there's a lot of things like this that were low grade and um I was actually noticing that I would do my shift, which is the first half of the day, and then because there was enough lowgrade stuff, I'm like, I actually didn't I feel like I didn't make progress on all of the things that needed to get progress made. And I haven't even closed out the things that I was working on. So, basically, the next shift is starting with a debt. They're starting with all of my debt. And I know what that feels like because it also happens to me.

Okay, there's metal on the road, I guess, bouncing under my car. I don't know what I ran over. I didn't see anything on the road, so that's cool. I don't know if you'll hear it on the recording, but I drove I guess I drove over something metal. There's literally nothing that's on the road. Maybe it was someone beside me ran over something and it bounced up. But there was a cruiser back there. So maybe there was an accident earlier and there's debris on the road. But anyway, um my goodness, tangent. What was I even talking about? What's the topic today? Um this debt going into the on call schedule. So yeah, I know what it's like to kind of inherit the debt of someone's shift. Uh, and that's not to say like they didn't try or something. There sometimes there's just stuff that carries over. So, starting a shift when there's already work, you're like, uh, um, especially when it's at 6:00 in the morning.

So, I I had a lot of that piling up. And I was saying to the next rotation, I'm like, "Hey, like just so you know, like I am physically around and like yes, things only got to this point, but like, you know, I I sort of don't want to give up on it because it's really not fair to you." Like, I don't feel that it's fair. And I this is sort this is another one of those things like sure we can have a written contract for the team and how the handoffs work and what's expected and I get it but it does not feel fair to me that I go through a whole shift and then at the end of it I'm just handing off all of the work that I was doing and seemingly didn't like on the surface it's like well what did you get done right like these all opened in your and none of them closed.

Are you kidding me? Like I don't I don't I don't like that. So that's a that's a me problem. So I think there's a bunch of these things where like my I guess my values um don't necessarily line up with the guidance that we're trying to to share with people because the reality is I I don't have the same expectation of others. My expectation of others is like you try your best to get done what you can in the shift. Make sure it's documented. Make sure if it's uh you know urgent that you're doing a warm handoff so people understand. And otherwise just like hey like it's either such a low priority then it probably shouldn't have been an incident and you're like hey I'll follow up with this tomorrow when I pick up my shift again or it's like hey this needs to get solved and here's how far I got.

Please continue. So that is the expectation, right? But I I don't I kind of have a a more strict expectation for myself, which again, how I demonstrate that is probably not fair for others because they see me modeling or trying to model one thing going, "Well, I guess that's what's expected of us, right?" Right. So, I I understand the implication of it and I'm still hopeful that I can find ways to make that not the case. But, um it's a tricky balance. So, one of the other things I wanted to talk about regarding all of this is like not only do I have, you know, this challenge with how do I how do I lead by example when when I'm probably not doing a good job of these things lining up for me. Um, I wanted to talk about this uh sort of this is more maybe more on like the burnout side of things where There's it's it's like there's only so much capacity that a person has, right?

And um I mean you could look at this in different angles. I'm not talking about like you know person can only take so much before they snap kind of thing. Uh, I'm sure you could look at this from a I don't know, like a whole bunch of different emotional angles, but I'm just going to talk about it from the perspective of like I don't know. Um, I don't even know a good way to like I was going to say to quantify I don't even know if I can qualify it properly. um like responsibilities and like tasks to to kind of track and and be and do. So, and this is why it gets tricky with like both work and life. And so, in my role normally, and this is the same if you're not an engineering manager and you're a software engineer or in some other role, um there's going to be tasks you have to do for work.

Makes sense, right? these are things that you're working on, you have to deliver on, okay? Not rocket surgery. Um, but then also like outside of work, you also have things. It's not that you finish work and then as soon as you clock out of work, it's like everything is just uh celebrations and awesome and no responsibilities unless you have something figured out that you really should be sharing in the comments so we can all learn about it. But there's there's these other responsibilities whether it's to your significant other uh whether it's to your children whether it's to your uh your parents right or relatives maybe you need have relatives and family or friends that need to be taken care of but whether it's to energy maintaining friendships whether it's to you name it right um your your house doesn't clean itself right like so who's cleaning the house who's doing the chores who's doing the grocery shopping.

