Im learning to become a junior developer and im really glad Chris is doing this youtube thing. Im following a bunch of "dev vloggers" and Chris seems to be the most real and genuine out there. Thank you man!
I have been taking a personal leave for three years, to just relax and spend time with my aging parents. (I have savings from my previous jobs and I'm not married.) Honestly, I sometimes tell myself that life is a journey filled with stresses and responsibilities, and burnouts happen no matter which profession you pick. But being a developer for closed to ten years, I really started to feel burnouts escalate when my responsibilities progressed and ppl expected you to do way more than you can handle on a daily basis. Although I still love the the tech field, I feel that I lost all the enjoyment when all you do is chasing deadlines. To me, losing personal life is not the biggest reason why I decided to take a step back. The life of a true engineer is a lonely road after all. What really hit me was the realization of two most important things in life - *health and family*. You can always get your personal life back to smell the flowers or to pick your hobbies back up. But health and family are not here to stay.
It's a profession that can be very lonely. Ruins marriages, families etc... probably leads to an early death too. Congrats to you for taking care of your family.
We need more people like you sharing these thoughts. I'm 39+ family man as well. You hit all the points. Burn out is real. One thing I that helps me is that I've been mentoring some young adults teaching them how to code and its an outlet for me because I get to speak my mind, talk about my experience in the industry and I don't sugar coat sh* to them. I pick real languages that can help them get a real job NOW, no flavor of the month stuff. I admire the enthusiasm in these younger devs but I try to set real expectations and make it applicable to real world problems they have around them. It helps me get some satisfaction out of this career that I've given 10+ years of my life to. Thanks for this video. Keep them coming.
So practically you have found a new "job", where you do new things, learn new things, and help others learn and build themselves to a desired way, and its giving you satisfaction. Ive been thinking about it, done it a few times, but it always ended up the same way: a new job, something ive never done before, or times when ive hit different grounds in the same sector. Building up again and again.
What makes me happy besides coding is going outside and doing simple activities. - Walking - Nature spots with no technology - Friends & Family time - Reading books Coding is a means to an end. Find other things to do in life.
"I've been programming for the last 35 years, and I've been burned out for the last 30." - Quoted from your video. I've been programming since 1970, and I've burned out a few times. However, I've set myself up as a contractor when the opportunity permits, which has given me far better control of my time. I have been less motivated to do a 40 hour week than to work, say, 20 hours and get other things done with the remaining hours. It's my guess this is probably harder to do now, since programming projects are more focused on SaaS organizations and big enterprise scale operations. I used to live in Frederick, MD (in the 1960's) so I saw a lot of familiar stuff from the DC and Maryland countryside. I made a couple of canoeing trips down the Potomac when I was in summer camp. I like to vegetate in an easy chair just speculating on the meaning of life sometimes. It keeps things in perspective.
It's not a job though. It's a career. A job is flipping burgers today and next year driving a taxi and next year working in landscaping. A programming career is something you build in time and it becomes you.
Programming is a way of life if you earn enough out of it, you have the comfort to take your time when you solve problems, when you have time to enjoy your results and you don't let customers or bosses to stress you out.
I'll tell you one more reason why you get to burnout: You keep pushing and working as hard as you can, and building stuff over and over again... only to be thrown to the trash. To not get paid. You've wasted your time and energy for nothing. If you do that enough times, you automatically develop a repulsion for that thing. You hate it. It's like asking a painter to paint his best paintings, only for you to tear them down at the end. He'll eventually stop doing it. This is why we get to burnout.
Good analogy and very true with software. Which also brings up a good point about people who think code should be perfect. If it's just going to be thrown out in a few years like most software these days, working is better than perfect.
That is the decision I should have made long ago... ended up getting called all the time. Vacation? Sure as long as you will answer the phone. I was willing to do what I could but started to notice the important things I was neglecting due to being tethered to a pc all the time. Life balance should be your top priority.
There's only a limited amount of time that you can be productive, especially if you aren't sleeping well. One of the problems is that people view productivity as "lines of code produced". (That's more a measure of bugs created, since that's proportional to lines of code: look it up, if you don't believe me. A few lines that do the right thing are worth reams of noise. The trouble is that if you try to avoid the Peter Principle and don't "move up", it starts to look as though you're not very competent, and HR droids will ignore your resume'. P.S. I wrote my first lines of code for money in 1966, but now I try to teach others.
This is not just programming. The corporate world in any job is designed to suck everything out of you relentlessly. Sure, running your own business is riskier and more difficult, but there are certain things in the corporate world that lead to burnout that are more than just the main work task. It is piling work on top of work, extra things that aren't related to your actual job, you know, the TPS reports (from the office movie). "Performance reviews", checklists for your checklists, that kind of thing.
Young over-enthusiastic devs that drink all the silicon valley cool-aid are the worst. I constantly wonder how can someone be so smart (to be a developer) and so stupid at the same time to believe all the "let's change the world, but not really I'm just exploiting your labor lies"
Meh. Is it hard to believe that a pessimistic person is going to burn out? I find it odd to shun people for being enthusiastic and excited about their job. This is coming from a pessimist.
It is true. I started running - I HATED running, it's boring, it's slow, it's not easy... but now, after some time running, I am addicted to it. I feel like a free bird when I am running and listening to music. It is a fantastic hobby to have, to be physically active, and running/bike riding is amazing. Since I am more of a closed off person, wouldn't call myself introvert (as it's popular these days), I have my social moments, but in general I like to be more alone; I enjoy peace and quiet. If all you do is code, then it's the same as anything else, it gets boring. I wouldn't want to play a videogame for a whole day, it would just get boring. Gotta take everything in normal quantities, no matter what it is.
A huge key way I avoid burnout is to help others. I started as nothing and lucked out with amazing mentors. People who openly, patiently elevated me as I stumbled and learned. Mentoring really helps me when I feel this way bc it’s exciting to see how far I have come and I always learn more when I teach.
For me burnout comes much faster with toxic work culture, bad management, bad team and stressful deadlines, and role. Working at Amazon I experienced this and ended up in the hospital from stress induced health issues a couple times. But then moved to Cisco and my team is wonderful, we don’t use burn down charts, we set quarterly goals and mostly define our own tickets to accomplish those goals, the team generally has time to research problems and test solutions. I can work 100% remote or in any cisco office. Took 4 mo paternity leave which was amazing. I wake up excited each morning to see my coworkers and help keep the internet a safer place. Been 6 years and very few moments of burnout. Stressful days sometimes but not stressful months or years.
I've been working as a junior developer for the past four months now and I absolutely agree that coding seems as a task and not a learning process. I joined the industry since I wanted to use my brain potential more. I'm not a smart kid and flunked miserably in maths and whatever I did in my life. Don't get me wrong, I gave in my 100% for everything but I never seemed to use logic much. That's why programming intrigued me. After I got my first job, things were so or overwhelming yet exciting and I remember how I used to sit and keep coding for hours where I learned to create different projects. Fast forward to Nov, I am caught in this mental fatigue. Whenever I got comfortable in one project, I've to move on to the next one. No one told me about the fast paced attitude in the industry. I never studied in a college and just did a short course in web development. But, it's been difficult. I'm glad that you have acknowledged this in your video. And right now, I started to exercise and spend time reading the Bible more. Also, I sketch on my phone. The fatigue isn't gone, but it's still something I guess. In the end, I just hope to all the people who are watching this video or reading this comment, please do realise that programming isn't a way of life. Always lean back and enjoy. There's no point competing with people and reaching somewhere quick. Well, this applies to me and it can be different for you. Sorry for the long para, enjoy your day, folks.
It's called "work" for a reason. Nobody promises you you'll be "happy" in your job. I've been developing for 30 years. I've seen generation after generation of young developers come and go. The single biggest reason I see young coders (as opposed to developers) leave the field is because they're not "happy". Development is more diverse and varied now than ever. There is always some new tech to learn. That said, I know well about burnout. I'm self-taught also, and have worked with many developers with masters or even PhDs who didn't want to develop...they wanted to manage. Entitled assholes who will stab you in the back faster than a bit goes through a GPU. You have to decide if you got your degree as a hobby, to climb the corporate ladder, or for the love of problem-solving through software. Only you know this, but everyone else will see it if you try to pretend to be something else. I accepted promotions all the way to CIO once. I was even more miserable. They don't do anything meaningful, and often become clueless to technology except through salespeople. I ended up leaving that company and going to a Lead App Dev role with another company. I've made it clear to my management I have no interest in managing again. This is because I want to keep my hands in the technology, not in becoming yet another pointy-haired boss. Corporate work is tedious, boring, unnecessarily complicated and you have to watch your back. BUT the rewards you get are for your family. Stability is huge. Health Insurance and an HSA are huge. A 401K is huge. The young don't get this, because they've grown up in chaos. Always jumping around and chasing shiny things. If you plan on staying single, fine. Focus on what you want. But if you plan on becoming responsible for a spouse and especially children, you do whatever you have to do to provide for them. Your happiness is not a requirement. This sounds bad to young people, again because they're typically not responsible for anyone but themselves. Once you have kids, you'll get it...that is IF you put them first. Being a professional means you get the job done, to the best of your ability, even when it's not "fun".
"Stability" is not the case anymore in the current industry environment. If you want a raise you move to another company as companies only give matching to inflation thus it's not a raise. It's even taught now to move every 2 or so years as this is the only way to get better pay and access to better projects and a better position. If you want to work till you are 65 then by all means do your usual "stable" job and not get the funding you actually deserve. In my experience it's those that are too old in technology that actually hold back progress as the usual old habits are forced and new ways of thinking is rejected, rather than embraced as ex. Remote work for software engineers as engineers don't need to be in a office if everything they do is online in any case but because of "old" people this becomes a long drawn out problem instead of being fully embraced as there are many financial and intangible benefits. If you can code on a senior level then there is no difference between 5 years and 30 years of experience as the individual that has 30 has a lot of clutter knowledge that is not viable in current changing environment and would rather take the 5 year experienced individual as all his knowledge is current and up to date to what the company requires and probably would also have less problems as compared to a 50 something year old that has high demands. So to end there is only 2 ways things will go down if you are salaried employee, 1. You either climb the corporate ladder aiming for even higher positions every year or 2. You stick in a "comfy" position and never grow as a professional and also never your bank account. Sure there are people that like to keep their hands "dirty" in technology but then you need to ask yourself do you do problem solving to "solve" a problem or to play with technology? Since if it's the former then it would be better fit to go higher in the ladder where you have more responsibility and sway as to what happens in a project, if you are the latter then you will always listen to the former as to what happens in the project and really never actually do what you wanted to do in the project even as a team lead you have to listen to your bosses all the to the top.
