COMPLETELY Overwhelmed: Toxic Culture And Physical Burnout Symptoms

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all right folks I'm headed to the office here um we going to Reddit for a topic and this one is not actually like I mean we're going to we'll talk about this scenario specifically but uh it's going to be a lot more General and uh it's everyone's favorite topic which is burnout so another quick note I'm driving to the office super early today well not super early um I have a meeting at 8:00 a.m. that I do with Europe but there's an event right after that and my boss was suggesting that we're there in person so I have to get to the office before the 8:00 a.m. meeting so I have to leave at 7:00 in the morning which is crap and this is like the perfect time for rush hour for me because I say perfect very sarcastically by the way because uh there's

like one highway to get from where I live to to Redmond and it's just it's going to be everyone it's got to drive to work so this is going to be fun I don't have the 360 camera going cuz it's raining and uh I've just kind of given up on trying to make that work during the rain um no point in me stressing about having a camera on top of my car just to have all the footage look like trash um but the Reddit topic is about burnout and the person that was writing it I don't have it pulled up in front of me cuz I'm driving now but um they're an Amazon employee and this is not to throw shade at Amazon this could be you could replace Amazon with any other company and I'm sure there are going to be people that say

yeah but Amazon's worse and sure um I don't have you know firsthand experience from Amazon so I'm not here to say that's the case I literally don't have evidence of it um but this person kind of talks about their six-year career so far and um they're they they talk about being on a team in the beginning that's like pretty rough uh and they're getting a lot of like anxiety and stress and like it's pretty hard to like it's really having an impact on them and then they they end up switching teams and they're kind of progressing through their their career right so they're going from being you know a more Junior developer into like mid-level senior um then they're on some other team that's like better for some middle part but they're getting experience in that they're they're getting like there's more stress associated with

the job uh and then most recently it sounds like they had to transfer teams again or they did I shouldn't say they had to I'm not actually sure but another team transition this is back to a toxic team uh and uh given that their L6 which is I think an Amazon L6 I think at least at manager level is what I would be consider considered like equivalent at Microsoft I believe um so they're that but an individual contributor and now they're saying like their stresses and anxiety and everything else is so bad they have like physical symptoms of like you know like chest pain breathing problems uh they were citing that they you know and this is actually going back even earlier in their career when I mentioned they were also stressed like regularly crying from work um and I'm not saying this like I'm

making fun of them I want to be very clear about that I don't want to say haha look at this look at this idiot crying from work um nope um absolutely not because I think that this is unfortunately far more real for many people that uh then people want to admit which is pretty awful uh un fortunately but I I know I know this or at least have I shouldn't say I know like as a matter of fact there are you know X number of people or some percentage that's not fair for me to say but um what I will say is the number of people that do reach out to me personally and write me messages and stuff like that that talk about being stressed at work or to the point where they're in tears or something like that or how they're treated doesn't

feel Fair all of that kind kind of stuff is far more prevalent than I would have ever expected so I guess I've been fortunate in my career where I don't have such things not to the point of crying at least and again I'm not I'm not making fun of anyone for that that's a legitimate response when you know you're completely overwhelmed so I'm just try I wanted to make this video to kind of draw some attention to like some things that that go on and like the soft for engineering industry and maybe some some perspective on on that as a whole so that's why I said this video is not going to be specifically about this person's exact situation but um we can abstract it a little bit we're software developers we we abstract things right maybe that's only net developers I'm not sure but

um so before I keep rambling on here just a reminder if you want questions answered leave them in the comments um that's where I try to focus all of my attention if I don't have comments that are pending that I think would make really good topics then I go to Reddit um but otherwise my attention is in the comments that you guys leave so please do that if you don't want to write something in public feel free to send me a message look for Dev leader on social media that's also my main YouTube channel and then uh you can write whatever you want um I'll keep it totally anonymous because I have no need to out anyone that's kind of not the point I just want to be able to try and help if I'm able to um so that said let's chat through this

