What to Do After Burnout?

My honest advice: Get out of the Hacker News hivemind.

The folks on this site act like every programming job is either at a FAANG/MAGMA company, a startup, or not in tech. They are wrong.

If you are willing to look outside the valley (but still in almost any big city or suburb), there are oceans of tech companies that work in like, financial compliance dashboards or healthcare documentation or if you’re OK with it defense contractors. You can make $150-250k easy. Your life will involve waking up, attending a standup on Google Meet, adding an endpoint to a REST API, sending it off to be tested, then around 2 you fix whatever the testers found, send it off again, then clock out once there’s nothing else in your swim lane (possibly before 5).

You won’t get equity, and you won’t have the outlandish salaries people are always talking about on HN, but you’ll also have the freedom to not think about your job outside of work hours. If what you want is to leverage your skills into a comfortable life where you can spend time with your kids, this is the move.

I’ve seen people burn out and try to leave tech for greener pastures, it often doesn’t turn out as well as they expect. In other fields, you’ll be a lot more fungible and you’ll come to realize how much cushion and leverage developers get from being a somewhat scarce resource.

Burnout is a thing which should be taken more seriously by more people.

Go on holiday. At least two months. The first week you'll think you're still at work. The second week you might have some time to collect your thoughts, and plan. Then beyond that you might hopefully have the headspace to catch up on chores and life admin.

Month two is for enjoying yourself and your family.

Do the above first. Not addressing your main Q; I'm sure there are good jobs which would still hold your interest/excite you.

> Getting a different job in a startup or an agency sounds like the last thing I want right now. From what I’ve heard big tech is not all that much different, and a non-tech programming job sounds like it’d be boring/horrible in a different way.

Here's the thing. Every job is a job. Even "doing what you love" comes with days when you really don't feel like doing it. There is no perfect job that will contain all the things you like about work and none of the things you don't like about work.

Furthermore, you will never ever get the first years of your kid(s) life back. You should be present for those years. Being burnt out and hating your job does not leave you the mental bandwidth to be present.

Taking a less glamorous job to make space in your life for other pursuits is not bad. Even if it's just for little while to reset. And have some perspective: you can enjoy some aspects of a job without enjoying all aspects. Pick what is most important for you and optimize for that. And the most important aspect is not fixed; it will change depending on your season in life.

I don't think I've ever been actually burnt out, but I have experienced the gamut of job satisfaction. You break out of it through self-reflection and understanding what you actually like and dislike about a job, and what really matters to you in life and how to build around that.

I took a year off. I couldn't exactly afford it, and I didn't exactly sign up for it either (laid off). But it was exactly what I needed.

I lost a loved one and mistakenly assumed work peers would understand that I was struggling. They didn't. No secret the workplace makes people astoundingly cold. This left me feeling bitter at the industry.

Towards the 8 month mark I started to have a different crisis: I still didn't want to work again. Would I ever want to work again? Just in the knick of time I did find my stride. My point is that it took patience. You're in the wrong environment for that.

I'm sure you've heard this before but your work doesn't care about you. Your co-workers don't care about you. If you put even a small amount of care or emotion into the job you're playing yourself.

Your kid matters. Your job doesn't. Your deadlines are a lie made up by someone who should be focused on going to therapy. Sounds like you're a driven, talented individual. Take a break for you and your kid. That ambitious drive won't leave you just because you took a break to focus on what actually matters.

Burnout doesn’t really come from too much work, you can be swamped to the brim and feel no burnout. Or you can be sitting bored for 8 hours at your desk stretching out 1 hour of responsibilities to last all day and feel super burned out.

The real cause of burnout is toil for no reward. It sounds like whatever used to motivate you to get shit done isn’t there anymore. Any amount of work you don’t believe is worth the effort will make you feel burned out.

A good book about this is Peak Performance. Pairs great with The Passion Paradox. They cite more researchy/academic sources, if that’s what you’re into.

I’d suggest starting there. Looking into what used to motivate you, why it’s missing, and thinking deep about what it is that you do want to do. Then find ways to do that.

For the last five years I've worked exclusively with non-profits and companies who are aligned with some sort of social good.

Coming from the agency/startup world, things are completely different for me now. Can't get something done at 6pm on a Friday? That's okay no problem we'll look into it Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. Or next quarter.

It's a completely different way of working, antithetical to the adrenaline chasing, weekend ruining pursuits of my youth (I think I'm old enough to say that now).

My income is smaller. Much smaller. But on an hourly basis I am probably making about the same as I was before, and every aspect of the job is much more pleasurable.

