I’m recovering from burnout after working at a big tech company for 10 years. I think this article tries to focus on how just giving people the right work will prevent burnout, but I think the causes are very complex and vary for different people. But it’s important to catch it before it’s bad. For me, I had difficult to please managers, or projects that went nowhere, or passion projects that were not invested in, or lack of strong non-work relationships, or even just looking at the company I worked at slowly lose all culture and turn into something that started to abuse customers and focus on profits.
I think I ignored a lot of signs and indications under the feeling that well “I’m promo tracked to the next level and I worked hard so I’ll ignore it.” My partner told me to talk to somebody, friends said I worked hard. But then slowly my motivation to work at my job decreased. I delivered less, I made up excuses, I stop caring about projects when I used to really care. Which was a huge difference because I used to be a top tier developer every year.
But the big part was my personal life. After work I was tired and not motivated, even though I would barely do any work. loosing interest in hobbies was a big indication. Going to the gym, but not really pushing myself, etc. I think there’s some parallels with depression, but I never felt like I had that because I kept getting out of bed doing things.
I had a friend deacribe their experience and I just started thinking yeah I feel the same way. I finally had a health issue/mental breakdown that caused me to go to the doctor and pursue FMLA leave which is giving me partial pay to just focus on myself, focus on friends, and talk to a therapist. I don’t know what I’ll do when it ends. Probably won’t go back to the company.
Weirdly, a lot of my friends in the big tech industry have hit a breaking point and are leaving or on leaves.