83% of Developers Suffer from Burnout, Haystack Analytics Study Finds

I work at Amazon and have been subjected to two versions of those periods (because I switched teams): one was every year around Black Friday and Christmas, and the other one was when a new big show releases on PrimeVideo (like LOTR).

Those periods are the total opposite of quiet.

You still have to work on normal deliverables, except you can't push them on your pipelines (not even beta) and on top of that you have to either support last minute critical demands for ad-hoc work, and then you have to work around the extremely strict deployment windows to actually release that ad-hoc crap to prod.

I have started deployments at 9AM and finished at 11PM routinely during those times because there's a single day where the pipelines are open and you have to complete your deployment before the next day.

And yet, more than enough companies plan their staffing for "can barely hold it together in not-so-busy season and expect overtime in busy season". That looks good for the beancounters, but is hell for the staff.

> Plus I still take vacations.

The US doesn't have mandatory PTO requirement. Europe does, but it still is nowhere near a level that would actually allow people to have enough free time to enjoy life.

Sadly, with higher interest rates, there is a pressure to produce results in the short-term, at the expense of long-term investments.

The idea of a forced break to do these things implies they arent important. Otherwise they should already get picked up.

I think these kinds of arrangements are dangled as a carrot in front of engineers, while the person doing the dangling knows full well that they are selling a lie. Now, such an offer is a red flag in my eyes, unless I hear a credible story firsthand from every engineer that interviews me.

Next time I am offered such a carrot, I basically will need to see it put into writing before I believe a word of it. I suspect you have learned a similar lesson from your own experience.

I hate the view that allocating a fixed percentage of time every X week(s) instead of allocating proper time as a project to fix issues affecting the productivity of the whole team/engineering org is doing something. It's just another source of frustration.

Which country? US for sure. It wasn’t until my 5 year mark with my current company that I hit 4 weeks of combined PTO/sick leave. And due to a company policy, they didn’t match my prior vacation amount when I joined.

And per HR, our vacation policy is better than industry average.

The irony is this

https://agilemanifesto.org/display/index.html

All these programmers agreeing to IMO the worst culprit to programmer burnout. I still struggle understanding who these people are and why they support this cult. Every excellent programmer I've ever worked with just laughs at this.

I mostly write applications for large enterprises and SMBs. Stuff most people think is boring but is really cool and runs the world: order processing, supply chain, operations, ecommerce, etc. I try to stick to relatively simple and effective technologies, but that's becoming harder and increasingly complex.

What had worked best for me (in descending importance):

  1. LOVE building. If you're not getting satisfaction at work, build something for yourself at night. It's my rush.
  2. Become excellent at what you do. Think Steve Martin, "Be so good they can't ignore you."
  3. Volume. Build. Build. Build. I still think this is the best way to learn and get good.
  4. Keep learning. The best way: building something, then learning what you need to build it, not the other way around (class, book -> then build).
  5. Understand the people side and the tech side are very different. Embrace both, but differently.
  6. Build something that builds something. The nested learning is magnitudes more effective.
  7. At some point do a startup. Even if it fails, you will be much better.
  8. If it stops being fun, do something else. (I've always stayed a programmer, but if I couldn't keep it fun, I would have become a bartender, or a writer, or something).

> Usually, at the point of real "burnout" there is no fix except leaving for a different setting for awhile.

Still being with my employer causes some real pressure. They don't want to help to fix my issues, while still expecting me to come back to work. I need to get out of this situation.

> While I often infer Plumbing is a cleaner trade than the tech sector [...]

The thing is though, I love software development. I have wanted to be a software developer when I was 4. And I'm almost 34 now. But I really hate the politics and drama. I just want to create, be creative and be a team leader. I know I can do that and I'm good at it. But I just have to find the right match.

I didn't know about Ikigai, but I've printed out a copy for on my whiteboard and I love reflection, so thank you.

My first burnout at this job was caused by exceeding my stress levels for a very long period of time, more than a year. I asked my supervisor to assist me with this. And he kept promising change, but it didn't materialize. It also didn't help that I was the only team member that was working on a separate location. When I return to work, I started looking for another job, but a company restructuring happened, which brought me new challenges. This change made me abandon job hunting.

Fast forward to about a year ago and I had the opposite problem now. Work had just dried up and I wasn't doing anything for longer periods of time. Causing somewhat of a bore-out. Also I was required to justify my time, which was becoming impossible. Causing anxiousness. Again I pointed this out to my supervisor and was job hunting for months. But both, again, didn't materialize in time.

I have an added problem that I can only travel by train or bike, while most IT employers nearby are only accessible by car. And I really would like to work on site with a team. At least for half the time.

Now I would like to start with another employer, but I still feel extremely empty and anxious. Sorry, English isn't my first language and this has a lot of emotions coming through with it. That's why maybe some sentences seem a bit off.

If you're at the "right at the edge of it" phase, it's rather obsessional focus, trying to please everything and everyone, high feelings of responsibility and duty (even if nothing will happen if you're gone), stress (both the "good kind", the one that everyone believes is perfectly normal to have when you have something important to do, except all you're doing is making a shitty CRUD app right now, and the bad kind, where going to the office fills you with dread), not enjoying what you used to enjoy but saying "it's okay, it's just temporary" when you've not touched that backlog of games in 6 months.

The thing is with most non-office professions like that, especially those involving physical instead of cognitive work, it's much easier to disconnect and relax mentally after work than with software engineering where even once you're done for the day you can end up mentally ruminating about critical bugs or issues throughout the evening, especially if you have a lot of responsibility and you know people/business is counting on you.

SW dev work can be very stressful.

followed by a nap period, please.

Maybe its like furniture movers... it takes time to build up that endurance and mastery to get to the point where it is possible to do for 3 - 4 hours at a time. Pivotal was also strict with taking 15 minute breaks... one in the AM around 10:30am and the other in the afternoon around 3pm.... but each pair can decide on their own.

When I was a team lead in pairing teams, I did allow (and encouraged solo time), but the code written during solo would be consider spike code... code to learn and try stuff out. Ultimately to make it into prod code, it had to go through a pair.

Who wouldn't? I get tired after 1.5 hours of programming solo.

>not really being able to just take the wheel and investigate things quietly for a few minutes

It's not disallowed. I do this all the time when pairing.

I have a suspicion that people who don't like pairing have more of a visceral rather than intellectual dislike.

As a software developer, you must be master of your toolings. Noone but you have that ability to improve you ! WHo else to blame then ?

It is "funny" how that has come to mean strict and stiff developement process.

I've joined a bunch of companies, and there' two kinds of companies to me: Lacking of automation and pushing with automation.

One example: CI/CD process where developer only cares about the code, not CI/CD configuration.

The real trouble is that there is no end to the demands that a business will make on a person. A business can't halt and wait for your burnout to subside. A business needs to push the next widget out - and if you can't help with that then someone else will.

This is directly at odds with recovery. There's never enough time to feel proud and connected to your work. Just the next task.

Yes, burnout is a rich country problem, because you otherwise kill yourself at the task because you can't afford not to. Give Vietnam western european wages and within 10 years, burnout will also be a talked about problem. Just because you don't have time to look at something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.