The first time I heard about burnout was from a colleague that was just trying to go back to a job after about two years being mentally unable to do any job. It started when one day, arriving at the work, they just froze and started crying uncontrollably.
It was a diagnosed condition. I am always unsure of what people are talking about when they talk about burnout. Is this panic attack that makes someone temporarily incapable of working or is a strong stress feeling that might be solved just by changing jobs?
The spectrum idea makes sense, but the situation, consequences, and ways to help are very different on different parts of this spectrum.
I think the term burnout was first applied to social workers. Just imagine the situation they are in: a steady stream of people with serious problems in their lives comes to you and you are supposed to help them. But you have so little time and power to help any particular case that you hardly seem to make any difference. And no matter what you do that stream never ends. No wonder that feelings of sheer helplessness, ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear. That's burnout. I don't think it is specifically associated with panic, aside from the panic that if you start working you will experience all the negative emotions that you associate with your job.
> ineffectiveness, meaninglessness of your work, cynicism, ennui, and extreme aversion to the work can appear
Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.
My own totally unscientific theory of burnout is that with scarce positive reinforcement and lack of progress towards some higher goal your lizard brain just stops understanding why on earth you continue to expend energy on this job thing. Of course your job pays the bills but this may be hard for the lizard brain to understand (and in case of volunteers where even this positive reinforcement is absent, burnout hits them especially hard).
Many corporate jobs share this dynamic. Support, obviously. But every position where there is a lot of routine maintenance and lack of any kind of satisfying milestone ahead carries the risk. Also, opensource maintainers (Unpaid? Check. Never ending stream of maintenance work? Check. Lack of some higher goal? Well, their project is already popular, there may be no other definite goal.)
Startups are better in this regard because growth provides positive reinforcement and the possibility of an exit provides a higher goal. But what if growth stops and the satisfying exit never materializes? Burnout will hit you like a hammer.
> Jobs in corporate software development can feel pretty much like that, at least for me. Startups are better, but, on the other hand, they work you harder.
You might be confusing cause and effect; you feel those things after being burnt out. Once upon a time, I worked at a start up doing very rewarding, high-impact work with cutting edge technology...just too much of it. I could feel burnout creeping up[1] and I asked my boss for time off, he agreed, but feared I would not return after my break and pressured me to finish the project before leaving by working at an even faster pace - you can guess what happened next. I walked in one morning, sat and my desk and I discovered I no longer had any gas left in the tank: I was completely empty inside, no motivation, no interest in any doing anything work-related, all I could do was browse web comics all day, and even this didn't bring me any joy at the time.
I took my break and switched employers soon after (which wasn't my plan initially), fortunately the new organization had a much slower pace, it took me months to get close to my previous level of productivity. Never again.
1. When weekends doesn't feel like enough time away from work, you might be on your way to burnout
Interesting, there is a discussion in this article on whether compassion fatigue is a form of burnout or not. I think it is. It is probably caused not simply by exposure to suffering, but by exposure to suffering coupled with perceived ineffectiveness in alleviating it. It is not like every patient who comes to a doctor has a specific problem that can be precisely diagnosed and that magically goes away after a treatment is prescribed. Many have chronic illnesses, many will get worse or even die despite the treatment. Many require much more time than what the doctor can spend on them for proper diagnosis and treatment.
Freezing and starting to cry without any reason was the exact same moment for me i recognized i hat do change. I made three weeks holiday without any technical equipment just to slow down life very drastically. A few weeks more of just working half days and much sport and i was back to normal. Never again!
This could also be attributed to comorbid/latent mental health issues we are not privy to e.g. depression (emotionally numb), anxiety/malaise in social settings that trigger panic attacks/fight or flight adrenaline response, PTSD from work environment (victims of abuse), bipolar disorder, etc.
These seem to mirror/share symptoms with how people feel when they describe burnout in the workplace. Sometimes I feel like it's the reason people jump ship to new companies in the tech industry around ~2 years mark, keeps the novelty and honeymoon factor going. Thoughts?
It was a diagnosed condition. I am always unsure of what people are talking about when they talk about burnout. Is this panic attack that makes someone temporarily incapable of working or is a strong stress feeling that might be solved just by changing jobs?
The spectrum idea makes sense, but the situation, consequences, and ways to help are very different on different parts of this spectrum.