I’m writing this at 3:45am, once again I can’t sleep because of the stress. I am a 38 year old software engineer, and again I’m so burnt out I don’t know how I am going to do this again today. Unfortunately this has been the story of my adult life. Jobs running me completely into the ground has just been a regular thing for me. I can tackle a lot of problems my coworkers can’t in terms of difficulty, and this leads the management to giving me more projects and my coworkers less, until I break. Yesterday a lot of my coworkers worked half days and have time to screw around on Facebook, while I triage 3 different projects. Looking for new jobs is that much more challenging when you’re 100% wiped out. Thankfully my wife is a saint and took care of everything tonight.
The question: What should I do differently? Get a new job and then act barely competent enough to avoid being fired so that I stop getting absolutely buried? Im applying for new jobs now, but I’m trying to seek guidance on both finding a less insane job and keeping it from creeping up on me like this one has. I’m the sort of employee that likes working one place for a long time, and I’d prefer not to switch jobs every 5 years.
Thank you in advance for any and all advice, and if you’re looking for a remote .NET developer don’t hesitate to message me.
Edit: Work-life balance… A lot of people are pitching that this is something that I need to work on, so I thought I’d elaborate. My company has no ticketing system or task system of any kind. We have Slack, but an unpaid account, so no history after 90 days. All communication is verbal. Email is used sparingly, only when someone needs to send a file typically (company culture is very odd). Everything becomes a “right now” problem, because there is no queueing tool of any kind in use. Yes I have mentioned this to management repeatedly, and I have a reminder in my phone to bring it up about every 6 months. About time off – I have frequent deadlines / meetings / etc scheduled with clients, and those deadlines do not change to accommodate time off. I stick to my 8 hours, but those are 8 really shitty hours. The volume of work the boss is piling on me is more than he can even keep track of, and I regularly guess which things he’ll forget and just don’t do them and never mention them, as a means to reduce my workload.
Also, every developer works completely alone. There are 5 devs, but we are “corrected” typically if we work together. So I will do everything from talking to the client to gather requirements, estimate the hours for the bid, write the code, set up UAT servers for testing, and deploy it into production manually across multiple servers. We also have no release management at all (we are only barely allowed to use version control), and because we work completely independently the production code can get really wonky. By now you’re asking yourself “why the hell is he still here?” I’m paid about 30% above the market rate for my area, and there aren’t a lot of dev jobs in my area.
35 comments
Yes.
You need to not put so much of your self and personality into your job. They’d replace you in two days if you left or worse. Do a good job but don’t kill yourself and your personal life in the meantime.
And easier said than done, I know. I also struggle with this.
You should take the day off.
Management can be ignored when they ask too much. Just don’t overpromise things. If the project fails because they thought you would do it all, it’s their failure not yours.
Just tell them you are out today, get some rest.
Yes without question
Nope.
However, I have suffered burn out before. Usually switching jobs gives me a good reset.
Had the same issue when working client services for a software developer. Managers got more and more careless knowing I would pull stupid hours fixing things. When one of the worst offenders got bonuses for stuff that inky worked for my efforts I quit. Clients knew who offered the real value and I haven’t had to tout for work in 10 years.
Clients I work regularly with know if they call it urgent i will get it done, and I get a lot of flexibility for that. I can go to kids school events, go to the gym during the day, and be woken at 3am if the system is down. I’ll tell them I hate them at the time but it’s a trade off I’m happy with.
The most important part if this is to push back up the line for things to be prioritised. You want me to work on a,b and c, which one comes first? I’m outta here at 5, B won’t happen today. Maybe get someone else to start working on it. C won’t get a moment until next week at best. Set that tone.
Considering I’m also a software engineer up reading your post 3 hours before I need to get up for work, I’d say that is proof enough for me. Maybe this industry just sucks right now despite getting paid decently. All of the layoffs stress me out. I don’t hate my job but I certainly don’t like it.
Sounds like you’re having difficulties to say No.
> Yesterday a lot of my coworkers worked half days and have time to screw around on Facebook, while I triage 3 different projects.
