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57% of Tech Workers Are Suffering From Job Burnout, Survey Finds (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A survey conducted among the tech workers, including many employees of Silicon Valley's elite tech companies, has revealed that over 57% of respondents are suffering from job burnout. The survey was carried out by the makers of an app that allows employees to review workplaces and have anonymous conversations at work, behind their employers' backs. Over 11K employees answered one question -- if they suffer from job burnout, and 57.16% said "Yes."
The company with the highest employee burnout rate was Credit Karma, with a whopping 70.73%, followed by Twitch (68.75%), Nvidia (65.38%), Expedia (65.00%), and Oath (63.03% -- Oath being the former Yahoo company Verizon bought in July 2017). On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix ranked with the lowest burnout rate of only 38.89%, followed by PayPal (41.82%), Twitter (43.90%), Facebook (48.97%), and Uber (49.52%).
The company with the highest employee burnout rate was Credit Karma, with a whopping 70.73%, followed by Twitch (68.75%), Nvidia (65.38%), Expedia (65.00%), and Oath (63.03% -- Oath being the former Yahoo company Verizon bought in July 2017). On the other end of the spectrum, Netflix ranked with the lowest burnout rate of only 38.89%, followed by PayPal (41.82%), Twitter (43.90%), Facebook (48.97%), and Uber (49.52%).
But, allow me to play doubles advocate here for a moment. For all intensive purposes I think you are wrong. In an age where false morals are a diamond dozen, true virtues are a blessing in the skies. We often put our false morality on a petal stool like a bunch of pre-Madonnas, but you all seem to be taking something very valuable for granite. So I ask of you to mustard up all the strength you can because it is a doggy dog world out there. Although there is some merit to what you are saying it seems like you have a huge ship on your shoulder. In your argument you seem to throw everything in but the kids Nsync, and even though you are having a feel day with this I am here to bring you back into reality. I have a sick sense when it comes to these types of things. It is almost spooky, because I cannot turn a blonde eye to these glaring flaws in your rhetoric. I have zero taller ants when it comes to people spouting out hate in the name of moral righteousness. You just need to remember what comes around is all around, and when supply and command fails you will be the first to go. Make my words, when you get down to brass stacks it doesn't take rocket appliances to get two birds stoned at once. It's clear who makes the pants in this relationship, and sometimes you just have to swallow your prize and accept the facts. You might have to come to this conclusion through denial and error but I swear on my mother's mating name that when you put the petal to the medal you will pass with flying carpets like itâ(TM)s a peach of cake.
My blood pressure has never been higher!
Not to mention my managers who openly joke about how being stressed "is just something you deal with" and openly laugh about it in front of me anytime someone mentions it.
Fark this noise
>> one question -- if they suffer from job burnout, and 57.16% said "Yes."
I doubt they know what burnout is then. Are you dragging yourself to work AND finding yourself still getting there two hours late because fuckit AND then working at home past when you really wanted to go to bed multiple nights in a row AND hating your job AND not caring if the current deathmarch you are on actually yields a product? Then, yes, you're burned out and it's time to find a cush corporate job or maybe just a few weeks of beach/mountain/whatever. Did someone at work hurt your feelings this week but you're still OK with the work for the money? Well then not so much.
Tech work culture is seriously broken when 80 hour weeks and never going on vacation for any reason is encouraged and celebrated. Burnout under such conditions is inevitable.
Long on call hours. Declining inflation adjusted wages. Having to spend hours and hours of your own time training because companies don't train anymore. Constant threats of outsourcing or being replaced by an H1-B applicant (despite the fact that that is explicitly illegal).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Always take it. Every year -- don't set a precedent that you're overly hard-working...
Or at least raise the wage floor where overtime == time and a half. Obama tried this, Trump unfortunately rolled it back. Also, sometimes you need to work overtime two weeks in a row, crunch time to finish a project. I'd change that requirement to get the time back to something like a 2-3 month period.
$250k/yr if you have no time to enjoy it is worthless unless you plan to work for a few years, live like a miser, and invest enough of it in rental property so you never have to work again.