Having about 21 years experience under my belt I can say they you are pretty accurate on all your points. However, if money is a driving factor and for me it is. Management is where the money is........plain and simple
Yeah, I've been programming since I was 15 (27 now) and I'm looking to find some remote work and build a homestead and eventually move away from programming professionally. I want a family, a loving one, and I want to spend as much of my time with them as I possibly can. I think the "corporate lifestyle" is just a trap.
I feel the same as you. The real issue is that the profit is not shared equally, that the managers and up take all the value that is created by the engineers and only give them peanuts, yet they create per dollar the most complex products in the world. If the compensation was more equally shared maybe perhaps people would work less or work shorter careers and retire earlier. If you could reach your retirement goals at 40 I believe a lot of people would suck it up knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel, but at the moment how the industry is people have to code till their 60's to get even close to retirement.
I remember watching this video on RUclips called "Do You Want To Have A Life? Or Be Exceptional At One Thing?" that similarly highlights this "I am doing coding and nothing else" mentality we tend to do especially at the beginning of our carreers. Was a real eye opener in terms of finding ways to balance work life. My primary tips of mitigating burnout would be: 1. Work on side projects where the topics really interest you instead of things that you think "You need to know to be more hireable". (I work as a full stack developer, doing video game AI at my spare time) 2. Separate a set amount of money every month for your hobbies and don't feel bad about spending it. You worked hard for it, you earned it, enjoy it. (made me get into trying out things like comic book colouring and tabletop gaming)
I have been doing web design and programming for 20 years. I often felt that I lag behind dedicated developers, because I was doing two occupations at the same time. Progress was slower, but I enjoyed it most of the time. Yes there were occasional burnouts, but nothing this serious and lasting. Now when I watch your video and when I think back, I think that this double occupation actually saved me in a long run: whenever I was bored from design, I switched my primary focus to development, and vice versa. Knowing that I can find job anywhere also helped me, so I never stayed in companies that didn’t respect me. Best thing that happened to me was remote work. With it I became more productive, I found what I like to do, I have no social interactions with toxic people and I feel great now! I am an introvert person, as you might guess and it wasn’t the job that was ruining my life, it was other people. Now I interact only with friends and everyone else are just pixels on the screen. I earn more money than ever before and I have no desire to change that. I am never ever going to work in office again!
Good for you. Sounds that you have made the correct choices. One advise save enough money so that you can semi-retire or change career in your early fifties or slightly later.
Programming is my 4th career and there is more stressful trust me. I was working on oil tankers as an officer in the merchant navy and its seven days a week, 24 hours a day operations. A chief officer can have no sleep on the job as its relentless. One mistake and a whole product line is tainted and can cost the company millions of dollars. Can a web application going offline cost a company millions of dollars? Safety drills constantly. Rough weather that makes it hard to sleep on a ship. Months away from one's loved ones. Majority of jobs do suck in some degree. There are a lot of stories about the medical profession and stress.
Yes an application can go down and cost millions, it's called banks and financial institutions and then cyber security threats ,same goes with company image being tainted by ill run applications ect. Clearly you didn't think your comment through. You think billion dollar companies applications won't cost them astronomical amounts of money if they go down?
As a programmer, I think that programmers sometimes forget that their profession is not that special compared to other professions. (Disclaimer: this observation of mine is limited to texts and videos I have seen on the internet.) Yes, it's different but so is every other profession. Programming is actually quite easy and chill work compared to tanker ships for example. That kind of thinking seems to lead to a reflection of the surrounding world through a weird and unnecessary 'programmer' view.
Maaaaaaaaan. I've been a programmer at the largest employer in the US for the last 3 years. This video spoke to the deepest darkest depths of my soul. Can't tell you how much I relate.
@@alinaqvi2638 Some of the original agile proponents have created the category of "Dark Agile". Some of the same buzzwords and practices, but none of the values.
IT in general is a bad place for burn out. After a break-up I just focussed on nothing but work, I was learning to code in my spare time and barely took any time to relax or socialize. I am still homebound with a severe anxiety disorder, caused by all the stress and neglecting my emotions and human needs. I'm working up slowly towards a life again, but i don't think it will be as an employee. I will probably start my own business as a programmer, and maybe do some devops stuff if theres a market for that. I will also have to start going out more with friends, that is something I somewhat avoided too in the last few years. Burn out is something you don't see coming, and mostly happens to the people who just keep going, no matter what. Wish you the best!
Thanks for keepin' it real... I took 10 years off from coding after I sold my startup that I ran for 7 years. I weighed over 300lbs and was very confused about many aspects of life. I live a very minimalist lifestyle now, and have a better perspective on all these things. You are spot on with this video.
It's literally that as You had said. I'm interesting in IT over 25 years, over 15 years of documented experience. 1,5 year ago I changed (N+1 time) from Web Apps backend development to Data Warehousing (ETL) and hired in small corporation (about 200 people, 2 offices in two countries; now +/- 600 people, 4 offices in 3 countries). My impressions after half a year: the same problems (regardless technology), from over 20 years, repeating constatntly + after so much quick company groth: the same corporate culture problems as in other companies. Many hobbies, to handle this sh**t, and over a year of strugle with my self to not to quit this job (because family to feed and loans). Just going there, doing my stuff, and getting paycheck, trying not to insult anyone with a few words of truth. Even rescuing totally immersed project as one-man-army (my vide experience after 25 years of study lets me to be frontend, backend and database developer at once, this is good for all kind of works on client's office) it didn't make me feel happy. Later, after getting grtulations at company meeting, just shaked hands, get back to desk, worked till 5 p.m. and got back home as usually (just another boring day in office). The only thing that stops me from changing jobs, is that this circus just starts again and again, and I don't feel like going through the same thing over and over again.
@@raccoon.guitar then you never start family. There is always something to be done right in job, it's never ending story. Separate your job from private and family time.
I have been doing contracting work for 25 years. Seen around 40 companies and government organizations from the inside. Companies that need contractors are nearly always badly organized. Only worked for two or three companies that at that moment in time spend their IT-money wisely and were competently managed.
Wow, one of the most real videos on RUclips. I've been at this game for 20 years, but have been fortunate enough to be able to switch between & sometime combine coding and design. Still the constant change can wear you down. Thanks for sharing your candid thoughts.
Hey man, I really needed this video, I didn’t know how to explain it but this video cleared it up for me, I myself have been feeling burned out for the past 2-3 months , I don’t want to touch any code or work on anything and when this happens I feel like I’m falling behind then I get angry with myself and tell myself I need to get back to finishing my projects then I’m back to that mind state again where I just don’t feel like doing it at all, I really Haiti’s state I’m in. But as you have mentioned all these other areas of my life where things are not going well , I believe are playing a part in this
I understand your situation as I have been their myself. I am an old computer hack from Silicon Valley after 37+ years. I live in another state helping out a small company IT stuff. Sometime we fall into the perfect storm in life where divorce, company shutting down, and having to deal with 2 teenage daughter after mom moved out with her boyfriend. I still loved doing my type of hacking but I have other outside hobbies like hiking & biking. Things do change but keep and open mind about anything that comes your way. Take care dude.
@@realchrishawkes you know, somehow i don't find it odd, actually. Because, correct me if im wrong, but I'm pretty sure becoming a RUclipsr is not as easy as it sounds. And I salute you for staying in the industry despite of it. And thank you for sharing your experience and thought on the matter. It really hits home for me. The lack of sleep, neverending sprints, not caring about your success, or failure.. I hope i could find my own "RUclips channel" soon.
@@realchrishawkes I was wondering if anyone else noticed this. All of the developers I know have moved on to other things or are in the process of doing so.
I still remember the first month I was out of college, working full time in the field. My feeling was like "so this is how it's going to be hen... (boredom)". Programming my own little projects can be fun and rewarding as I learn a new technology but in the real world, making apps and websites for corporations, I just find it boring and uninteresting.
I'm 42, I've been trying to get a job programming for the last 8 years, after 4 years of experience. Nobody will hire me. The companies seem to want to ignore 70% of the labor force and overwork the rest... (not considering immigrants...)
As a fellow programmer, I hear you Chris. Burn out is a global phenomena increasing in the recent years. Corporate seem to expect you to learn and do everything at the same time so they can save and get more for their buck. At the beginning, it is fine, even exciting to get more work and achieve more and you start feeling better. However, on the long run, you lose that excitement and you start feeling that nothing ever is enough for them .. This feeling combined with their new expectation of you catches up with you on the long run and you lose this sweet spot of achievement because on the back of your mind, you know it will not be enough and you are caught in this circle. I can not give an advice on that as the solution vary depending on your situation but you have to assess thoroughly positives vs negatives and remember that your health is priceless.
I like exercising , reading books , going out in nature , visiting places, listening to music, decorating my room, playing video games, drawing stuff , eating food , playing with animals , playing sport
Programmer since 1976. Burned out in 1999. The job became that of a virtual bricklayer. I drive for Uber now. It sucks. I frequently hate it. I don't make much money, but I am free. And I am a lot happier. I get up at noon. I work when I want. I answer to nobody. I go to bed at 4am. And if anybody gives me any bullshit, I kick them out of the car. End of problem.
Yes, thats honest. I am working remotely last 7 years. Few years ago I was worrying that certain project has finished and there is nothing more to do at the moment, but now I got used to it. Changing projects is the only way to fight burnout.
@Johnny Five i know it is probably hard for US citizens to find such job, because here in russia you are considered a rich men if you have 10$ per hour, while its probably below poverty line in USA. U
Man, you really hit some good points. I've been developing for 15+ years and keeping up with the ever-changing landscape (at least in webdev) is just crazy. Really appreciate the vid!
I am a new Junior Web Dev, with just 5 months of experience. I'm sitting in the front of laptop from 10 AM until 1-2AM. After 2 weeks, I can say that I'm down. My brain is so tired. I think that I need a break. I wanted to work so hard to be better, but I forgot that I'm only 21 and I can't destroy myself in this way at this age. :D Maybe in the future.
Remember when you first started coding? That’s how it should feel all the time. As a junior, you are excited. Later, as a senior dev, you are squeezed endlessly. It never stops. We fall apart. This is an intense field. The answer. - BALANCE! Love, hobbies, friends.
What are we "squeezed endlessly" by? By management that expects us to live by their daily schedule while still producing code. By juniors who won't spend ten minutes with documentation, but will interrupt the only two-hour block we get to work on code all week to ask a question answered in the first paragraph of the documentation.