What the fuck is going on in your job?
On a more positive note, why not use this to negotiate better conditions/pay etc?
Stop giving a fuck. Do bare minimum, just enough to not get fired. Since you’re the best one there you can likely get away with that for a long while.
Or devote yourself fully to your job. Put your family and your mental and physical well being second. The choice is yours
In my opinion you should do 2 things:
1) Look for a new job. Sounds like you are already doing this.
2) This is the long one. Have a long chat with your managers. Tell them you are overworked and need to set priorities. Sit down and list everything you are working on, how long it will take you for each task, and ask them to set a priority list. This one is important, if a new task comes in immediately work with your managers to put it in your priority list. Be clear if they ask you to move a new task to priority 1 that other tasks will get moved down and not finished in the estimated time.
Ask them if they expect you to work over 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. If they expect you to work more than 8 hours a day then find a new job ASAP even with a slight pay cut.
If they agree that you should only work 8 hours a day then start setting boundaries like active hours you will be on, no more laptop at home(only applies if you don’t WFH), no contact after active hours, etc.
At my job(ASIC design and verification) I have a long priority list of each task(larger projects or tasks are broken down in to 1-10 day tasks). We have a task tracker(bugzilla) where I can update my status as needed, then we have weekly team meetings where we go over status and tasks for each team member. I work with my team and manager to set priorities on my tasks and I set the estimated time it will take me. I am lucky at my job that 90% of the time I am not expected to work more than 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week.
Good luck! I have lost a few coworkers to burnout it can be hard to avoid with overachievers. It is important to remember a job is transactional. They pay you for your time and it is important to stay strong and not give extra.
Of course, it will if you allow it to.
Dam Im hoping to transition INTO software dev at 38…
Do you have a decent project manager? I work as an IT project manager and one of my top issues I focus on is avoiding any of my developers being in your situation. I watch their workloads closely especially our high performers to make sure exactly this doesn’t happen and will push back against product owners and stakeholders and will also make sure their chain of command is aware of the load.
Have you ever brought this up with your leadership team. A lot of managers will just continue to dump work on you if you don’t speak up cause they think you’re fine with it.
I would tell your PM and your direct supervisor that the workload is killing you and see what they say.
I have had this problem in the past and seen others go through it. I realized that their inability to give me realistic workloads or timelines did not obligate me to work the job of 2 people. And that they had no reason to change the situation if they were getting the work of 2 people done for 1 salary and the work was all high quality and on time.
So, if got all my work done, they’d assume the situation was a-ok, so I realized I had to not get it done. Of course I would never actually miss a deadline (or do low quality work) so what I did was reach out to my boss/team and say that my workload was too big and I needed support to finish everything on time, or we could ask the client if we could have more time. They hate asking clients for more time, so the solution was always to get people to share the load. Another strategy was, as soon as I was assigned a workload I knew was impossible, I’d message my boss and explain that I was worried about completing everything and list all my work and ask him what I should prioritize. Often he’d take something off my plate at that point because it was obvious it was impossible.
Your employer is taking advantage of your conscientiousness and desire for the company to succeed, while NOT being conscientious of your needs or your happiness or mental health. They aren’t looking out for you so stop looking out for them…so much. Or get a new job and enforce boundaries from the start (“Sorry I won’t be able to take that on, I’m already at capacity. But I’ll reach out once I have more capacity and would be happy to support whoever is working on it.”
In general no. Of course there are good days and bad days, but I’m genuinely interested in the industry I work in and have a fantastic boss. Work is still work, and I’d rather not have to work, but in general I don’t dislike my job
I’m 48. I switched careers at 36. I hated what being a mill worker worker had become and became a boiler operator. I love my job!
So, I don’t usually reply here bc I’m a woman but I’m in tech and you have to stop accepting the work that you can’t get done. Prioritize your own time – say straight up “I can take that on, but if I do I’m going to have to push out XYZ effort.” Get your estimates right, get your delivery timelines established (using the Scotty Principle if necessary) and start saying no.