If companies were to regularly take 10-20% of their profits and divide them up into bonuses for employees who work overtime, I bet a lot of these people would be much happier. Where I work, it is just a given that even if you brought in a few million dollars of new work for the company, if you're not "management," you typically don't see a bonus. Then they wonder why no one below management tends to give a damn about finding new business unless they're guaranteed a salaried slot on it (which is rare, so motivation is low).
... because that word describes my current situation quite well. I do work a ton, on quite demanding stuff and by taking lots of risk. Currently, I am not precisely earning a lot. But I do love my job, perhaps even a bit too much. And I think that this is the key issue here: really liking what you do or not.
"Most of tech workers not liking their jobs are suffering from job burnout" sounds more descriptive of the actual reality. The tech world does seem quite tough for those not truly enjoying it, in general or under the given conditions.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The medical field in the US still values its employees, unlike IT.
What's wrong with not being promoted -- just do your job well, take your pay and vacation time. Work to live, don't live to work. A snazzy job title isn't the pinnacle of human achievement.
Meanwhile, in the civilised world, the government would be sending in labour inspectors and shutting your employer down if they heard that they gave you 3 weeks vacation, and only after you demanded it.
In my field, year-long spikes are common.
I'd support having all such things (including scheduled days off, vacation, overtime/comp time, etc.) kept indefinitely, with maximum caps for each kind. If an employee leaves for any reason, including being fired, they get paid out whatever they haven't used.
I'm quite happy to help my team meet their goals and go the extra mile to deliver a quality product to our customer..... but I certainly expect that once that's done, I'll get to go spend time with my family.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If the spike is a year long, time to hire more people vs abusing your own workers.
I've done a lot of Peopleware like consulting, mostly for software development teams. The IT office space is in general the enemy of these teams. They are noisy and destroy your concentration. You can only break someones concentration for a finite number per day, certainly with introverts, after that the dev is just excausted. As a rule of thumb, the correlation is more people wearing headphones -> more burnout. It's fucked up that people need to wear headphones to attempt to do their work, and a clear sign the environment is poison to their jobs. Of course they put all these people in the same space, to save money. Hardly ever do they do the math, and contemplate how much it costs them in burnout and turnover.
Does this result argue for wider adoption of Netflix's H.R. model, as expressed in the manifesto that went viral a few years back? Namely:
1. Hire "A" players, because the competence of one's coworkers is a large contributor to employee satisfaction.
2. Don't use golden handcuffs as a means of mitigating hiring churn; you want employees to stay at the company because they want to be there. Employees choose how much stock they want vs. cash.
3. Don't use performance based bonuses; high performance is the base level expectation, not something to be singled out and rewarded.
4. "We're a team, not a family." You don't "cut" people from a family; you do "cut" people from a pro sports team.
5. "Hard work - Not Relevant". They care about productivity, not how hard you worked to be productive.
6. Low tolerance for "brilliant jerks".
7. Pay "top of market" wages. "One outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than two 'adequate' employees." "Employees should feel they are being paid well relative to other options in the market."
Lots of companies now offer "unlimited" PTO- but that really just means there is less incentive to let you take time off, and you won't get paid out for unused vacation when you leave.
I've worked for companies that offer 2 - 3 weeks and unlimited. The companies with the unlimited policies ALWAYS track your PTO more closely than the ones that give a set number of days.
I'm not surprised that a significant number of users who don't feel comfortable talking to coworkers without anonymity are feeling burnout at work. This wasn't a commissioned study with careful target sampling, they just showed this question to their users. The title of this article should be "57% of Tech Workers Who Use The Blind App Are Suffering From Job Burnout, Survey Finds".
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Try working construction for minimum wage and not knowing where your next job will come from. Then have your blood pressure tested.
Ahh the "staving people in Africa" argument your mother made to get you to eat your vegetables. Great example of the fallacy of relative privation. Just because other people have it worse doesn't mean you should be grateful for a possibly better but still bad situation.
Working in Belgium and some of the things I have had happened to me.This is in several companies:
On a Friday at the end of February: Hello, you still have not taken your 5 last days and you need to take them at the end of Febrary. "So that means I have the week of next week?" Yes. OK. Have a nice day I see you after that.