I know lot of people dismiss this but Mindfulness Meditation really helped me out of burnout cycle and my anxiety is now non-existent (no meds of any kind). It also helped improve my relationship with people since burnout makes you difficult person to deal with. I've only been doing this since mid this year and the changes of how I feel is like night and day. Only regret I have is not starting this way sooner. My choice is Waking Up app, but any of many other mindfulness apps are good too.
Good video. I've been a professional developer for 28 years. You must be willing to change and learn constantly. If you are looking for a steady job that doesn't change, its the wrong career. The best way to avoid burnout is to do something different every 4-6 years. Learn something new, become really good at it and productive, then move on to something different. It helps to keep the thrill of applying what you've learned alive. I managed a small development team for 12 years. Now I develop web/mobile applications for industrial control and management is 5% of my time. At some point, I'll will mentor my replacement and learn a new skill; probably AR.
I burned me out because I was running from myself and my problems focusing insanely onto my work. Then I started to say no, and rejected good opportunities in my working for the sake to break the cycle. I quit to work in my specialist field and started working in many different things, really not good paid. But then I began to feel like shit and useless. But after sometime I could start see the real world. I started to understand that my real value doesn't come from what I achieve, and what cool projects I'm working on, but I have the right to live, just because I'm. That gave me real peace! It took all the pressure I put onto myself. Now I'm at a point where I can say I want to do this or that just because I want, not because I have to prove something to me or others. I've also learned to be happy with what I have and with little.
Your "old guy" sounds like me. I was a programmer for 35 years, starting in 1975, and ending in 2009 when I was laid off in the recession. I wouldn't say I was burned out for 30 of those 35 years like your "old guy", but I'll tell you one sign that in retrospect told me I was definitely burned out at the end. In the 10 years since the day I was laid off, I have not written, nor even looked at, a single line of code.
@@r-gart Yes, you may ask, and I will tell you. For 2 years, I collected unemployment and made a futile search for another programming job. Remember that back in the recession years, there were federal extensions to UI so, in my state, I was able to collect UI for up to 99 weeks. The 2 years I spent looking for work made it clear to me that age discrimination, although technically illegal, is ubiquitous. There wasn't much interest from prospective employers in an old programmer is his late fifties when most of the other applicants were younger than my 3 children. For the next 7 years, I worked as a seasonal tax preparer as my second career. The pay was a fraction of what I was making as a programmer, but at least I felt I was contributing. I left that job after reading a story about a tax preparer in his late 90's who was still on the job when he died at his desk and I didn't want to be that guy. Plus, it wasn't worth it with the low pay, long hours during tax season, and dealing with clients. For the next year, I did as little as possible, mostly went for bike rides. I'm thankful I made decent money as a programmer and was able to save some money in my retirement account to allow me to do nothing now.
Hi Chris! Love your video, I don't feel alone in my exhaustion anymore. I just got laid of my job as an Magento backend-developer. Even tho I went in to high inte the beginning and worked a lot to prove my worthiness(Results where obvious) and constantly just producing I had to manage my diabetes type 1 also. Combination of sitting 8-17 mon-fri in an office that is essentially an incubator for bacteria and viruses plus stress ,my body just couldn't stand the heat anymore. So the reason for letting me go was because Im on sick leave all the time. The point is that no matter if you have obligations to your kids, a divorce, health issue or anything human for that matter you have to take care of yourself. No one is really going to clap you on the back and thank you. The harsh truth is that business is business, when you don't produce the amount you are expected to do you are not valid anymore. That's why you are correct in finding something more in life and treat your job as a job. Biggest lesson 2020 for sure. I hope you post more videos on how to get out of the burnout, is there an silver lining and is maybe MOB programming the solution to The agile monster smoothie.......
You are exactly right when you say that the more you help others the better you feel. Continue to focus all your efforts towards that and you will be transformed.
I´m really wondering what the best way is to keep being happy in life, not only as a programmer. I think that can only be achieved through one's own attitude. Look at other countries where people have far less stuff, doing crappy jobs and still seem to be happy with life. I think many people in europe (I live in germany) and US/CAN are unhappy and burned out for other reasons than their jobs. People compare to other people on social media who have more, earn more and then feel mediocre. They always focus on the things they don´t have, compare to people who earn more and get unhappy. Now lets focus on the things we have: We get paid for learning new stuff everyday, challenge our minds, make other people happy or make their lifes easier and work from a warm room for a pretty good salary. Why should I become burned out?
Thank you Chris for a great speech! I am super-excited to become iOS-developer now after being totally burned out by almost ten years of sales manager's job. Surprisingly the symptoms were quite the same.=)
BIG RESPECT. Thanks for opening up and being vulnerable online bro. Lots of people were made more comfortable and wiser from this video...even the 22 year old new programmers living at their parents ;). Respecto de Los Angeles esé
I agree with you, this job can drain your brain to the point of being tired mentally when you get home. You feel like doing nothing because you just want to rest your mind. Another thing I would add is dealing with incompetent programmers (colleagues and boss). I write programming standards documents so that we can keep the code simple and understand it easily but they always manage to screw everything up. It's like they don't have the attention span and I always have to fix their mistakes. One more and I'll stop venting. When my team makes installations on a client's server and leave their "garbage" (setup files, backups, backups of backups and what not) everywhere on the machine. I find that unprofessional, messy and it leads to more mistakes. They install the wrong version or forget to close a database and the client works for days or weeks on two different databases and loses data! Financial data! They look at me like I'm the unreasonable one because I'm nagging them and angry at them for this. I'm burned out. I'm at a crossroad in my life. I don't know if I should start my own company, work elsewhere or just change field. It brings good money and I need it to finish paying up my debts and for my future goals. So much anxiety and not knowing what to do to keep my sanity. I'm just tired or maybe the right word like you said is fatigued. Thanks for the video and reminding us that we're not alone in this!
Have you thought maybe perhaps it's the way you communicate that might be the issue? Everyone has to learn from somewhere and teams are filled with people at varying stages of learning, some years ahead of others. So it would be rather unfair to expect someone that is a junior to have the same standards of coding as a senior with 10+ years experience. Just keep in mind there is a reason why there is the distinction of junior and senior as to indicate whom might need help or guidance in a team. If you get angry in a professional setting this indicates that you aren't communicating properly and have false expectations that aren't being met. At the end of the day keep in mind you too were once that "incompetent" person that you are referring to, as I have not ever met an engineer that does not make "stupid" mistakes.
It seems to me that the underlying issues here are things like: life goals, happiness, self-realization, life balance etc. You can get burned out on anything really, unless you absolutely 100% love it (and everything/most things around it). I am not a programmer (but I am actually learning to become one) but from listening to many people from this industry, reading forums etc I gathered that it seems like a career like many others. Nowadays life is just like that, stress will get to you sooner or later. That is why it is crucial you structure your life well (self-awareness is key!) and try to stick to your own rules. But in the end nobody can do it perfectly, it is always a battle. I wish you well, your channel seems interesting and I like your honesty and directness.
I'm 21 and I feel this lmao, only bc of programming on my own projects every day for years, not even done with university yet. Balancing coding out with (social!) hobbies and exercise is key
Agile - is literally hell for any developer. It is just a matter of time when you are gonna burn out. It strips all the fun out of programming, making you a cog in a constant stressful grind. Fuck Agile
You only mentioned it briefly, but I thought you made an important point about how coding inevitably changes the structure of your brain. I've found that as the years have gone by it feels as though my thought process has become much more robotic and less empathetic -- and as a result, more pessimistic. Luckily coding has provided me with sufficient income so that I don't have to worry about housing, food, and most other basic needs. This has been an incredible gift as of late because I've come to realize that now I finally have time every day to just sit and think and rediscover the parts of me that have been killed off by coding and "being an adult".
Great video and well documented thoughts. 👍 The burnout is real and some will survive. But at what cost? Life is short. I've been on the web dev + design grind for 24 years and have been burned out off and on for about 10 of those years... Having other passions / activities is a must. But being able to balance everything in life is the biggest MUST. It's cool while you are young and single but as a married person with kids it's so much more difficult. I've been slowly moving away from it and taking up other things to expand my technology skill set even further. It's crazy because the industry seems to have a tractor beam on my ass, everytime I say Im done with it, I can't seem to shake it. My hopes are that coding will end up being a hobby in my old age. Cheers to all the youth out there taking this industry on! 🍻👏
Set a deadline. Meet the deadline. Repeat. Forever. Deadlines are the main issue for me. It makes it harder to feel truly satisfied with your work, leaves less time for experimenting with new stuff. Yeah, it takes away the joy basically.
I am a veteran developer coding since the early 1980's. I suffered burnout a number of times during my career, but then I got wise and discovered the secret of not burning out. Nowadays I happily write open source code for free and enjoy it as much as when I was in my youth. If you would like to know my secret, write to me!
Good advice at the end. Several years back, I actually had the pleasure of getting downsized while I was going through a divorce. It was tough, but I have found that having an occasional/seasonal part-time job that is customer facing like retail or restaurant can help, so you get a chance to do something far-removed from coding while not risking a wholesale career change.
Sunday morning, made myself a cup of coffee and wanted to check out some tutorials on GraphQL and k8s, but RUclips suggested this video. Watched it and recalled why I'm really tired of relearning technology behind every hype word out there only because local market need a workforce to make another CRUD MVP app with something that is new and shiny. 6 years in the industry and now more often that before I recall that I wanted to be designer back in my university years. Still not sure I've made a right choice. Good luck to you Chris!
It is better to work as a remote freelancer than in a corporate office. You do not have the conflicts, the commute and they have to pay you for every hour you work. No more working 70 hours and getting paid for 40.
I remember going trough my divorce, and not being able to code the project I was on. I told my manager and he gave me an other smaller programming job. Glad I told him and not waited until the project went down the drain.
Wow! Those video clips of the liberty thingy are strangely perfect with your narration! You're dead-on with the symptoms. Thank you so much. And it's not just the programming industry. Try film/tv for 40 years... writing, editing, directing...stuff so many young people are dying to get into ... and unless you're a mega star, it's just as much a constant crisis, bs, and the income/time less then slave wages. And owning you're own business can be just as much a burnout. Gave it all up and went into bartending. Just show up, pour and clean, be happy. Never loved a job so much! :)
i just turned 20 and currently have school, work and my own project, coding for about 12 hours a day on average including the weekends, i'm also starting to feel mildly burned out even though i just started with my fist coding job 1.5 year ago, i should probably also stop spending this much time on my own project but that's quite hard, although i do still like coding when i am working on my own project, at work and school i really feel like there is just a lack of room for me to work the way i like to and it all just to be finished quick, not done properly with enough time to research stuff and actually work on making something i'm happy about, and then later on needing to fix it again because now we want something else but the first quick and dirty solution doesn't support that, so now we need another quick and dirty solution. Luckily i'm going to buy my first project car in the beginning of next year so i'll hopefully have something of a distraction from then on, helping to keep me sane in a world of way to short deadlines
I'm not yet a developer professionally, but I will always remember what one of my old coworkers tried really hard to bury into my head, lol. I don't remember her exact words, but she said that if I remember anything she told me, it's that no matter what I NEED to have something outside of work. And not something I even need to worry at being good at. Music, painting, baking, it can be whatever. But something else, just for me. "Don't just do work." This video feels like exactly that advice.
