BURN OUT: Why Are Software Engineers ALWAYS Suffering From It?

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it is Monday December 99th 2024 um just leaving CrossFit here we got a good topic for today that was submitted sorry my windows got all foggy from Crossfit um we're going to be talking about burnout in software engineering so um let me back out of this spot at least this car has a backup camera it's nice I'm still having flashbacks from that um courtesy shuttle and sorry if there's a little bit of noise I got to clear off my windows here cuz the entire car fogged up while I was waiting there okay um yeah this was submitted from a viewer so wanted to say thanks for that uh reminder that if you want me to talk through topics just leave a comment um lots of people have been doing that which is great it makes it super easy uh otherwise if you want feel free

to DM me if you want to keep your uh your request Anonymous uh happy to kind of read through what you got to say leave more detail if you want me to provide uh more meaningful answers when things are really generic I unfortunately have to give very generic answers um because I don't know what you want me to focus on so just a reminder so huge thanks for the the requested top IC here I am a little bit out of breath so I apologize if it sounds like I'm uh struggling to stay alive but uh the question was like more specifically worded around like why burnout seems to be more prevalent in software engineers and um I didn't want to focus the time on like kind of putting software Engineers or software engineering is a field sort of like at the Pinnacle of burnout or

something like that I don't I don't know if it's a huge um I don't know like benefit to try and and spend time comparing because I actually don't have stats to to show even if that's a fact right like is software engineering statistically higher rate of burnout from other fields I I actually don't know um and I'd be very biased because I am am and have been in a software engineering field like my entire professional career so um by like by definition my my view is going to be skewed right so um I don't I don't want to spend the time doing that because I actually just don't know there could be other fields that are significantly more uh or it looks different right so I figured I would just talk about uh burnout and software engineering um and some things to think about there

so um if you are sort of new to the field of software development software engineering I would say uh two things that I would urge everyone especially Juniors to keep in mind as they're entering their career and just keep keeping this in the back of your mind throughout your entire career is that there is burnout and there is impostor syndrome and these are two things that I feel like are constantly um sort of out to get you if I can phrase it that way and sometimes they'll be very sneaky like uh you won't notice they're happening so even like burnout especially right can really sneak up on you where it feels like seemingly out of nowhere you're like okay like I've I've hit my limit and now I have to get out of this you know this state but the reality is like you were

putting yourself there for a long time right so um if I had to think about reasons why burnout is pretty big in software engineering um we'll start with uh one that I think is unfortunately probably common for many people uh I've been pretty for my career to not have this consistently I guess is how I would say it but basically like like bad management trying to uh you know say more more more out of software developers so tight release schedule uh constantly trying to just get more work out of software developers and um depending on how that looks in your work environment that could just be like hey you got to stay late or hey we do Agile and we have Sprints but like like um we're just going to keep adding more things into the Sprint commitments so this can obviously like with those

couple of examples this can take shape in a lot of different ways but the point is that like people are over their work capacity and um for this particular example it's it's really like uh caused by management or when I say management I don't just mean like you're a direct manager it could be um the way that your engineering and product organization is like product gets to dictate uh what's going in and and you don't really have a choice and you're not being supported by your manager like this kind of thing where it's just more more and more um a a note on this though is like if you've heard my other talks I I've always had this mindset well I shouldn't say always I I've been I've tried to embody this mindset throughout most of my manag career um where basically like I try

to put people first as much as possible and one of the side effects of doing this is that when when there are periods where like we do have like a really urgent release or if we have a live service and there's like an ongoing issue like a live site issue that um that people know that because I've spent the time building up the trust and the respect and not constantly demanding things of them that when I do have a situation like that that people know that um like they have more trust in me right Nick doesn't always do this that must mean it's serious um you know Nick's always been I'm by the way I'm just I'm putting words into people's mouth I don't actually know if I can truthfully say this but uh this is what I'm trying to achieve right uh you know

