kinda unrelated to this video. I applied what you said about googling less and trying to remember how I've done things before and it's helped a lot. Keep the good advice coming
Been burning out for about three years, but couldn't justify it because I wasn't overworked. This video describes it PERFECTLY. It's boredom, stagnation, lack of energy from my peers, and expecting too much happiness from my job. It's changed who I am as a person, affected my relationships outside of work, everything. This video is the-most-on-point on the subject I've ever seen.
I remember asking you this exact question in your stream "how do you maintain your mental health as a software engineer?" and you answered "do not place your hope into your jobs" I didn't really get what you meant by that until I watched this video. Thank you for making this video :)
Not gonna lie, Primeagen is the discovery of my life. We are the same generation, have a similar background and energy. I can relate to everything you say so much in most of your videos and when not, I learn about myself. I'm not aware of any other UA-camr delivering content this way and let me tell you, that's extremely refreshing. There's something about the little words you pick and the tone with which they are delivered. Pure magic, keep going !
YES! big difference when there is a real person on the other side of the camera too :) love Primeagen's authentic emotion and energy. also he's a dad like me, he's been through the ups and downs after 10+years in the industry, and most importantly he uses vim
The way you described how you were bored at your job is exactly how I once felt. At first, I thought that as long as I was coding I would be happy but then I realized that I needed to feel more challenged to be fully engaged.
Was in a pretty similar situation and I just realized that being a software developer wasn't for me. Programming and technology is what I am most passionate about in my life but the monotony of the job and feeling like a cog in the machine just wore me down. Thankfully I moved into management and it's been great for me as I get to apply my love of technology to a job that allows me variety and keeps me constantly changing.
Aside from burnout, your videos provide a lot of insight and it means a lot to me because I am an upcoming freshman in a few months. Thank you for being awesome. You also inspired me to pick up vim and I've been loving it. Hope you're doing well Mister.
Thank you for this video. I kinda burned out in February this year and had to really do some soul-searching to figure out what happened. - I got promoted into a new role I really didn't like and without much support. - I lost all my tools to remove stress during the pandemic. No gym, no spa, no friends and family. - I was also running a dnd campaign that was taking its toll on me (It's a lot of preparation) and was competing for my energy with work. - There were a couple of things I didn't like at my last job that just grew worse over time. - My house was a mess. I'm lucky enough that I could afford time-off, figure out my issues and get back on track. Always keep some $ for bad times people, you never know when you will need it.
I've been really burned out three times in my career. Honestly, your videos on vim and learning new things just lights a fire to program. You've already helped me conquer burnout, thanks for all the advice!
I don't have a burnout but I can relate to the external circumstances impacting your work. Seeing the way the war has impacted my family/friends has also impacted my work and is generally a shadow over everything that has happened in the past 4 months. It has changed my productivity. Slowly getting better though. Still have a lot of fun when coding, especially when I'm just playing around with new things for myself. Currently fist deep into some new Laravel things and it is just interesting and fun. Thanks for sharing this. Useful for both juniors/seniors to hear this.
yayaya! them things are real. The external stuff was actually the worst out of the three things i mentioned. it probably did more to affect who i am today than anything else.
Man, I am at a job right now and the things that most make me burnout is: The people, the environment, poor management and communication. I expected things to get better but they didn't, good people who are one of the only things that are still holding me back in this company are leaving, deadlines aren't being met and higher ups are demanding more, so the only thing that is holding me now is the sense of obligation. I was actually thinking of getting a psychiatrist but I need to focus on the main issue and just leave BLAZINGLY FAST when I get the chance. Your advice opened my eyes, Thanks.
I was in a similar situation. Just think about it the other way around: most companies do not really care about you. I recommend preparing to leave and then tentatively speaking up and asking for support / change. If that doesnt work, you are good to go anyway :) Best of luck!
Man, so much to say on this one. Going through this process now. I am chasing a CS degree at age 52 and I have to say I am terrified I'm just not addressing my current issues. I do know I do not want to work on cars anymore, the burn out is severe and I am so deep on a current project that It would be such a dick move to walk away but....its just painful. Thanks for addressing a real issue that as you say affects everyone.
Thanks for sharing. I'm considering the opposite direction; drowning in a fullstack build, but craving real life living. Hope that you can complete your commitments and take confidence into your tech career!
This spoke to me on such a deep level that I'm so glad I found it just at the right time. I'm currently going through this phase right now and I absolutely hate it. I'm crushed, burned out, suffering from crippling imposter syndrome and thinking about giving up programming altogether. Here's to hoping I can stay the course...
Dude I was exactly in the same situation right now...was considering quitting my current job and think about how to move forward. Best luck to both of us...
Couldn't come at a better time, I've just been spending my last weeks feeling tired and playing video games even when I know there are a lot of things I need to get done I think it's time to change my perspective and look for the root cause of why I'm feeling like this instead of just trying to distract me from it
Thanks as always for the relatable videos! For anyone else out there. The soul sucking force is very accurate. If you’re having a bad work experience you feel tired all the time. It constantly feels like you need another cup of coffee. It’s hard to spot existential boredom because we tend to pass it off as something is wrong with the code. In reality you probably need to be coding in a different domain where the problems you are trying to solve are actually interesting. Coding just to code sucks.
i had burnout for 4 year 😒( starting from my inter got completed ) still having it . you are the one i look up to and you talked about it . thank you .
Can relate, I definitely put too much value to my work when I was early in my career, I performed very well and was happy but then circumstances changed and I became unable to perform so my mental health took a huuuuge dive and hurt performance even more (to around ~10% of the peak level)
Thanks for this amazing video. It REALLY touches on the realities of bieng a professional software engineer. Thanks for this validation and sharing these thoughts.
So much truth I this… I’ve really been appreciating your wisdom and humor since stumbling across your channel a few months ago. Thanks for not being afraid to talk about real life struggles instead of pretending they don’t exist!
While it won’t prevent burnout, you can mitigate it by being healthy. No processed foods, no refined sugar, no seed oils, exercise, good sleep and get sun light. This advice is universal and highly effective.
Changing perspective and how you approach it is everything. Vacations and breaks ain't gonna fix it. Going to the gym ain't gonna fix it. The problem ain't going nowhere you're just coming back where you left and thinking is this the thing I am getting back to?! Retrain your self to think differently. At burnout time you need to step away from ordinary you and become some extraordinary version of yourself. --- I have no better explanation sorry :)
I have experienced 2 kinds of burnouts. 1) when the project you're in is absolutely boring, or too easy or something that I am not at all passionate about. 2) when my project is ridiculously hard and every feature you build, every bug you solve requires tremendous amount of knowledge than what you're used to consuming on a daily basis. Feels like drinking from a firehose! but over time, I have personally experienced that you really do get used to the second type of burnout. and not only that, you overcome it entirely and adapt to it! You learn to make those huge leaps required to build that complex feature. you need the right mindset, supportive group of peers to guide you, to get through the second one. you need a new project or a new job to get through the first one.