@@realchrishawkes Yeah, no easy way out, especially in my country. So for myself, I decided to work through it for as long as I can, to have savings when I totally wouldn't want to do it anymore, and focus on my hobbies. Also, leaving work in the office, this includes learning, and avoiding overtimes helps.
I run a translation office because of my "Linguistics background" and I have recently started working in the IT sector, especially to translate IT documents from one language to another.. My next career move is to work as a junior developer for a couple of years until i can sell my services as a consultant or outside company merging it with my current "linguistics background". I will be one of a kind in my field... Generally, as a rule of thumb.. if you spend more than a couple years in one company, you're a sucker! Your goal should be to use companies the way they use you.. get their free training and know-how and then do consulting or be self-employed.. I have been self employed for half a decade now and Im really scared of going back to an 8 to 4pm job..
I've been a Programmer/Analyst or Full Stack Developer for some 28 years now. Like you getting fed up is not necessarily about the work you do. The gatekeepers want you to take tests and prove yourself over and over again and the clients that just flat out lie about the work they bring you in for. I'm talking about contract work. I'm going to do it for another 10 years because retirement would leave me poor and bored. One thing I did was to set a 10 year plan for myself to get work-life balance until I retire. I turn away calls every day if the recruiters have clients that don't fit into my plan. So I'm taking care of me now. I am just accepting the outcome of my decision. Money isn't the most important thing anymore. You meet with a lot of resistance out there. New contracting companies call and automatically begin to ask you to lower your expected rate. They don't want to accept a recognized GSA tax break on splitting your rate into per diem for travel expenses and taxable income. 'We don't do that' they say. I say 'Why don't you do that? You don't pay any more money to me but that helps me separate expense overhead from taxable income. Don't you care about my well being?' Then i get dead silence because the recruiter is sticking to a script working from a country half way round the world. There are just so many jerks to deal with no wonder we get burnt out. But its not necessary. Enough people have to turn away from a broken system. Let it collapse on itself and join a reemerged and smarter system.
As someone of equivalent age and experience, what depresses me is the sense that everyone my age and older is now so preoccupied with their spouses and their children that they no longer share my continuing and ever-growing passion. While they all look bored and burned out, convinced that they've learned everything worth learning (and being utterly wrong about that fact), I keep discovering new things to learn every single day. Quite ironic, I think.
This was a really good video...What I personally used to help me was trying to gym at least 1 hour a day everyday so I could clear my head and focus on myself
Stumbled upon this video and one major thing you mentioned is that your life should not be defined by just where you work. There are some weekends I try to hang with my coworkers and all they're talking about is the PR that's opened or about to be open in the next sprint; I'm sitting there like are these guys serious, it's the freaking weekend (Drink a beer, chill out; go to a beach; go sky-diving) do something!! other than talking code all the time.
Totally agree with all the points discussed in the video. Having some sort of non-technical hobbies/activities in the daily routine really does help in averting these situations.
My recipe is a constant focus on the balance aspect. I work remotely and in what we call "smart working" (at least here in Italy). That makes me gain a lot of time for me, and my passions besides coding. I've been working as a web dev from 20 years now, and I keep on struggling for have time to study, cover new aspects (for instance at the moment I am more into teaching then actively developing) and avoid burning out. For instance as a freelance dev/teacher (6 years and a half) I try to work no more then 5/6 hour per day. I have less money, but I am happier. You never have a safe and sound position, but it worked so far. Will see what future is gonna bring.
I know one guy who is working in IT for about two decades who managed quite the career in databases and business intelligence. I chat with him now and then because I want to start with programming and he always tells me that I shouldn't get too fixated with programming. Most guys in this business do the coding job only for as long as necessary and then move on to a consultant job or whatever and that it should be my goal too. It is easier money and I imagine it is not fun to be stucked into a room full of nerds every day unless you are a nerd yourself, staring at code, getting bad posture and all the reasons Chris mentioned here. And being a front-end developer isn't really paid that well in the EU or UK either when I hear Chris that you make >100k as an average self-taught developer in the US. Anyway my friend's advice often is to instead of getting too much into making websites I would be better off learning a ERP system like Odoo and help small and middle companies to digitalize their business processes. I guess he is right but I don't see myself there as I don't have background in programming or business. I think making websites might be considered the lower end in this digital era right now but it's a much more approachable step to me. But then, I also fear that later I will have a hard time to progress out of a coding job. @Chris I hear your frustrations being stuck as a senior developer. I wonder if you have applied for consultant jobs outside you company. According to my friend after a couple of years not having a degree becomes less important.
I live with my parents and I got burned out too - worked like idiot for 12h a day, then couldn't/didn't wanted to program for 1.5 years. Changing field & learning new skills helped me a lot - I regained that child-like curiousity when it comes to coding. I went from video game dev (~7 years) to robotics dev. Landed much better job now too. :) Still live with my parents tho, but am planning to move out.
I'm glad I found this video. I've been a developer since 2004, and at around 2009 I started to feel the symtoms. Lack of motivation, tired and got irritated alot. I'm stil a developer and it has been ups and downs but mostly downs. I know I'm the only one who can change it, but it's hard when you get paid alot. You kind of create a life style based on your salary. However, I have given me one more year to save up and then take some time off. Maybe for a year or forever. Time will tell.
If you really didn't liked it anymore after five years. Save a lot of money and retire or if that is not possible try to change careers now you are still relatively young.
I quit my almost 10 year office programming job because of burn out. All things mentioned here are real and true. So glad to see that its real for so many people so I'm not crazy I think :). And BTW looking to create my own company.... Maybe this is a new way to get even more burned out, we'll see in a decade...
Glad I found this video. Makes me think I'm not crazy at all. I thought I was the only who thinks about hating my current work place, my boss (who is not capable of leading a team at all), the IDE I'm looking at. I'm glad I have a few hobbies that has been helping me cope up with this and now I understand why I feel the I feel. Keep it up mate.
I don't know... I've been a programmer for 16 years, working in NYC... I combat burnout by helping others. Showing them a better way of doing things or getting them out of a pickle. That in turn, motivates me to keep my game fresh, and learn new things. I love seeing my co-workers eyes open wide, when I show them how the new stuff makes our lives simpler. Hobbies are a must outside of work, but I consider my job one of my hobbies. The moment it becomes a shore, it will drain you. By the way Chris... Keep up the videos, good stuff.
I have since left the Software Development industry after dedicating years of my life trying to get into this sector of the IT industry. I left because there tends to be a huge amount of toxic feminism and left leaning political ideologies, and this tends to be the basis for the company culture at most IT firms these days. It's a hostile and toxic environment for red pilled men and I personally want nothing to do with it. Best of luck to all of those who are still on the grind, make sure however you are making yourself your own mental point of origin and you're doing exactly what's right for you. I'm much happier in my current situation and I'd encourage some of you to explore the possibility of working on something else.
Tnx for this vlog. The most important thing, as you said, is not to define your self esteem from programming alone! I work in this industry for more than 20 years now. There are projects doomed to fail or project methologies you don't like. You have to find a way to survive.
Thanks for your honesty Chris. In my experience this is a more common phenomena and hits more people than only those who work in IT. I believe that we as human beings always need to keep developing ourselves to feel good about ourselves and this may be anything from learning new skills (that may not have anything to do with our daily jobs), to spiritual development. I thank you for your videos and hope you will find the insight that leads you to more joy in your life. At the end we are all human beings and should not identify ourselves only by what we do to earn a living.
🎓 If you're learning web development, check out my latest courses on my website @ codehawke.com/ 🎓
Im learning to become a junior developer and im really glad Chris is doing this youtube thing. Im following a bunch of "dev vloggers" and Chris seems to be the most real and genuine out there. Thank you man!
Look at also TraversyMedia.
The only high performance dev for a long period of time is the part-time dev.
aka.....Linus Torvalds and Greg Hartman.
I have been taking a personal leave for three years, to just relax and spend time with my aging parents. (I have savings from my previous jobs and I'm not married.)
Honestly, I sometimes tell myself that life is a journey filled with stresses and responsibilities, and burnouts happen no matter which profession you pick. But being a developer for closed to ten years, I really started to feel burnouts escalate when my responsibilities progressed and ppl expected you to do way more than you can handle on a daily basis. Although I still love the the tech field, I feel that I lost all the enjoyment when all you do is chasing deadlines.
To me, losing personal life is not the biggest reason why I decided to take a step back. The life of a true engineer is a lonely road after all. What really hit me was the realization of two most important things in life - *health and family*. You can always get your personal life back to smell the flowers or to pick your hobbies back up. But health and family are not here to stay.
It's a profession that can be very lonely. Ruins marriages, families etc... probably leads to an early death too. Congrats to you for taking care of your family.
We need more people like you sharing these thoughts. I'm 39+ family man as well. You hit all the points. Burn out is real. One thing I that helps me is that I've been mentoring some young adults teaching them how to code and its an outlet for me because I get to speak my mind, talk about my experience in the industry and I don't sugar coat sh* to them. I pick real languages that can help them get a real job NOW, no flavor of the month stuff. I admire the enthusiasm in these younger devs but I try to set real expectations and make it applicable to real world problems they have around them. It helps me get some satisfaction out of this career that I've given 10+ years of my life to. Thanks for this video. Keep them coming.
How do you balancing the relationship life while Coding ,coding Wants 12hours a day
It's Good Serving The Youngers Web Devs Because Our World Need More programmers
Taking advantage of other people to overcome your mental issues is immoral. You should be getting a therapist instead and leave education to pros.
So practically you have found a new "job", where you do new things, learn new things, and help others learn and build themselves to a desired way, and its giving you satisfaction. Ive been thinking about it, done it a few times, but it always ended up the same way: a new job, something ive never done before, or times when ive hit different grounds in the same sector.
Building up again and again.
What makes me happy besides coding is going outside and doing simple activities.
- Walking
- Nature spots with no technology
- Friends & Family time
- Reading books
Coding is a means to an end. Find other things to do in life.
Nice advice.