Nick has been flexible with uh you know with our work hours whatever else so now that he's saying hey look we have a critical issue or we really have to push on uh this release or something like okay like you know I've been I've been trying to keep the uh the gas tank full in terms of Engagement and stuff so when I really need people to lean in and help uh they are more willing to now I don't know if I do a perfect job of this but that is sort of the goal that I try to do and uh I've heard even just from people commenting whether it's uh this channel my primary Channel Dev leader whether it's on like LinkedIn or Twitter posts um I can I can confidently say unfortunately that um there's seemingly many people with managers that are not trying

to do that and that means that you're I'm I'm calling it like a gas tank of like motivation or engagement right like is constantly running on empty and they're constantly trying to like put the put the metaphorical accelerator down to get more out of you so then you inevitably experience Burno so I think this is one way and I don't know I I don't even know if I can confidently say like out of types of burnout or reasons that like it's that's the biggest sort of culprit I think maybe um but this is sort of the the culprit that's like like I said it's a it's imposed on you by your environment or your or your direct management um so that's one and uh another one is kind of interesting but it's almost like like self-inflicted and I don't I haven't fully like in a

lot of the things I'm talking about I haven't fully thought through exactly how I want to say this one but um I I'll just kind of like say the thoughts that are coming to mind by the way most of the time when I'm talking in the car like the thoughts are not fully formed unless I have to yell at people for cutting me off and then cutting off someone else like this idiot um which you can't see but if you hear pop po pop I'm downshifting to try and make sure that I'm not hitting people uh that are driving stupid so it's kind of like a self-inflicted one because uh it's like people I feel like there's a certain personality types that like especially in software development it's like people that are they're intelligent they're trying hard um they're constantly trying to like push themselves

I don't know if that makes sense but like I think there's a personality I don't know if you call that like I got to mess this up someone's going to call me out on it is that like called type A personality I don't know and I don't even know if that's a good way to even categorize it but I I feel like there are um at least pockets of people in software development that are uh they're focused on advancing their career they're intelligent people they're trying hard they're always trying to like to do more and be more productive um intelligence part aside because I don't know if I can actually make a claim on that but I think that like for myself personally I fall into this uh kind of trap a little bit which is like you know uh I don't need someone to

be like yelling at me to go do more work and put the pressure on like I generally find that I am trying to do more things uh and I'm sort of always operating at my limits and so I think for this group of people it's more of like a can I call it lack of awareness um lack of balance and when I'm using the word lack here I don't mean zero I'm not saying like therefore this person literally cannot balance anything or they have zero awareness not what I'm saying but it's almost like it's not quite sufficient to to help um reach like a good equilibrium point so what happens for these individuals and I'm I'm bucketing myself in here so I'm trying to think about how I've approached like my career uh as a software developer or even hobby projects when I'm trying to

make things succeed it's like um it's always I don't know like it's it's this feeling of if I do more like I can get it ahead whether it's the product the service or even like my career right and what happens is like uh sense of pride in the work you're doing like there's I think there's a lot of good things that come out of this but there's like consequences for not keeping it in check right so I feel like we we get um rewarded for for putting in work right so and not always the people that experience burnout because they have management demanding things of them um this is a group of people that's not getting rewarded for putting in more work like you're keeping your job and the reward is that you have to somehow work even harder next time but this group of

people that I'm describing now is like um you're the like we're the ones that are putting in the work not being forced to because we are almost like being rewarded for doing more work right um or it feels like it so people that are trying to advance their career they're putting in extra time they're working harder they're going above and beyond so they are it's almost like self calling it self-inflicting The the potential for Burnout and I want to be careful how I say that too because I I even like the way that I see um reward structure and stuff at Microsoft right just as an example it's it's about impact so if you want to be able to advance in your career you need to be demonstrating impact right so it's not at some level like I'm at principal level I I truly feel