There's all these things that just have to get done. This is just life. And so, you have tasks in work, you have tasks outside of work. And uh to me what's kind of tricky with some of this stuff is like I don't know like are we as humans or even I mean maybe just as as individuals are we each individually able to compartmentalize those things so well that like you know you could have a million tasks at work and then you're like okay work's done like like good thing I only have to, I don't know, take out the trash between, you know, today and tomorrow. And like that's really the only responsibility I have outside of work. I think there's probably a lot more things for more people on a regular basis. And I don't know if we all compartmentalize them perfectly. I certainly don't. And so this really becomes obvious for me when I'm doing something like an on call shift.

It's the same if I have like, you know, particularly stressful projects or things like that. But especially with an on call shift where I I I think I'm like starting to notice it a little bit more while it's happening. But when I'm getting overwhelmed and feel like I'm underwater and then working long hours, um, I definitely become short, right? Like I I'm definitely like someone will reach out for help on something and and for me it's like what is the it to me it feels like what's the quickest way that I can make this like not something I have to focus on and to me that's like a very terrible that's a terrible support system, right? Someone's reaching out for help and you're just like how do I make this not my issue without like totally being an to this person? And sometimes that whole without being an to this person is like you're riding that line like pretty hard.

And so it's a it's a really weird thing because that's not like I don't like to think about myself that way. Like what's the you know when you're trying to help someone, what's the bare minimum you could possibly do to to make it so that they're not your problem to deal with anymore? like that is not that's not how I think about myself. And often when I'm overwhelmed in situations, that's what starts to happen. And I caught myself. Uh there's a particular instance this past week where, you know, someone was asking for help on something and kind of did what I needed to do to prove like, hey, not, you know, you're coming to us to look at this, but like it's not us. And you know, here's the next next team to go chat with about it cuz like can't help you here. And uh and they uh they don't know what's up, right?

Like it's not not their fault. They don't have the um the background in the area. I wouldn't expect that they know all the details. Great if they do, but I don't expect they do. And you know the next person was kind of like hey like I checked like not us go ask this other team to the to the to the extent where the people who are asking for support are like we don't like we don't even know who that team is or how to reach out to them or or what we're supposed to be asking them like it was just such a good example that between me um and one other person it was like are we are we actually helping here at all or are just saying like not us. And um I had I remember I had sent this response middle of the day and it was only in the evening when I was finally kind of getting through most of what was on my plate.

Obviously I'm not done my on call stuff for the week, but kind of getting this chance to breathe. And uh I just remember going back to this chat and being like, "Hey, like, okay, I I can see that you guys are trying to ask for help and like here's what's happening. You're being kind of strung around. No one's really helping. Um let me take a step back, try to explain some of these things because they were saying they don't know, right? Like let me let me try helping paint this picture so you can see why this is happening." And then like hopefully if I paint a good enough picture here, you can understand that like in some cases we might not even know where to go. So like all basically all we can do is tell you up to some degree what's going on for what we can see.

And beyond that, like we're telling you that everything that we know is operational the way we expect. And like now that we've concluded this for you with confidence, it it's probably on you to go ask, you know, uh, some other group for more clarity on on where to go next. Because truly, like, we've exhausted our options. But I wanted to do it in a way that would help educate and not just be like, "Look, we told you it's not us. Go away." Cuz that's not helpful. And um I'm just sharing this because it like it took me like the full day to kind of come back to it just to be like how do I help this person because I can clearly see that I'm being an Like when I read back what I'm saying I'm like that doesn't just doesn't feel like me.

