Slashdot Mirror
Burnout and Depression Among IT Workers?
Cultural Sublimation asks: "All of us working in IT seem to be
especially prone to problems like
burnout and depression. Could part
of the reason be directly related
to our professions? Recently, there
have been a number of interesting
features on Kuro5hin which have focused precisely on this issue. From people claiming that "
The Internet Is Driving Me Crazy",
to an in-depth two-part series trying to
demystify
depression, the message is that too
much information might be making us sick.
What are the experiences of fellow
Slashdot readers on this topic?"
Television, radio, and even my favorite hobby of listening to music seem to need to be supplanted by something else. I used to enjoy sitting down, putting on a CD or record and just listening. Now, I get bored too quickly - and that makes me somewhat sad (but not depressed).
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I wonder, am I depressed because I'm burned out or burned out because I'm depressed?
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Here's the question that pops into my mind:
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Its bad enough linking to articles in The Register, do we now link to articles in blogs? What happened to real news? Is this just comments about comments about comments about news?
We can't play video games and ride around the office on our Segways like the future promised! Suck!
i dunno, but i've never been sicker, more volatile, or more depressed than i have been since i started my current job.
Information overload is part of the problem. The other part is the abusive lifestyles we lead - in part by choice and in part because the industry expects it of us. The more strenuous brain-work you're having to do on a daily basis, the more sleep you need to avoid clinical depression - yet we're expected to, want to, and are driven to sleep relatively little.
The answer is to do you magic during an 8 hour work day, and spend the rest of the day being relaxes, and get a good 8-10 hours of sleep every night - good sound sleep. If you're already suffering clinical depression of some stage, you need even more sleep to recover from it. A good diet and a healthy level of exercise also wouldn't hurt. Be sure to read the linked kuro5hin articles though on the caveats of exercise for the clinically depressed.
11*43+456^2
Whats the matter, Cliff? Job pressures got you down? Wanna talk about it? I'm here, bro.
That the linked articles aren't uncontested on k5. For example not this comment about psychotherapy or the lack of knowledge thereof the author seems to have.
I'd be depressed too if i was one of the people who paid for an account here and desperately refreshed all day so I could get first post, and the highlight of my day was good karma.
I'm going to sleep.
I'd rathter read comments about comments (ad inf.) about real news, than read unsubstantiated anonymous rumors passed off by the mainstream press as real news. It's not that blogs are so journalistic or reliable, it's that mainstream media news is so unreliable and devoid of journalism, that blogs make better news sources these days.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
read http://daily.rotten.com and you'll soon see that *your* life is a paradise, provided you're not featured of course.
For an early introduction into what you *could* become, take a look at the poor fuckers on the mother site
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
A certain minority of Americans are inventing new illnesses in order to avoid work.
The economic miracle that was started off by Ronald Reagan in the 80s, and continued through the George Bush Sr and Clinton administrations is one the wonders of the modern world. The solid economic base of Amreica, coupled with the explosion of the American designed world-wide-web and Internet have created opportunities for all regardless of education, race, sex or class. Anyone in America who wants a job will be able to take their pick from a selection of attractive and highly paid positions due to the strength of the American economy.
So why is it then that the middle classes have taken to faking diseases and why are otherwise respectable physicians joining in this collective fraud ?
Dyslexia, M.E., Attention Deficit Disorder, Repetitive Strain Injury, Anorexia. You have probably heard of these diseases before. At least one of your co-workers has probably taken time off work for one of these 'illnesses' in the last month. And yet, up until now no evidence has been produced to support the existence of any these afflictions as actual medical conditions. Let's analyse these 'sicknesses' one by one.
Dyslexia does not exist. Stupid children who cannot read do exist.
M.E. does not exist. People who need to go to bed a bit earlier do exist.
Anyway, some resources. If you are taking/thinking about taking meds, I highly recommend http://www.crazymeds.org/ The site isn't run by a doctor, but having checked his information from a number of different sources, he definitely seems to get the information right. Plus, the site is irreverant, which I appreciate.
The first course of therapy for depression is cognitive behavioral therapy. There is a standard book that explains these techniques. Feeling Good, by David Burns. Amazon link here: http://tinyurl.com/7dxos
I've read a lot of books on depression over the past 18 months, and the best, the most informative, I found was The Noonday Demon, by Andrew Solomon. Amazon again: http://tinyurl.com/99neh
Finally, the links in the post were good, and a good start, but I definitely disagree with some of his advice. Everybody is different, so take the time to hear different viewpoints on diagnoses, symptoms, and cures.
If you're wondering, treatment has made me better than I was, but I still have room for improvement. This is important. Depression may never (or it may) be "cured" for you, but in nearly all cases, treatment will decrease its severity. But not necessarily right away. Treatment is a process, and it takes some time to get there. Be patient.
"My girlfriend's got sodium laureth sulfate hair."
For what reason would we be cheerful when we have such devastating incidents daily such as the Dreaded 404, which has already been shown by logs to spread depression.
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
And your point is what?
* I threw in the towel for good on that site when one of their recurring flamewars about the Middle East devolved into a dispute about whether Israel is or isn't in Africa.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
kuroshin, -1
I've been watching this pretty closely, preparing for a masters program in a related topic. This isn't directly related to my research, so take it more as an idea than a finding, but:
Information overload will only affect certain personality types. There are those of us who inhale Google daily. Recent example: "I went home last night, discovered Hibernate, learned it, and converted our 70,000-line service center app to use it. Want the diffs?" Yeah, there are people who do this; we had it happen at work about a week ago.