They literately told be right before I went home, so no way to hand over anything. Yes, my manager was there and wished me a nice unexpected holiday.
Another one:
"We see you have worked 2 hours extra, when are you going to take them this week?"
And a nice one. We saw you worked from 9 till 5 for the last year. However we forgot to mention that this did not include you break, so please work the legal hours from now on and sorry for the misunderstanding. (No, they never asked to do those hours they paid)
In Belgium a manager of a supermarket was fired, because he came in early to do extra work, so his employees would need to do less. That company had a strict "no overtime" policy. Mind you, before they fire somebody, they will be warned at least 2 times if not more.
No, it did not matter that he did not claimed the payment for it.
And having a healthy work-play relation is important in most European companies. In many places people will work 4/5, meaning having one day extra of and earning enough with the 4/5th to make it interesting. This on top of e.g. homeworking.
Yes, I do have 35 holidays and unlimited sick days, because being sick is not something you know how long it will take. Could be one day, could be 10 months.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Does anyone know how this compares with other professions?
Then in the off years, we'd have layoffs.
People tend to like that even less.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
If you work under such conditions by choice then it is on your shoulders alone.
No, you're wrong. Those working conditions are spreading everywhere. Companies have figured out that instead of hiring more people, they can force others to work more for the same pay.
Don't like it? Get out. And then there's the bullshit of "well, others are doing it!"
And the days of walking out of one job into another are gone - unless you're in the hot skill du jour. Which these days is AI. And god forbid you're over 40: things get real hard then.
And then how does one check on that when interviewing? I had questions about hours and being on call and the interviewer picked up on it. When asked if I had a problem with long hours, I replied, "I want a life."
I received an email later that day, "We're sorry, but you don't have the skills. We are going with another candidate."
I had recruiters stop calling me when I stressed my need for free time and the requirement of 40 hour work weeks. I even got a lecture.
This field is shit and pays shit for the time and stress one endures.
I work with several devs making nearly that much, and they most certainly are burned out. When you work constant death marches with Seattle Hundreds (16 hours a day Mon-Thu and 12 hours a day Fri-Sun) that almost always happens. I work almost that much, and I moved over a year ago and still haven't even unpacked yet. High pay helps, but you still have a breaking point. There just aren't enough programmers to meet demand.
Working in Belgium and some of the things I have had happened to me.This is in several companies:
On a Friday at the end of February: Hello, you still have not taken your 5 last days and you need to take them at the end of Febrary. "So that means I have the week of next week?" Yes. OK. Have a nice day I see you after that.
These stories are precisely why Belgium, and the rest of Europe are the king of tech development, innovation, and the global leader in envelope-pushing ideas.
35 days a year basline seems to be the gold standard in Europe. Typically around 22-25 days you can take whenever you like, plus the rest as paid public holidays.
Unfortunately I find many companies don't like to negotiate extra time off. My current employer lets me buy one or two weeks a year, basically unpaid leave no-questions-asked and with the cost spread over the year. I'm quite happy with that.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I hear this all the time but WTH actually does this? Anyone here at slashdot? Even when I was younger I did an all nighter just once or twice. I've been working 8 hour days the last 15 years.
love is just extroverted narcissism
40 hour work weeks, enforced. 30 days paid vacation per year, plus holidays and weekends.
Par for the course in the UK.
If you work overtime one week, you get those hours back the next week.
Not par for the course, but it's pretty common the you will get it back sometime. A busy period coming up to a deadline could cover a few weeks.
Everyone gets two days off in a row every week.
.. usually happens
If you give up those days for some special reason, you get comp vacation time to be used within the next month.
You would usually get this, but may have to wait until the peak is over before taking the time back. Alternatively you could be paid - time and a half is quite common
Everyone takes all their vacation, every year.
In the UK it's exceptional for anyone not to take all their time. A company I worked for switched the "holiday year" from a fixed January-December to a year based on when you joined to prevent a large number of people being off at the end of the year to use their entitlement,
The no vacation thing pisses me off. My entire adult life, I've only had one "real" vacation if you define it as a whole week off.