"I've been programming for the last 35 years, and I've been burned out for the last 30." - Quoted from your video.
I've been programming since 1970, and I've burned out a few times. However, I've set myself up as a contractor when the opportunity permits, which has given me far better control of my time. I have been less motivated to do a 40 hour week than to work, say, 20 hours and get other things done with the remaining hours.
It's my guess this is probably harder to do now, since programming projects are more focused on SaaS organizations and big enterprise scale operations.
I used to live in Frederick, MD (in the 1960's) so I saw a lot of familiar stuff from the DC and Maryland countryside. I made a couple of canoeing trips down the Potomac when I was in summer camp.
I like to vegetate in an easy chair just speculating on the meaning of life sometimes. It keeps things in perspective.
Programming is a job. We are more than our jobs.
100%. I'm guilty of losing sight of that at times though.
It's not a job though. It's a career. A job is flipping burgers today and next year driving a taxi and next year working in landscaping. A programming career is something you build in time and it becomes you.
@@capcadoi ruclips.net/video/Zy4a8T45GiQ/видео.html Really?
@@capcadoi This is where your troubles begin if you do not treat your job like a job.
Programming is a way of life if you earn enough out of it, you have the comfort to take your time when you solve problems, when you have time to enjoy your results and you don't let customers or bosses to stress you out.
I'll tell you one more reason why you get to burnout: You keep pushing and working as hard as you can, and building stuff over and over again... only to be thrown to the trash. To not get paid. You've wasted your time and energy for nothing. If you do that enough times, you automatically develop a repulsion for that thing. You hate it. It's like asking a painter to paint his best paintings, only for you to tear them down at the end. He'll eventually stop doing it. This is why we get to burnout.
Good analogy and very true with software. Which also brings up a good point about people who think code should be perfect. If it's just going to be thrown out in a few years like most software these days, working is better than perfect.
@@realchrishawkes What does that tell you about meaning?
I would rather stay a junior dev with a great family life, friends and hobbies than a senior dev that only works 24/7.
You're smarter than I. This should be the mindset of this industry.
You got it right!
That is the decision I should have made long ago... ended up getting called all the time. Vacation? Sure as long as you will answer the phone. I was willing to do what I could but started to notice the important things I was neglecting due to being tethered to a pc all the time. Life balance should be your top priority.
I would rather work as a senior for half the year and relaxing the other half with the income from the first half.
There's only a limited amount of time that you can be productive, especially if you aren't sleeping well.
One of the problems is that people view productivity as "lines of code produced". (That's more a measure of bugs created, since that's proportional to lines of code: look it up, if you don't believe me. A few lines that do the right thing are worth reams of noise.
The trouble is that if you try to avoid the Peter Principle and don't "move up", it starts to look as though you're not very competent, and HR droids will ignore your resume'.
P.S. I wrote my first lines of code for money in 1966, but now I try to teach others.
This is not just programming. The corporate world in any job is designed to suck everything out of you relentlessly. Sure, running your own business is riskier and more difficult, but there are certain things in the corporate world that lead to burnout that are more than just the main work task. It is piling work on top of work, extra things that aren't related to your actual job, you know, the TPS reports (from the office movie). "Performance reviews", checklists for your checklists, that kind of thing.
Young over-enthusiastic devs that drink all the silicon valley cool-aid are the worst. I constantly wonder how can someone be so smart (to be a developer) and so stupid at the same time to believe all the "let's change the world, but not really I'm just exploiting your labor lies"
True idiots for sure.
Meh. Is it hard to believe that a pessimistic person is going to burn out? I find it odd to shun people for being enthusiastic and excited about their job. This is coming from a pessimist.
I found myself saying "Yep" a lot throughout this video.
It is true. I started running - I HATED running, it's boring, it's slow, it's not easy... but now, after some time running, I am addicted to it. I feel like a free bird when I am running and listening to music. It is a fantastic hobby to have, to be physically active, and running/bike riding is amazing. Since I am more of a closed off person, wouldn't call myself introvert (as it's popular these days), I have my social moments, but in general I like to be more alone; I enjoy peace and quiet. If all you do is code, then it's the same as anything else, it gets boring. I wouldn't want to play a videogame for a whole day, it would just get boring.
Gotta take everything in normal quantities, no matter what it is.
Great advice thanks
A huge key way I avoid burnout is to help others. I started as nothing and lucked out with amazing mentors. People who openly, patiently elevated me as I stumbled and learned. Mentoring really helps me when I feel this way bc it’s exciting to see how far I have come and I always learn more when I teach.
For me burnout comes much faster with toxic work culture, bad management, bad team and stressful deadlines, and role.
Working at Amazon I experienced this and ended up in the hospital from stress induced health issues a couple times. But then moved to Cisco and my team is wonderful, we don’t use burn down charts, we set quarterly goals and mostly define our own tickets to accomplish those goals, the team generally has time to research problems and test solutions. I can work 100% remote or in any cisco office. Took 4 mo paternity leave which was amazing. I wake up excited each morning to see my coworkers and help keep the internet a safer place. Been 6 years and very few moments of burnout. Stressful days sometimes but not stressful months or years.
I've been working as a junior developer for the past four months now and I absolutely agree that coding seems as a task and not a learning process. I joined the industry since I wanted to use my brain potential more. I'm not a smart kid and flunked miserably in maths and whatever I did in my life. Don't get me wrong, I gave in my 100% for everything but I never seemed to use logic much. That's why programming intrigued me. After I got my first job, things were so or overwhelming yet exciting and I remember how I used to sit and keep coding for hours where I learned to create different projects. Fast forward to Nov, I am caught in this mental fatigue. Whenever I got comfortable in one project, I've to move on to the next one. No one told me about the fast paced attitude in the industry. I never studied in a college and just did a short course in web development. But, it's been difficult. I'm glad that you have acknowledged this in your video. And right now, I started to exercise and spend time reading the Bible more. Also, I sketch on my phone. The fatigue isn't gone, but it's still something I guess. In the end, I just hope to all the people who are watching this video or reading this comment, please do realise that programming isn't a way of life. Always lean back and enjoy. There's no point competing with people and reaching somewhere quick. Well, this applies to me and it can be different for you.
Sorry for the long para, enjoy your day, folks.
It's called "work" for a reason. Nobody promises you you'll be "happy" in your job. I've been developing for 30 years. I've seen generation after generation of young developers come and go. The single biggest reason I see young coders (as opposed to developers) leave the field is because they're not "happy". Development is more diverse and varied now than ever. There is always some new tech to learn.
That said, I know well about burnout. I'm self-taught also, and have worked with many developers with masters or even PhDs who didn't want to develop...they wanted to manage. Entitled assholes who will stab you in the back faster than a bit goes through a GPU. You have to decide if you got your degree as a hobby, to climb the corporate ladder, or for the love of problem-solving through software. Only you know this, but everyone else will see it if you try to pretend to be something else.
I accepted promotions all the way to CIO once. I was even more miserable. They don't do anything meaningful, and often become clueless to technology except through salespeople. I ended up leaving that company and going to a Lead App Dev role with another company. I've made it clear to my management I have no interest in managing again. This is because I want to keep my hands in the technology, not in becoming yet another pointy-haired boss.
Corporate work is tedious, boring, unnecessarily complicated and you have to watch your back. BUT the rewards you get are for your family. Stability is huge. Health Insurance and an HSA are huge. A 401K is huge. The young don't get this, because they've grown up in chaos. Always jumping around and chasing shiny things. If you plan on staying single, fine. Focus on what you want. But if you plan on becoming responsible for a spouse and especially children, you do whatever you have to do to provide for them. Your happiness is not a requirement. This sounds bad to young people, again because they're typically not responsible for anyone but themselves. Once you have kids, you'll get it...that is IF you put them first. Being a professional means you get the job done, to the best of your ability, even when it's not "fun".
Very wise comment. I agree with you. Thanks for sharing!
"Stability" is not the case anymore in the current industry environment. If you want a raise you move to another company as companies only give matching to inflation thus it's not a raise. It's even taught now to move every 2 or so years as this is the only way to get better pay and access to better projects and a better position. If you want to work till you are 65 then by all means do your usual "stable" job and not get the funding you actually deserve. In my experience it's those that are too old in technology that actually hold back progress as the usual old habits are forced and new ways of thinking is rejected, rather than embraced as ex. Remote work for software engineers as engineers don't need to be in a office if everything they do is online in any case but because of "old" people this becomes a long drawn out problem instead of being fully embraced as there are many financial and intangible benefits.
If you can code on a senior level then there is no difference between 5 years and 30 years of experience as the individual that has 30 has a lot of clutter knowledge that is not viable in current changing environment and would rather take the 5 year experienced individual as all his knowledge is current and up to date to what the company requires and probably would also have less problems as compared to a 50 something year old that has high demands.
So to end there is only 2 ways things will go down if you are salaried employee, 1. You either climb the corporate ladder aiming for even higher positions every year or 2. You stick in a "comfy" position and never grow as a professional and also never your bank account. Sure there are people that like to keep their hands "dirty" in technology but then you need to ask yourself do you do problem solving to "solve" a problem or to play with technology? Since if it's the former then it would be better fit to go higher in the ladder where you have more responsibility and sway as to what happens in a project, if you are the latter then you will always listen to the former as to what happens in the project and really never actually do what you wanted to do in the project even as a team lead you have to listen to your bosses all the to the top.
Having about 21 years experience under my belt I can say they you are pretty accurate on all your points. However, if money is a driving factor and for me it is. Management is where the money is........plain and simple
Yeah, I've been programming since I was 15 (27 now) and I'm looking to find some remote work and build a homestead and eventually move away from programming professionally. I want a family, a loving one, and I want to spend as much of my time with them as I possibly can. I think the "corporate lifestyle" is just a trap.
I feel the same as you. The real issue is that the profit is not shared equally, that the managers and up take all the value that is created by the engineers and only give them peanuts, yet they create per dollar the most complex products in the world. If the compensation was more equally shared maybe perhaps people would work less or work shorter careers and retire earlier. If you could reach your retirement goals at 40 I believe a lot of people would suck it up knowing there is light at the end of the tunnel, but at the moment how the industry is people have to code till their 60's to get even close to retirement.
I remember watching this video on RUclips called "Do You Want To Have A Life? Or Be Exceptional At One Thing?" that similarly highlights this "I am doing coding and nothing else" mentality we tend to do especially at the beginning of our carreers. Was a real eye opener in terms of finding ways to balance work life.