Others simply cannot absorb and process information that quickly. These people are potential info-burnouts. Tends to correlate, in my experience, with a general unwillingness to learn new programming languages or adapt to new systems. They're not being sticks-in-the-proverbial-mud -- they understand that they simply can't cram it into their brain quickly enough, and it often makes them anxious.
There are a lot more types of programmers than that, but you get the idea. In my case, I was trained from an early age to work around my ADD by constantly juggling large amounts of data. (My parents are ADD programmers too.) I have the opposite problem: my productivity declines as my tasks get simpler. It becomes too easy to become distracted.
My point: don't reduce the problem of burnout. There are a lot more variables than just information.
I suspect work conditions have far more to do with burnout and depression. Programmers tend to be expected to work long hours, and at least in my experience, a surprising percentage of programming shops have hostile, competitive, or abusive environments.
Geeks in general don't exercise as much as they should. Lack of exercise leads to depression in a big way. Cut 40 minutes off your other hobby projects and get some good hard exercise, exercise as in you're in the zone for a solid 15 minutes at least. Go get a Polar monitor, it's a nifty gadget (mmm gadgets) that will tell you for sure when you're in the zone. For most people, it's less effort than they think -- you don't have to exhaust yourself to get your heart rate up, though it's pretty punishing to keep it up for the first couple weeks.
If you exercise regularly, your mind will be sharper, and you'll write better code. This I guarantee.
My polar HRM is of course gathering dust. I need to take my own advice.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
And loosing your spouse to someone who is around more than you.
.dot com days, there are no more perks, inhouse childcare, you are being outsourced quicker than you can say "work visa".
This whole "Salary" means 50+ is bullshit. White collar workers make less then union construction workers not even counting in overtime. The union guys at our work pull 6 figures with massive OT, but we get to sit a nice comfy desk why our Boss yells at us why are 10 million customers out of service because of an outage we dont control.
Ya, no stress there, goto work at dark, come at dark, wife is mad at all hours, you want to provide a good home, but thats not good enough.
Really, its come down to 2 parents working to make a living so you can spend time with the family. Good jobs require you to put in more hours, ding ding, problem here...
Humm, ya, unions suck dont they. Thats why companies merge and lay off thousands of workers, oh wait, unless they are union. The IT workers are dropped quick, the union workers sue and get their jobs back.
Americans are idiots, they refuse to realize unions where created for saftey and fair wages. So, who needs a union, the big old corporation will take care of you right? This isnt the
Lets just blame depression, heres your happy pill.
Too much information may lead to burnout if it is not properly handeld (Dream states are our bodys ways of coping with the excess of information) , What causes the depresions is the long hours and heavy workloads . When the body is not given good time to recouperate from our daily chores then we will suffer from the effects.
The IT field as it is will most likely make us susceptable to this,IE: working that extra couple of hours to get a project finished. If we deny ourselves proper rest and relaxation we are bound to become overburdend and stress.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
I've been experiencing this 'effect' lately.
/. , or browsing forums for new knowledge. All (mostly) legit use of my time, but it's starting to feel like it is all I can, or want, to do. The worst part is, nothing seems to stick anymore. I'll read some info on a site and not remember it a day later.
/. but ultimately who cares about that. I sit, frustrated at myself and the amount of mounting work... a pile that grows exponentially it seems... Yet I can't seem to motivate myself to change it. I recognize that it's happening... I see the crash ahead of me. It's not that I'm apathetic or lazy, but I sure seem to be behaving that way. Is this a symptom of depression?
I'm the sole developer on a fairly elaborate project. Everything tech related is my responsibility. Site design and architecture, development, support, training, hardware, software, security, everything.
Early on, it wasn't so bad. Then a year went by. Then two. The third has now completed and I'm entering the fourth. Some days I sit at my desk staring at the screen. In my mind, I'm running through everything I should be doing, but I can't seem to get my fingers to do the typing or my legs to move me to the other side of the room to the desk where I work on hardware.
I almost didn't bother typing this... but it's kind of theraputic in a way.
Anyway, lately I seem to find all kinds of 'filler' activities to consume my time. Reading up on the latest changes to the various software we use, keeping up with
Sure, I can probably remember most of the topics on
I've never really thought of myself as someone who gets depressed. Maybe that's denial talking. How does one check for that?
More importantly, how does one go about kick-starting their motivation again? I've tried little side projects that are related to what I do already, in the hopes that will gain me some momentum and I can then change lanes and keep working, but I can't even seem to build up any steam.
Even as I type I'm getting bored. Could be because I figure nobody will even care what I'm typing in the first place. Then again, if it helps someone else, or someone with insight can explain it then maybe it was worth it.
I wonder if there's anything good on tv right now?