One reason there's such a lack of vacation time here in Seattle is that in Washington state, the law only requires less than 2/3 be paid out. In CA, we have to pay out 100%. That's why in CA we require employees to take PTO to get it off of the books, but in WA we basically don't allow vacation time. No company I've ever worked for let programmers take even a fifth (as a guess) of the time we earned.
Yes, but the stress that tech people experience is completely fake. It REALLY doesn't matter if your work is done on time.
It does if you want to remain employed with your current company. If that doesn't matter to you then you probably aren't stressed to begin with. If anyone who worked for me expressed that attitude they would be "succeeding elsewhere" in short order.
No one is going to die if your software or network doesn't work.
I'd like to introduce you to some folks who work in medical IT who will disagree with you rather strongly. Same thing with software that controls/drives cars or airplanes or manned rockets or traffic signals or ocean navigation or food safety or electrical grids or nuclear reactor controls or.... The list is very long for things that actually do matter. Yeah, nobody probably cares if your word processor crashes but more than a few of us do things that have serious consequences.
Amazingly humans survived for thousands of years without IT or computers.
Ok we're done here. Claiming people shouldn't have stress because computers didn't exist 200 years ago is irrelevant and stupid.
IT people are highly paid. If they're not, then they're in the wrong career. Take a few months off between jobs or something. "Burnout" is only a problem if you've got no other options. Otherwise, it's a life choice.
I don't respond to AC's.
A single data point is statistically meaningless "woe is us" wanking UNLESS other industries are surveyed.
If the "burnout" rate for tech workers is 57%, but for medical workers is 75%, factory line workers is 62%, and teachers is 60%, then the rate for tech workers is really not bad.
If OTOH other industries scale at 20-30%, then the tech sector really is dire.
In short: I suspect that everyone feels like they are underappreciated, underpaid, and is "fed up with all the bullshit at work"...like everyone else.
-Styopa
Need unions and OT pay!
How does the company even end up with 100 hours of work per week for everyone? Is that all essential work, or just busywork? If burnout rate is super high, wouldn't you end up with even more work and fewer people to do it?
It is very nice to be independently wealthy and not have to worry about getting a paycheck, but for the rest of us we have to do it for a paycheck or face homelessness and possibly starvation.
If all available work is under such conditions, is that really a choice?
http://www.ishikajaiswal.com/n...
You just described a government IT job.
I see it everyday. Every shop I've been in has the superstars. And everyone else is compared to that person or persons.
So unless you're willing to do the same, you wont get promoted, wont get a raise, wont get to do the new cool stuff.
Fortunately, for me anyway, there is always another job. But switching jobs also takes its toll and makes you look bad in some circumstances.
I think it all boils down to the fact that technology sucks and doesn't work nearly as well as what we're told, so you wind up thinking that you are the problem or will be viewed as the problem when in fact we're just 21st century factory workers pushing buttons.
Because US's annual raises rarely meet the US's annual inflation rates. So you are forced to move up the salary chain or effectively get a pay cut ever year.
No good deed goes unpunished.
I work with people who proudly complain about "working until 2 am" or willingly take on all kinds of client work at ridiculous times because it burnishes their reputation.
Some after hours work is unavoidable in IT, but I just refuse to work those kinds of hours regularly without added compensation of some kind (added vacation days without strings and/or more money).
As a more skilled/experienced/older worker, I think I can get away with it but I'm not gonna lie, the people who do it seem to have more street cred in the organization because they are willing to bend over.
I think it's highly organization dependent and sometimes individually dependent (ie, can you get done what needs doing in normal work hours). And I think there are definitely orgs where if you're not doing that, you might as well resign now because you will get shuffled to the shit work.
What's wrong with not being promoted -- just do your job well, take your pay and vacation time. Work to live, don't live to work. A snazzy job title isn't the pinnacle of human achievement.
While I agree with the sentiment that most people shouldn't feel pressured into living to work, the pinnacle of human achievement in any discipline is nearly always achieved through an insane devotion to the task. The people responsible for this level of excellence generally live to work.