My primary tips of mitigating burnout would be:
1. Work on side projects where the topics really interest you instead of things that you think "You need to know to be more hireable". (I work as a full stack developer, doing video game AI at my spare time)
2. Separate a set amount of money every month for your hobbies and don't feel bad about spending it. You worked hard for it, you earned it, enjoy it. (made me get into trying out things like comic book colouring and tabletop gaming)
I have been doing web design and programming for 20 years. I often felt that I lag behind dedicated developers, because I was doing two occupations at the same time. Progress was slower, but I enjoyed it most of the time. Yes there were occasional burnouts, but nothing this serious and lasting. Now when I watch your video and when I think back, I think that this double occupation actually saved me in a long run: whenever I was bored from design, I switched my primary focus to development, and vice versa. Knowing that I can find job anywhere also helped me, so I never stayed in companies that didn’t respect me.
Best thing that happened to me was remote work. With it I became more productive, I found what I like to do, I have no social interactions with toxic people and I feel great now!
I am an introvert person, as you might guess and it wasn’t the job that was ruining my life, it was other people. Now I interact only with friends and everyone else are just pixels on the screen. I earn more money than ever before and I have no desire to change that. I am never ever going to work in office again!
Good for you. Sounds that you have made the correct choices. One advise save enough money so that you can semi-retire or change career in your early fifties or slightly later.
Programming is my 4th career and there is more stressful trust me. I was working on oil tankers as an officer in the merchant navy and its seven days a week, 24 hours a day operations. A chief officer can have no sleep on the job as its relentless. One mistake and a whole product line is tainted and can cost the company millions of dollars. Can a web application going offline cost a company millions of dollars? Safety drills constantly. Rough weather that makes it hard to sleep on a ship. Months away from one's loved ones. Majority of jobs do suck in some degree. There are a lot of stories about the medical profession and stress.
Yes an application can go down and cost millions, it's called banks and financial institutions and then cyber security threats ,same goes with company image being tainted by ill run applications ect. Clearly you didn't think your comment through. You think billion dollar companies applications won't cost them astronomical amounts of money if they go down?
As a programmer, I think that programmers sometimes forget that their profession is not that special compared to other professions. (Disclaimer: this observation of mine is limited to texts and videos I have seen on the internet.) Yes, it's different but so is every other profession. Programming is actually quite easy and chill work compared to tanker ships for example.
That kind of thinking seems to lead to a reflection of the surrounding world through a weird and unnecessary 'programmer' view.
@@kazykamakaze131 True.
Maaaaaaaaan. I've been a programmer at the largest employer in the US for the last 3 years. This video spoke to the deepest darkest depths of my soul. Can't tell you how much I relate.
Thanks for sharing. I can guess who that employer is. I'm sure it can be hell.
this didn't make me too happy as a student lol but i appreciate the insight , we have to hear it from a general because everyone else sugar coats it.
I honeslty thing that “agile methodologies” have had a great negative impact on developers mental health and wlb. And btw I love this types of videos.
Marius Costache agile == micro mgmt == burnouts
@@alinaqvi2638 Some of the original agile proponents have created the category of "Dark Agile". Some of the same buzzwords and practices, but none of the values.
it's not a marathon; it's a sprint...with no finish line
Also has led to shitting out software instead of quality testing them properly
@@prod.arcsyne2990 that's actually the main flaw
How I wish that all developers especially the senior ones can be truthful like you, thank you for this video.
IT in general is a bad place for burn out. After a break-up I just focussed on nothing but work, I was learning to code in my spare time and barely took any time to relax or socialize. I am still homebound with a severe anxiety disorder, caused by all the stress and neglecting my emotions and human needs. I'm working up slowly towards a life again, but i don't think it will be as an employee. I will probably start my own business as a programmer, and maybe do some devops stuff if theres a market for that. I will also have to start going out more with friends, that is something I somewhat avoided too in the last few years. Burn out is something you don't see coming, and mostly happens to the people who just keep going, no matter what. Wish you the best!
I asked myself the other day: would i learn to code if there was no money involved? And i answered yes. I imagine a lot of people would answer no.
Thanks for keepin' it real... I took 10 years off from coding after I sold my startup that I ran for 7 years. I weighed over 300lbs and was very confused about many aspects of life. I live a very minimalist lifestyle now, and have a better perspective on all these things. You are spot on with this video.
Good for you!
I am semi-retired after a 20-year career as a java developer...
It's literally that as You had said.
I'm interesting in IT over 25 years, over 15 years of documented experience.
1,5 year ago I changed (N+1 time) from Web Apps backend development to Data Warehousing (ETL) and hired in small corporation (about 200 people, 2 offices in two countries; now +/- 600 people, 4 offices in 3 countries). My impressions after half a year: the same problems (regardless technology), from over 20 years, repeating constatntly + after so much quick company groth: the same corporate culture problems as in other companies.
Many hobbies, to handle this sh**t, and over a year of strugle with my self to not to quit this job (because family to feed and loans). Just going there, doing my stuff, and getting paycheck, trying not to insult anyone with a few words of truth.
Even rescuing totally immersed project as one-man-army (my vide experience after 25 years of study lets me to be frontend, backend and database developer at once, this is good for all kind of works on client's office) it didn't make me feel happy. Later, after getting grtulations at company meeting, just shaked hands, get back to desk, worked till 5 p.m. and got back home as usually (just another boring day in office).
The only thing that stops me from changing jobs, is that this circus just starts again and again, and I don't feel like going through the same thing over and over again.
The moral of the story: 1) don't ever work office jobs. 2) don't have a family until you can handle it without having that office job.
@@raccoon.guitar then you never start family. There is always something to be done right in job, it's never ending story.
Separate your job from private and family time.
Maybe we shouldn't specialize like insects?
I have been doing contracting work for 25 years. Seen around 40 companies and government organizations from the inside. Companies that need contractors are nearly always badly organized. Only worked for two or three companies that at that moment in time spend their IT-money wisely and were competently managed.
Wow, one of the most real videos on RUclips. I've been at this game for 20 years, but have been fortunate enough to be able to switch between & sometime combine coding and design. Still the constant change can wear you down. Thanks for sharing your candid thoughts.
Your attitude is great. It's very grounded which is just what newcomers to the industry need to avoid false expectations.
Hey man, I really needed this video, I didn’t know how to explain it but this video cleared it up for me, I myself have been feeling burned out for the past 2-3 months , I don’t want to touch any code or work on anything and when this happens I feel like I’m falling behind then I get angry with myself and tell myself I need to get back to finishing my projects then I’m back to that mind state again where I just don’t feel like doing it at all, I really Haiti’s state I’m in.
But as you have mentioned all these other areas of my life where things are not going well , I believe are playing a part in this
Reinvent the wheel every time over and over again: exactly.
That's older than Europe:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus
I understand your situation as I have been their myself. I am an old computer hack from Silicon Valley after 37+ years. I live in another state helping out a small company IT stuff. Sometime we fall into the perfect storm in life where divorce, company shutting down, and having to deal with 2 teenage daughter after mom moved out with her boyfriend. I still loved doing my type of hacking but I have other outside hobbies like hiking & biking. Things do change but keep and open mind about anything that comes your way. Take care dude.
All IT workers should listen to this video.
Man, 4th month into the industry , and I'm already thinking on how do i get out of it.
Don't you find it odd so many programmer RUclipsrs are not actually in the industry? I do.
@@realchrishawkes you know, somehow i don't find it odd, actually. Because, correct me if im wrong, but I'm pretty sure becoming a RUclipsr is not as easy as it sounds. And I salute you for staying in the industry despite of it. And thank you for sharing your experience and thought on the matter. It really hits home for me. The lack of sleep, neverending sprints, not caring about your success, or failure.. I hope i could find my own "RUclips channel" soon.
@@realchrishawkes I was wondering if anyone else noticed this. All of the developers I know have moved on to other things or are in the process of doing so.
I had this feeling 3wks into my first internship.
I still remember the first month I was out of college, working full time in the field. My feeling was like "so this is how it's going to be hen... (boredom)". Programming my own little projects can be fun and rewarding as I learn a new technology but in the real world, making apps and websites for corporations, I just find it boring and uninteresting.
I'm 42, I've been trying to get a job programming for the last 8 years, after 4 years of experience. Nobody will hire me. The companies seem to want to ignore 70% of the labor force and overwork the rest... (not considering immigrants...)
Have you been actively applying for those whole 8 years?
As a fellow programmer, I hear you Chris. Burn out is a global phenomena increasing in the recent years. Corporate seem to expect you to learn and do everything at the same time so they can save and get more for their buck. At the beginning, it is fine, even exciting to get more work and achieve more and you start feeling better. However, on the long run, you lose that excitement and you start feeling that nothing ever is enough for them .. This feeling combined with their new expectation of you catches up with you on the long run and you lose this sweet spot of achievement because on the back of your mind, you know it will not be enough and you are caught in this circle. I can not give an advice on that as the solution vary depending on your situation but you have to assess thoroughly positives vs negatives and remember that your health is priceless.
The last advice is GOLD.
8:45 “Some of us in this needs to have more hobby than coding...”
I won’t forget this
Think about...connection, human type of.
Viktor Frankl.
I like exercising , reading books , going out in nature , visiting places, listening to music, decorating my room, playing video games, drawing stuff , eating food , playing with animals , playing sport
Living this right now. Thanks for this video!
I'm sorry to hear that. I appreciate the comment though. I wish you the best.
Programmer since 1976. Burned out in 1999. The job became that of a virtual bricklayer. I drive for Uber now. It sucks. I frequently hate it. I don't make much money, but I am free. And I am a lot happier. I get up at noon. I work when I want. I answer to nobody. I go to bed at 4am. And if anybody gives me any bullshit, I kick them out of the car. End of problem.
I think one of the biggest obstacles in programming, for me at least, is ur mind consumed from the past after many hours of debugging and coding.
ruclips.net/video/fa5p19APgd8/видео.html
Yes, thats honest. I am working remotely last 7 years. Few years ago I was worrying that certain project has finished and there is nothing more to do at the moment, but now I got used to it. Changing projects is the only way to fight burnout.
@Johnny Five i know it is probably hard for US citizens to find such job, because here in russia you are considered a rich men if you have 10$ per hour, while its probably below poverty line in USA. U
Man, you really hit some good points. I've been developing for 15+ years and keeping up with the ever-changing landscape (at least in webdev) is just crazy. Really appreciate the vid!
I am a new Junior Web Dev, with just 5 months of experience. I'm sitting in the front of laptop from 10 AM until 1-2AM. After 2 weeks, I can say that I'm down. My brain is so tired. I think that I need a break. I wanted to work so hard to be better, but I forgot that I'm only 21 and I can't destroy myself in this way at this age. :D Maybe in the future.