Depression, bipolar disorder, mania, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, Asperger's syndrome (we can read about them in Weaknesses of the Hacker Personality by Eric S. Raymond) are very common among intelligent people in general, not only IT workers. Somewhat less common are dyslexia, schizophrenia and various types of psychosis. This seems to be rather widely known but at the same time many people tend to forget about autism. Some of you may remember that back in 2003 I made some research to find a correlation between IQ (the intelligence quotient) and AQ (the autism-spectrum quotient). The results pretty much speak for themselves. Needless to say it seems that while some of the symptoms may result from caffeinism, sleep deprivation and other drugs abuse, at least some of them seem to be directly correlated with other personality characteristics and sexual habits or the lack thereof. But we have to keep in mind that it is very easy to fall into post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. We have to ask ourselves whether these are intelligence and technical skills that cause personality weaknesses or the other way around when a weak psyche and antisocial attitude result in the concentration on abstract concepts and thinking in general. In short: those who are more intelligent do not necessarily have to be psychopaths but any sociopaths most certainly have a lot of time to think and tinker with their hardware. That may in turn result in the perception that intelligence makes people crazy which does not have to be true at all.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Programming and IT are racing to the bottom awfully fast. If these industries are what you experience most of, you can (fallaciously) extrapolate that to other industries. For example, in my dark moments, I've wondered why cars don't yet require subscriptions to keep driving. I've also wondered when restaurants are going to make you start signing waivers before you eat there.
Likewise, we can fallaciously extrapolate the dismal quality of software to other industries. (See the old "if cars were like computers" joke). I spent a couple years in support at my company; some customers actually like our product, though, after my experience, I'm surprised that our boxes ever boot up at all, much less occasionally do something useful. I can recognize now that that's a warped perspective.
Let's face it, the world isn't an ideal place. Access to all the information about how far from ideal it really is will bring anybody down. Couple that with getting to see minimum amounts of sunshine, minimum amounts of contact with people outside your field and the constant pressure of only being called on when things are broken (so no phone call you get is good news)... Then, for the heck of it, let's add the effects of seeing a company strive for globalization and realizing your job isn't real secure anyway. But, on the plus side, you rarely have time to commit suicide so you're probably live until your organs fail!
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Reading Slashdot for long enough, you start to wonder when corporations are simply going to take over the government, make slavery legal again, and start charging lifetime subscriptions for products you can only use for a year.
The fact that all the depressing things reported here are true doesn't help. Knowing that you / your industry / society / etc. is heading towards a race-to-the-bottom cliff, and not being able to do a damn thing about it, is awfully depressive.
Andrew Solomon (referenced above) mentioned in a "Bush Survival Guide" of antidepressant tips I got for Xmas:
Ask anyone who has left the IT field to reflect and they will tell you how much their job took over their lives....most jobs do not do that.
:)
Plus you have to understand the type of person who usually heads into this field is usually a geek....this is more than just their jobs and usually the geek life is one that is defined early in school life......maybe we should be looking at this from that angle.
I need more sleep...excuse me
I have a serious question. Post anonymous for obvious reason. In the real world, people cannot discuss health issues, especially mental health issues. I'm really wondering just how many people have had the same problems as I have. I graduated college almost 10 years ago. After college I got a decent paying job, got an apartment, all the usual stuff. Everything I thought I wanted up to that point. I even had a fiance. American dream so to speak. I became very disappointed. The work was not what I expected, the hours were not what I expected, my life was not what I expected. I quickly fell into depression.
I was known as a talented guy at work. Was quickly moving up the ranks. It required a lot of work and study on my part to maintain this level. Eventually the depression increased to the point of affecting my work. It became harder and harder to come to work. I was drinking extreme amounts of coffee to maintain concentration. After some time of this, I had my first panic attack. Was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, thought I was having a heart attack. My heart rate was going crazy. Doctors thought I was on drugs, but I surely was not. They advised me to see my physician about my heart rate and released me. My physician asked me about my stress levels and I told him I was pretty stressed. He sent me to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist put me on zoloft and sent me away. After a couple weeks of small amounts of zoloft I felt great! I could concentrate. I could get up in the morning. I was happy. I even stopped caffeine. My work returned to levels it had previously been.
With this newfound ability, I began taking on more work and working harder to move up. This continued a number of years. About every year so, I start getting back into that state. At which point I increase the dosage, with consent of a doc, and am able to take on more work. I am now considered a very high level programmer and can do many things that others have not. Though this has all come with a price. When I think about it, I wonder what is going to make this stop. Unfortunately, I think it will take something serious to happen. Does anyone else drive themselves like this or am I just crazy.
...so I recently changed careers. I'm now a reporter.
... as someone who has suffered from depression for years, let me hint to you that there are several other things in the IT "lifestyle" ("Life? Don't talk to me about life....") that have something or other to do with depression.
...
(1) Self-care. The style that we encourage in CS courses, with our image of hackers working for days at a time and living on the four programmer food gorups ("caffeine, grease, salt, and processed sugar"), is not something that people can generally physically deal with even into the middle twenties. Sleep and periodic meals make a big big difference to mood.
PHB's who think that you can actually do more in an 80 hour week than in a 50 hour week just add to this, which leads to
(2) Feelings of helplessness. We start out with the frustrations of programming, where we're doing perhaps the most complicated intellectual task invented by humanity, doing it with a body of knowledge that's really only 50 or 60 years old, and dealing periodically with apparently inexplicable problems. Then add the canonical Dilbert moments: PHB's, "flexible" schedules, expected overtime, "offshoring", our own inclination toward being obsessive-compulsive (which we either start with or are trained into by our tools and techniques), and then dealing with a whole lot of people who don't understand the intellectual challenges or share the style of rigorous thought and obsession with detail that go with our field. Depression and burnout are very much related to feelings of helplessness.
(3) programming tends to involve people who are less extroverted and less social. People who are bright, introverted, and unsocial tend to feel isolated and alone. Depressing.
