Why Software Devs Keep Burning Out

Summary

The video by HealthyGamerGG explores the reasons behind the high burnout rates in the software development profession, despite its high demand and lucrative salaries. Software developers face unique challenges such as rapidly changing scopes and timelines, and blame for both failures and successes. This creates an environment of cumulative stress, exacerbated by poor work-life balance and lack of social skills. The video also discusses remote work challenges, and the insidious work culture within software companies, while offering practical advice for developers to manage stress effectively and utilize resources like HR support.

Highlights

• Software development is seen as prestigious but is highly stressful due to constant changes and high expectations. 🔄
• Developers face a unique situation where success often leads to increased expectations rather than reward. 😩
• Remote work, while beneficial, can also exacerbate feelings of loneliness and blur the lines between home and work. 🏢
• Poor soft skills and lack of boundary setting can make it difficult for devs to cope with workplace stress. 🚫
• Being aware of HR support and wellness programs can significantly aid in coping with burnout. 🛠

Key Takeaways

• Software devs often face changing scopes and timelines, leading to stress and burnout. 🕰
• Developers are blamed for both failures and their hard-earned successes, adding to stress. 😓
• Remote work provides freedom but often increases isolation and blurs work-life boundaries. 🏡
• Understanding and utilizing HR resources can greatly impact job satisfaction and reduce stress. 📚
• Learning soft skills and setting boundaries are crucial for improving work conditions for developers. 🚧

Overview

Software developers, despite working in one of the most coveted fields, face some of the highest burnout rates in any profession. The video by HealthyGamerGG dives into the reasons why, highlighting how changing timelines and expectations place immense stress on developers.

The video explains how many developers are in a bind, being held accountable for both the failures and successes at work, resulting in a vicious cycle of stress. Moreover, the shift towards remote work has both reduced commuting stress but also increased isolation and blurred the lines between work and personal life.

HealthyGamerGG offers practical advice for developers to recognize stress signs and utilize workplace resources like HR. By enhancing their soft skills and learning to set boundaries, developers can better manage stress and improve their work environment, reducing the risk of burnout.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction This chapter discusses the downsides of being a software developer, despite its reputation as a highly sought-after and well-compensated profession. It highlights the intense competition, high salaries at major tech companies (such as FAANG), and the significant mental health challenges developers face. Notably, it mentions a high suicide rate among developers and a UK study revealing that 83% experience burnout. The chapter underscores the paradox of high earnings versus poor mental health in this field.
• 01:00 - 03:00: The Great Resignation and Developer Challenges The chapter titled 'The Great Resignation and Developer Challenges' addresses the paradox of the software development profession. It highlights how, despite being highly prestigious and competitive, it remains overwhelmingly unsatisfying for many individuals, leading to widespread dissatisfaction and job-seeking behavior among developers, a trend termed 'The Great Resignation'. The chapter aims to explore why developers find themselves in such a precarious and unenviable position. It suggests that developers are uniquely positioned to face challenges that predispose them to feeling like they are set up for failure.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Setting Up to Fail This chapter discusses the concept of being set up to fail, focusing on how people, particularly developers, are often given unrealistic scopes of work and timelines. It draws parallels to other professions, such as medical doctors, who also face defined work scopes and time constraints in their roles. The chapter highlights the challenges and pressures of meeting these expectations, and the blame or negative consequences individuals may face if they fail to meet them, or even if they succeed.
• 04:00 - 05:00: Blame and Success In this chapter, the focus is on the ever-changing scopes and timelines within professional environments, particularly for developers. The narrative illustrates how developers often face shifting priorities and expectations, influenced by external factors such as management's exposure to new ideas. For instance, a CEO may suddenly wish to pivot towards integrating AI into projects after being inspired by a podcast with industry leaders like Elon Musk. The chapter conveys the stress and adaptations required when external inspirations impact project scopes unexpectedly.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Cumulative Stress Environment The chapter discusses the high-pressure environment often experienced in development work, particularly in companies like DevOork, where there are frequent changes in project scopes and timelines. This environment is characterized by sudden demands to add new features at any time, even when a product is near its launch. Such conditions lead to stress and discomfort among developers, as they bear the brunt of responsibility and consequences if they fail to meet changing demands, contributing to burnout, depression, and anxiety.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Work-Life Balance Challenges The chapter discusses the challenges of work-life balance, emphasizing the pressures faced by employees when last-minute changes are imposed by upper management. It explores how these adjustments, often dictated by CEOs, have a trickle-down effect where blame and pressure fall upon developers rather than on decision-makers. This scenario creates a stressful work environment, where efficiency is demanded without regards for the feasibility or added workload, leading to suggestions of using AI or replacing personnel to meet unrealistic expectations.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Impact of Remote Work The chapter discusses the pressures and expectations on developers in the remote work environment. It highlights how developers often work extra hours, including weekends, and bring work home to meet high demands. Successfully meeting these demands can sometimes lead to changed expectations from leadership, as exemplified by a CEO increasing workload after previous success. The chapter explores how this dynamic can affect job satisfaction and career progression.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Interpersonal Challenges in Development The chapter discusses interpersonal challenges faced by developers in a work environment, highlighting the issue of cumulative stress resulting from high expectations and high-pressure situations. It explains how delivering work under tight deadlines eventually sets a precedent, leading to consistently high expectations from peers and management. This environment tends to build up stress over time, causing developers to feel burnt out. The chapter also reflects on developers' feelings of helplessness in changing these dynamics.
• 10:30 - 13:00: Stress Management and Avoidance The chapter titled 'Stress Management and Avoidance' addresses the dynamics within work environments regarding stress and recognition. There are two types of developers: those who work tirelessly but often don't get the recognition or promotions, and others who work less but manage to get promoted and take credit. This disparity is particularly noted in coaching programs, pointing towards the need for effective stress management and recognition strategies.
• 13:00 - 19:00: Employee Resources and HR Engagement In this chapter, the discussion focuses on employee resources and HR engagement. It addresses the common challenges employees might believe they face in their jobs, particularly the misconception that certain things cannot be changed due to authoritative leadership like a narcissistic CEO. The chapter suggests that the real issue might be a lack of knowledge about how to implement change and establish boundaries, especially among populations such as developers who may not have honed their social skills extensively. Moreover, it highlights that there are senior engineers and other individuals in influential positions who have successfully navigated and set these boundaries.
• 19:00 - 25:00: Conclusion and Recommendations The conclusion and recommendations chapter discusses dealing with challenging work environments, particularly under narcissistic bosses. The chapter offers guidance on strategies to navigate such situations and invites readers to consider personalized coaching for tailored advice. Suggestions include leveraging certain skills to transform seemingly impossible situations into manageable ones, highlighting the blame-shift that often occurs in such contexts. It concludes by encouraging readers to explore further learning opportunities provided in the accompanying coaching program.