I feel like I'll check this video several times during the next years. I certainly would in the past, I feel so referenced in many of the cases you expose.
My god, I absolutely love those videos. I'm a young student currently starting out in IT, and I really do feel myself completely lost in job life. Your videos are a true pleasure to watch and absolutely help me, with so much energy, enthusiasm and interesting editing and content. Thanks a lot for this awesome "offer"!
Read up on "imposter syndrome", just in case it hits you. It hit me not to long ago, and it wasn't fun. But luckily I had a supportive, understanding, team. If your team ever dismisses your feelings on that note, your team is wrong. Simple as is.
I went trough the scenario with the vacation. I took 1 or 2 weeks of work, went to Greece beach sun yada yada... then I went back to work and felt exactly the same from day 1. Then I decided to switch the project and now things are looking better. Btw, I spent around 1 year saying that it sucks and I no longer like it, but that long was needed for me to actually get of that boredom/unsatisfaction state I was in. One more thing, the people, both from my team and from the client were amazing, I simply lost any excitement about the project itself, the code base if you want to look at it in this way. Now I'm facing something similar, but with my hobby pet project, a Rust game engine, and raw devlogs I publish on youtube. Now I'm at a stage where I kind of know what to do, I have an idea of the implementation, but to sit in the chair and do the actual work, is kind of painful and I feel there is no satisfaction even tho the broad idea of creating my own pet game engine is exiting, but at the moment I feel like quitting, but the problem is that I can't figure out why I feel like that. At least at the work that pays the bills stuff if great at the moment :-D
Great advice. Would also recommend switching roles within the same company if you start to feel burn out and have been in the same role for multiple years. Have been doing product engineering for 3 years and feel burn out? Maybe give SRE a try. Or just go to a different product team. IMO this is especially useful if the company itself is a great place to work at.
Yowza. That piece about "When you're burnt out, a two week vacation won't fix it" perfectly describes my exact previous situation to a T. It crept up on me. I would take a vacation for a week once a quarter or so just to chill out and recharge, and after a while it just felt less and less effective. I enjoyed the break but within a few days I felt exactly the same. I was constantly counting the days till I would be off again. The company had some layoffs in mid June, I and a bunch of other people were caught up in it. I've kept in touch with all of them. Pretty much across the board everyone was feeling absolutely drained for a while and they thoroughly enjoyed the time since the layoff and felt like they could actually breathe finally.
My solution was definitely different (quit my job, spent a year meditating) but the circumstances were also different (0 days off for years, constant crunch-time startup culture, senior-most engineer). I went through a bootcamp and actually did explicitly plan out, in text, what you said: once I make X amount, I can take time off, or once I get X title, I can try having a social life again, etc. That was a mistake.
I literally took 2 weeks off with all my remaining vacations at the end of last year and just like you said. It didn't help a single bit. Things were just building up (relevant or irrelevant to work), and when you noticed it, you just lose the motivation to even get out of bed and go to work.
i am self taught but the way i combat burnout is instead of working towards an end goal and hanging all my hopes on it, i appreciate the little battles everyday and mentally reward myself for the progress not the end result, this has worked wonders for me and i rarely get burnt out, when i do i know i just need a day of rest and even then i feel like crap during that day because im not going after it, its such a big life changer when you stop saying "i want to get a good paying job at google" and start saying "i will wake up everyday and i will show up and do my best to improve myself no matter how small that improvement is" and during these days where you just dont want to do it you still find it in you to get up and go after it , your brain rewards you for that small achievement, over time this becomes a habit, of getting a win everyday, and before you know it you start landing on these big goals you set earlier but at this point you're all about the daily small wins so you just keep going.
Great video 👍 Can definitely relate, I’ve been on the path to Lead Engineer and feel burnout to the point where I’m starting to wonder if it’s actually worth it and I should dial back & rethink values.
I've been feeling the exact thing as you described. I put out my 30 day notice period yesterday and the amount of excitement I get from getting different interviews and offers sort of relieves and brings back the energy I lost from burnout. love exploring new things
I've had something similar (but plus health probs too) and up until recently I didn't understand at all what happened and I wasn't able to get back to it. Thank you for your testimony, you've just given me a very complementary analysis and probably helped me a lot !
WTF... You 100% describe what i felt in the past months (and still feeling), i'm currently taking some time off (lucky me that my past self thought to save some money aside for unexpected event). I become aware that i stop caring about ... pretty much everything, become bored... losing interest... and stress about many little thing to finally decide to take some time off to reflect on myself. I'm kind of scared because i kind still like programming and programming oriented stuff but i don't know if i still want to do that. I was the type of guy who eat code xD, i liked it some much that the 8 hours of my job wasn't enough... i quit and started of my company with 2 of my old colleague and one and half year later i have the exact symptoms that you describe.
I needed this thank you, nobody tells you this stuff especially when you enter the industry as a person who codes for fun and for work now.... it can feel like your constantly working but like that pressure is caused by something else when your unhappy at work there is always some other explanation and if your tired of programming even when its kinda your life its not the coding that's killing you its something elsewhere but when you don't see it that way you kinda feel like your broken since something you've had your whole life is making you feel miserable...... so yeah thanks primeagen really needed that pick me up
God bless you When ever I feel I am close to be burnout I immediately go to gym and make sure to make alot of exercise to think better and change my mood and avoid negative thinking
This is a really good heads up. I'm that self taught guy that just got my first big break (had a job in consulting and then at a startup, now I'm at a large medtech company). And it's not as inherently magical as I had hoped (read: it's still a job), but fortunately for me, I have 2 wonderful girls that give me all the fulfillment that I need. As always, thanks for the perspective!
100% agree - placing self value in work is way too fickle. Your value is much greater and deeper than that. (singing Switchfoot "We Were Meant To Live" in my head now)
WOW. I've been struggling to understand my current situation for a long time. I thought I conquered burnout years ago! Didn't realize there could be multiple causes. And I think my current burnout is a combination of all 3. I'm going to make some changes! New engaging job, realign my values to eliminate hopium addiction, and face external factors head on and stop procrastinating! Thank you!!
This video is absolutely amazing, if your work is not what you do in your free time then you don't enjoy it enough If you are not feeling satisfaction and your work feels boring , then you're going to burn out at some point, or maybe you are burnt out already
Great context and viewpoints going on. I've been in a dozen different industries and jobs. For me I know that just coding is such a a pleasurable experience I'm cool with doing it 16 hrs a day. But I know there are things (like express) that just... Egh.... Everything in this. Industry being equal... If you aren't challenged you won't be happy. We are made to thrive on challenge or give up on living.