IME working at a big tech company post-burnout is much more relaxing than working at a startup. There is definitely opportunity & reward for working hard and getting stuff done, but planning timelines and deadlines are so much longer. And none of the existential dread from “will we run out of runway” or “how do we get to PMF”.

Especially if you go in a level or two below your actual tryhard level, you’ll still likely earn more than you would in a startup (sans home run exit). You can still do good work on interesting problems, but with more breathing room for work/life balance.

I'm going to share this article that helped something click for me when I was experiencing a burnout. https://lifeofaudrey.com/essays/surviving_burnout.html

The part that really spoke to me was the first paragraph. It helped me find my way.

I'm currently just trying to hang on, I transferred to a less stressful role internally. I also realized because I'm susceptible to burnout I can't push myself and give myself a ridiculous mortgage. I need to keep my cost of living low cause I might just quit and try to never work again.

It's been a band-aid solution, ultimately I think my problem is I don't want to work for these tech companies, almost all of which seem to be user-hostile with incompetent management just squeezing their employees and jockeying for credit whenever something actually valuable is produced. Burnout is my brain telling myself that, not any unique condition. But alas...I have life responsibilities.

Time off and complete disconnect from all things work related. It doesn’t even matter if you travel or do whatever, just disconnecting is enough. Three months is considered the ideal minimum amount of time.

I burned out hard many years ago and this was the only thing that worked for recovery. I’m at that point again now with my current startup but I have no choice but to force through the burnout. I’m gonna be in a rough spot in a few years but I have very little choice.

I had a kid in early 2021 and was in the throws of burnout at work at that time. I'm out the back end of it now and didn't have to make any drastic changes. Here's what worked for me (most important first):

- Lowered my expectations for fulfillment/advancement at work during this period. It's OK to just make a sincere effort at work and put your career in maintenance mode for a few years. It'll still be there when you come back. Also, work doesn't have to be a source of great enjoyment or fulfillment in life, it's OK if it's just a job (again, that can be temporary too).

- Shift into a lower stress role at work. For me I work in research and part of my burnout was feeling the weight of needing to innovate continually. I shifted into a more well-defined engineering focused role for a while and rapidly felt relief from the pressure.

- Took care of my health. Slept when I had opportunity, ate well, cut back on booze, exercised (but without pressure to achieve anything in particular).

Overall though, I'd definitely say you've got to look at the whole picture. Having a young kid is probably not independent from the burnout, so you probably can't feel better purely by focusing on career changes.

Can you "retire" yet? If you had 15 years at BigCo, that should really be a yes, but with startups it depends a lot more. By "retire" I mean that you can pretty safely coast by with your annual living expenses set to (depending on your risk appetite) 4% to 10% of your investments. If you can do that, pull the trigger and quit. Commit to only a few years gone, if "indefinitely" is too scary or you don't feel confident in long term market increases. Your professional associates will still be around at various places when and if you decide to work again, making a "resume gap" all the more something not worth worrying much about. After a while, you might explore doing something on your own, or doing consulting, or just teaching yourself some new skills because you suddenly get an intuition about what it is you want to do next. But it should be driven by desire and not a sense of obligation to be generating an income.

If after a year you still have no clue or worse still can't really bring yourself to work like you used to, it might be something else that's not quite burnout that's causing you to struggle.

Recover. However you can.

It only gets worse if you don’t take action. If you can, quit and find a distraction unrelated to your career. Sometimes it takes years for people to bounce back, sometimes only months.

You won’t be your full self until you recover.

Might be like car sliding on ice.. Leave it going as it wants to without you adding further unknowns... Observe carefuly.. decide what to do..

Lots of similar threads here, here my take on a recent one.. "drastic-change-for-a-while": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37905149

have fun (pun intended.. find it somewhere first)

I work in a startup, but you’d never know it because of how well managed everything is. I’m paid well and am never too busy. You just need to find the right company, a startup doesn’t have to be a boiler room.

I'm sorry to hear about your burnout. Consider these steps:

1. Reflect: Assess your current priorities and work values. 2. Set Boundaries: Clearly define work hours to prioritize personal time. 3. Seek Support: Connect with a mentor, therapist, or support network. 4. Explore Alternatives: Consider part-time roles or consulting. 5. Skill Reevaluation: Reevaluate and hone your skills, exploring new areas. 6. Incident Management Platforms: Use tools like Squadcast for streamlined incident response, reducing stress. 7. Self-Care Routine: Implement a self-care routine to manage stress effectively.

Remember, finding a balance is key, and seeking a fulfilling career path is a journey.

I've had much better success without switching.