There is nothing wrong with working to live, but there often is nothing wrong with living to work as long as it is a decision made freely.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
...end up with even more work and fewer people to do it?
The part I find fascinating about that is that the junior/recent college grads stick with jobs despite the long hours for the experience and the most experienced people stick with jobs because they know it's the same most everywhere else. I guess it's the devil you know. The guys in the middle with five to fifteen years experience are the ones that keep jumping ship to try to find somewhere better.
My company has about eighty people with less than three years experience and around twenty with more than twenty-five years of experience, like myself. I think there's only one person in the middle. Everyone else in that middle quit after we announced a two year death march. Well, they didn't call it that of course. They just said we were requiring scrum teams to add 50% to their velocity for the next 52 sprints.
Too many tech jobs are just cleaning up after Indian disaster after Indian disaster. And not in any sort of permanent way, just putting out the same fires over and over.
There are two kinds of IT people. Those who create. And those who fix creations. If you're tired of doing one, then figure out how to get paid doing the other, and feel good knowing you'll be working to fix your own disasters.
Only 38%-39% of your IT employees are burning out.
That's something to be really proud of.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I worked for a companies where IT people used to look for places to go on vacation that had no phones or pager service. For one co-worker's rafting trip on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon started a trend among the IT staff: where can I go where the phone/pager coverage is really poor or non-existent? Far, far North Canadian fishing trips started getting considered. Can't have people actually having an outside-of-work life so the companies bought satellite phones. No more vacations for you without a corporate leash. Check in daily. Or else.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Nobody really does. Drama queens. If you are regularly working 80 hour weeks in IT, you are dumb or you just really like to work.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Yep, so many folks LOOOVVVVEEE 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, and having to respond to the boss 24x7x365.25. Who needs a life?
UNIONS are why we have benefits, weekends, holidays and vacations. No company did that out of the alleged kindness of their hearts.
But none of you here need them, they're *so* "ancient", never mind they could get you a 40 hour week and no being bothered off hours, no, enjoy your (non-) life.
Yes, you should be grateful, but you are an ungrateful self centered little shit. Common malady.
Grow up. You post some of the most ridiculous drivel on this site and then have the stones to start calling names when someone points it out. If you don't actually have a rebuttal more eloquent than calling someone names then shut up and move on to your next troll.
Mod down! Creimertard pastebin!
I would posit that humans in fact need someone to be worse off than them as a coping mechanism for their own suffering/misfortune/whatever.
Only the more pathetic and narcissistic among us. Sadly that seems to be a rather large percent of the population. I fear people don't need that but quite a number seem to enjoy it. If we do actually need to feel better than others then that is a very sad commentary on us as a species.
Who ISNT working for a paycheck?
Do I really have to explain that some people don't really give a shit about what they are doing? Sure everyone works to get paid but some people actually try to enjoy what they are doing along the way so that the job is more than just a means to get money.
It is very nice to be independently wealthy and not have to worry about getting a paycheck, but for the rest of us we have to do it for a paycheck or face homelessness and possibly starvation.
You don't have to be independently wealthy to make a living doing something that you don't enjoy. If you hate IT work then go find something else to do. It's a big world with lots of opportunity.
If all available work is under such conditions, is that really a choice?
Are you seriously claiming that someone who is bright enough to find work in the tech sector will find it impossible to do something else if they put their mind to it? Possibly even something they actually enjoy doing with reasonable hours and adequate pay. Point is very few people are forced to work in IT. Arguing that they don't have a choice is really just nonsense in almost all cases.
Hire people as term-contract workers with the understanding that they're temporary unless otherwise informed.
Most of the companies mentioned are Silicon Valley tech firms, where the competition for jobs is fierce, and hours are brutal. In the rest of the country, my impression is that stress levels are much lower. I personally can't imagine a better job than the one I have, and I know many who agree.
I work with several devs making nearly that much, and they most certainly are burned out. When you work constant death marches with Seattle Hundreds (16 hours a day Mon-Thu and 12 hours a day Fri-Sun) that almost always happens. I work almost that much, and I moved over a year ago and still haven't even unpacked yet. High pay helps, but you still have a breaking point. There just aren't enough programmers to meet demand.