And then I wanted to share one more thing to take this a step further because this is the for me this is the scarier thing because it's beyond work and um this is still related to on call but the example is like I think it was on Thursday um my wife uh has Fridays off but uh she works Monday to Friday just longer days and there was a a point on Thursday it's got to be that it was on Thursday I can't remember it might have been that it's blurring together Maybe it was Friday and um she was between appointments or something else, not working, but just between stuff. Anyway, I was eating lunch and and my wife was home and I hadn't seen her cuz I've been doing on call stuff and she's been out and about or at work prior.

And so, you know, when you're with your significant other and you're you're you're not spending a lot of time together in a week like this, like this is something where I feel like I should be very much like, "Oh my god, like tell me about your week. Like, let's catch up." And like literally putting energy into the connection that's between us. And uh you know I I don't think I was noticing it at the time when I was sitting there, but I'm just like eating my my lunch and like she's kind of around and it's like I'm barely barely acknowledging her. And then I I remember when I was sending this update to this this partner later in the day and I was just walking you guys through um I just remember thinking like holy like I was like this to this partner but like to my significant other my goodness like that's not even it's not like I was being mean or rude or anything like that.

It's just that I wasn't It's like I wasn't present and like that's not a sustainable thing, right? So, um sure, you know, give myself a little bit of uh grace and that yeah, maybe on some given day like it's okay for that to happen. Not everyone can be 100% all the time. Sure. But I I don't know. I don't I don't think that's uh I don't think that's a one day kind of thing. I think I get to these states of being overwhelmed and then this behavior kind of happens. And the reason I said it's scary is because like you don't see it happening while it's happening. That's scary to me because I don't want to have extended periods of time or make it a this is just the way that I am. Like that's not how I want to be. So, I need to be more aware.

And all of this is kind of coming back to work life balance and burnout because I think at least I don't think I'm alone in this. I think the way I operate is that um I'm constantly trying to to do more things trying to figure how do I balance them? And sometimes when I feel like, hey, I'm balancing more things like this like, you know, new new baseline achieved of like I can, you know, manage whatever is going on. Maybe the only reason that's working is because energy that should have been going into other spots that are important is not. And want to just say that for you to think about because I think for for anyone who is listening like I think that could look very different right in and one case one example I'm giving you right now at least was like at

least in this one instance like yeah it was not being present with my wife there was not in my opinion certainly not enough energy going into uh you know our relationship our connection during that period of time but you know if I if I'm honest with myself, is that just an on call thing or is that just what happens when I'm stressed and overwhelmed and how often am I stressed and overwhelmed and like what's the cause of that, right? Like a lot of that is my doing. Uh so yeah like you know this is more to talk about it for awareness to get people thinking not to uh not to say I have it fixed and certainly not to rant about it. I think like thinking through this stuff is important. I don't think we do enough reflection. Personally, I don't um code commute for me is one such way that I kind of forced to reflect, right?

When I talk about stuff that's not a submitted question or a something I'm answering from Reddit, um I'm forced to reflect on these things. So, I think it's helpful to to do and we got to take it one step at a time to try making improvements. But yeah, so as I get to the office here to recap, I think you know leading by example, trying to model the behavior you want you want, sorry, is not um it's not always straightforward. Um, I think that means that if you're if you're modeling a behavior that's not exactly what you want other people to do, you have to like I don't know be so overly explicit and overcommunicate and like there's so much more that has to go into it to to make it clear and I certainly don't think I do enough of that unfortunately. Uh, so lots of uh room to improve.

there any good spots? We'll take this one. Um, so that's something to think about, I think. I don't know, like noticing your behaviors when you're feeling overwhelmed, like maybe while it's happening. It's hard to notice, but I think it's good to go reflect on things. But yeah, work life balance is very challenging. So, hope that was helpful to to think through. I guess my camera was a little lopsided that whole time. Sorry. Um, but yeah, if you got questions, leave them below in the comments. If you have, uh, you know, thoughts and different experiences you want to share, I think that's awesome, too. Otherwise, you can go to codeccomute.com. You can submit stuff anonymously that way, and I will make a video response for you and anyone else who is going to watch it on on the all YouTube. So, thanks. See you in the next one.