um so a couple things going on here we have things like uh toxic work environments uh we have things like uh expectations that continue to grow and grow as you as you level up in your role and there's an important Distinction on that part in particular because I don't think that many people recognize this but um when we talk about getting promoted right so you're junior then mid-level Senior uh staff principal however you know the or whatever level numbering structure you have the interesting part about just like getting promoted is that getting promoted actually comes with more expectation and I it's kind of interesting I didn't really realize this personally but uh from interviewing other software Engineers like on my main YouTube channel on the podcast part talk to people that were working overseas and they said that and like again I had never really

heard this before but that it was uh I I don't know if I can use the word common but maybe I can say it wasn't uncommon that people would be offered promotions and turned them down and that's because how they look at their um sort of work life balance and stress and all that they're like I'm okay where I'm at right and I I think maybe maybe it's more of a North American perspective maybe it's you know where where people are working I don't know what the exact um demographic that maybe delineates some of this but certainly whatever demographic I fall into is uh has always been you know do whatever you can to keep getting promoted right that's like that's how you win in in your career keep getting promoted like whatever the next level is like hyper focus on what you're supposed to

be doing um which is ironic because like I keep bringing this up in videos I've actually never been promoted once officially in my career which is nuts right um it's uh startup startup things um so at least in some parts of the world or in some you know more specific areas of software engineering there is this extreme focus on promotions but what's often not spoken about is that the expectations of you when you are promoted go up and up and up and that's why sometimes at certain levels going to the next level actually feels like there's a ceiling right some companies have what feels like a ceiling and it's because the expectations are not linear anymore it's not linearly increasing expectations the expectations almost become exponential this is why you don't have like at Microsoft like every developer that's been there for you know 20

is automatically like a distinguished engineer no um because at some point the expectations become exceedingly difficult to to achieve and maintain and maintain is the key word there right because as the expectations go up it's not hey you did the thing boom here's the promotion it's hey you've been doing the thing you consistently do the thing we see you as the person who consistently does the thing this is going to be one of the worst drives I've done in a long time according to Google which gives me 5 minutes to get into the office and sit down and start a meeting that I lead and that's why it's code commute um so yeah when we're chasing levels the expectations continue to go up now I've also had conversations regarding you know some some of I don't want to say there's like exactly specific thresholds like

you know between level X and Y like this is the threshold where this happens but um there's actually you know stages in people's career where there might be more people that kind of end up at that level and never break past it and there's a there's a word for this and I can't remember but I I feel like the word that comes to mind is like a Terminus or something I've heard it before maybe it's just cuz I'm driving and I can't think of it but anyway it's basically like a point some level in career where it's like totally acceptable to you know keep leveling up until you're at that point and that's a good Landing point and people will stay there for years and years and years and and that's okay right cuz if you had someone that was a junior level engineer and

they were Junior for 10 years like that probably would not be a good sign but whether it's senior or staff or principal whatever level there's you know within companies there's generally this idea that yeah if we had people end up at this level and they stay there that's fine now some companies will have like performance-based rewards and this is the other thing that I want people to think about when you are achieving the next level and the expectations go up if you have performance-based rewards so say you're get I'm just going to make up numbers to keep it very simple say you're over you're overachieving at your level so you get a a 20% bonus and in whatever you know metric that is so 20% bonus okay but now when you go up to the next level you're not exceeding the expectations at that level

so maybe and likely your your compensation as a whole has gone up but getting that 20% bonus at that level is no longer a thing right because you're not exceeding the expectation that at that level you might just be meeting them uh and there are certain situations where people get promoted and they actually have a difficult time trying to maintain like not even they might have gone from exceeding to now it's difficult to even maintain the new expectations so when this person is describing their career experience it sounds like they have a combination of toxic teams which I'm going to Pivot to and basically the increasing expectations of going up in level and all of those things put together maybe they have other stuff going on in their life too that's that's certainly not helping and it's becoming overwhelming so let's pivot over to teams

as I'm driving I just want to make sure that I can kind of jump around and cover what I want to cover with with toxic teams or if you're at an organization at a as a whole that the culture is not something that you're that you're into uh sometimes it takes being there to know which is why I was saying like you know this person was writing about Amazon I literally have zero experience in Amazon I've interviewed for Amazon I had offers from Amazon the people that I talk to seem lovely so like my experience very limited but from what brief experience I had from interviewing did not seem terrible right it seemed like it was a nice place but that's all I got so you know maybe if I would have been hired I would have been like oh man like this is terrible