like to go from My Level to the next level you it's not just let me keep doing my job at steady state and I've actually like I've heard this even like from senior to principal and if I'm thinking through some examples of this like people still had to kind of push outside of their comfort zone but it this happens more and more so the point is that if you are this type of individual that's trying to advance their career you kind of need to lean into like how do I have more impact and I'm saying like the phrase self-inflicted for it but it's because the motivation to do so is apparently there um so say for example in my my role right so I'm at principle level um I know that I need to have impact I need to have visibility so uh if my

steady state of work which might already be very busy is not giving me such opportunities if I want to advance I have to go find those opportunities and sort of like do more and I already might be at capacity but I have to do more um um and I think like if we think of people outside of just me right I think that this is a pretty common thing that comes up um and that could be kind of confusing sometimes because you might have feedback from managers that isn't clear and in terms of next step in your career it might feel like the answer is supposed to be do more um to give you a brief example I won't uh like it's obviously completely Anonymous I have worked with an individual at some point in the past that that um was under the impression that

to to do more sorry that to advance in their role the expectation was they needed to do more and there were a handful of times where they would ask like about essentially like trying to talk about Landing more work like picking up more things to land more things and uh I had to tell them on a couple ofac like hey like by the way like you're already doing tons it's not it's not more work in your case it's actually uh like consistency in the work like high quality and consistency um but they already again like inherently had in their head like for me to do better it must be more which is very interesting I find like uh I I think that's common though it's a weird intersection um so I think that that plays a huge role when it comes to burnout is that

we have people that are very motivated um and and unable to properly balance things for for any number of reasons right if that could be external factors that could be self-regulation and uh and you could even a mix of these two right so I'm not trying to say they're mutually exclusive I'm trying to say like examples of where this stems from so let's take for example now um these two scenarios where I said you have someone who's like self-motivated who's like I got to do more I got to do better I got to excel in my career and then you have you put them into an environment where they don't have uh great management Andor sort of like environment for um like long-term productiv if you will and I think that that can exacerbate the problem like tremendously right um I think that's a huge

part of it um if we shift gears a little bit to another example I think uh especially over the past few years uh work life balance with remote work in particular so um I love remote work um I because you're watching Code commute uh you probably know that I commute to the office a few times per week but I uh like that's technically by choice like my manager likes it and it's great that we have actually team members that do go into the office so I like it too um CU if no one goes in it's kind of silly to go drive in so I can call them from the office but anyway um it's not forest and I go um so I do hybrid but remote work can be super tricky uh um for some individuals so I like it but I think people

have to have awareness of what's up and uh when you have things like live Services you have remote work um where do you like where do you draw the line between like what's work and what's like your time so give you an example even like this weekend and I'm not blaming anyone this is just a a real example right so um like on yeah yesterday sorry it's only Monday uh yesterday I had to get on like a a call for work because an area that I manage someone had questions about something that was going on with some services and um so I was essentially on a call while not on an on call shift on the weekend and to reiterate I'm not I'm not blaming anyone like I was the right person to engage on that but like so what does that mean I just

spent few hours on the weekend working right like at this point in my career for me to spend a couple of hours on the weekend working absolutely nothing I don't care uh because when I worked in a startup before it was like you know uh 12 plus hour days every day for for years um and that was not uh because I was forced right that was self-inflicted so for me to spend a couple hours on the weekend I'm like that's fine um but that's not necessarily an expectation that I have on other people um and there could be other situations where in reality it's more time more uh frequently for some individuals right so like what about their personal life um there are meetings that especially because we are uh an international company we're Global right like we have a team team members in China

we have team members in Vietnam we have team members in Europe I don't really work with um it's pretty rare that I'm working with people in India plenty of people from India even directly on my team but not like not time zone related right so um when we have these cross Geo teams like I have to have in order for to keep sane I have to have a lot of flexibility in my schedule I'll give you an example even this week um I'm taking a Wednesday evening meeting so just after work uh moving that to today and then Wednesday instead of in the evening I'm doing like an 8:00 a.m. meeting so that we can meet with people in Europe so I have some days where I'm working later and some days where I'm working earlier and uh yeah like the the reality is like