Hey man that's a great video.. I'm being demotivated day by day for last couple of month's..idk why I'm feeling bad or unsatisfied every single second of my life 😭
What should I do ? I've completed my bachelor degree in computer application now what line i choose?? I have some family financial problems and my parents saying "you should go for work now" ! But i need to learn more 😭 and these thoughts are just blowing my mind every day.
Glad to hear that I’m not alone in feeling this way. In my case I could speak to my line manager and he was able to help me out. Feeling validated that external factors affect everyone and not just me haha
Thank you so much for this video. I am super burned out but felt that a lot of it was from juggling personal life difficulties and should cause me to burn out because my job is boring and simple and doesn’t really matter. I just took 7 days burn out leave and on day 5 and 6, I sat at the computer and coded most of the day, my own personal project that I made a huge roadmap for. I thought, I’m burned out from having to do too much and now I’ve given myself more to do? Doesn’t make sense. Your video makes it make sense to me.
Thank you for sharing your insight, wisdom, and the pay-it-forward message. Reflection and root cause analysis is always valuable, especially for continual maintenance of one's emotional, mental, and physical health. 💜➕
Thanks for talking about this topic and approaching it in a human way. I think you'll help many people (including me), and I would be interested in if you could also provide advice on other meta topics around programming.
I needed this, thank you. I've been having panic attacks lately, lost interest in my school's projects, etc. It's like nothing makes sense anymore. Do I even want to code. I love coding but at the same time I hate coding. Wondering if i'm just wasting my life in front of a screen. The future with the fucking AI's isn't making it better, why do I even learn to code? I started learning Rust on my own for fun and then I saw that chat gpt could do my job in 5 seconds. The vast majority of the job offers are mostly the coding version of working as a cook in a fast-food restaurant. I don't know if i'm making sense here, but I guess I'm smart enough to see that I'm not that smart and will not get any meaningful and entertaining job, that serves a real project.
I’ve got that self-taught rigor with the lofty goals just as you described… I don’t have goal posts set so right now it feels like I’ll be grinding forever. It’s not all bad, I’m transitioning in my job from lead QA engineer to software engineer, but right now I’m doing both. So I have to coach the newbies while getting coached by the seniors, trying to get this new automation platform off the ground and maintaining the old platform, all while completing 5-10 points per sprint. I can feel a burnout possibly coming but I keep telling myself it’s only temporary. Waiting for the day when I finally “arrive”.
I always knew you were a vim guy, but now its clear you are of the neovim kind. Two burnouts in, the first I fixed the symptoms, that drove me right to the second, 9 years later. Fixing the problem since then.
I really needed to hear this rn, thank you so much for making this video. I was feeling depressed for a while and constantly was having burn out, but I had no idea how I could get out of the situation. I already feel so much better after watching this video. I think I'll binge watch your channel today! P.S. I love Vim and Rust, and I use typescript for my work. I've only red your profile but I think already love your channel
Watching Primagen has really helped my burnout. Part of my burnout was due to hating a lot of popular software engineering fads. It felt like everybody around me was mindlessly accepting every terrible new hyped up idea. I felt like either the world was crazy, or I was crazy. Maybe both. But I feel like Primeagen cuts through the crap.
Great point: There's not just one cause, so there's not just one solution. Software engineering is very much a product of our minds... Which work most effectively when we are motivated. So while "the job" can seem like the problem, it's really only by examining yourself that you can identify real solutions to burn out. So some considerations: - What about doing software engineering appeals to you? What is engaging? This takes some introspection, because the answer to you is different from others (and can change over time). If you just enjoy cranking out the code, that is great to know: because pursuing promotions *could* make you miserable as the expectations shift at different levels. If you enjoy problem solving, then make sure you're in a spot to convert requirements into an implementation plan (sometimes product folks do this in companies instead of software... That can reduce job satisfaction, but if you don't know these things about yourself, it can be hard to recognize why "this particular job" feels more soul crushing than the last). - Those are *very important* points about not defining yourself solely by your job. It's very useful to recognize the "entire you" when solving burn out. Sometimes you can "love what you do" and still get burned out. It's possible that you need to add/adjust something in your life outside of work. You have complete control over hobbies, volunteer work, and relaxation activities... These can provide targeted options at supplementing very specific needs. As pointed out "a vacation" doesn't fix real burn out. So just "doing something" isn't enough: this goes back to introspection about yourself: what do you need that your job is not providing? The book "Drive" offers a framework for motivation in terms of autonomy, mastery and control. Frequently burn out comes when your role is severely lacking in one or more of these areas... Sometimes your job cannot change and you still want to do it: so can you supplement with an activity outside of work by knowing exactly where your job role is missing the mark - Finally, sometimes you just have to change jobs / companies. At the worst burn out point I experienced, I received the best advice: Life is too short to do something you hate. If the problems are bigger than you/your manager can affect, if they are larger than you can supplement with activities outside of work: then you may just be happier somewhere else... And that can be okay. Use this information to think about the kinds of questions you potential employers in interviews so hopefully you can avoid "the same" problems again.
I believe not taking care of yourself is a huge factor too, specially in jobs that demand high concentration and mental effort. Exercising a few days in the week and having a good night of sleep really helps, and we tend to neglect that. I also think this crazy search for the ultra-productivity is a bit exaggerated. We don’t need to fill every single moment of our lives with that perfect podcast that is going to make us the ultimate high-efficiency master, it’s ok to relax from time to time. It might actually make us more productive.
The old 8-hr work days are the dinosaur mgmt from the assembly-line days. It doesn't matter how much time someone spends but the results they deliver. I am a huge fan of WFH and shorter durations in the office. I hate archaic mgmt that are essentially modern day plantation owners. Have to watch over employees to make sure they put their 8 hrs in. Who cares. If someone can deliver amazing results in 4 hrs, that person is a superstar and a much better team member than someone slugging away for 12 hrs. Getting burned out at work myself and ready to kiss corporate world goodbye.
I was just in a similar situation, I was working on legacy C# forms applications with the promise from my job we would do more advanced stuff. It never came ended up quitting 2 weeks ago and got a new job with way more responsibility. This job was soul crushing in the fact I wasn’t challenged enough. Which is in stark contrast to my previous job before that where it was extremely hard and I was getting severely underpaid for what I was doing which was basically a director role while writing 1000+ lines of python per day.
I've been feeling burnout lately. What exasperates it is I work for a friend, and I lead a majority of the projects. We recently started a project that I'm just not that into, which is making things even worse. My plan is to see this project out (1-2 years) and re-assess then.
My last job we used cars to describe burnout. Feeling like a smoking 2003 Honda Odyssey is definitely not the way. And repairing it ain't gonna be cheap or easy. Thanks for making this and for everyone commenting here. I quit my 6-figure security engineer job for a lot of the reasons in the video, getting myself checked out and getting back into the love of programming by going through "The Linux Programming Interface" with C/zig with a previous coworker. Also looking into temp seasonal jobs in the woods/farm/nurseries/nature. I know there are pressures and fears for those looking to take an extended break. But taking the time is worth it. Don't get into a head-on collision with life.