or maybe depending on which team or part of the company um because when you have these enormous companies you have to think that sometimes there are suborganizations that are basically like smaller companies and even those are very large and sometimes the culture within those can be very different so I don't have experience in Amazon it's not fair for me to say but maybe what I'm saying is like if you're employed somewhere that might be your first opportunity to really see the culture so when you're interviewing just a you know when people are like what am I supposed to ask the the interviewer I don't like there's a million things you could ask them I don't think there's a secret question but you know you might really care about what the culture is like so finding ways that you can ask about the culture in not

a super generic way like tell me how great the culture is and someone's like we're a family and then you're like well that's a answer um like try to find ways to ask questions regarding culture that are going to you know be informative for you right like what things would you be looking for and ask questions specifically about that to try and highlight that so when you're at a place you might realize okay culture is not either what I expected or maybe it is what you thought it was going to be and you're like okay but I'm not I'm not you know air quotes like cut out for it and I don't think that people should be cut out for toxic cultures um that's like I don't know like sure if you can be resilient that's great but at the same time like instead of

putting so much energy into like look I'm surviving a toxic culture I would say like what are we doing to get out of that so when I briefly scroll through the comments I saw people saying like hey time to brush up on your resume right like clearly you're sticking around somewhere and and it's really not it's not doing so well for you you and that's again not to to criticize this person and say oh it's because you're bad or like I was kind of just saying like oh you're not cut out for a toxic work environment so like you're not worthy it's like this probably is not a good fit for you especially if it's getting to the point where you're having like physical symptoms of stress right you should not be going to work and crying from work that's not what we want if

it wasn't obvious um and you know other people were kind of pointing out like this is extremely not sustainable so people were basically suggesting like you know it's tough but like it's probably time like as you're trying to survive there basically shift your attention into into getting your resume brushed up start practicing lead code do what you need to be doing to start interviewing now I know the job Market's tough right now I would say it's uh exceedingly difficult especially for more Junior people um I'm I'm not saying that that makes it easy for other people that are more senior uh but I I would suspect that being able to apply for you know more senior roles uh would likely I'm going to use the word easier or maybe I should say cuz that might trigger people I want to say easier uh not as

not as impossible as applying for junior roles I don't know like I feel like there's no way to say this without than someone getting upset cuz it's the internet um but and they have Amazon on their resume you know I've we talked about this in other videos like does that actually matter and it's like should but it's kind of like it's like saying oh I went to Harvard it's like that doesn't mean doesn't mean that you are necessarily uh you know the best educated person but it carries some type of prestige with it right or wrong it happens to and I would say the same thing happens with uh with names and Tech not saying right or wrong just that it seems to happen so this person probably could you know if they brushed up on their resume practiced uh lead code and other interviewing

techniques um that's probably a good path for them but the reality is and sort of the more generic thing that I want to touch on here is that when you're in a toxic work environment um you know I would say especially if it's a place like Amazon or just a large company you're and I I'm not I don't like saying this cuz I don't like it to sound like defeatist I guess but your ability to change that work culture is probably limited because it would take so much time and energy to do it that if you're already at the point where you're like crying from work physically stressed out trying to change the the culture of an organization that's that big is it's I don't know I don't want to say it's impossible but like probably it's probably not worth your time now if you're

at a small company and you're having this type of thing happen I might say like depending on how much you truly you know like love the idea of the company love what it stands for love the work you're doing but something about the the team culture whatever else like that might be worth investing some time and energy into to try and change it right I have the reason I say this is like when I was at a startup before Microsoft I had seen when things were really good and I had seen times where things were not really good and I would stand up and try to drive change because I'm like I know we can do better than this because we have done better like we are regressing so instead of just being like oh this is the way it is it's like no like