You need to take some time off. Figure out what things would help you handle the stress and pressure you’re feeling that are negatively impacting your life.
I think the hardest part of any job is keeping it from becoming who you are. That’s one thing I’ve really been working on myself at my new position, making the job be something I do. I do it for whatever amount of time, and then close the laptop and I’m done with it. If the laptops closed, I try to remind myself not to think about work. While also taking the approach of that I’ll work hard, but I can also only do what I can do.
My last company, I was with almost 7 years. I worked 50-60 hour weeks almost every week. Stressed beyond belief. I feel like it took me four months after leaving to finally destress from it all. That job was my identity. It was who I was. And it was not healthy for me.
hard work is rewarded with more work unfortunately. I envy the people who don’t take their jobs seriously and just skate by.
I am in devops so I can understand where you’re coming from. Tech jobs in general can be very stressful, always problem solving and constantly keeping up with changing technologies. It can also be very mentally demanding but not physically demanding so it’s easy to feel burnt out but in a state where you haven’t actually done anything physical so your mind is tired but your body is wired.
With that said, tech jobs like ours are also in some ways probably have one of the best work to pay ratios you can get. I literally work from home, barely move a muscle and make good money. There are certainly way, way worse jobs out there.
I don’t know if another job is the right answer, I think you need to work on finding a better work life balance. Do some physical activity, find some things you enjoy outside of work
The trick is to set boundaries. Work life balance comes first, project comes second.
I’ve been where you are. I’m 37 years old and it took me several years to learn to say “NO”. I always thought if I wasn’t working every minute of every day for the sake of the company, I wasn’t worthy of their attention or my paycheck. I always took on more and more assignments until I got burned out and left.
Eventually, I learned that it’s perfectly fine to keep your tasks at 70% capacity and say no to additional work. Don’t just say no on it’s own, explain what you’re already doing in great detail and why you cannot combine the additional tasks without compromising the quality of the work you’re already doing.
Career-wise, I won’t be promoted as quickly anymore as I’m not overburdening myself, but mentally, I’m better than ever. I see others come, burn themselves out and go. I keep a steady pace and I’m here to stay.
Not a software engineer, but 38 and active duty military. I am close to retirement and so are a lot of my peers. In the last week I have heard 3 different people all say the same thing about work: we’re tired. I dont know if it is an age thing being around 40, or a work thing being in a demanding role or maybe both, but the sentiment I am getting is that we are all getting tired. Combine that with all the stuff I have to do for my kids, I am exhausted. I have a terrible back so if I work out too much or in the wrong way I am in pain for days. I have gained about 10-15 lbs over the last 3 or 4 years and it feels impossible to get rid of now.
How to combat all that, I dont know. Work less hard? Thats only one piece of it. I have an internal count down until I can retire and never work another 40 hour week or spend time on projects I want to do, settle down somewhere. I have another count down in my head of when the kids dont need me nearly as much and they are becoming more self sufficient. Random days off are nice, but a full week feels like too much with nothing really to do. Find balance I guess. If you arent passionate about anything find something to get you excited once in a while.
The Reddit answer is “stop caring.” The mature answer is “learn to set, maintain, and enforce **boundaries**.” It takes work, but you’ve seen how much work it is to *not* do it.
There are lots of books on the subject and a therapist can help if you’re so inclined. I admit, that turning the tide at your current job will be a big challenge after you’ve let them walk all over you so long. Might be easier to use this job as your boundaries testing/learning ground and then move to a new job with your new tools in place.
No it doesn’t. I was in one I hated and I like mine now. It ebbs and flows, but it’s pretty decent. I still get Sunday blues but workload is manageable, I get paid well, working hours are good and I get compensated if I have to stay longer and coworkers are nice.
I remodel rooms for people. I work around 30-35 hrs a week, and only stress when I don’t have enough work lined up. I get the daily satisfaction of seeing the progress I’ve made, and usually make low 6 figures a year.
It’s hard but satisfying work. I’m happy.
