Hacker News Reader

Comment by BadassFractal | Hacker News Reader

First hand experience. As a founder it's terrifying to let people know that you are experiencing debilitating levels of burnout, anxiety and moderate depression that prevent you from being effective at your job. There are days when you're just sitting there staring at your screen for 10 hours hoping nobody can tell you're checked out.

You put on a smile, try to follow the usual routine as a robot, and secretly go to your therapist to try to fix it before someone catches on. I was lucky therapy got me out of it, or at least mostly smoothed it out, in under 6 months.

View on HN

As a founder you could also set a positive example and say "I can't get anything done today" and take a break.

Fixed working hours are one of the biggest problems in a profession like software engineering. On some days you just can't get anything done. It would be better to just take the day off and come back fresh the next day instead of sitting around and pretending that you are working.

Aaaand... over here we just received formal notice (very informally worded) that mandates us to work for certain durations and be present at specified times, and required to log this by any means we see fit, full log being due to management each month.

This kind of attitude just sends the wrong message, devaluates everyone's work by subsuming it to mere tallies, and just outright crosses everyone, obliterating trust and turning it into a culture of fear. Turns out quite a bunch of us aren't efficient at all before 10AM because that's how our circadian rhythm is, yet it's viewed as laziness to come mere five minutes late as we're supposed to show up at least an hour earlier, preferably two. Net result, actual work is hardly done during this forced downtime, and reluctantly so afterwards. Everyone is just pretending to comply in order to bridge the impedance mismatch. As a result, everyone gets increasingly tired fighting their natural rhythm, and slowly growing bitter with each day passing as we witness ourselves wasting everyone's time.

Software development and engineering is a highly mental, creative process. We are not laying bricks 8 hours a day, we have to find and build new solutions to new problems, one by one. This process cannot be shifted, sliced, rearranged at will because it's not mindless, numbing, robot work.

This entire post echoes my feelings precisely. My circadian rhythm makes getting ready before 10am a problem, much less making it to the office.

I'm currently employed at a place that is relatively completely opposite of requiring a log to be submitted to management. Even so, there is still passive-aggressive chats about being to work on time and the total number of hours per week.

Whenever I make myself feel shitty for having a rough time making it into the office I have to remind myself that this isn't a factory position where working 30 more minutes means I produce 5 more widgets. Every single day is a unique work experience where I may work well beyond the time I should leave or I'm hit with all manner of distraction that makes it rough to accomplish anything other than surfing HN. Having (project) management types that have a similar work experience likely should produce a little more empathy than I feel is conveyed by my peers. I have to assume that being primarily driven by meetings and time-delimited tasks makes it difficult to see my perspective, even if there is some venturing into the nebulous side of things.

I hope we can differentiate between mental blocks and illness, but if you are in the former category, try switching to different classes of tasks. If you are in the "illness" category, ignore this comment all-together.

I do have days where I cant get code done, but luckily there are other things that work well on those days -- like catching up on research paper queues or audit/accounting/cleaning. Accounting/cleaning has a strangely and remedial quality, there is something soothing about getting things to balance perfectly and into order.

Uhg, I am in that exact situation right now. I've done the therapy thing in the past, didn't help. Meds in the past seemed to help but hard to isolate them as THE factor that helped me out of a rut. So now I feel out of options.

I am so burned out. So much on my plate, so much work to do, and literally not one neuron fires to get me going. My memory and mental function, at an all time low.

I gotta believe this just goes away, otherwise I lose my job for sure.

Ya'll are lucky that you can afford therapy. There are many who cannot and whose insurance won't pay for it.

I believe that lack of access to mental health care is one of the fundamental problems with modern society.

I would absolutely concur.

Have you tried various types of therapy or different therapists? In my experience, in order for therapy to be effective, I need to form a kind of trusting relationship or bond with the therapist. There are _many_ different techniques employed in modern therapy; trying different things to find out what works for you is key.

Ask for a sabbatical.

Take a month (or better yet, three). It will benefit both you and the company. Discuss options here, and whether or not it's paid (or paid partially).

It's a hard ask and a really hard conversation to start, but it sounds like you need the time.

I've just started my 3rd month of sabbatical. It's wonderful. Best money I've spent.

Yep, I'm in the same boat as GP. I am currently exiting to take several months of rest. I might even cook/bake again, part time, if I get restless.

While I'm very happy that the author seems to be getting what they need, a day or even week here or there is not fixing my problem. I've always been the kind of person anyways who doesn't really settle into a vacation or travel excursion until around week 2, so maybe I just move more slowly.

Eventually I would like to contract again (been salaried for a few years now). I am lucky enough to have a partner in a different, but still also well-paying and in-demand industry, to help with finances. We live minimally anyways, so I'm hoping it wouldn't be impossible to maintain our quality of life without working myself to death chasing leads and payments. Partner is trying to do something similarly unorthodox. We have no aspirations for hockey stick growth or jackpot payouts, we just want to enjoy our lives while we can, while creating and helping in a way we like.

Edit: meant to reply to the comment regarding sabbaticals below.

There's never going to be one factor that gets you out. It's a combination of tools working together that makes it livable. For me it's meds, exercise and social contact.

Meds might help your present chemical situation but they're not going to change the mental ruts & habits your brain has formed (eg. I'm stressed, I want a cookie/beer/etc. I made a mistake, I'm so stupid).

Therapy can help you understand and notice those patterns, why they formed, and what you can do to gradually correct them, but you'll have a hard time if you're going uphill against your brain chemistry.

This book really helped give me a framework for understanding the exercise part of it: https://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing-Perfor...

And of course, like physical pain, in some situations mental illness is a signal the body is sending that something in life isn't right. I've had some serious depressive episodes evaporate as soon as I broke off a toxic relationship (personal or professional).

Happy to chat more in private if you want.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com