I've never worked anywhere with that kind of schedule....or known anyone who has. Then again, I have never lived in shit holes like Seattle or California.
I simply wouldn't work like that. If it were that, or go on welfare, I'd say fuck it and go on welfare, or just rob houses for a living - leaving that kind of schedule to the suckers.
If my employer required me to work more than 50 hours per week on anything other than a rare occasion, I'd find a new employer. ASAP.
What is burnout? Feeling stressed? To me, burnout is being incapable of doing your job any longer.
I worked 55-60 hours a week for most of a year, mainly due to two senior people leaving with a month's difference and a third knocked his head pretty bad leaving me and a few juniors to sort it out. That was as an IT consultant though so I had a billing bonus that gave me pretty good kickback. If I recall correctly it kicked in at about 2/3rd = 67% billable time and the company average was 75-80% somewhere, so your average consultant would get bonus for like 10% while I could hit 50%+. Normally they wouldn't have let anyone rack up that many bonus hours but they were desperate to deliver so they paid me well to get out of a tight spot.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've taken 4 weeks of vacation in 30 years. One week when my dad died. One week for a camping trip, and the remaining two weeks were for things like my children being born.
Then you've been suckered, or have different priorities. One year, I took 6 weeks off to travel around the country. Another year, I took 4 weeks off and went to Australia. Another year, I took 6 weeks off and went to Africa. I've taken multiple 2-week vacations. Without checking e-mail. And yes, I live in the U.S.
That's when you job-jump laterally between companies... loyalty is a cruel joke in IT.
...unless you're a nurse, then you still get treated like crap.
(the above statement is based on my own anecdotal evidence and is in no way intended to be taken scientifically)
(also, Wik)
Don't Panic.
I can definitely see how this can happen to a consultant and needing to make hay while the sun shines.. Mostly was addressing salary folks :)
love is just extroverted narcissism
NPs seem to do fine. There's also research/academic nursing. So not always...
I hear this all the time but WTH actually does this? Anyone here at slashdot? Even when I was younger I did an all nighter just once or twice. I've been working 8 hour days the last 15 years.
My understanding would be Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc. although I've only really heard from people that have worked at Amazon. They hire new young and eager workers who they can work and fire them when they burn out. However, just as many leave before that. It's all part of an understood system where new workers agree to be overworked while padding their resume and looking for a new job. This lastrs for an average of 18 months before they have found a new job or get laid off. They hopefully hop to a better paying job than does the same till they decide upon an exit strategy of looking for a place with less upward mobility but more stability once they have reached the desired salary and skillset.
Same boat as you being an older worker. These guys get stuck on something (all night) and I usually can figure it out in an hour or two- I know it takes time but managers do appreciate folks that are cool and consistent.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The single data point is 57% of IT workers.
That 11000 people were surveyed to create that single data point does not magically multiply it. It's still a single data point.
Sarcasm? Why is it a bad thing not to be "top dog?" Being less innovative with better quality of life is just fine with me.
Ditto. I could make far more money if I was willing to sacrifice my life for it, but I'm not. When I look for jobs, I make it clear that I value a solid work-life balance.
My work flatlines after about 30 hours. I get paid to solve hard problems. That's not something you can just do for 50-60 hours every week. I don't do assembly-line work. If that's what you need done, I'm not the person you want to hire.
Yes, it limits my job opportunities and my pay, but I'm pretty damn happy with my life because of it.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
You posted 20 times in this thread about working people. During working hours.
Hows life on welfare you loser?
Bull fucking shit. Lived in Seattle and worked there for 7 years. Everyone took vacation. Everyone took time off. Nobody worked 80 hour weeks, nobody even worked 50. Nobody ever had a hard time taking vacation. This was at both startups and major companies (Amazon).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It's FUNNY! It is written by someone with an extensive knowledge of English colloquial expressions, or copied from someone with that knowledge. MOD PARENT UP!
(There are areas where English is trashy. You may need to take a shower after you read this.)
