I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences.

"Blue collar" burnout, to me, is the archetypal fast food worker making minimum wage working paycheck to paycheck, who not only has to deal with financial insecurity that comes with the job but the physical (actual manual "work") and psychological (rude customers) burdens that come with those types of jobs.

My wife is a clinical psychologist focusing on the mental health impact of high-pressure jobs. She had me build this “Burnout Calculator” based on a self-evaluation protocol they use in their practice. Leaving it here in case it’s helpful for anyone: https://azimuthpsych.com/burnout-calculator

This is good post on experiencing burnout (and avoiding it).

Written by an early programmer at Slack, and someone involved with their recent desktop app rewrite project.

For me, "team marathon running" on software projects means only rarely "sprinting".

As the author suggests, sacrificing sleep, body, and hours eventually catches up with you. But, it's very easy to do and we've all been there. This is part of the reason that medical residents are burnt out on medicine even though they love medicine. It doesn't matter that you're doing what you love -- that's only the top little self actualization triangle of Maslow's heirarchy/pyramid of needs. You need all the base components of Maslow's heirarchy satisfied, too -- financial health, bodily health, emotional health.

I like the note in the end about his advice:

This advice doesn’t get you very far. In the abstract, it’s just more self-help cliché. For me these are hard-won lessons, and it’s unlikely I would have done anything differently if someone had told me this when I was 26 or 30.

I feel like the cause of burnout generally lies much deeper than not asking for help or not putting health first. It's more about certain values embedded in you from your past. Those values make you feel responsible for things you aren't, and might make you push yourself. Which might also bring you good things in life, but you have to wonder where those values came from and if they are indeed true for you and helping you.

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression?

Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.

I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration.

My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.

The bit about ending up in hospital with an obstructed bowel from diverticulitis? I call misdiagnosis - either on his part or mine.

I had an uncannily similar experience, except in my case it was about a week a month (sometimes much more, sometimes less) that I lost to the vomiting, the nausea, the delirium, the totally immobile bowel. In my case, the stress went on for years, and years, utterly relentlessly, day and night, incessantly, and so did the gut attacks. I’d get angry when people mentioned they’d slept badly, because at least they’d got to sleep. I’d spend a sleepless week shivering and roasting and dripping sweat and reeling with nausea, unable to make words or thoughts, then finally suddenly recover, and the moment I was capable of any movement or coherent thought, I’d be writing apologetic emails and heading back to the office, where I’d get a barrage of abuse from both clients and cofounder for my absence.

After multiple hospitalisations they’d decided I had everything from diverticulitis to gallstones to salmonella to a brainstem injury. They took my gallbladder out, did exploratory surgery, every endoscopy you care to name. It kept happening, nothing worked.

Then, I quit my business. Two months later, I had my last “attack”, as I’d come to call them, and it’s now been three years.

So... I wonder if the author had diverticulitis, or was having the same violent physiological reaction to stress that I had apparently developed.

Is this really burnout, or just overheating?

To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc.

This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.

I hope someone will (or has?) conducted a historical and geographical analysis of the concept of “burnout”. I’m curious about where precisely it emerges (hypothesis, predominantly America) and when (hypothesis, the 21st century).

It’s a peculiar concept in that it seems to capture the idea that we’ve reached a stage in human development in which we shouldn’t really have to work that much, but do so anyway. It a sort of paradoxical situation in which we’ve eliminated the conditions which necessitated or fostered overwork with material ends (must produce xyz units of consumable goods, food etc) for overwork with largely frivolous ends (the sustainment of online systems which don’t actually create any material value—only abstract or cultural value—not true in every case, of course) enter the “burnout” concept—the big boss no longer needs to forcibly push his workers to the edge, they’ll do it for him through some odd sense of pride or ridiculous notions of performance which are enforced not through punishment but through the allocation of “benefits” like respect, small bonuses, etc etc. —the workplace “culture” (though the social dynamics which emerge at workplaces are not worthy of the name) is an effective system for ensuring people overextend themselves.