After about ten years in typical software jobs, I can't imagine most would find there is all that much more to explore there. Pretty much every place is some flavor of Object Oriented Agile Scrumming using like ten frameworks stacked on top of each other and falling all over the place. There are a handful of innovative individuals and companies, and you might work for them if you can drop lower in the stack and build everything yourself (parsers, game engines, editors, programming languages, that kind of thing). Thing is, most jobs won't give you that opportunity. You have to do all of that learning yourself, and even if you've proven somewhat competent at it, people hiring for those unique roles still might think you aren't good enough. Interesting jobs are highly competed over. The typical job pays you all that money because it is boring and nobody wants to do it. That's economics. If you stay long enough, you can watch the cycle of burnout and depression happen in those around you. Those at the top know this, and they just factor it into the business calculations. My solution: just don't let yourself get bored, even if you're working a boring job (and chances are you are because economics). If that thing is taking like ten minutes to compile, step away from the computer. Don't be so available on Teams and Slack all day. Answer stuff as it comes in, but don't feel guilt if you can't get to something until the next day. Have tons of projects outside of work that excite you, and try to work on those while all of the other boring b.s. is going on. If you can tend to your mental health, it means you will stay longer which is actually good for the company hiring you to do the boring thing. So even if you tending to your mental health means working fewer hours during the day, that's fine so long as the company is still getting a good ROI on your work (this is highly context-sensitive as a big company can make millions off of just a few lines of code pointed at the right problem). Do high value things in as little time as possible, and save your intellect for projects that excite you.
You'll be lucky to find am interesting job. Most times you are doing some mundane task like adding a new endpoint to a spring boot app, editing some query or building some infrastructure with Terraform. You almost are never going to build spring boot, a database, or a configuration tool like terraform at work. Economics
Well said on all accounts. Good know I share the same sentiment on a lot things, especially identity. Companies don't define us. We are programmers at heart and SWE or anything else is just a nice title that gets some 'oohs' and 'ahhs' at dinner parties. You can see how quickly that can get to us lol.
I just accepted and allowed myself to not be 24/7 motivated, code machine. Don't make it a big deal if you ruined your plan to study after work this week. Skip a week or two, it's okay, you will be fine, you are not burning out, relax.
burn out happens when you don't like what you're doing :( most of this hit true for me. I loved programming for a decade before I changed jobs and went through two years of having any enthusiasm or desire to make things better slowly crushed by a wall of antipathy and 9-5 style software. I had no idea programming could suck so much, it had always been so satisfying before. It kills me when I remember how good code can be, but I've at least hopped on to the next thing and am trying to claw my way back to caring about writing software for others. Might not ever really get there to be honest, it's the loss of agency to clean up garbage that sucks the joy out of software for me. I always feel like I'm stepping on eggshells now. In my heart of hearts I would not care if I lost this job, but I'm just too experienced to actually fail even if I'm mustering, like you said, 15 or 20 percent of my passion each day, just praying for the aliens to end the simulation :P
When I was getting my PhD, I saw a lot of people burn out because they kept thinking "I can do X when I graduate". When I began my program, I started to fall into this trap and was working crazy hours. Then, I realized that a PhD takes ~6 years, and that's way too long to not enjoy life. So, I said "screw it" and decided that if it can't be done in 40hrs a week on average, then it isn't worth having. I think my productivity per week actually went up significantly after that, even though I was working less. I was lucky to have an advisor who was very supportive of this. In fact, she told me that no one can be expected to come up with good ideas if they don't take some time to step back from the grind every now and then to get some perspective. I think there's a lot of truth to that; most of my good ideas don't come to me when I'm sitting at my computer; they come to me when I'm walking my dog.
Sometimes I find it hard to know if I am experiencing burnout or if I'm just actually in the wrong career. There was this Fireship video that hit me when it started with something to the effect of "Realising that you should have been a civil engineer instead so at least you're outside and you make things people look at with interest". It kind of hit me so hard that it's got me doubting to be honest. Does anyone watching Netflix really care that you wrote this slick, clean, performant function? Or are they just going to complain if it ever needs to buffer for a few seconds.
I've been through this stages and at only one company: boredom, excitement, then putting my value on my work, burnout, and then finally balance. But now, they are trying to make a manager out of me
kinda unrelated to this video. I applied what you said about googling less and trying to remember how I've done things before and it's helped a lot. Keep the good advice coming
hio!
Do you remember which video of his that covered that?
and much better - to write your decisions down
I just love this guy, he speaks his heart out!
TRYING OUT HERE
Exactly
facts
tom speaks his heart out better through the true art form that is JDSL. tom is a genius
Yes, Dr. Disrespect does that.
Been burning out for about three years, but couldn't justify it because I wasn't overworked. This video describes it PERFECTLY. It's boredom, stagnation, lack of energy from my peers, and expecting too much happiness from my job. It's changed who I am as a person, affected my relationships outside of work, everything. This video is the-most-on-point on the subject I've ever seen.
I remember asking you this exact question in your stream "how do you maintain your mental health as a software engineer?" and you answered "do not place your hope into your jobs" I didn't really get what you meant by that until I watched this video. Thank you for making this video :)
yayayaya
It was so true for me, when I stopped doing "do not place your hope into your jobs" everything changed for better :)
Not gonna lie, Primeagen is the discovery of my life. We are the same generation, have a similar background and energy.
I can relate to everything you say so much in most of your videos and when not, I learn about myself.
I'm not aware of any other UA-camr delivering content this way and let me tell you, that's extremely refreshing.
There's something about the little words you pick and the tone with which they are delivered.
Pure magic, keep going !
Tytyty! Just trying to speak from the heart.
YES! big difference when there is a real person on the other side of the camera too :) love Primeagen's authentic emotion and energy. also he's a dad like me, he's been through the ups and downs after 10+years in the industry, and most importantly he uses vim
Same. so Same. Insprired to go again.
I am also a former addict, but I did not get a job at Netflix. So i relate to about half of Primeagan.
The way you described how you were bored at your job is exactly how I once felt. At first, I thought that as long as I was coding I would be happy but then I realized that I needed to feel more challenged to be fully engaged.
Was in a pretty similar situation and I just realized that being a software developer wasn't for me. Programming and technology is what I am most passionate about in my life but the monotony of the job and feeling like a cog in the machine just wore me down. Thankfully I moved into management and it's been great for me as I get to apply my love of technology to a job that allows me variety and keeps me constantly changing.
@@jamess.2491 what position exactly you work on now?
You need to do other things - not sit in front of the computer 24/7. That’s where burnout comes from.