In fact, a lot of us would test pretty highly for Asperger's Syndrome, which is akin to mild autism.
The point is that you don't need some new "information glut" syndrome to explain a prevalence of depression and burnout.
sometimes I want to be the person in the 3rd world who has never ever even taken a phone call.... not the guy that has 15 remote sessions open, and 10 browser tabs... if I owned a mobile serial killing would not be far behind!
Sig Hansen?
I was a depressed overweight nerd sitting at the computer too long, getting angry and frustrated.
Now I am an overweight happy nerd sitting at the computer playing WoW, getting angry and frustrated at all the n00bs who can't play as well as me.
Things tend to work themselves out. =P
Unfortunately, in America far too many people are diagnosed as depressed when the cultural norm for emotion is happy. People -can- be neither happy nor sad, just... there. I'd imagine that quite a few geeks would tend to fit into that distanced analysis of the world leaves them rather neutral feeling. Since neutral is below happy [the cultural norm], they're judged as being sick or depressed. Nothing is making them feel bad, it's just that nothing is there to make them happy.
Though that said, I wouldn't be suprised at all if much of the stereotypical geek lifestyle [bad diet, low exercise, spotty social activity, not enough sex] led to increased rates of proper depression.
Seriously... What kind of lifestyle could ever, possibly allow this?! I work from 7am-8pm every day for my day job, then do consultancy work from the end of work until 2/3am - and work when I travel as well. Time is not to be wasted... I sleep 3 or 4 hours a night, and work weekends...
The strangest thing... I always feel good.
My question is more this.
Is it a case of too much information, or being bombarded by abuse from people who are willfully ignorant about the technology they use daily.
A certain amount of burnout can be fairly easily attributed to things like high end programming to short deadlines and small volumes of sysadmins being forced to manage huge server farms, but in my experience, for each systems engineer or sysadmin, you have at least two (in the company I work for, we have 14 helpdesk staff compared to 7 sysadmin/engineer staff) frontline geeks for each one behind the scenes.
I have had personal experience in supporting clients for an ISP, as well as my current job supporting state government, and the level of ignorance shown by the client (and the abuse and anger it generates) hits me much harder than being asked to support a new product or service.
IMHO this is one of those things that has more than one answer, though I wonder if other industries in their formative years experienced similar issues.
Yeah, Burnout Revenge is gonna rule big time man. Especially when you fling pedestrian cars at the other racers. Wait, this isn't Burnout 4? Well.. er.. You can still ram your nitrous injected car into a busy intersection and control the wreckage in bullet-time right?
Seeing the business owners walk with 10s of millions generated from my inventiveness and energy, suck the company dry and leave me with a skeleton business with no future (too much to die, too little to live) was enough to get me depressed for three years and counting, with no energy left for rebooting.
I'm waiting for the Acceptance phase to kick in. So far, it hasn't.
Every time I get a support request because someone doesn't know that you move a window by dragging it by the title bar, or because they can't find a program on their start menu I do start to wonder why I bother.
Another article about IT prima donnas complaining about how their job is worse than any other job.
Geez! I am so tired of the whole "IT is worse than X".
IT is no worse than any other job. In fact, it's a great deal easier than many.
If you want big bucks, then you will work hard for longer than 40 hours a week. PERIOD! That's the way it is. I do not know what IT people were promised by their recruiters, but that's the way it works in every other profession.
I guess that IT people have pressures like "my job can go somewhere else" now more than ever, but that's just the way it is now---for almost everyone!
Suck it up, get help, or get lost! And STOP THE WHINING!
... or at least it seems like that. I am a Medical doctor by training, and as a part of my mandatory membership in the German Medical association I get their weekly journal. Regularly comes up "Burnout in the Medical profession." (noone suffers that bad from burn out like doctors yadda yadda yadda). I am co-owner of a small company, so I get all kinds of more or less useful business related stuff. Regular topic: Burnout in management. (noone suffers that bad from burn out like owners/managers yadda yadda yadda). And now Slashdot.... So it's not only IT, it's the general trend in demanding jobs to overestimate one's capabilities and capacity to endure a lot of pressure over a long period of time.
A year ago, I was so miserable in my then-new job that I hated getting up in the morning and so consistently irritable that my boss was convinced I had an anger management problem. But that's largely because I was working for a boss whose first instinct when he saw a new employee having difficulties was to diagnose him as having an anger management problem, and whose approach to "customer service" was based on being unfailingly polite to them... and doing as little as possible for them.
Now I work for a boss who trusts me to use my own judgment, assumes (without her constant supervision) that I'm working in good faith to do my best, and encourages looking at support requests as puzzles to solve, which is by far more interesting than treating them as tickets to answer and close as quickly as possible. It's almost exactly the same job... but so much better for my mental health.
Am I gloriously happy and eager to go every day? Of course not... but I'm a lot better, and most of the depression I drag around these days comes from my personal life, not from my job.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I thought this was a little well written to have been posted that quickly. This is originally from http://www.adequacy.org/public/stories/2001.7.8.10 5659.2501.html and written in 2001. I would hope that this posted does not repeat this stunt in the future, regardless of the topic or their opinions.
I suspect work conditions have far more to do with burnout and depression. Programmers tend to be expected to work long hours, and at least in my experience, a surprising percentage of programming shops have hostile, competitive, or abusive environments.
Exactly. It has not a Goddamn thing to do with "too much information or having to learn new languages". That's bullshit. It's easy to just tune stuff like that out except what you need to get the work you're supposed to be doing done.