I had my first major career failure this year and lost a very good job. I was able to land another good job quickly but I’ve been full of doubt and am seriously lacking in confidence ever since. I can’t sleep and have anxiety. The new job has significantly more responsibility and in many ways the pressure that the author describes in rewriting Slack is very similar to what I’m going through. Every time I have a setback at work I am afraid of losing my job. I finally recognized this as burnout and am trying to come back from it but it’s a slow process. I’m trying to exercise more and get enough sleep but the sleep part is still not working all that well.

This was the hardest one for me and caused me a burnout a couple times, especially when working remote from home.

Separate your work and personal life. This was a major change for me. I’ve always identified very closely with my work. I’m learning to separate my sense of self-worth and purpose from my professional self.

There is some incredibly obnoxious script on this page that won't let you resize the text. First time I've seen that.

I often feel like the web couldn't possibly get any worse, and every day it finds a new way to surprise me and get worse.

Burnout fucking sucks. I thought I went through it once in the past (and maybe I did), but when compared to how I feel now it was nowhere near as bad. I recently tried a few things: 1) nootropic supplements, which have helped a bit to an extent; and 2) take a week long tech-free vacation to the mountains, but when I came back my state didn't really change.

I think my burnout is due to feeling utterly unchallenged at work. The work I've been doing feels way below my pay grade. I'm also attempting to grow my own SaaS business and growth is very slow (3 years in, at $4k MRR), which makes that "light at the end of the tunnel" of going full-time on my business seem unreachable at times. I also have a 5 month old, so I'd also factor that into the lower-bound of my stress level (but I do feel like she helps me slog through hard days more than anything).

I'm starting to be more open about my mental health with family/friends, and I feel like I'm in a rut and not sure how to get out of it. I wish I could take a sabbatical.

> I design and build technology in Vancouver. I spend most of my time working on Slack, a paradigm-shifting tool for team communication. In my work I strive for usefulness, beauty, and positive impact on the lives of others.

From this chap's tag line on his home page it seems like he still identifies strongly with his work and over emphasises the importance of it.

Something I think that has helped me avoid burnout is to stop at 16.00 (or whenever your regular working day ends) and leave work, physically and mentally.

On the weekends, I don't think about work ever (unless something happens to the system and I'm on-call, which very rarely happens. I realise I'm lucky in this regard.)

I just can't work more than 6-7 hours on a given day. Working more won't make me more productive, on the other hand I'll waste more time on reddit since I can't stay focused and I can "catch up" my pre-noon procrastination later.

A part of this, of course, is to insist on not working outside work hours from the beginning of joining a company. In doing so, your colleagues will learn to know not to disturb you outside of work unless it's really necessary.

I feel like that's the mistake the author of this article is committing: not doing anything else than work. Everyone needs time off to recoup no matter what business they're in.

I have never been burned out, but I think I would have been. I did a couple stints at various places (non dev work) where I was pretty excited to continue working and get higher in the org. Fortunately for me they were co-ops which ended and allowed me to see that, retrospectively, they kind of sucked, were not especially fruitful career tracks, and would have ground me down after a year or so. It’s really hard to check yourself while engaged and working on something.

Caretaker burnout anyone? Nobody talks about it but this is the hardest of all. You can turn the back on a career but not to your loved ones.

Slack spends a lot of time promoting itself as a “work hard, them go home” culture. Do others fimd tat to be true? If so, why would burnout be a risk for someone at Slack?

Great advice if you’re already a millionaire.

That was a great read. I think the most important thing is letting go when stressful problems become a danger to your health. Just think "I'm not that important in the grand scheme of things" and take a few steps away from the problem (obviously that's not always possible, but it's more often possible than people think). What will happen is the following:

- Maybe you're right, and things go on nicely without you

- Maybe things go not so well, so your coworkers have to learn redundancy and that they cannot pile all the problems on one person

- Often, you come back from your break (be it going home early, or taking a few days off, etc.) refreshed and you look at the problem from a new perspective. Potential emotions like anger and impatience have worn off, enabling you to act calmly and rationally.

Well, burning out building the first version of Slack is probably materially different than the burnout most others experience, but sure.