Title: "I hole-hardedly agree..." -- I whole-heartedly agree...
"doubles advocate" -- devil's advocate
"all intensive purposes" -- all intents and purposes
"a diamond dozen" -- a dime a dozen
"a blessing in the skies" -- a blessing in disguise.
"on a petal stool" -- on a pedestal
"a bunch of pre-Madonnas" -- a bunch of primadonnas
"taking something very valuable for granite" -- taking something very valuable for granted"
"mustard up all the strength you can" -- muster up all the strength you can
"it is a doggy dog world" -- It is a dog-eat-dog world
"you have a huge ship on your shoulder." -- you have a huge chip on your shoulder.
" throw everything in but the kids Nsync" -- throw everything in but the kitchen sink
"you are having a feel day with this" -- you are having a field day with this
"I have a sick sense" -- I have a sixth sense
"I cannot turn a blonde eye" -- I cannot turn a blind eye
"I have zero taller ants" -- I have zero tolerance
"what comes around is all around" -- what comes around goes around [what goes around comes around]
"supply and command" -- supply and demand
"Make my words" -- Mark my words
"when you get down to brass stacks" -- when you get down to brass tacks
"it doesn't take rocket appliances" -- it doesn't take rocket science
"to get two birds stoned at once" -- to kill two birds with one stone
"who makes the pants in this relationship" -- who wears the pants in this relationship
"sometimes you just have to swallow your prize" -- sometimes you just have to swallow your pride
"come to this conclusion through denial and error" -- come to this conclusion through trial and error
"I swear on my mother's mating name" -- I swear on my mother's maiden name [not a usual expression]
"when you put the petal to the medal" -- when you put the pedal to the metal
"you will pass with flying carpets" -- you will pass with flying colors
"it's a peach of cake" -- it's a piece of cake
Else.
This data MIGHT be accurate, it might even represent much more than just tech workers. But, the source of this data is a voluntary survey conducted within an app whose sole purpose is to allow you to chat with coworkers behind your employers back and anonymously review the place you work. Usage is probably skewed a bit toward those that aren't happy with their workplace. Personally, I'm more surprised that 43% of respondents from an app like that didn't claim to be burned out.
Unless the sample selection is random, it's not an opt-in survey and there's no opt-out, then its results have no meaning.
Only people who have personal motivation to answer the survey will - those who feel burnt out and want to complain about it in this case.
Long live Waterfall!
I'm 51. I don't work like that. I suggest you move out of the "high tech" areas. Nobody expects you to work like that in Raleigh, NC.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Also an older worker. In my current gig, I was asked why I wasn't working all weekend like the other developers. Quote, "Because, my stuff works."
I'm not the company superstar, but I've had the time to build two airplanes. My pay is still good.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Did a phone interview with Amazon once. Told him at the end that I wasn't interested. I could see right through what he was getting at, and it is exactly what you reference.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
haha! you're the same agile consultant! haha!
Only I can judge you.
I certainly don't do it. You want me to work overtime, you can damn well pay me.
But the common phrase around an embedded development shop in Denver is "I've already hit my 40 this week".
I stayed way late one time making up some hours and a co-worker complained that "working late doesn't make me look special when everyone does it". And yeah, the lights are usually still on at 7pm. SOMEONE is still here.
Some people are just workaholics.
It's idiots that work extra hours for free that are driving this problem. Make them pay over time at 1.5 times hourly rate, and don't work extra hours, watch the problem magically solve itself. Unionization might be the only solution.
Only I can judge you.
Samers for me. I've been at it for 21 years. Worked through X-mas once but that was at triple-time, so not a problem. If I work extra hours (EWW) they are paid hours.
Only I can judge you.
Then get yourself an Indian wife, do some plowing, and quit your bitching.
Only I can judge you.
^^^^^^^^
IIIIIIIIIIII
exactly!
Only I can judge you.
maybe it's time to renegotiate your salary, do this while taking all the vacation time you've missed in 30 years, they owe you about 56 weeks, plenty of time for them to think about your demands. You're probably also of retirement age or close enough which makes you all that much stronger in a negotiation.
Only I can judge you.
