Are passionate programmers more prone to burnout than others? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Active steps to prevent a burn-out?

I am a software professional with around 6 years of experience. I was a developer initially but later moved onto consulting roles where I would go to a customer's place and do the solution development there itself.

Last year, despite having fairly good work life balance. I quit my job due to burnout. Even after taking 6 months rest and rejoining back, I seem to have lost all the creative instinct and my energy for work.

My other friends in same profession seem to have avoided burnout( may be due to cynical view of their work, which I don't have).

I seem to have come to belief that being passionate and non-cynical actually puts you into more risk of being burnout. Is this true ?

My Question:

• Are passionate programmers more prone to burnout than others?

Answer 1

I am struggling with burnout right now too, and I haven't quite figured out if it is the death of passion or an early mid-career crisis that will go away soon. I know where you are at.

I am unsure if its linked to having too much passion for me though, I feel like it is a number of things that are all culminating.

• I start a project with an initial boost of enthusiasm, then when I solve the hardest problems or have finished designing and laying out the architecture and design skeleton, I completely lose all motivation to continue. The rest of the work seems so well understood and boilerplate to me that I can't find the motivation to do the easy parts. It is as if I designed it too well. When I am working on a poorly designed application I do not have this problem because even simple user requests and features become challenging to implement.

• I am beginning to get bored with business application development, but my entire career has been working towards being taken seriously as an application developer for business apps. I feel like every project at every company is just a cyclical loop, being stuck reading the same book over and over again. To truly understand who this feels see the movie Groundhog Day.

• I have personal disgust for all business types anymore. I feel that if I didn't have a family to feed I would rather be out protesting the injustice of the world. I can't stand business people anymore because the majority are scummy, self-serving, conniving, self-centered, deluded individuals who would run over my grandmother if it meant they would make a little more money. The worst part of all is that as I progress in my career and becoming more connected with business people and managers, I see myself becoming those very people I despise. I end up making the same decisions and pushing the same policies on others and it upsets me greatly. I feel like I don't know who I am anymore.

• I am more aware now than I was when I was a junior developer. Being more aware of just how wrong everything is quite depressing and in a way I almost wish I still had the blessed ignorance of when I was younger. The world was a much simpler place and I thought I had it all figured out. Life was simpler, I didn't have to worry intensely about ever changing customer needs and management decisions, all I had to worry about was coding the next user story on my task list. I made less money, but I would take a paycut to not have to worry about this anymore. I have so much trouble with the stress.

• I am just flat out tired of customers. They never really know what they want, and the vast majority set you up for failure. That is stressful too because I always wonder if I could have figured out what they really wanted if I had asked them the question differently.

My advice is to remove stress from your life and evaluate what makes you happy. I know this seems generic but if you declutter your life you will find more room to fill with joy and you will rediscover passion again. Further try not to worry about things that are out of your control (and there is a lot). Focus on what you CAN change.

Answer 2

If there's something else that interests you, this may be a good way to find out.

I suspect many programming positions don't give you much chance to feel that you are doing something really worthwhile, or where you face intellectual challenges allowing you to grow.

I'm passionate about programming, and I've been fortunate enough to be stimulated all along.

It helps to work with great people who pull together. Not all programming assignments are fun. Some are downright scary, but if you're in a good group and are appreciated, you can continue to feel good about what you're doing.

Answer 3

I've had various stages of burnout on various projects throughout the years, but I'm still going with a strong passion for programming. The tactics that helped me are pretty dependent on the reasons for burnout; hopefully some of these can help.

• VC funding running out: My first gig was with a VC-funded startup building a fairly complex product with a shrinking niche market. We had no real sales and marketing, so the stress level was very high as our runway dropped under a year, 6 months, 3 months, etc. I was in a long-distance relationship with my now-wife at the time, so I had almost nothing else going on and worked A LOT (typical startup MO - 80-ish hour weeks). I started working a less (still on the order of 50-65 hours/week), more due to circumstances (got married, had a house to work on, etc.) than anything else, and we had to pivot the business (to avoid folding). The pivot provided a welcome change that renewed my energy

• Inheriting a shitty product: After the aforementioned pivot failed, we essentially fell into a contracting agreement (the company was now down to 3 developers) with another company who was bouncing back from near bankruptcy (new CEO came in, we came in, LOTS of cuts in both personnel and facilities expenses). The deal was that we would use our expertise to help stabilize, streamline and scale the current product and then rewrite it on our technology stack. The maintenance of the old product lasted about a year, and it was maddening to work with. I burned out pretty quickly in that year both with the stress from the financial state of the company (and the pressure that exerted on us to succeed with this POS), and the hassle of working in a codebase which was not consistent or well-designed. The solution here? The new product. We started working on the rewrite, and it was fun - greenfield design, lots of discovery/research (new technology) and no real deadlines.