Yeah, you have to take care of yourself. No one else will.
Remember when you first started coding? That’s how it should feel all the time. As a junior, you are excited. Later, as a senior dev, you are squeezed endlessly. It never stops. We fall apart. This is an intense field. The answer. - BALANCE! Love, hobbies, friends.
It really is intense. Balance is key.
What are we "squeezed endlessly" by? By management that expects us to live by their daily schedule while still producing code. By juniors who won't spend ten minutes with documentation, but will interrupt the only two-hour block we get to work on code all week to ask a question answered in the first paragraph of the documentation.
I know lot of people dismiss this but Mindfulness Meditation really helped me out of burnout cycle and my anxiety is now non-existent (no meds of any kind). It also helped improve my relationship with people since burnout makes you difficult person to deal with. I've only been doing this since mid this year and the changes of how I feel is like night and day. Only regret I have is not starting this way sooner. My choice is Waking Up app, but any of many other mindfulness apps are good too.
100% agree. Foundation skill for keeping life balanced.
Good video. I've been a professional developer for 28 years. You must be willing to change and learn constantly. If you are looking for a steady job that doesn't change, its the wrong career. The best way to avoid burnout is to do something different every 4-6 years. Learn something new, become really good at it and productive, then move on to something different. It helps to keep the thrill of applying what you've learned alive. I managed a small development team for 12 years. Now I develop web/mobile applications for industrial control and management is 5% of my time. At some point, I'll will mentor my replacement and learn a new skill; probably AR.
I burned me out because I was running from myself and my problems focusing insanely onto my work. Then I started to say no, and rejected good opportunities in my working for the sake to break the cycle. I quit to work in my specialist field and started working in many different things, really not good paid. But then I began to feel like shit and useless. But after sometime I could start see the real world. I started to understand that my real value doesn't come from what I achieve, and what cool projects I'm working on, but I have the right to live, just because I'm. That gave me real peace! It took all the pressure I put onto myself. Now I'm at a point where I can say I want to do this or that just because I want, not because I have to prove something to me or others. I've also learned to be happy with what I have and with little.
Your "old guy" sounds like me. I was a programmer for 35 years, starting in 1975, and ending in 2009 when I was laid off in the recession. I wouldn't say I was burned out for 30 of those 35 years like your "old guy", but I'll tell you one sign that in retrospect told me I was definitely burned out at the end. In the 10 years since the day I was laid off, I have not written, nor even looked at, a single line of code.
May I ask what were you doing for those last 10 years?
@@r-gart Yes, you may ask, and I will tell you.
For 2 years, I collected unemployment and made a futile search for another programming job. Remember that back in the recession years, there were federal extensions to UI so, in my state, I was able to collect UI for up to 99 weeks. The 2 years I spent looking for work made it clear to me that age discrimination, although technically illegal, is ubiquitous. There wasn't much interest from prospective employers in an old programmer is his late fifties when most of the other applicants were younger than my 3 children.
For the next 7 years, I worked as a seasonal tax preparer as my second career. The pay was a fraction of what I was making as a programmer, but at least I felt I was contributing. I left that job after reading a story about a tax preparer in his late 90's who was still on the job when he died at his desk and I didn't want to be that guy. Plus, it wasn't worth it with the low pay, long hours during tax season, and dealing with clients.
For the next year, I did as little as possible, mostly went for bike rides. I'm thankful I made decent money as a programmer and was able to save some money in my retirement account to allow me to do nothing now.
Hi Chris! Love your video, I don't feel alone in my exhaustion anymore. I just got laid of my job as an Magento backend-developer. Even tho I went in to high inte the beginning and worked a lot to prove my worthiness(Results where obvious) and constantly just producing I had to manage my diabetes type 1 also. Combination of sitting 8-17 mon-fri in an office that is essentially an incubator for bacteria and viruses plus stress ,my body just couldn't stand the heat anymore. So the reason for letting me go was because Im on sick leave all the time. The point is that no matter if you have obligations to your kids, a divorce, health issue or anything human for that matter you have to take care of yourself. No one is really going to clap you on the back and thank you. The harsh truth is that business is business, when you don't produce the amount you are expected to do you are not valid anymore. That's why you are correct in finding something more in life and treat your job as a job. Biggest lesson 2020 for sure.
I hope you post more videos on how to get out of the burnout, is there an silver lining and is maybe MOB programming the solution to The agile monster smoothie.......
You are exactly right when you say that the more you help others the better you feel. Continue to focus all your efforts towards that and you will be transformed.
I´m really wondering what the best way is to keep being happy in life, not only as a programmer. I think that can only be achieved through one's own attitude. Look at other countries where people have far less stuff, doing crappy jobs and still seem to be happy with life. I think many people in europe (I live in germany) and US/CAN are unhappy and burned out for other reasons than their jobs. People compare to other people on social media who have more, earn more and then feel mediocre. They always focus on the things they don´t have, compare to people who earn more and get unhappy. Now lets focus on the things we have: We get paid for learning new stuff everyday, challenge our minds, make other people happy or make their lifes easier and work from a warm room for a pretty good salary. Why should I become burned out?
Programming is fun if you do your own business. The best long term solution is to start a full time or side business.
Getting off social media is a good start.
Thank you Chris for a great speech! I am super-excited to become iOS-developer now after being totally burned out by almost ten years of sales manager's job. Surprisingly the symptoms were quite the same.=)
Thanks for watching and commenting!
I have no friends or family, I am ready for those 80 hour workweeks
Ah the famous last words...
Let’s see how you feel in 5 or 10 years
This is exactly what I am experiencing right now. I listen to you and I feel like you are talking about me. Thanks for sharing this.
BIG RESPECT. Thanks for opening up and being vulnerable online bro. Lots of people were made more comfortable and wiser from this video...even the 22 year old new programmers living at their parents ;). Respecto de Los Angeles esé
Thank you. We have to change this industry for the better. The more that speak out the better.
I agree with you, this job can drain your brain to the point of being tired mentally when you get home. You feel like doing nothing because you just want to rest your mind. Another thing I would add is dealing with incompetent programmers (colleagues and boss). I write programming standards documents so that we can keep the code simple and understand it easily but they always manage to screw everything up. It's like they don't have the attention span and I always have to fix their mistakes. One more and I'll stop venting. When my team makes installations on a client's server and leave their "garbage" (setup files, backups, backups of backups and what not) everywhere on the machine. I find that unprofessional, messy and it leads to more mistakes. They install the wrong version or forget to close a database and the client works for days or weeks on two different databases and loses data! Financial data! They look at me like I'm the unreasonable one because I'm nagging them and angry at them for this. I'm burned out. I'm at a crossroad in my life. I don't know if I should start my own company, work elsewhere or just change field. It brings good money and I need it to finish paying up my debts and for my future goals. So much anxiety and not knowing what to do to keep my sanity. I'm just tired or maybe the right word like you said is fatigued. Thanks for the video and reminding us that we're not alone in this!
I think we need to save money like never before.
Have you thought maybe perhaps it's the way you communicate that might be the issue? Everyone has to learn from somewhere and teams are filled with people at varying stages of learning, some years ahead of others. So it would be rather unfair to expect someone that is a junior to have the same standards of coding as a senior with 10+ years experience. Just keep in mind there is a reason why there is the distinction of junior and senior as to indicate whom might need help or guidance in a team. If you get angry in a professional setting this indicates that you aren't communicating properly and have false expectations that aren't being met.
At the end of the day keep in mind you too were once that "incompetent" person that you are referring to, as I have not ever met an engineer that does not make "stupid" mistakes.
It seems to me that the underlying issues here are things like: life goals, happiness, self-realization, life balance etc. You can get burned out on anything really, unless you absolutely 100% love it (and everything/most things around it). I am not a programmer (but I am actually learning to become one) but from listening to many people from this industry, reading forums etc I gathered that it seems like a career like many others. Nowadays life is just like that, stress will get to you sooner or later. That is why it is crucial you structure your life well (self-awareness is key!) and try to stick to your own rules. But in the end nobody can do it perfectly, it is always a battle. I wish you well, your channel seems interesting and I like your honesty and directness.
I'm 21 and I feel this lmao, only bc of programming on my own projects every day for years, not even done with university yet. Balancing coding out with (social!) hobbies and exercise is key
Agile - is literally hell for any developer. It is just a matter of time when you are gonna burn out. It strips all the fun out of programming, making you a cog in a constant stressful grind. Fuck Agile
It's a load of bs.
I feel you on that issue bruh. You do great videos.
Thank you
You only mentioned it briefly, but I thought you made an important point about how coding inevitably changes the structure of your brain. I've found that as the years have gone by it feels as though my thought process has become much more robotic and less empathetic -- and as a result, more pessimistic. Luckily coding has provided me with sufficient income so that I don't have to worry about housing, food, and most other basic needs. This has been an incredible gift as of late because I've come to realize that now I finally have time every day to just sit and think and rediscover the parts of me that have been killed off by coding and "being an adult".
Great video and well documented thoughts. 👍 The burnout is real and some will survive. But at what cost? Life is short.
I've been on the web dev + design grind for 24 years and have been burned out off and on for about 10 of those years... Having other passions / activities is a must. But being able to balance everything in life is the biggest MUST.
It's cool while you are young and single but as a married person with kids it's so much more difficult. I've been slowly moving away from it and taking up other things to expand my technology skill set even further. It's crazy because the industry seems to have a tractor beam on my ass, everytime I say Im done with it, I can't seem to shake it. My hopes are that coding will end up being a hobby in my old age. Cheers to all the youth out there taking this industry on! 🍻👏
Set a deadline.
Meet the deadline.
Repeat. Forever.
Deadlines are the main issue for me. It makes it harder to feel truly satisfied with your work, leaves less time for experimenting with new stuff. Yeah, it takes away the joy basically.
Deadlines also assume that everything goes perfectly. Technical debt is swept under the rug and the push for new features is continuous.
I am a veteran developer coding since the early 1980's. I suffered burnout a number of times during my career, but then I got wise and discovered the secret of not burning out. Nowadays I happily write open source code for free and enjoy it as much as when I was in my youth. If you would like to know my secret, write to me!
I love the scenery that goes along with this video and message.
Good advice at the end. Several years back, I actually had the pleasure of getting downsized while I was going through a divorce. It was tough, but I have found that having an occasional/seasonal part-time job that is customer facing like retail or restaurant can help, so you get a chance to do something far-removed from coding while not risking a wholesale career change.