No, you have a shitty job. GTFO.
You’re doing a great job, so you get more work, till you break. You can talk to your boss and tell them you’re gonna quit if your workload doesn’t change. Or just leave.
How many hours a week are you working? Too many hours causing the problem? If so, just learn to say no. And when your boss bitches about this, just figure out a way to say, “you can have me for 40 hours a week (or whatever you feel is reasonable) or you can fire me. These are your options.”
Honestly, not everyone.
I have done a huge range of different jobs from software engineer to video editor to radio DJ. I’m decent at all of them, but I’m extremely passionate about all of them.
In all of them I have been afforded a fair amount of autonomy, setting and reaching my own goals. This may not be realistic in a lot of situations, especially high paying ones, but if you have the discipline you can be far more productive and enjoy your work a lot more.
Right now, I’m doing engineering by day (for my own software), hosting an 80’s music radio show overnights (on terrestrial radio), and DJing top-40 nightclubs on the weekends. It is burning the candle at both ends but I absolutely adore everything I’m doing and the job itself is my motivation to get up from my 4 hour naps in between shifts.
It sounds to me like the organizational overhead is what’s getting to you, not the job itself. I understand your reticence to change jobs frequently, but what enables longevity at a job is finding a environment that works for you.
Given your drive and competence in the field, you may be better off trying to get in near the ground floor at a startup, where there is a lot of work to be done but you’re surrounded by people passionate about the project and everybody’s giving their all, there is no room for people screwing around on Facebook all day. These types of jobs can be risky because most startups fail, but you help to shape the corporate culture and if you build a good product it can be a career that lasts a lifetime (I say this as someone who was the senior engineer at a failed startup).
You also need to make sure you still have some stamina left at the end of the day for things that are completely different from your line of work. Hobbies, pleasurable activities, recreation, something to break up the monotony. For me those are my parallel careers, but it can be anything that’s totally different from your job that recharges you.
Good luck, and remember the #1 rule of development: “That bug isn’t mine.”
I could write a book on this for you, but I’ll keep it simple.
I’m 47 – Weirdly a lot of similarities here. I know ASP very well. I have been programming since I was 11. I moved onto a CTO role and then left tech entirely at 35. I built a career being the superhero, it paid well and it was cool being the smart guy people needed. People would call me ‘the oracle’ because I could solve any problem they had.
Here is what I’ll have you consider – You’re making your own reality. You actually like how important you are in the role and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s job security, it pays well – you’re special. Your expertise and talents give you power in ways that are hard to describe but it’s rooted in this concept. Essentially being a superhero makes you important, so you’re always trying to maintain that expectation – if you slow down or let things slide a bit does it compromise your whole identity? Going anywhere new you’d be starting from a position of weakness, so you just continue to feed this ego (essentially).
I don’t believe in work life balance as a concept, I think aligning your life around your work has the best results – but you need to be comfortable in your role and better manage the job itself – you can’t have more of a life while your job is stressing you out, so the only solution is to fix your work situation by taking more control of the process, communication and work on only bringing the superhero out from time to time.
Since you seem to like the job responsibility, it would make sense to try to make it work better for you rather than just completely jump ship. At least you may want to put an effort that direction first and judge the outcome.. if it fails you can more easily walk away because you’ll have more clarity.
… or not, just my thoughts.
And I didn’t leave tech because I hated it per se, I just felt like I could do bigger things beyond that constraint.
Hell no
I’m a machinist and I love my job. I would pay them to do the stuff I do. I can’t believe they are paying me to learn and do this stuff because I would do it for free.
Hell I have been trying to find equipment so I can do it at home on my free time. Also most of the guys I know in the industry love their job and alot of them have equipment at their house and dick around at home on their free time.
If you don’t know what a machinist is look at my profile I have a lot of pics
I’m a 54yo software engineer, was usually significantly better than most of my colleagues, and often had to handle end-to-end solutions.
I think the one key observation that I can provide to you is that you clearly do not realize how much leverage you have. If you’re given all of the important projects and everyone else goofs off, your supervisors know how critical you are to the organization.