Burnout doesn't usually come from work itself, but from its effects on your home life. As someone who has worked in startups, has a family, and takes on too many extracurricular activities, these three things helped me the most:

I set limits on my time spent thinking about work. I will put in a solid 40 hours (and more if my company really needs me on occasion), but I let it go after my 8-hour allotment. It will take a few days for both you and your company to get used to this. However, don't hesitate to prioritize your family commitments. For example, you might say, 'Sorry, that's all for today. I need to attend to family responsibilities.' and then firmly adhere to this boundary.

Take small amounts of time off. The effects of having time off are near immediate, but they don't last long. Instead of taking a solid month off, plan several 3-4 day weekends well in advance, and it will pay off massively.

Get your personal/outside-of-work house in order. Let your loved ones (or people/groups with whom you've made commitments) know that you're trying to mitigate your burnout and outline what you need. Whether that's some time to yourself each day or scaling back your commitments, it can help immensely.

> a non-tech programming job sounds like it’d be boring/horrible in a different way

The people working in certain sectors make it sound like any job in another sector is going to be unacceptable. Have you talked with people currently working those other jobs to find out what it's actually like?

I have a picture of a truck driving over a cliff as I read your post. You're saying you're burned out, but you're also saying you're not open to doing anything different.

Work with your hands / physically: woodworking, gardening, re-build an engine, build some custom handlebars for you bicycle.

If you can afford it, take a break and don't work for a few months.

Instead of "work" do other things that you enjoy. Can be arts, crafts, video games, travel, whatever YOU want.

Do not create a to-do list for those activities. Do whatever you feel like doing when you wake up in the morning

This has worked for me.

There is a deadline because it has to get done and won’t get done on its own (surprise: because no one wants to do it). So they find people like you to do it and they pay you to toil and essentially kill your soul for doing so. So that’s where you are. The remedy is two fold- get away from that company, take time and do nothing (smell the roses, exercise, family, whatever) and then think what you want to do, irrespective of $. If you need a job, you’re right big tech is as bad (probably worse except the pay maybe). There are teams that are slow and don’t ship that much, you could try and find those roles and coast you just need to interview the hiring manager in an intelligent way..

Anyways all the best, I hope you find peace and happiness

My advice:

- Take some time off

- Talk to your family and ask them to help you.

- Take care of your health. Sleep, have quality time for your self.

- To exercise.

- Don't take all these advices very personal or serious. It depends from person to person, usually someone who cares about you is the one who can give you the best advice.

Take a long vacation and unplug without working on anything else or checking in for at least a month. Explain to senior leadership that you need this for everyone's benefit. They'll be happy to abide if they value your contributions longterm.

Start by sleeping 9+ hours per night, or at least staying in bed for that amount of time.

Been there.

let's look at some of the reasons of the burnout:

1. You are not a 20 year old anymore.

2. Been there, done that so many times.

3. You got a kid AND (obviously) a partner. This is a major change in your life. Your priorities are changing.

Essentially, what you were doing in the past, is not working and you know deep inside you will not work.

The only thing you can change in this whole equation is YOU.

and so here's what I suggest...

take a break - go away from everything (and I mean everything including your kid) for a week. Suggest going to a small town where there's nothing to do, it's incredibly boring and all you can do is go for long walks. Here's what you should think about:

1. Look at your next 30 years (so long you've coasted along but now you have to plan). Decide what is it that you want to be known for at the end of the 30 years. What is it that you will have wanted to achieve.

2. Make a list of the top 3-4 areas you want to be in. More importantly, make a list of the consequences (both +ve and -ve) if you choose a specific area.

3. Pull together a plan (remember, it will change as you execute it) of how you will get from here to there for each area. That includes the steps you'll take, how will you track it, what issues/risks will come up, your answers to that.

4. Take the top 2 and start doing. At some point, you'll need to dump one area. You can do just one thing in this lifetime...

aaand... if all the above is wrong and it is not a major burnout, then just go for a week's vacation and walk yourself into the ground. Come back completely (physically) exhausted. for me, I need to rinse, repeat every 1/2 year.

Oh yeah finally, Don't take a high end, 5 star resort or something like that. Be frugal. You want the physical discomfort to override the mental pain. You need other things to bother you. For example a friend of mine did a one month travel on less than a $ per DAY across India (and that included staying, food, traveling etc.,)...

Hope this helps.

Best.

It's always a group of questions I queue up when interviewing--trying to suss out what the culture is like with respect to work/life balance. I don't want to work on weekends, I don't want to work at night. Sometimes things come up, but it needs to be exceedingly rare.

By making that a must-have item, even more than target salary--you only have one life, one family--I've been able to avoid a lot of burnout in the last few years. But early on in my career, I didn't give that the respect it deserves, and I paid for it.