Sign me up. Fuck Seattle, I choose you Belgium!
Only I can judge you.
Except that repugnicans pushed for this just as strongly. Don't create divisions where none exists. Us fighting amongst ourselves only helps keep us all down while we are raped by the wealthy.
Only I can judge you.
Other data points are irrelevant to the subject at hand. How more or less other workers are burned out in comparison has jack and shit to do with IT, and Jack left town. If waitresses have it worse, it doesn't mean IT has it better. If accountants have it easier, it doesn't mean IT has it harder.
Your attempt to forcibly inject relevance to the subject has no relevance.
And if you are not convinced yet, we also have the worlds best beers and chocolates. The waffles are only for the tourists.Oh and the company pays for public transport, I get 8 EUR per day in meal money, I just received 250 EUR in Ecochecks and I have extra hospitalization and pension insurance.
None of these are a rarity and neither is the 13th month. But be warned, the standard amount of holidays is only 21 days for (I think) 35 or 37 hour weeks, so what most companies do is let you work a bit longer (I work 37.5 hours per week) and let the hours accumulate, so you get more days off.
Some sectors will give extra holidays and you might get extra for years in a company and/or age. Friend of mine has 50 paid holidays. Try to get into the banking or insurance sector.
And larger companies will be better if days off is your thing. Join a union or not. Nobody cares. And they are not trade unions, so you can pick almost anyone you like (again: or don't)
You can also join any moment you desire. Nobody will ask if you joined or not, because nobody cares.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
You forgot the part in Belgium where your gross revenue is taxed 13% social security + 50% federal tax + 4% local tax (8% on the 50%). Oh, and your employer also pays 33% on your gross salary.
What's that? the federal tax of 50% is only in the highest tax bracket? right, the bracket over 35k$. Luckily the lower tax brackets are only 45% between 20k and 35K and 40% between 10k and 20k.
I sure am thankful I get to keep 1/3rd of my gross income (sarcasm).
It must be difficult for people for whom English is a 2nd language.
Thanks for the insight. I found that on reddit.com/r/copypasta/ from a year ago.
Also: 9/20/2016 Quoting:
Most people can't be creators, society needs more fixers than creators.
Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
Why so many more burnouts declared today than before? Perhaps we just have more awareness. Perhaps our jobs are indeed more stressful.
These may be important factors, but I don't think they explains this phenomenon alone. We see a huge increase in diverse kinds mental problems (ADHD, Alzheimer, depression). I think the "Broken Brain" hypothesis by Dr. Hyman quite plausible.
http://drhyman.com/blog/2017/1...
He claims that important factors for the decline of our mental health are diet and exposure to toxins, besides stress.
Did a phone interview with Amazon once. Told him at the end that I wasn't interested. I could see right through what he was getting at, and it is exactly what you reference.
Friend of mine played that game for about five years at Amazon, jumping around internally. Finally decided what he wanted to do and found a job out of state with a well padded resume at a company that desired stability.
tl;dr. Artificial deadlines, expectations of 60 hour work weeks, expectations of being connected 24/7/365, and caring about the same things as management are all the ways to crush your spirit.
It sounds like burnout and it's darn close but honestly not caring about things helps put it all into perspective.
I don't have my work email on my personal cell phone. So anyone sending a high priority email to me after my work hours isn't getting a response until my next work day. If they start requiring me to check my email all the time they can furnish me with a device to do so.
I'm salaried but that salary is based on me working regular 40 hour weeks with an occasional rotation on call. If they start doing the 'work until the job is done no matter how long it takes' push then I continue my 40 hour weeks and see what happens. I honestly don't mind an occasional all-hands deadline but when they become more than a quarterly exception then it's a sign that management has no idea what they're doing.
I learned long ago that working at a high rate of speed only gets you more work while the slower workers get tasks reassigned to the .. ones who work faster. Since I'm not that much of an idiot I don't try to stand out of the herd.
Almost every deadline is arbitrary and only benefit the managers who set them. Those are the same managers who are going to get heat when their deadlines aren't met. It does roll downhill but again being in the middle of the pack shelters you quite nicely.