It takes some self-confidence and some spine, but you have to start demanding that you only work <X> hours a week (whatever <X> is satisfactory to you), and that includes whatever after-hours time.
What are they going to do, fire you? You’re absolutely critical to the day-to-day operations of the company. It will fall apart if you don’t show up, and they all know it, and they’re just happy that you don’t seem to realize it.
And if they do fire you, hey you’ll have time to find a new job. Even if it pays less. Because your personal well being has significant value, and you don’t deserve to be exploited like this.
Not every employer is like this. The good ones will treasure your drive and attitude, and they’ll use you to help fix the critical problems, and then give you a break. Good managers treat their best employees like rock stars, not like gullible chumps.
Could you go freelance and charge a premium for your knowledge?
I’m also a software engineer. I know exactly what you’re feeling. And you don’t have to endure it.
I’ve been there. Best thing to do is talk to your manager. Tell them you’re overwhelmed with your workload and work on a plan to prioritize what you have and/or farm some of the effort out to other developers.
The temptation for me was to do it all myself and not ask for help. That way, the company and management will see how indispensable I am. And I can’t trust my co-workers to do things as well as me anyway. I did that until I got burnt out.
I was afraid that if I wasn’t constantly overburdened, that management would somehow find me replaceable. I was wrong.
Trust yourself. Trust your talent. You will excel far better on one project, rather than trying to keep three going at once.
Now I don’t know your situation. Maybe you’re the only one that can do this stuff. Maybe your team isn’t as talented as you. The point remains: with the amount of time you have in your position, you some cache to ask for help. You *must* be valuable if you’ve been around so long.
I’m 51, but I’ve only been in my current position for five years. Still, we’ve brought on newer junior developers to help me. I take on the really hairy stuff; they take the not-quite-as-challenging stuff with a little insight from me occasionally. And it works out great for everyone.
Damn I was in your shoes. You know what my reward was?
I got laid off 2 weeks ago with ok-ish severance.
——
You are burning the last remnants of your youth for an organization that would literally work you into a grave for an extra couple bucks. It is not worth it.
You are suffering from clinical burnout.
Do your best to get laid off. Get severance, get unemployment, chill for 2-3 months and then look at freelancing or a better organization.
Or keep doing what you’re doing and die early. That’s literally the choice.
One of the best things I did in my life was get out of a horrible company. It all came to a head when I was on the verge of missing my son’s first Halloween, which was on Saturday, working what I later realized was my 82nd day in a row. I had taken advantage of a merger and positioned myself in a role that I could do, but would’ve never been able to be hired into with my resume. This fueled a feeling of needing to prove that I could do the job and saying yes to anything because any misstep would make them realized I didn’t belong. If you showed any efficiency, then you get more projects. You get yourself any breathing room, more projects because you have availability. You are paired with another PM, so if you don’t take on more work then it gets piled on them. If you feel comfortable, then you have the knowledge your partner is drowning.
With my son being born, I took the 4 week parental leave, but felt I had to make it up when I got back. 2am night feedings became a great time to get in contact with the India team to make sure everything was going smoothly.
Cut to Halloween, I get up early in the morning knowing I had so many more client requests and that this day was going to push me into 90 hours. By the afternoon, I look at my wife holding our infant son in a dog costume and mid-explanation of why I can’t just close my laptop because client needs xyz and if I stop they’ll just pile more work on my coworker, I just stopped and said I need to quit my job.
I started scaling back slowly. Closing my laptop at Quiet quitting in the parlance of our times. After a couple months, I found a new job with a higher salary and a great work-life balance. I still get panicked sometimes at this new job think I’m not doing enough and I need to more. My boss says I’m like a rescue dog. The idea that if someone emails me at 5:30 and I can say I’ll do it in the morning or if someone emails at 11pm I can just leave it would’ve been a fantasy a few years ago.
I just have to constantly remind myself work isn’t the important thing in life. My wife and sons are.