I like it too much here it's not just going to go this way and then trying to drive change now just to give you an example like that company had gone public they had been acquired like they went back to private and they have you know uh different owners now um if that company culture is changed like that might be very difficult to go influence now and the size of the company's much bigger it's at least two or three times bigger than when I left right and even when I was trying to drive some of that change it would have been two to three times smaller than when I left right so it's a I'm not saying it's impossible I'm just saying that like once there's a critical mass it's so much more energy to try and drive change so it's likely that instead of

putting more energy into something like that you're actually trying to look at what is your exit strategy so we kind of talked a little bit about um like toxic teams right and by the way I didn't like to find toxic but this might be a little bit more open-ended for people's uh own definitions but basically if you're in a team that's the regular operations are causing you to be stressed out uh potentially crying from work probably some things going on either within the team or within how you're team interacts with leadership that's not it's not very good so talked a bit about that we talked about the increasing expectations as you're going up in level so now I kind of want to try to bring things maybe more more full circle we'll see people say things online around like hey like getting into software development

just for the money right um and you can do that with any career really if you're if you're good enough at something people will pay you for it uh seems like software development as a you know reasonably there's I mean different paths where you can have a pretty high pretty high salary or total compensation but like the the real question is like what's sustainable right because when we when we do things like hyper optimize for a specific goal like I'm just going to hyper optimize for total compensation the more you go down that path cuz I mean on paper it seems like the best right why why would you not do that right we're trying to optimize things we're working like don't we want to make more money like yeah that's I think that's a fair a fair statement to make but it's like at

what cost now is it is it okay to be like you know what I'm going to go try to get one of these super high paying jobs uh I'm going to accept that I might get burnt out after a year or two uh and then you know I'll kind of switch gears from there I don't like I don't think there's anything wrong with that I don't think that there's like a wrong thing to do because it's going to be individual for for everyone right um even for me when I was working at a startup before Microsoft I remember thinking like I know that the rest of my life is not working this way but I think in order to be successful well for the company that I was at and for myself I said I think that this needs to happen right like I see

this as a path to success it's not the rest of my life but I'm going to do what I think needs to happen here and that meant like you know overexerting myself and you might be a young developer and you're like I'm just going to use I'm going to keep picking on Amazon here because that's what came up on Reddit no shaded Amazon I'm just trying to be clear but like you're like hey okay well Nick made a video talking about this person's bad experience at Amazon but like screw it like I I'm able to get this offer at Amazon they're going to pay me a ton of money I'm going to do it but I'm only going to stay there for a bit and like I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but I think that what we have to do is be

aware that that kind of thing is not sustainable so again if you're hyper optimizing on uh whether it's I'm just going to increase my level as much as possible I've talked about this in other videos or I'm just going to purely look for total compensation that goes up and up and up as I'm jaw popping at some point it's very likely that you'll reach situation where it's just not sustainable for you so when I talked about level jumping I mean like you might be in a situation where you're truly not qualified for it right and that's you know you're it's going to be really hard to perform at that level more like in this person's case I'm not saying that they're not necessarily qualified because it could be that they're the toxic environment aspect too but the expectations are so high that trying to maintain

those expectations is so exceedingly difficult that you cannot sustain it so what's it worth to you because if you're getting more money and your entire life is terrible like you're regularly crying you're physically impacted from the stress of work like what dollar amount and for how long is that worth it I'd be very curious right I know that number is going to be different for different people but like sorry I got to switch lanes and not going so well let me in okay um right because it's it's so you know it's so simple on paper to be looking at career advancement and saying that's what I want to do that's what I need to do but if you're not balancing out the other parts of your life like what is that what you need to do there's a I I don't know I wouldn't call

it a meme but like there's a a screenshot of like a a I guess it's a Reddit thread or something Reddit post where it's I think it might be another Amazon situation so this is just me ripping on Amazon apparently not my intention um but someone was saying that they they reached like uh they're talking about how they reached an L7 uh level in their role and uh how like their wife wants to divorce them now like they weren't present for like any part of like you know their child being birthed and stuff like that and they're like so I got my promotion but like my wife is like they want to leave me now and it's like I don't know if the the post was a a joke or like someone's real story it's impossible to tell on the internet I guess but um