@@mithrandirthegrey7644tbh, just coding can be boring if you have people skills. Maybe some have to use them.
This came just at the right time! Thanks for sharing your experience
ua-cam.com/video/dvdL-21o3GM/v-deo.html
no problem :)
Dudes leveling up in his wholesom advice. You're doing an amazing job.
Aside from burnout, your videos provide a lot of insight and it means a lot to me because I am an upcoming freshman in a few months. Thank you for being awesome. You also inspired me to pick up vim and I've been loving it. Hope you're doing well Mister.
yayayaya! tytyty. Glad to hear you are getting ready to do some crushing!
Thank you for this video.
I kinda burned out in February this year and had to really do some soul-searching to figure out what happened.
- I got promoted into a new role I really didn't like and without much support.
- I lost all my tools to remove stress during the pandemic. No gym, no spa, no friends and family.
- I was also running a dnd campaign that was taking its toll on me (It's a lot of preparation) and was competing for my energy with work.
- There were a couple of things I didn't like at my last job that just grew worse over time.
- My house was a mess.
I'm lucky enough that I could afford time-off, figure out my issues and get back on track.
Always keep some $ for bad times people, you never know when you will need it.
ua-cam.com/video/dvdL-21o3GM/v-deo.html
real things right there. Its really funny how sometimes a promotion could be the last thing you ever want.
I've been really burned out three times in my career. Honestly, your videos on vim and learning new things just lights a fire to program. You've already helped me conquer burnout, thanks for all the advice!
I don't have a burnout but I can relate to the external circumstances impacting your work. Seeing the way the war has impacted my family/friends has also impacted my work and is generally a shadow over everything that has happened in the past 4 months. It has changed my productivity. Slowly getting better though.
Still have a lot of fun when coding, especially when I'm just playing around with new things for myself.
Currently fist deep into some new Laravel things and it is just interesting and fun.
Thanks for sharing this. Useful for both juniors/seniors to hear this.
yayaya! them things are real. The external stuff was actually the worst out of the three things i mentioned. it probably did more to affect who i am today than anything else.
Man, I am at a job right now and the things that most make me burnout is: The people, the environment, poor management and communication. I expected things to get better but they didn't, good people who are one of the only things that are still holding me back in this company are leaving, deadlines aren't being met and higher ups are demanding more, so the only thing that is holding me now is the sense of obligation. I was actually thinking of getting a psychiatrist but I need to focus on the main issue and just leave BLAZINGLY FAST when I get the chance. Your advice opened my eyes, Thanks.
I was in a similar situation. Just think about it the other way around: most companies do not really care about you. I recommend preparing to leave and then tentatively speaking up and asking for support / change. If that doesnt work, you are good to go anyway :) Best of luck!
Fixing the symptom instead of the problem. That hit me somewhere very deep in my heart. Thanks man.
Man, so much to say on this one. Going through this process now. I am chasing a CS degree at age 52 and I have to say I am terrified I'm just not addressing my current issues. I do know I do not want to work on cars anymore, the burn out is severe and I am so deep on a current project that It would be such a dick move to walk away but....its just painful. Thanks for addressing a real issue that as you say affects everyone.
keep at it, it gets easier once you graduate - and if you end up quitting school, try to get a programming job anyways.
Thanks for sharing. I'm considering the opposite direction; drowning in a fullstack build, but craving real life living. Hope that you can complete your commitments and take confidence into your tech career!
This spoke to me on such a deep level that I'm so glad I found it just at the right time. I'm currently going through this phase right now and I absolutely hate it. I'm crushed, burned out, suffering from crippling imposter syndrome and thinking about giving up programming altogether. Here's to hoping I can stay the course...
Dude I was exactly in the same situation right now...was considering quitting my current job and think about how to move forward. Best luck to both of us...
Felt that way for years. I think your main point on "not putting validation in your work" speaks numbers. Helped me a lot
Couldn't come at a better time, I've just been spending my last weeks feeling tired and playing video games even when I know there are a lot of things I need to get done
I think it's time to change my perspective and look for the root cause of why I'm feeling like this instead of just trying to distract me from it
This is so relatable! I didn’t understand why anyone would want to leave a nice comfy job but just like you said, many don’t feel challenged enough!
This hit home, I def put too much of my self worth into my career. Thanks for sharing!
yayaya! its a simple thing to do, and i certainly have been guilty.
Duuuude..... I thought I was the only one having similar thoughts🤯. Thanks a lot for sharing.. great fricking content. 🙏🙏
Thanks as always for the relatable videos!
For anyone else out there. The soul sucking force is very accurate. If you’re having a bad work experience you feel tired all the time. It constantly feels like you need another cup of coffee.
It’s hard to spot existential boredom because we tend to pass it off as something is wrong with the code.
In reality you probably need to be coding in a different domain where the problems you are trying to solve are actually interesting. Coding just to code sucks.
yaya
i had burnout for 4 year 😒( starting from my inter got completed ) still having it . you are the one i look up to and you talked about it . thank you .
Can relate, I definitely put too much value to my work when I was early in my career, I performed very well and was happy but then circumstances changed and I became unable to perform so my mental health took a huuuuge dive and hurt performance even more (to around ~10% of the peak level)
Thanks for this amazing video. It REALLY touches on the realities of bieng a professional software engineer. Thanks for this validation and sharing these thoughts.
So much truth I this…
I’ve really been appreciating your wisdom and humor since stumbling across your channel a few months ago. Thanks for not being afraid to talk about real life struggles instead of pretending they don’t exist!
While it won’t prevent burnout, you can mitigate it by being healthy. No processed foods, no refined sugar, no seed oils, exercise, good sleep and get sun light. This advice is universal and highly effective.
100% agree. Eating pretty decent and exercising can cure a huge number of Common woes
Buying into health scares and health crazes is also not good for your mental health. Seed oils are fine if not consumed into caloric surplus
@danielblank9917 agreed, seed oils are fine, huge part of Asian cuisine
Changing perspective and how you approach it is everything. Vacations and breaks ain't gonna fix it. Going to the gym ain't gonna fix it. The problem ain't going nowhere you're just coming back where you left and thinking is this the thing I am getting back to?! Retrain your self to think differently. At burnout time you need to step away from ordinary you and become some extraordinary version of yourself. --- I have no better explanation sorry :)
I watch many videos on your channel. Suddenly, UA-cam suggested this one-such perfect timing. Thanks for your advice.
I have experienced 2 kinds of burnouts.
1) when the project you're in is absolutely boring, or too easy or something that I am not at all passionate about.
2) when my project is ridiculously hard and every feature you build, every bug you solve requires tremendous amount of knowledge than what you're used to consuming on a daily basis. Feels like drinking from a firehose!
but over time, I have personally experienced that you really do get used to the second type of burnout. and not only that, you overcome it entirely and adapt to it! You learn to make those huge leaps required to build that complex feature.
you need the right mindset, supportive group of peers to guide you, to get through the second one.
you need a new project or a new job to get through the first one.