I took 9 months off to find the joy again. Then I found an established company that produces something useful for society and that has plenty of people that has been working there for a long while.

Starting a small company doing a niche product, while easier said than done, provides significant benefits in recapturing your own time.

When the baby won’t let you sleep you can have productive time without it feeling forced, you can take days off when needed, take naps in the middle of the day, etc.

It’s a different kind of stress that can feel healthier.

I would always travel and adventure when the burnout built up. Worked perfectly to relieve it. Inevitably after some time I would start to get some motivation back and craving for intellectual stimulation, that's when I could start learning new things, new projects and the desire to get back into work.

Also, regular hard exercise and/or martial arts training, particularly BJJ, is de riguer for stress management.

When you get into YC one of the first things they tell you is to develop a regular physical health practice because startups are incredibly difficult.

Safely blow the burnout into the weights and your sparring partners.

I suffered some extreme burnout that disrupted everything in my life for years. I managed to stay employed and even advanced in my career, but it was through sheer willpower alone. I won’t go through the details of how horrific my life was and the suffering I endured.

What helped me the most was meditation, specifically vipassana (insight mindfulness) meditation, grounded in Theravada Buddhism, as taught by Gil Fronsdal. In fact, not only did it help me recover entirely from my burnout, I am happier and more involved in all aspects of my life with a clear focus on the things that give me pleasure. I can only say as further fallacious appeal for this method there’s a reason Buddha - a normal man with no magical powers or claim to godhood, not offering magical immortality with your best friends forever, or really anything other than a way of meditating and thinking about life - has a major world religion and his teachings have spanned thousands of years. It’s not a religion, it’s a guidebook on how to have a human mind.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Fronsdal

Introduction to meditation:

https://www.audiodharma.org/series/introduction

Good luck! I’m sorry you’re experiencing this, but for me at least it was a gateway to a richer life.

Is it an option to work less? Say 4 days instead of five? It will give you more time with your family and it will decouple you more from work without directly giving up your job.

Maybe talk to your boss about your situation?

I have set extremely clear boundaries on my time and enforced them religiously. This has caused massive problems, including potentially destroying my company. I have simply accepted those problems as the cost of reading my son bedtime stories.

The overtime culture in startups is toxic, because efficient output is u-shaped over time: if you work too hard your productivity goes down. It requires very mature self reflection to know that slowing down will actually speed up the work.

tldr, boundaries boundaries boundaries. Maturity.

I asked for a raise this summer and they wouldn't accommodate that so I quit. I was burnt out and the company was asking for ridiculous things like 24-hour incident response without being on-call and paid for it.

Right now I am mostly playing gigs and running sound. A lot of pushing boxes and a little "figure out why the mic isn't sounding right". It's cold in Colorado, but boondocking in my truck at these remote gigs is kind of a fun challenge for now and knowing how has opened up a lot of possibilities for other fun sounding travel.

Most of my time is off, and I am spending that time writing and making music with the folks I like, and doing little experiments with analog electronics just to try and learn a bit.

On one hand, the only reason I feel okay just working intermittently like this is that a) my kiddos are grown and I don't want more b) I have enough in the bank that I can jut bum around doing these gigs indefinitely and c) my living situation is simple and doesn't have a lot of costs. I'm 45, my kids are graduating college this year, I'm not married, etc. "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose" and all that.

I've also have had a couple careers, as a teacher at a university and as a programmer for the web.

One of the realizations I've had is that my agency job didn't pay an amazing amount more than, say, bar tending at a good bar.

My day rate as a stage hand / sound guy is quite a bit more than my "day rate" as a programmer, but I couldn't block out any of the 5 days a week I was working to just go and do whatever I felt like. The trade off is that I don't get anywhere near as many days of work.

All that is to give some context to a point: a lot of the folks I know let their fantasy of who they are override the material reality of what they are actually doing with their time.

In that my "professional" careers as a programmer or educator, I was getting a lot out of identifying as a programmer or teacher. There is some value to that.

What I did not realize was that these identities weren't really worth much. Being a good father and respected musician (neither of which are worth any money) are both worth more to me.

Or, to put it a different way, I really wasn't getting paid as much as I was thinking I was, especially compared to other, similarly competent folks in the service industry and trades.

Giving up a bunch of freedom so I could worry about problems with my software 24/7 was neither fair to myself nor even all that necessary.

I can't comment on your specific situation, but I can say that "switching careers" really hasn't been all that much of a problem once I realized that most of what I was getting were idealized notions of "stability" and a rather class-inflected notion of my position in the labor pool, neither of which is ultimately worth very much at all.