However, it's the long days, no recognition, no real social life, and when you do come home, it's to a shell of a home that's got nothing but some dumbass computers and whatever stupid geek toys you were bored enough to buy during their 15 minutes of fame on /. If you're lucky you have friends that are in totally different lines of work. If not, you're left with the other losers that you see every other week at the LUG meeting. Do this for 10-15+ years and you don't question the burnout and depression. You question why you haven't turned into a homicidal maniac and why postal workers get all the infamous glory.
If you haven't noticed, unions only work well for jobs that can't be moved to another locale and aren't done by illegal immigrants...yet. Who were the big losers of the economy of the 70s & early 80s: unionized workers in manufacturing. Who were the big losers of the downturn in the 90s: middle management. Who were the losers this last time: geeks. Unionizing programmers would only push things overseas faster, just like unions are still pushing manufacturing jobs out. Also, you will still be the peon that has to do all the work because somone who has more seniority than you will get the choice days off, no weekend on-call time, and more vacation and pay. Not because they're better at their job than you, just because they've been there longer. A host will carry only so many parasites.
I thought that his (her?) description of hormesis was fascinating. Take a good look at those graphs in section 3 (from the second part) to understand the real deal behind sports. Everyone who starts to exercise to fend off stress should really understand how and why it may help. Remember folks: if you over do it, you could actually be making your depression worse!
It's a pity that this huge caveat isn't more widely known. Especially if you are young, it is very easy to start exercising obsessively, and it might be too late before you realise all the harm that you are doing to yourself. Remember that moderation is the secret!
I've been there. I burned out - major depression. I use technology in my business (self employed - indy film & videography), but I don't give a hang about it anymore. I'd rather do something with all of the tech than learn about the tech just for the sake of it being there.
For me, basically my whole life was wrapped up in the computer. Programming, projects, hobbies, my identity - how people recognized me and interacted with me - and often what they interacted over.. all of it was dependent on the computer (and none of this was in an unhealthy obsessive way - for example the antisocial EQ addicts, I was nothing like that - technology was just my drug that got me high and made me my real world friends).
When I finally burned out, I had very little else to 'me' that didn't involve computers or programming or technology in some way. Major depression ensued. Fortunately for me though, because I've never been the antisocial type, I had a pretty good support system around me that kept me from really offing myself over everything. I've found new hobbies, I've restarted my 'life' and learned from my past mistakes. No one aspect of what I enjoy or what I do defines me anymore.
Kind of a rambling of thoughts and not to coherent, but I've definitely been there. For those of you afraid of having the same thing happen, start branching out now. Make friends and hobbies that don't involve binary. Learn to spend time away from the comp and not feel like you're missing something terribly crucial.
And get A LOT of excercise.
Dilbert: People are tired, weary, bored, and depressed after a hard day's work. Day in, day out, year after year in endless dead end job after endless dead end job with no future and no hope. That's natural. It's completely appropriate to feel that way. How else should you feel? If you felt good after that soul crunching experience, that would be sick. Chronic cubicle syndrome is just life! Information Glut? I think it might be a wee bit more complex than that ... less fads, less phb's, more treatment, more research, more education.
"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing." -- Salvador Dali
Computers will always be my "hobby" - I personally can't see anything replacing that. Consequently, I fear if ever a day comes where I can't have a job (for whatever reason) that involves computers. At the same time, I entertain a fantasy of seeing the day when advanced AI makes my job unnecessary...
After work, I tend to do different things - sometimes I just kick back and relax. Sometimes this involves doing nothing, sometimes watching a bit of TV or a movie, or reading the paper, or a book. Sometimes, I come home and just hang around with my wife, talk about the day, spend time with her together. Sometimes we go out and do some shopping.
Other times, I come home, and I work on a project. I have waaaay too many projects (a quick perusal of my much out-of-date website will easily verify this). A couple of projects I am currently working on are a revamp of my website (which is involving me learning yet another language - PHP this time - to replace my current Perl-based site), in order to better host my projects and thoughts. So - there are two projects in one - a revamp of my site, and learning PHP. On top of this, I have been investigating and building an ROV based on a cheapo "monster-truck" RC vehicle. Right now, this vehicle has three RF systems for camera, pan/tilt servo system, and control of vehicle, which is very unwieldy, but it was a "proof-of-concept" done on the cheap (basic ROV system for under $50.00, actually). My next step is to go "whole-hog", which is going to necessitate integrating a PC running Linux, an Apache webserver, an 802.11x wireless connection, a USB camera, a PIC-based interface for drive motor, steering servo, and pan/tilt servo (which will necessitate me learning PIC assembler, and a setting up/building a system to dump the hex code, etc - ie, building a PIC-programmer from scratch, then learning to code it all) - then building a CGI interface (likely based on one of the "P" languages - Perl, Python, or PHP) to send commands to the PIC, and to receive images from the camera remotely...
That is only scratching the surface of my project list. I have so many projects, I am likely never to get bored or burned out (heh, my next plan for the RF video transmitter I have on my ROV currently is to try my hand at a video camera model rocket). Whether I will finish them is another matter, but these are things that are all geeky and in most cases, based around computers and electronics. I have several other projects waiting in the wings that don't involve these things, in case I want something really different (though these other projects tend to be expensive in scope - for instance, I need to replace *all* the rubber suspension bushings on my Bronco, along with some ball-joints on the steering system, among a ton of other things - ugh!).