I feel like I'll check this video several times during the next years.
I certainly would in the past, I feel so referenced in many of the cases you expose.
they were inevitable for me. i assumed others may have the same issues.
My god, I absolutely love those videos. I'm a young student currently starting out in IT, and I really do feel myself completely lost in job life. Your videos are a true pleasure to watch and absolutely help me, with so much energy, enthusiasm and interesting editing and content. Thanks a lot for this awesome "offer"!
Read up on "imposter syndrome", just in case it hits you.
It hit me not to long ago, and it wasn't fun. But luckily I had a supportive, understanding, team. If your team ever dismisses your feelings on that note, your team is wrong. Simple as is.
@@NostraDavid2 thanks for the tips! I'll definitely look into that, especially because I'm trying (!) to live more healthy and happy
I went trough the scenario with the vacation. I took 1 or 2 weeks of work, went to Greece beach sun yada yada... then I went back to work and felt exactly the same from day 1. Then I decided to switch the project and now things are looking better. Btw, I spent around 1 year saying that it sucks and I no longer like it, but that long was needed for me to actually get of that boredom/unsatisfaction state I was in. One more thing, the people, both from my team and from the client were amazing, I simply lost any excitement about the project itself, the code base if you want to look at it in this way.
Now I'm facing something similar, but with my hobby pet project, a Rust game engine, and raw devlogs I publish on youtube. Now I'm at a stage where I kind of know what to do, I have an idea of the implementation, but to sit in the chair and do the actual work, is kind of painful and I feel there is no satisfaction even tho the broad idea of creating my own pet game engine is exiting, but at the moment I feel like quitting, but the problem is that I can't figure out why I feel like that.
At least at the work that pays the bills stuff if great at the moment :-D
Great advice. Would also recommend switching roles within the same company if you start to feel burn out and have been in the same role for multiple years.
Have been doing product engineering for 3 years and feel burn out? Maybe give SRE a try. Or just go to a different product team. IMO this is especially useful if the company itself is a great place to work at.
This may be your best video. Advice for the spirit that is rarely heard today.
Jeez man, this one hits pretty hard. I know we've all been there. Sometimes it's hard to recognize it when you're going through it.
Yowza. That piece about "When you're burnt out, a two week vacation won't fix it" perfectly describes my exact previous situation to a T.
It crept up on me. I would take a vacation for a week once a quarter or so just to chill out and recharge, and after a while it just felt less and less effective. I enjoyed the break but within a few days I felt exactly the same. I was constantly counting the days till I would be off again.
The company had some layoffs in mid June, I and a bunch of other people were caught up in it.
I've kept in touch with all of them. Pretty much across the board everyone was feeling absolutely drained for a while and they thoroughly enjoyed the time since the layoff and felt like they could actually breathe finally.
My solution was definitely different (quit my job, spent a year meditating) but the circumstances were also different (0 days off for years, constant crunch-time startup culture, senior-most engineer). I went through a bootcamp and actually did explicitly plan out, in text, what you said: once I make X amount, I can take time off, or once I get X title, I can try having a social life again, etc. That was a mistake.
I literally took 2 weeks off with all my remaining vacations at the end of last year and just like you said. It didn't help a single bit.
Things were just building up (relevant or irrelevant to work), and when you noticed it, you just lose the motivation to even get out of bed and go to work.
Brilliant advice! Gonna bookmark this to constantly remind myself of what should I really focusing on.
i am self taught but the way i combat burnout is instead of working towards an end goal and hanging all my hopes on it, i appreciate the little battles everyday and mentally reward myself for the progress not the end result, this has worked wonders for me and i rarely get burnt out, when i do i know i just need a day of rest and even then i feel like crap during that day because im not going after it, its such a big life changer when you stop saying "i want to get a good paying job at google" and start saying "i will wake up everyday and i will show up and do my best to improve myself no matter how small that improvement is" and during these days where you just dont want to do it you still find it in you to get up and go after it , your brain rewards you for that small achievement, over time this becomes a habit, of getting a win everyday, and before you know it you start landing on these big goals you set earlier but at this point you're all about the daily small wins so you just keep going.
Great video 👍 Can definitely relate, I’ve been on the path to Lead Engineer and feel burnout to the point where I’m starting to wonder if it’s actually worth it and I should dial back & rethink values.
you're a legend prime. love your short takes on youtube!! keep em coming
I've been feeling the exact thing as you described. I put out my 30 day notice period yesterday and the amount of excitement I get from getting different interviews and offers sort of relieves and brings back the energy I lost from burnout. love exploring new things
Thank you for making a video about this, very under-discussed topic and your video was both insightful and containing practical tips!
I've had something similar (but plus health probs too) and up until recently I didn't understand at all what happened and I wasn't able to get back to it. Thank you for your testimony, you've just given me a very complementary analysis and probably helped me a lot !
WTF... You 100% describe what i felt in the past months (and still feeling), i'm currently taking some time off (lucky me that my past self thought to save some money aside for unexpected event). I become aware that i stop caring about ... pretty much everything, become bored... losing interest... and stress about many little thing to finally decide to take some time off to reflect on myself. I'm kind of scared because i kind still like programming and programming oriented stuff but i don't know if i still want to do that. I was the type of guy who eat code xD, i liked it some much that the 8 hours of my job wasn't enough... i quit and started of my company with 2 of my old colleague and one and half year later i have the exact symptoms that you describe.
I needed this thank you, nobody tells you this stuff especially when you enter the industry as a person who codes for fun and for work now.... it can feel like your constantly working but like that pressure is caused by something else when your unhappy at work there is always some other explanation and if your tired of programming even when its kinda your life its not the coding that's killing you its something elsewhere but when you don't see it that way you kinda feel like your broken since something you've had your whole life is making you feel miserable...... so yeah thanks primeagen really needed that pick me up
yeah, people don't tend to talk about a lot of things in our industry. its weird.
God bless you
When ever I feel I am close to be burnout
I immediately go to gym and make sure to make alot of exercise to think better and change my mood and avoid negative thinking
This is a really good heads up. I'm that self taught guy that just got my first big break (had a job in consulting and then at a startup, now I'm at a large medtech company). And it's not as inherently magical as I had hoped (read: it's still a job), but fortunately for me, I have 2 wonderful girls that give me all the fulfillment that I need. As always, thanks for the perspective!
100% agree - placing self value in work is way too fickle. Your value is much greater and deeper than that. (singing Switchfoot "We Were Meant To Live" in my head now)
WOW. I've been struggling to understand my current situation for a long time. I thought I conquered burnout years ago! Didn't realize there could be multiple causes. And I think my current burnout is a combination of all 3.