you know I could see that being a very real thing someone hyper optimized laser focus to try and get promoted did everything they needed to do to do it but that meant that giving up everything else around them right and uh I guess it's not for me to tell people how to live their life at all like it's absolutely your life and um you do what you do but I think that uh I think my recommendation for folks is like awareness right um is that actually what you want you know are would you be happy reaching in that in that example the L7 level with your I don't know your million doll total comp if that meant that you were building a life with someone and and they're like you know that's that's now over like is it is it worth it and uh I

don't know I feel like again not for me to say but for me the answer is absolutely not right we don't like my wife and I don't have kids but if if my wife was like look like you've been so focused on on work that like I want to get divorced like that's to me that's that's scary well for I mean a lot of reasons but scary that if it got to that point where it was a surprise to me like how out of truly how out of touch would you have to be in your own relationship to not even realize that it's deteriorating to that point where like your partner is saying no right so I think that we we just have to kind of do this reflection and and understand like what is it worth now with that said I think if you're

say if we're talking about like being with your partner having families and stuff like that there may be and I if you if you're on the internet you probably know Alex her MOSI I'm not saying that you have to like him or not um but I I really did appreciate how Alex her Moi put put this in at least one one video or post or something must have been a video um but he was speaking about how he looks like him and his wife they're both extremely successful financially um so that they look at things in like terms of Seasons which is kind of a funny thing to say I guess but the idea being that you might have um you might have a busy season for someone in the relationship which means at some point and it's acknowledge that it's not a permanent thing

but there's going to be goals that people are trying to achieve or external factors that they don't have uh direct control over and for them to achieve those goals it's going to mean that they have like a busy season like they need more attention onto something that will mean less attention for their partner and the idea being like you know you have your partner to support you through that right it's not you know you're not communicating you suddenly just like are neglecting your partner and they're like what the hell is going on but let's take this person for example uh in the in the Reddit post that we started with if they're like okay well I'm stressed from work I'm basically falling apart now I need to go start interviewing like that might be in the short period of time even more stress and I

don't know if this person I can't recall if they were saying they were married or had a family but like that would be and just to bring it back to like the busy season thing that might be a really important conversation to have with their partner to say like look like things are not good right now and they're probably going to get a little bit worse in the shorter term but like I need to invest time and energy into into interviewing applying to jobs in interviewing and like that's going to mean that I need your continued support cuz I'm I'm assuming and hoping that they're getting support through you know their challenging times with work and that's kind of like a busy season to say look please I need support it's not a permanent thing but um help me get through this so that we

can move forward together right so that I will be employed somewhere um that is sustainable for me that I can be effective that I'm not physically stressed out crying from work like I need that could you could you imagine like let's imagine that this person and maybe unfortunately if you're going through a similar thing like if you're so stressed from work or crying from work regularly how truly how difficult would it be to like go home and have like you know like attention that you could divide to your partner meaningfully or to your family right you're probably so stressed and overwhelmed that you're like I don't have capacity for anything else in my life I I can't imagine that sorry this person is holding a stop sign but it doesn't make any sense to me um no one's stopping traffic's going both ways and they're

holding a stop sign up wow we made it to work way faster thanks fast lane um so my takeaway from this entire video is like you know having having some awareness of of what's going on as you're navigating your career because um it's not um it's not about like getting a high score in the career it's like this is your your life and if you're going to be trading everything that's important in your life just to be able to have a title on paper or to have a couple of uh couple of extra dollars in the old bank account um might not be worth it right might not maybe for you it is there's nothing wrong with that right this is I'm not trying to guilt people into this and I I I hope that's clear I'm not trying to say by the way if

you're focused on money like shame on you I'm saying for the people that don't realize that's probably a a bigger concern right they don't have awareness of it and that's what I'm trying to bring visibility to is like if you haven't kind of thought through this and how this progresses like is that truly the path you just want to laser focus on so with that said folks I'm going to go inside get a meeting room ahead of time so I'm not scrambling thanks so much for watching I hope this was helpful in some capacity and uh I will see you next time take care