Ultimately, these hobbies in most cases allow me to investigate and learn things that I might be able to apply to situations within my job. No, my job (as a software developer, BTW) may never need an ROV to roam the halls of the office. But - maybe my skills I picked up along the way doing PHP, Perl, Python, PIC assembler, etc - maybe those may come in handy for some project. Indeed, at my last job, I used various skills I have picked up to recover passwords lost by other employees (ie, my employer had me hack their systems). This wasn't something I ever expected to use on the job, but it happenned anyhow.
So - don't look for something to replace your hobby - look for things and projects to do away from work to augment your work based on your hobbies and interests. Look for additional hobbies as well, which might fit well into your interests (ie, in my case with my Bronco, I looked at it as a project vehicle, something nearly completely outside my experience, with the idea that I could learn as I went to fix it).
Here - I will give you an idea to start with: You are a network admin, so you must like to set up and run network
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
There's no question that exercising more can help relieve symptoms of depression. Since many of us sit on our big fat asses all day (there's a reason for the stereotype), it's no surprise more of us would be depressed. When you have a job like that you have to make more of a conscious effort to get up and be active after work.
Consider what it's like to be a programmer (especially an American programmer) in private industry:
:)
1. Management doesn't like you. They consider you a big sunk cost, a drain on their precious profits. It won't matter whether the product YOUR team developed is the only thing the company has to sell, it won't matter if your skill in setting up their network made them leaner and meaner than the competition, nothing you do or say will change anything. They consider you an anchor around their neck and they resent you for it.
2. You are painfully aware that management (the guys from #1 who don't like you) keeps investigating various outsourcing options. From time to time, you see the CEO having warm conversations with guys in suits, who you know from a conversation in the elevator are with a large outsourcing firm.
3. Although all the guys in Sales are out the door by 5:01PM, and in the bar pickled by 6:00PM, YOU're stuck at work until 9PM every night trying to get a product release out the door. You're working your guts out because your idiot project manager doesn't care (he's drinking with the guys from Sales). And no matter how hard you work, your only thanks is going to be "Damnit, Bill, you're a week late on this! This is going to go in your performance review!"
4. Because you live at work, and therefore are a pasty, nearsighted, vaguely unhealthy dweeb, you haven't been laid in a year. But you have to listen to the sales guys bragging about all the pussy they're getting when they're drunk in the bar you never make it to. Once in a while, one of them catches a venereal disease and you get to enjoy a minute of Shadenfreude. Then you go back to your compiler. What the fuck! It was compiling fine a minute ago... How the fuck did that... Oh. Right. Never mind. (Type, type, type).
5. The ONE NIGHT you go home early (at 6PM) because you're dead exhausted, you run into one of the suits and he quips "Half day, Bob?" The rest of the elevator ride is you fighting the overwhelming urge to stab him in the neck with the pen your father gave you for Christmas. The reason you DON'T is, you're afraid the police won't return it after the forensics guys are done with it. It really IS a nice pen.
6. Every day, on your way in to work, you walk past Smith, who is some vague middle manager or something (you don't know what his actual function is, but he seems to be always present). If you're even a minute late, he makes clucking noises as you pass. If you forgot to shave, he rubs his chin and shakes his head, smiling. The one time you spoke, he got snotty with you, implying that you were a hippie freak.
7. You can't work for more than ten minutes without somebody ruthlessly interrupting you to ask you a question they could have answered with Google in two minutes flat. You briefly consider buying a spray can and filling it with cold water (it worked on your ex-girlfriend's cat). Then you think, nah, better use battery acid. THEN you worry about why you thought of that, and THEN, you worry that you're a big pussy because you worried.
One day, you realize: THIS IS MY LIFE. I picked this on PURPOSE! And just like that, you become a burnout.
DISCLAIMER: When I figured out I was a burnout, I left the private sector and found much happier environs. I feel a whole lot better now.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
-Ideological piffle-
Explaination in "plain english": Obviously Bill, Lisa and Amy had more pressing things to do with thier time than to wait on you hand and foot for minimum wage & tips. Just because you have spent you whole life "working hard" at chasing money, that does not mean the whole planet should do the same regardles of what else is going on in thier lives.
These famous dyslexic people are all to stupid to read? Granted Tom Cruise is on the list but among the others are Jefferson, Edison and Washington, all of whom would make your brain appear a bit "skateboard-ish".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Ultimate can be very aerobic and it's not that hard to find people to play with who don't keep score and where people switch sides at random in the middle of the game. I.e. when you get tired, you switch out with someone, and then when you are recovered you switch out with someone who is tired without regard for which team you're on. There are plenty of people who play who just enjoy running back and forth really hard throwing a disc around.
I haven't played in a while (been cycling mostly) but way back there was some talk about trying to get it in as an olympic sport, but one of the big barriers is the lack of respect for team boundaries. "Hey, you guys are short a few players and look tired-- why don't we have our extra subs play for you for a couple points" doesn't go over well at the olympics.
It's too much sitting at the computer and too little interacting with people. Easy as that.
Justin?
All the dyslexics I know are very smart. One was a civil engineer who went back and got a B.A. in English Lit, Honours. He took three times as long to read everything, because the page distorted into strange patterns for him. His essays were brilliant.
Another is my stepbrother, a respected geomorphologist. I helped him overcome the reading barrier, as the letters rearranged themselves into non-english. He improved. His parents were both highly literate professionals, and he had excellent elementary education.