time management becomes critical or else you're spending so much more extra time working right think about days where it lines up where you have something in the morning at 8: and something at 6:00 from meeting like that's a long day and if you have them recurring like you're just stacking up more time so if people don't have this awareness or they don't feel that they're they're in an environment that support supports it instead of that being like Oh I just had to work an extra hour today or extra 2 hours on this given day it's like consistently I am working extra hours many days and um I think of course that can lead to burnout right because you're doing stuff that's just extra and you're not focusing on your your life outside of work I had something something else just came to mind and I

was like pivot to that and I'm watching these lights and this person driving through a red light amazing you see a lot of really stupid stuff when you're driving oh this is what I wanted to say um because I think this one's really critical too um burnout does not just occur from people being like oh man this is the worst a I'm so close to home and this bus is like stopping so I have to stop um burnout doesn't just occur because you're doing something you hate right um I think sometimes it's a lot more obvious you're experiencing burnout when you're like I am constantly doing this thing and I don't like it and I'm disengaged like you really notice the burnout effect like uh compounding but you can burn out from doing stuff you love to okay so that's something I want to close

on is that when I said earlier in this little uh monologue that uh you know it can sneak up on you like consider that you might really enjoy doing something and the side effect is that you put more and more time into it the the reality is like things often come back to balance and if you're not balancing things in particular ways something else will give so this is a scenario where if you're not paying attention to it burnout can sneak up on you it's just that it might look different so I've personally experienced this where I've talked about this in the past um when I was working at a startup it was a few years in and uh I realized that like just from working all the time I like pretty bad social anxiety I went from being pretty outgoing like I'm not I'm

introverted but like to go hang out with friends and stuff like or at least if someone was like let's go to a party I would be like that actually sounds fun like I would like to go you know have fun somewhere and um or like go out like for you know whether it was like to a bar or something like to just be able to go do stuff uh even though I'm introverted it would be nice to go you know do something and I I reached a point where I had so much Social Anxiety that even to go hang out with friends if it were like at had a friend's place that I didn't know as well or there was like mut like their friends that I didn't know like I wouldn't want to go um and I was like why did this happen right

I was starting to make excuses for doing social things and it's because I had bad social anxiety so um these types of things can sneak up on you and it's not obvious so I think my sort of takeaway point for everyone is that like having awareness of burnout I think is critical it's not just for software Engineers but uh we talk about it a lot in software engineering because it is really important to think about and I think ultimately it comes down to balance and um because when we describe it as balance you can have things that uh that affect that balance whether that's you your your environment uh the the scenario that you're in they will pull in different directions on that balance and I think that when you have awareness of these types of things then then you can work towards making that

balance uh you know closer to that Center Point otherwise you start pulling in some directions and even if it feels like for example oh look I'm being rewarded for my career progression like this feels like the good direction to move in for how long right for how long can you be pushing outside of that that center point of balance chasing that uh for how long can a manager or product owner or whatever expect that their team is like working around the clock getting more and more stuff done we have to try and get back to that equilibrium point and I think personally as a manager when I'm thinking about teams and productivity my My head goes to this is kind of a weird way without drawing a picture of it but like how can I think about this equilib point for a team and how

can I find ways to make a team more productive while keeping them at that equilibrium point right as little as possible moving away from that Center of uh equilibrium so something to think about software engineering and burnout uh unfortunately go hand inand a lot of the time so I do have awareness of that and uh I would say sorry this guy's walking his dog past me and staring at me as uh it's probably kind of weird that I'm sitting in my car filming myself um yeah if you have any other thoughts on Burno you can feel free to share stuff below um you know it's uh it's important to talk about so thanks for for submitting this one if you have your own questions you want to answered submit them below and happy to chat through them I will see you soon take care