I'm going to make some changes! New engaging job, realign my values to eliminate hopium addiction, and face external factors head on and stop procrastinating! Thank you!!
This video is absolutely amazing,
if your work is not what you do in your free time then you don't enjoy it enough
If you are not feeling satisfaction and your work feels boring , then you're going to burn out at some point, or maybe you are burnt out already
Damn you hit this out of the park. Said exactly how I’ve been feeling
Great context and viewpoints going on. I've been in a dozen different industries and jobs. For me I know that just coding is such a a pleasurable experience I'm cool with doing it 16 hrs a day. But I know there are things (like express) that just... Egh....
Everything in this. Industry being equal... If you aren't challenged you won't be happy. We are made to thrive on challenge or give up on living.
Hey man that's a great video.. I'm being demotivated day by day for last couple of month's..idk why I'm feeling bad or unsatisfied every single second of my life 😭
I get that, and I've definitely been there. It's really difficult.
What should I do ? I've completed my bachelor degree in computer application now what line i choose?? I have some family financial problems and my parents saying "you should go for work now" ! But i need to learn more 😭 and these thoughts are just blowing my mind every day.
Estos videos vienen en momentos oportunos!! Gracias por el contenido 😊
These vids are too good
Don't know why postponed watching this for such a long time, great no nonesense advice here.
Glad to hear that I’m not alone in feeling this way. In my case I could speak to my line manager and he was able to help me out. Feeling validated that external factors affect everyone and not just me haha
Thank you so much for this video. I am super burned out but felt that a lot of it was from juggling personal life difficulties and should cause me to burn out because my job is boring and simple and doesn’t really matter.
I just took 7 days burn out leave and on day 5 and 6, I sat at the computer and coded most of the day, my own personal project that I made a huge roadmap for. I thought, I’m burned out from having to do too much and now I’ve given myself more to do? Doesn’t make sense. Your video makes it make sense to me.
Thank you for sharing your insight, wisdom, and the pay-it-forward message. Reflection and root cause analysis is always valuable, especially for continual maintenance of one's emotional, mental, and physical health. 💜➕
Reflection, valuable, have you ever coded in Java?
@@tokiomutex4148 Yeah 😑
@@denzilv I can show you the path to Helheim, when you leave take Spring Bpot with you
I go through that shit right now, and I'll definitely take a note regarding not making the job being my life.
Great video! loved the insights, thank you for this!
Keep the good advices coming. Thank you
no problem.
Thanks for talking about this topic and approaching it in a human way. I think you'll help many people (including me), and I would be interested in if you could also provide advice on other meta topics around programming.
I needed this, thank you. I've been having panic attacks lately, lost interest in my school's projects, etc. It's like nothing makes sense anymore. Do I even want to code. I love coding but at the same time I hate coding. Wondering if i'm just wasting my life in front of a screen. The future with the fucking AI's isn't making it better, why do I even learn to code? I started learning Rust on my own for fun and then I saw that chat gpt could do my job in 5 seconds. The vast majority of the job offers are mostly the coding version of working as a cook in a fast-food restaurant. I don't know if i'm making sense here, but I guess I'm smart enough to see that I'm not that smart and will not get any meaningful and entertaining job, that serves a real project.
Wow... I really needed to hear this today. Thank you.
Dude I totally relate to you about being crushed with boredom. School feels that way rn.
I’ve got that self-taught rigor with the lofty goals just as you described… I don’t have goal posts set so right now it feels like I’ll be grinding forever.
It’s not all bad, I’m transitioning in my job from lead QA engineer to software engineer, but right now I’m doing both. So I have to coach the newbies while getting coached by the seniors, trying to get this new automation platform off the ground and maintaining the old platform, all while completing 5-10 points per sprint. I can feel a burnout possibly coming but I keep telling myself it’s only temporary. Waiting for the day when I finally “arrive”.
I always knew you were a vim guy, but now its clear you are of the neovim kind. Two burnouts in, the first I fixed the symptoms, that drove me right to the second, 9 years later. Fixing the problem since then.
Fixing the problem how? Therapy?
Mentor Prime, right on time. Thanks for the words of wisdom!
I really needed to hear this rn, thank you so much for making this video.
I was feeling depressed for a while and constantly was having burn out, but I had no idea how I could get out of the situation.
I already feel so much better after watching this video. I think I'll binge watch your channel today!
P.S. I love Vim and Rust, and I use typescript for my work. I've only red your profile but I think already love your channel
you nailed it, this is why i keep quitting work, i am deriving my worth and identity from my job
One of the best video ever in UA-cam, simple as that!.
Watching Primagen has really helped my burnout. Part of my burnout was due to hating a lot of popular software engineering fads. It felt like everybody around me was mindlessly accepting every terrible new hyped up idea. I felt like either the world was crazy, or I was crazy. Maybe both. But I feel like Primeagen cuts through the crap.
Primeagen reintroduced a fun dimension into my burnt out of code life. Just have to figure out how to get back to normal, be relaxed and have a joy
Great point: There's not just one cause, so there's not just one solution.
Software engineering is very much a product of our minds... Which work most effectively when we are motivated. So while "the job" can seem like the problem, it's really only by examining yourself that you can identify real solutions to burn out. So some considerations:
- What about doing software engineering appeals to you? What is engaging? This takes some introspection, because the answer to you is different from others (and can change over time). If you just enjoy cranking out the code, that is great to know: because pursuing promotions *could* make you miserable as the expectations shift at different levels. If you enjoy problem solving, then make sure you're in a spot to convert requirements into an implementation plan (sometimes product folks do this in companies instead of software... That can reduce job satisfaction, but if you don't know these things about yourself, it can be hard to recognize why "this particular job" feels more soul crushing than the last).
- Those are *very important* points about not defining yourself solely by your job. It's very useful to recognize the "entire you" when solving burn out. Sometimes you can "love what you do" and still get burned out. It's possible that you need to add/adjust something in your life outside of work. You have complete control over hobbies, volunteer work, and relaxation activities... These can provide targeted options at supplementing very specific needs. As pointed out "a vacation" doesn't fix real burn out. So just "doing something" isn't enough: this goes back to introspection about yourself: what do you need that your job is not providing? The book "Drive" offers a framework for motivation in terms of autonomy, mastery and control. Frequently burn out comes when your role is severely lacking in one or more of these areas... Sometimes your job cannot change and you still want to do it: so can you supplement with an activity outside of work by knowing exactly where your job role is missing the mark
- Finally, sometimes you just have to change jobs / companies. At the worst burn out point I experienced, I received the best advice: Life is too short to do something you hate. If the problems are bigger than you/your manager can affect, if they are larger than you can supplement with activities outside of work: then you may just be happier somewhere else... And that can be okay. Use this information to think about the kinds of questions you potential employers in interviews so hopefully you can avoid "the same" problems again.