Another one I'm working with right now has the whole page look like it's shifting into hyperspace, or like some funky concrete poetry. She's a psychologist working on a post-doc. All intelligent, ad nauseum.
I also used to tutor stupid kids who couldn't read. They invariably had too much cathode ray tube exposure and no books in the house, and stupid parents who never read to them. None of them were dyslexic.
Likewise with the rest of your cadged assertions... these are real problems that have been overdiagnosed, undoubtedly, to the detriment of the real sufferers. I know an actual ADD sufferer (runs her own successful web publishing and video business), and I know kids who had ritalin forced on them due to misdiagnosis. Your muddying of the waters, however, is a troll.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Not bad, I'd give 6/10 for amusement value. Adequacy.org lives on.
People that are prone to these illnesses are more likely to go into techincal fields.
Another prime example of twisting stats to prove YOUR point, not reality.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I dont think people are depressed from the job itself but who they work for and what exactly they do. I work on some programming and find it fun, however when Im doing a job that is so pethetic and so boring trying to dot all the Is and cross all the Ts its just a pain in the ass. Though I dont get paid as much I find it much more enjoying to repair and help people with their problems. I still program some and may go back some day when I need the money but I know along with all the other cubicle gimps out there around the world unless you are one of those 80+ hours a week and loving it people it will not really progress much farther. I program on my own in my own time for fun when it gets boring I stop and do something else. Helping those people who dont know where to find the "any key" on a keyboard is much more enjoyable.
Working in any enviroment where the world seems to be on your sholders is to much for most people. Find a local small job and work for them. Sure that job could go under but so could a big buisness where suddently 300 programmers are all looking for work.
I am one of those Depressed overworked IT people who would rather lay down and die than finish the project but still finishes the project in the hopes it will be his last. Not everyone was made for the IT stuff and being paid less for working on a computer than for laying concrete does help put things in prospective.
Every job has to work hard to get anywhere big. Some more than others. In construction you work hard every day in programming you have impossible deadlines to work hard to meet in medical you work to never make mistakes. everything has its downside for what it is. People burn out because they only want the glammer not the actual work. If you dont like your job quit and get another but dont expect them to throw money at you simply for showing up. Thats not how it works, atleast not for most people.
To be rich in money you must sacrifice your time.
To be rich in life you must sacrifice your money.
To be rich in everything you must win the lottery.
-- Another burnout
Well Im gona go do something... and by something I mean nothing but doing nothing away from my computer counts as someth
About 2 1/2 years ago, I was on a "maintenance" team, basically keeping things running. The team was about a dozen people, 3 of which (myself included) were the "web team."
One of us spent 80% of his time supporting one subsidiary. The other spent 80% of her time supporting another subsidiary, plus the intranet website (not apps, just the site). I picked up the rest. For a goodly portion of the year, we were doing OK. We rotated a pager amongst the 3 of us, weekly. Mildly stressed, but not bad. We managed it.
Then Thanksgiving came around. The other guy in the group announced he was going for training the first 2 weeks of December, after which point he'd be in a different section of IT. Our manager had given him the opportunity to make this leap, and didn't offer it to anyone else. Once those 2 weeks were over, he was on vacation for the rest of the year, then off to his new assignment. So now we're down to 2 people on the pager.
At the end of that first week, the young woman on the team tendered her 2 weeks' notice. She'd told me it was coming about 2 weeks before that, but I wasn't to say anything to anyone. Mentally, she was "checked out" already.
Which left just me as the web person on this support team. The first business day after the 2nd person left the company, we had massive layoffs. I'm talking 1/3 of the IT department massive.
Later that week, the shit really hit the fan. Pager going off 4-5 times a day. 2-3 times a night. Systems breaking left and right. I scrambled gluing things back together. Wrestled for hours trying to figure out how to fix things that were left undocumented by people who were no longer with the company. My micro-managing boss somehow had no clue this was all going on. Never offered to find help for me. Never backfilled these two positions that were left empty.
And remember, this was the holiday season. Plus year-end craziness at the office. Lots of people taking time off, heightened awareness of any system downtime. I wasn't sleeping well, my body was responding in a very violent way to the stress, I was lashing out at people in a bad way, and generally not doing well. I don't recall how much time I took for Xmas vacation but I know I had leftover vacation time at the end of the year. How could I take vacation? There was no one else covering! Even on the days I was "on vacation" I carried that pager and was responding to problems.
In the final days of the calendar year, I spent every day asking myself "why don't I just walk out? They are abusing me, and I'm taking it." The answer was "this city is dead, there are few if any jobs I could get into. A stack of bills I couldn't cover while being out of work for more than a month. They have me by the balls and they know it."
After about 7 weeks of this torture (mid-January), I finally got up the nerve to say to my boss "um...can you please get someone to take this pager for me?" Yes, I had to build up the nerve to do it. Any sign of weakness would ruin you with her.
In my annual review, she had the audacity to tell me "oh, you seem tired all the time, and stress out too easily." It wasn't even worth fighting her - it would do nothing but make me look even worse, and she wasn't my boss anymore anyway. That year I spent under her thumb set me back by 2 years professionally, and I think I'm still paying for it today, 2 1/2 years later.