• Nothing is good enough: At some point, that new product needed to come out of dev and into customers' hands. When this stage hit, we received a lot of the 'crunch time' attitude from my boss and the CEO of the partner company. By this point in time, I had moved again (we were all working remotely), and my wife and I had actual social lives. The 'crunch time' attitude manifest itself in a general lack of respect for my time. I'd get a call on a Saturday morning about something in the codebase, and I'd have missed Skype calls at 8 or 9pm. As if having these incidents wasn't enough, I'd actually feel bad because my boss was still working 80+ hours/week (he has a wife and 2 kids), and I wasn't. I felt like I wasn't pulling my weight. I've had to work mentally to remove that block; I now limit myself to 40 hours/week, no matter what is happening. I don't pull all-nighters (for the company), and I don't check e-mail after hours. (also, my boss has cooled off after it was made clear that these communications/expectations were not acceptable). This has gone a LONG way toward reducing the stress induced by this environment, but I think I'm still in a constant state of burnout here. I still have passion about the code I write, but I care as little as possible for the company. I have several side projects that I work on with passion, and those in turn make the 'nine to five' tolerable. I keep my endgame in mind all the time, and that energizes me to do what I must at this stage in the game. I make time for the non-coding things that make me happy, and those also renew my energy toward this place.

Hope this helps. Cheers!

Answer 4

To distill maple_shaft: the things that tamp my enthusiasm are rote tasks and politics. Debugging external services, fixing cosmetic defects or using a poor solution because it will save money are examples of things that sap my emotions dry.

Answer 5

Programming isn't for everyone but that being said there are nearly unlimited options when comes to what can you develop and where you work in this field. Granted job markets aren't all the great but because you aren't fulfilled doing this doesn't necessarily mean its the profession and not where you work and what you're working on.

If you can, take a break, and go do something else and see if you miss it.

Go work for a small non-profit that you believe in developing software for them. Start your own non-profit in something that matters to you. You're only limited because you choose to be. It's one of the major benefits to our chosen careers. In today's world we can be used anywhere, you just have to be creative and driven.

If you have other skills you might want to pursue them.

As to motivation and energy, sleep enough, eat right, and exercise will all help TONS with burnout. Get a non computer hobby, something that makes you move around and do something non screen related.

HTH

Answer 6

Look my personal experience. I'm Public Accountant and Software Developer.

I worked for 6 years like CPA, and at the end I burnout of that career because I don't like, I studied it more for commitment than for pleasure. And now I don't want to know nothing about taxes (well I need to pay them yet), accounting, legal, papers, procedures, etc.

But on the other hand, like Software Developer, I'm a passionate of computing. Every time people calls me to solve a problem, stupid or complex, I enjoy it. I could be about software/web development, an Excel formula, networking, setup something in a smartphone, etc.

I really don't care too much if I work like a computer geek and my employer doesn't pay me a high salary.

At the end, what really matters is that you feel comfortable with what you do everyday. If you like to cook Churros, find a job to cook all Churros that you can. lol

Another experience: My father always wanted to study marine biology, but he studied aeronautical maintenance engineering, after 30 years of working in that area, finally he got tired and decided to work with something to stay near the sea.

Answer 7

Gotta throw in my two cents here. I personally view programming as a sort of obsession or mental illness - in a good way. Some people get cured and go on to do other things in life. It happens. Others can code till oblivion. I've been coding, oh, about 16 years now and I can't imagine suddenly stopping. I mean, I could go into a different tech position (evangelism, management, whatever) but I'd still code like crazy because it's just too much fun.

I'm generally rational about this: I think that if you stop enjoying something, that's it. If I stop enjoying programming or IT in general, you'll see me out the door pretty quick. I wouldn't opt for trying to 'motivate myself back in', so to speak - I think this is just putting more strain on yourself. Find what you enjoy doing and do it - even if requires getting a new qualification or degree to get in the market.

Good luck!