Comment by Version467 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Version467 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm still pretty young so this might not apply, but I tried to skip university and make it as a freelancer. Worked out fine money wise, but got severe burn out working on a project that I shouldn't have taken on in the first place, but needed the money.

I recovered fine, but it was pretty brutal. For a while I couldn't even look at code without getting nauseous and a having a splitting headache. I'm not exaggerating here, it was like I had lost the ability to comprehend code at all. Code was just meaningless symbols randomly arranged without any rhyme or reason.

What helped eventually is about ~6 Months of completely distancing myself from Programming. No programming for work, no programming for fun, not keeping up with current developments, nothing. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford this, but I truly believe that a 6 month long hard brain reset was needed. Wouldn't have worked in 3 months. Other comments here echo a similar sentiment and you'll find other blog posts and personal experiences on the internet with the same conclusion.

On the upside, coming back after 6 months and discovering that I stopped getting physically ill trying to code was an amazing moment. I fell in love with programming all over again. Only this time I learned to listen to my body and started prioritizing health and happiness over a steep career and financial success.

Honestly I don't think many people would be impressed by my professional output (especially not on this site), but I can honestly say that I've never loved it as much as I do now and I can rest easy knowing that it's sustainable and doesn't negatively impact my mental health.

As a society we should figure out some sort of systemic work exchange program where people suffering from burnout can leave their career for 8 months to work in a brewery or be a fire watcher or herd goats or whatever until they figure out that, "damn, my old job wasn't so bad after all." Either that or they become a full time goat herder...

It's not systemic, but I'm unironically doing this. I live in a LCOL city and I just walked away from my previous career path and am working in a lingerie shop. It's definitely not a forever thing, but the time to get my brain together is invaluable.

You do realize, illegal work environments and unreasonable expectations on developers is "best practices" in software development. As a society we need to end illegal best practices that require developers to work so hard they have physically damaged brain issues from the overwork and stress afterwards.

> You do realize, illegal work environments and unreasonable expectations on developers is "best practices" in software development.

This doesn't match my decade+ of experience. 35-50hr weeks and open communication on project statuses and timelines. I've had two or three crunch-times. Worked at a startup that went unicorn.

Perhaps my ambition exposed me to the worst of our industry: Apple Macintosh pre-release developer (everything in Assembly), OS dev for both the 3D0 and the original PSX game consoles, was at E.A. during the E.A. Spouse Era, managed a game studio for several years while also coding on titles, was a director of R&D for the first Internet live video infrastructure provider, worked in feature film VFX across 9 features while earning an MBA, failed at a very ambitious VFX/Advertising startup, and worked more recently as principal of a leading facial recognition developer. Across all these specialties, I've had a career composed of 7 day 60-80 hour weeks for over 4 decades.

Modern tech jobs (in the era of free money, which may be ending) have really put a clamp on long hours. Tech jobs were notorious for long hours until recently where it has flipped, and they are known for comfy work/life balance approach.

Do you consider yourself a victim? Holding the titles of director and principal means you used your position to reinforce this pattern, no?

I generally work in small teams, where I look out and mentor those I work with, rather than work them into the ground as I was.

You could say I consider myself a "Protecting Veteran".

What part was illegal exactly? My legal understanding is that there's no cap on salary working hours, no mandatory vacation or weekends, and a 3-day minimum on paid sick days (in california) .

Very true. Most agile principles are optimized to squeeze the most out of everyone. There is no space for breathing.

I think it would be really good for most people.

Oddly enough, it probably wouldn't be that hard, or even trivial if you are already a contractor

I mean, depending on where we're talking here, I think my girlfriend would love being a f/t goat hearder.. can you hook me up?

But, would you want the burned out brewers, fire watchers, or goat herders placed in your development team for 6 months at a time?

No, I wouldn't wish that evil upon them.

Hey, just wanted to mention that your path is pretty similar to mine. No college, jumped into gamedev to get out of high school, ended up burning out hard and doing nothing for a solid year after that job. I was playing Heroes of Newerth (a dota clone) all day every day. The game was super buggy, which annoyed me – I knew I could fix the bugs if I was given access to the code. Long story short, managed to get a job there and fixed all the bugs.

My point is, there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying. One would not expect that playing dota all day for a year would lead to the next phase of your programming career. But it did, and (acknowledging luck) I firmly believe it was because of that brain reset you mentioned. So I wanted to underscore your words with an example.

Bu your last paragraph is why I’m writing to you. My professional output wasn’t too impressive either. My first manager said “If you were a Carmack, I think we’d know it by now”; I forget how it came up, but I remember how disheartening it felt to hear.

Fast forward to present day, and I’ve done a bunch of stuff I’m proud of (including collaborating with Carmack for a few weeks on AI). The reason I got here was because of the other rehung you said: you love programming, and so did I. (Also Prozac was pretty important, in hindsight.)

So please don’t stress about whether you’re impressive or whether you measure up. You impressed me. You’re good enough to do whatever you want to do. And you’ll find your path if you keep looking.

Ditto for whoever’s reading this wondering if they’ll ever recover from burnout. You will. Don’t worry. It ends.

Hey, thanks for the kind words. Really, I appreciate it a lot!

Saying that others would not be impressed by my professional achievements doesn't mean that I'm not proud of my work. I have many valuable qualities, being a 10x Developer is not one of them. You're right, I am good enough to do whatever I want to. But I am very happy that post-burnout I want different things.

Striving for a stable life with a healthy mix of meaningful work and a good social circle is not what my teenage self envisioned for my future, but it has made me much much happier than striving for an impressive resumé. I'm sure there's lots to come in the future, but I'm proud that I had this realisation relatively early in my professional life. Without this change in perspective I would've been miserable forever. Because in the end, I really am no Carmack. And that's totally fine :)

It’s not like that though. Some of the most impressive people I’ve met got where they are by having your mindset, not by being “a Carmack” (coding machine). I’d like to think I had some impact in the areas I focused on, and my output wasn’t much more than yours, in all likelihood. It was just focused, and I was in love with the programming part.

I think you’re selling yourself short. Don’t count yourself out as someone who can impact the areas you want to.

I’m glad your life is stable now — if you ever need some encouragement in the future, DM me! Always happy to.

> For a while I couldn't even look at code without getting nauseous and a having a splitting headache. I'm not exaggerating here, it was like I had lost the ability to comprehend code at all.

I thought I was starting to experience burnout this year, but I've never had physical symptons like yours. Before that happened, did you note something particular? I don't think it came out of the blue

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