Sunday morning, made myself a cup of coffee and wanted to check out some tutorials on GraphQL and k8s, but RUclips suggested this video. Watched it and recalled why I'm really tired of relearning technology behind every hype word out there only because local market need a workforce to make another CRUD MVP app with something that is new and shiny. 6 years in the industry and now more often that before I recall that I wanted to be designer back in my university years. Still not sure I've made a right choice. Good luck to you Chris!
It is better to work as a remote freelancer than in a corporate office. You do not have the conflicts, the commute and they have to pay you for every hour you work. No more working 70 hours and getting paid for 40.
Where does one find the work though?
Big fat thumbs up from the UK, you speak the truth - voice of experience in our industry.
I remember going trough my divorce, and not being able to code the project I was on. I told my manager and he gave me an other smaller programming job.
Glad I told him and not waited until the project went down the drain.
Wow! Those video clips of the liberty thingy are strangely perfect with your narration! You're dead-on with the symptoms. Thank you so much. And it's not just the programming industry. Try film/tv for 40 years... writing, editing, directing...stuff so many young people are dying to get into ... and unless you're a mega star, it's just as much a constant crisis, bs, and the income/time less then slave wages. And owning you're own business can be just as much a burnout. Gave it all up and went into bartending. Just show up, pour and clean, be happy. Never loved a job so much! :)
i just turned 20 and currently have school, work and my own project, coding for about 12 hours a day on average including the weekends, i'm also starting to feel mildly burned out even though i just started with my fist coding job 1.5 year ago, i should probably also stop spending this much time on my own project but that's quite hard, although i do still like coding when i am working on my own project, at work and school i really feel like there is just a lack of room for me to work the way i like to and it all just to be finished quick, not done properly with enough time to research stuff and actually work on making something i'm happy about, and then later on needing to fix it again because now we want something else but the first quick and dirty solution doesn't support that, so now we need another quick and dirty solution.
Luckily i'm going to buy my first project car in the beginning of next year so i'll hopefully have something of a distraction from then on, helping to keep me sane in a world of way to short deadlines
The mix of the muted background walks with your controlled tone of voice made for a surpisingly amazing video. Love it!
I'm not yet a developer professionally, but I will always remember what one of my old coworkers tried really hard to bury into my head, lol. I don't remember her exact words, but she said that if I remember anything she told me, it's that no matter what I NEED to have something outside of work. And not something I even need to worry at being good at. Music, painting, baking, it can be whatever. But something else, just for me. "Don't just do work." This video feels like exactly that advice.
Also, guys who think that prolonged break will help against burnout, it will, but for a very short period of time
I've often wondered if its best to quit or just work through it? Sounds like there is no easy way out?
@@realchrishawkes Yeah, no easy way out, especially in my country.
So for myself, I decided to work through it for as long as I can, to have savings when I totally wouldn't want to do it anymore, and focus on my hobbies.
Also, leaving work in the office, this includes learning, and avoiding overtimes helps.
I run a translation office because of my "Linguistics background" and I have recently started working in the IT sector, especially to translate IT documents from one language to another..
My next career move is to work as a junior developer for a couple of years until i can sell my services as a consultant or outside company merging it with my current "linguistics background". I will be one of a kind in my field...
Generally, as a rule of thumb.. if you spend more than a couple years in one company, you're a sucker!
Your goal should be to use companies the way they use you.. get their free training and know-how and then do consulting or be self-employed..
I have been self employed for half a decade now and Im really scared of going back to an 8 to 4pm job..
I've been a Programmer/Analyst or Full Stack Developer for some 28 years now. Like you getting fed up is not necessarily about the work you do. The gatekeepers want you to take tests and prove yourself over and over again and the clients that just flat out lie about the work they bring you in for. I'm talking about contract work. I'm going to do it for another 10 years because retirement would leave me poor and bored. One thing I did was to set a 10 year plan for myself to get work-life balance until I retire. I turn away calls every day if the recruiters have clients that don't fit into my plan. So I'm taking care of me now. I am just accepting the outcome of my decision. Money isn't the most important thing anymore. You meet with a lot of resistance out there. New contracting companies call and automatically begin to ask you to lower your expected rate. They don't want to accept a recognized GSA tax break on splitting your rate into per diem for travel expenses and taxable income. 'We don't do that' they say. I say 'Why don't you do that? You don't pay any more money to me but that helps me separate expense overhead from taxable income. Don't you care about my well being?' Then i get dead silence because the recruiter is sticking to a script working from a country half way round the world. There are just so many jerks to deal with no wonder we get burnt out. But its not necessary. Enough people have to turn away from a broken system. Let it collapse on itself and join a reemerged and smarter system.
So well articulated and honest. Thanks for sharing this aspect of being a programmer.
As someone of equivalent age and experience, what depresses me is the sense that everyone my age and older is now so preoccupied with their spouses and their children that they no longer share my continuing and ever-growing passion. While they all look bored and burned out, convinced that they've learned everything worth learning (and being utterly wrong about that fact), I keep discovering new things to learn every single day. Quite ironic, I think.
This was a really good video...What I personally used to help me was trying to gym at least 1 hour a day everyday so I could clear my head and focus on myself
Stumbled upon this video and one major thing you mentioned is that your life should not be defined by just where you work. There are some weekends I try to hang with my coworkers and all they're talking about is the PR that's opened or about to be open in the next sprint; I'm sitting there like are these guys serious, it's the freaking weekend (Drink a beer, chill out; go to a beach; go sky-diving) do something!! other than talking code all the time.
Totally agree with all the points discussed in the video. Having some sort of non-technical hobbies/activities in the daily routine really does help in averting these situations.
Agree 💯 percent. I am burnt out right now, I so needed to hear this and comfort myself by saying to myself that I am not the only one.
My recipe is a constant focus on the balance aspect. I work remotely and in what we call "smart working" (at least here in Italy). That makes me gain a lot of time for me, and my passions besides coding.
I've been working as a web dev from 20 years now, and I keep on struggling for have time to study, cover new aspects (for instance at the moment I am more into teaching then actively developing) and avoid burning out. For instance as a freelance dev/teacher (6 years and a half) I try to work no more then 5/6 hour per day. I have less money, but I am happier. You never have a safe and sound position, but it worked so far. Will see what future is gonna bring.
I know one guy who is working in IT for about two decades who managed quite the career in databases and business intelligence. I chat with him now and then because I want to start with programming and he always tells me that I shouldn't get too fixated with programming. Most guys in this business do the coding job only for as long as necessary and then move on to a consultant job or whatever and that it should be my goal too. It is easier money and I imagine it is not fun to be stucked into a room full of nerds every day unless you are a nerd yourself, staring at code, getting bad posture and all the reasons Chris mentioned here.
And being a front-end developer isn't really paid that well in the EU or UK either when I hear Chris that you make >100k as an average self-taught developer in the US.
Anyway my friend's advice often is to instead of getting too much into making websites I would be better off learning a ERP system like Odoo and help small and middle companies to digitalize their business processes. I guess he is right but I don't see myself there as I don't have background in programming or business. I think making websites might be considered the lower end in this digital era right now but it's a much more approachable step to me. But then, I also fear that later I will have a hard time to progress out of a coding job.
@Chris I hear your frustrations being stuck as a senior developer. I wonder if you have applied for consultant jobs outside you company. According to my friend after a couple of years not having a degree becomes less important.
With 20 years of backend development experience, I totally understand and agree with your friend.
Being a consultant is a career path for developers.
I live with my parents and I got burned out too - worked like idiot for 12h a day, then couldn't/didn't wanted to program for 1.5 years.
Changing field & learning new skills helped me a lot - I regained that child-like curiousity when it comes to coding.
I went from video game dev (~7 years) to robotics dev. Landed much better job now too. :)
Still live with my parents tho, but am planning to move out.
I'm glad I found this video. I've been a developer since 2004, and at around 2009 I started to feel the symtoms. Lack of motivation, tired and got irritated alot. I'm stil a developer and it has been ups and downs but mostly downs. I know I'm the only one who can change it, but it's hard when you get paid alot. You kind of create a life style based on your salary. However, I have given me one more year to save up and then take some time off. Maybe for a year or forever. Time will tell.
If you really didn't liked it anymore after five years. Save a lot of money and retire or if that is not possible try to change careers now you are still relatively young.
I quit my almost 10 year office programming job because of burn out. All things mentioned here are real and true. So glad to see that its real for so many people so I'm not crazy I think :).
And BTW looking to create my own company.... Maybe this is a new way to get even more burned out, we'll see in a decade...
Less likely, because you will be more in control of your own company.
Glad I found this video. Makes me think I'm not crazy at all. I thought I was the only who thinks about hating my current work place, my boss (who is not capable of leading a team at all), the IDE I'm looking at. I'm glad I have a few hobbies that has been helping me cope up with this and now I understand why I feel the I feel. Keep it up mate.
I don't know... I've been a programmer for 16 years, working in NYC... I combat burnout by helping others. Showing them a better way of doing things or getting them out of a pickle. That in turn, motivates me to keep my game fresh, and learn new things. I love seeing my co-workers eyes open wide, when I show them how the new stuff makes our lives simpler. Hobbies are a must outside of work, but I consider my job one of my hobbies. The moment it becomes a shore, it will drain you. By the way Chris... Keep up the videos, good stuff.
i feel burnt out too. I just push myself to hard, chasing perfection can get very destructive.
I have since left the Software Development industry after dedicating years of my life trying to get into this sector of the IT industry. I left because there tends to be a huge amount of toxic feminism and left leaning political ideologies, and this tends to be the basis for the company culture at most IT firms these days. It's a hostile and toxic environment for red pilled men and I personally want nothing to do with it. Best of luck to all of those who are still on the grind, make sure however you are making yourself your own mental point of origin and you're doing exactly what's right for you. I'm much happier in my current situation and I'd encourage some of you to explore the possibility of working on something else.
Very great to tip at end of video, thank you so much 👍
No problem 👍
Tnx for this vlog. The most important thing, as you said, is not to define your self esteem from programming alone! I work in this industry for more than 20 years now. There are projects doomed to fail or project methologies you don't like. You have to find a way to survive.
Yeah, I'm going to get out in nature more and play games maybe.
Thanks for your honesty Chris. In my experience this is a more common phenomena and hits more people than only those who work in IT. I believe that we as human beings always need to keep developing ourselves to feel good about ourselves and this may be anything from learning new skills (that may not have anything to do with our daily jobs), to spiritual development. I thank you for your videos and hope you will find the insight that leads you to more joy in your life. At the end we are all human beings and should not identify ourselves only by what we do to earn a living.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I found it to be quite insightful.
Glad it was helpful!
its best when programming is a hobby or a side job ,because this keeps the thrill .Its just that creativity cannot be forced.