Real af, much respect G
I believe not taking care of yourself is a huge factor too, specially in jobs that demand high concentration and mental effort. Exercising a few days in the week and having a good night of sleep really helps, and we tend to neglect that.
I also think this crazy search for the ultra-productivity is a bit exaggerated. We don’t need to fill every single moment of our lives with that perfect podcast that is going to make us the ultimate high-efficiency master, it’s ok to relax from time to time. It might actually make us more productive.
The old 8-hr work days are the dinosaur mgmt from the assembly-line days. It doesn't matter how much time someone spends but the results they deliver. I am a huge fan of WFH and shorter durations in the office. I hate archaic mgmt that are essentially modern day plantation owners. Have to watch over employees to make sure they put their 8 hrs in. Who cares. If someone can deliver amazing results in 4 hrs, that person is a superstar and a much better team member than someone slugging away for 12 hrs. Getting burned out at work myself and ready to kiss corporate world goodbye.
I am loving this channel ThePrimeagen
I was just in a similar situation, I was working on legacy C# forms applications with the promise from my job we would do more advanced stuff. It never came ended up quitting 2 weeks ago and got a new job with way more responsibility. This job was soul crushing in the fact I wasn’t challenged enough. Which is in stark contrast to my previous job before that where it was extremely hard and I was getting severely underpaid for what I was doing which was basically a director role while writing 1000+ lines of python per day.
I've been feeling burnout lately. What exasperates it is I work for a friend, and I lead a majority of the projects. We recently started a project that I'm just not that into, which is making things even worse. My plan is to see this project out (1-2 years) and re-assess then.
My last job we used cars to describe burnout.
Feeling like a smoking 2003 Honda Odyssey is definitely not the way. And repairing it ain't gonna be cheap or easy.
Thanks for making this and for everyone commenting here. I quit my 6-figure security engineer job for a lot of the reasons in the video, getting myself checked out and getting back into the love of programming by going through "The Linux Programming Interface" with C/zig with a previous coworker. Also looking into temp seasonal jobs in the woods/farm/nurseries/nature.
I know there are pressures and fears for those looking to take an extended break. But taking the time is worth it.
Don't get into a head-on collision with life.
Thank you so much for this!
you are welcome
Loved this, thanks Primeagen
After about ten years in typical software jobs, I can't imagine most would find there is all that much more to explore there. Pretty much every place is some flavor of Object Oriented Agile Scrumming using like ten frameworks stacked on top of each other and falling all over the place. There are a handful of innovative individuals and companies, and you might work for them if you can drop lower in the stack and build everything yourself (parsers, game engines, editors, programming languages, that kind of thing). Thing is, most jobs won't give you that opportunity. You have to do all of that learning yourself, and even if you've proven somewhat competent at it, people hiring for those unique roles still might think you aren't good enough.
Interesting jobs are highly competed over. The typical job pays you all that money because it is boring and nobody wants to do it. That's economics. If you stay long enough, you can watch the cycle of burnout and depression happen in those around you. Those at the top know this, and they just factor it into the business calculations.
My solution: just don't let yourself get bored, even if you're working a boring job (and chances are you are because economics). If that thing is taking like ten minutes to compile, step away from the computer. Don't be so available on Teams and Slack all day. Answer stuff as it comes in, but don't feel guilt if you can't get to something until the next day. Have tons of projects outside of work that excite you, and try to work on those while all of the other boring b.s. is going on.
If you can tend to your mental health, it means you will stay longer which is actually good for the company hiring you to do the boring thing. So even if you tending to your mental health means working fewer hours during the day, that's fine so long as the company is still getting a good ROI on your work (this is highly context-sensitive as a big company can make millions off of just a few lines of code pointed at the right problem). Do high value things in as little time as possible, and save your intellect for projects that excite you.
This is literally, me I change jobs 3 months I'm bored.
You'll be lucky to find am interesting job. Most times you are doing some mundane task like adding a new endpoint to a spring boot app, editing some query or building some infrastructure with Terraform.
You almost are never going to build spring boot, a database, or a configuration tool like terraform at work. Economics
Well said on all accounts. Good know I share the same sentiment on a lot things, especially identity. Companies don't define us. We are programmers at heart and SWE or anything else is just a nice title that gets some 'oohs' and 'ahhs' at dinner parties. You can see how quickly that can get to us lol.
I just accepted and allowed myself to not be 24/7 motivated, code machine. Don't make it a big deal if you ruined your plan to study after work this week. Skip a week or two, it's okay, you will be fine, you are not burning out, relax.
You're the man. Thanks for sharing!
how this went from deep to "sub plug" to coconut oil got me good
Trying to find better ways of doing the ol sub call out
burn out happens when you don't like what you're doing :(
most of this hit true for me. I loved programming for a decade before I changed jobs and went through two years of having any enthusiasm or desire to make things better slowly crushed by a wall of antipathy and 9-5 style software. I had no idea programming could suck so much, it had always been so satisfying before. It kills me when I remember how good code can be, but I've at least hopped on to the next thing and am trying to claw my way back to caring about writing software for others. Might not ever really get there to be honest, it's the loss of agency to clean up garbage that sucks the joy out of software for me. I always feel like I'm stepping on eggshells now. In my heart of hearts I would not care if I lost this job, but I'm just too experienced to actually fail even if I'm mustering, like you said, 15 or 20 percent of my passion each day, just praying for the aliens to end the simulation :P
How to keep productive / focused would be a good topic for one of these.
Wow, you're just consistently helpful
When I was getting my PhD, I saw a lot of people burn out because they kept thinking "I can do X when I graduate". When I began my program, I started to fall into this trap and was working crazy hours. Then, I realized that a PhD takes ~6 years, and that's way too long to not enjoy life. So, I said "screw it" and decided that if it can't be done in 40hrs a week on average, then it isn't worth having. I think my productivity per week actually went up significantly after that, even though I was working less. I was lucky to have an advisor who was very supportive of this. In fact, she told me that no one can be expected to come up with good ideas if they don't take some time to step back from the grind every now and then to get some perspective. I think there's a lot of truth to that; most of my good ideas don't come to me when I'm sitting at my computer; they come to me when I'm walking my dog.
Sometimes I find it hard to know if I am experiencing burnout or if I'm just actually in the wrong career. There was this Fireship video that hit me when it started with something to the effect of "Realising that you should have been a civil engineer instead so at least you're outside and you make things people look at with interest". It kind of hit me so hard that it's got me doubting to be honest. Does anyone watching Netflix really care that you wrote this slick, clean, performant function? Or are they just going to complain if it ever needs to buffer for a few seconds.
Man I love your videos
Oh snap. Thank you
Thanks god someone is taking about this
I've been through this stages and at only one company: boredom, excitement, then putting my value on my work, burnout, and then finally balance. But now, they are trying to make a manager out of me