6 months into that year, I started a job search which continues today. In the 2 years I've been searching, I've received 3 offers, all of which I've had to turn down. One was with a startup demanding 6 and 7 day weeks, minimum 10 hour days. With plans to get married shortly after taking the job, that wasn't going to happen. The next, they couldn't approach my salary requirements and wanted to 1099 me when they should have been hiring (I now realize, after some research, that they were trying to avoid the IRS and other stuff that goes along with having real employees). And the last was another
Perhaps Acceptance will kick in when you start afresh, put your energy into something new, and enjoy the good things you are clearly able to create.
The most depressing and anxiety-inducing things tend to be those where abuse is caused by other human beings. I would say your experience falls into that category (regardless of the actual intentions of the other people, that's how you've experienced it).
The other end of that is Acceptance and ideally Forgiveness, but it isn't something you wait for. It's something you can choose, at a time when you have moved far enough away from the past that you are able to let go of it because there's no further need to hold on to the pain
If you're still struggling in a shell of a business caused by past troubles, it will be more difficult to let go of the past. If you're into something new that you enjoy, a new phase of your life when you're doing something you enjoy that you might never have done if not for the misfortunes of the past, then letting go of the past is much easier.
I agree totally with what you say about energy. It sucks you dry, to have that happen.
But not completely. It's hard to reboot, but a radical change of scene, perhaps one where you are more directly benefitting from your inventiveness, even if it's not millions but is personal, is likely to provide new energy.
I bet it is just a phase.
If your attention span is getting shorter, try concentrating, i.e. a bit of self dicipline.
Don't blame "the Internet".
When I was a teenager I blamed girls. Now it is women. There is always something.
While I think there are quite a few screwballs who should stop whining and get their ass into gear (notably emotional types who have never worked a hard day in their life and don't understand what pleasure it can bring... get off your ass, kick that poodle into the pond with your pills, and get a fewkin' life! You sit at home all day, no wonder you feel like crap, that's not a human's normal operational state! Goes for all you depressed stoners, too. Trust me, I've been there as well.), there are also genuine cases; and if you've never had a depression or burn-out, drop to your knees and thank whoever you appreciate that you haven't, cuz it's Shit City. You remember you once felt good, but can't picture or experience it, and the slightest task takes enormous effort. I'd rather chop off your leg and mine both than wish somebody what I went through (although as stated in the article, it might do some good to experience the sheer horror of it. Does wonders for your empathy towards your fellow man.) And I'm lucky, because my father had it too and is fairly well-informed, which meant we worked out the cause and solution fairly quickly.
/. post linked to contained some excellent examples and conjecture, especially because it supports that the problem is more in the lifestyle and actually there being a "tough shit, it's like that" problem. At least a few people will have read it and thought "Thank God, there's hope!". And praises to them for taking matters into their own hand. I also think it's an evolutionary fuckup which is becoming problematic because of the incredible momentum our society now has. Life is very intense and requires a lot of CPU power, and our brains are on the limit, just like our computers.
There's millions who feel like shit every day and don't have a clue why. Each person and situation is as unique as the next one and I think the articles the original
Three years ago, I was an extremely happy tween who had just started up his own company. Business prospered, a friend jumped on the wagon to help, and all was well; I enjoyed the contacts with people, the challenges in the field, learning management. I slept 3 hours a day, worked 12-16, and spent the rest in a combination of surfing, having fun with friends, sports and whatnot. I was having the time of my life and I thought many times "I wanna keep this up indefinitely!". And I certainly tried.
More customers came, more thinking had to be done, I even built my own house. I was working 20/7. And bit by bit, it became less rozy, and brain processes slowed, until three months later my colleague had to tell me how to write somebody's name down with a pen. Diagnosis: severe burn-out, go sit at home for a year. Couldn't do that, though... I didn't have any insurance for that type of thing and the money had to come in; moreover I didn't yet realise I was up way past my bedtime. I had invested a lot of money, time and effort and wasn't about to quit, COULDN'T quit.
So we worked on, and it got worse; until finally we bit the bullet and expanded. New office, extra people to help with the work. Slowly, my little brain recovered. But it's still not back up to par and it had shifted into a clinical depression, something which runs in my family and I had problems with through pretty much my entire youth until medication kicked it out the window. I reacted well to MAO inhibitors, and I still have them on the shelf when I need them.
My advice to others who are down: GET HELP. There's excellent brainlords out there who have a pretty darn good idea of what's going on, and they're like you and me: doing their best each day, every day. You'll know you've got a good one when you run into him or her; most importantly what they say should MAKE SENSE, not some dreamy "you should get in contact with your emotions, just FEEL the pain" nor "You're suffering because your energies aren't in line". They'd better have darn good explanations for their statements; if they can't, give 'em the boot and try the n
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
And don't forget lack of sex (doesn't apply to all, but quite a few I know). I've noticed my own moods tend to be more errated when I'm getting less "activity," though you can substitute in other activities frankly a good ol' fashioned healthy sex-life often does wonders for one's mood.
I find it's easier now that I have my primary visa and chequing account with the same bank. All my recurring bills go on Visa, Visa gets paid by moving money from my chequing account, no muss no fuss.
Some of the happiest people I know are some that (no offence intended) aren't the biggest thinkers. I find that your standard geek tends to think too much, internalizing possibilities, issues, etc.
Some people just live on a daily/weekly basis. They pay their bills, go to work, make babies, and don't sweat the rest... maybe not the best thing in the overall picture but often happier in general. Those who think on the bigger picture are often looking for the happiness of a group... others don't have to deal with such a big picture.