Why Software Devs Keep Burning Out Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 today we're going to talk about why it sucks to be a software developer so being a dev is one of the most coveted jobs on the planet it's super competitive if you work at a fang company you're making a base salary of oftentimes over a million dollars a year that doesn't include benefits and yet devs have one of the highest suicide rates of all professions they're in the top 10 one study from the UK showed that 83% of developers experience burnout which is a staggeringly high number and at one point in 2021 20% of developers
• 00:30 - 01:00 in the world were looking for new jobs because they were unhappy with what they were dealing with this was something that we call the great resignation so how can we have a profession that on the one hand is so coveted so competitive is the most prestigious on the planet in a lot of ways and at the same time is so terrible for people if you're a dev you probably know the answer and that's what we're going to dive into today so the TLDDR of it is that devs are in a very unique position of being set up to fail
• 01:00 - 01:30 and then blamed for the failure and even if you don't fail if you succeed that screws you over too so let's start with this concept of set up to fail so generally speaking if you're a dev you have a scope of work and a timeline in which to accomplishment so we need this kind of feature to go live let's say 16 weeks from now and in other professions you have these two variables as well so I'm a medical doctor which means I have a scope of work i have to show up to the emergency room to work a shift and then
• 01:30 - 02:00 I have a certain timeline right so I'm going to show up on Friday night at 6 p.m and I'm going to work till Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m scopes and timelines are incredibly common in all professions the biggest difference for devs is that that scope and timeline changes all the time right you have a CEO who heard a podcast with Elon Musk or Sam Alman or someone else who's talking about the benefits of AI and they show up on Monday morning and they're like "Eh we need to use the AI let's do the AI or
• 02:00 - 02:30 why don't we we have this feature in an app these other people have this feature let's build this feature." So DevOork is notorious for rapidly changing scopes and rapidly changing timelines in the worst cases timelines will get cut in half or when this product launch is happening in 16 weeks we want to add a brand new feature and then this is what really rubs devs the wrong way this is I think really where the burnout the depression and the anxiety really come from is that if you fail to deliver you're the one who's on the hook right
• 02:30 - 03:00 so no one is blaming the CEO for 6 weeks out the CEO wants to add this feature and when things fall apart no one is like "Hey we should find a different CEO who doesn't randomly change the scope 6 weeks before we have a product launch." No one is doing that right what tends to happen in dev organizations is that rolls downhill you were told to do this work if you can't deliver then we need to either use AI or find someone else who can do it so not only are you set up
• 03:00 - 03:30 to fail you are blamed for failure but it gets worse because often times what devs end up doing is not failing right because you guys work really hard you work weekends you work extra you take your work home with you and then you end up succeeding and does this mean you get promoted if you're lucky the answer is yes but chances are what this does is changes expectations now the CEO is like showed up six weeks ago and was like "Hey we want to add this feature." You grind you work really hard and you end
• 03:30 - 04:00 up doing it and then what happens is you adjust the expectations now the people around you are expecting rush work extra work since you pulled everything together and actually delivered they're going to expect you to do that again so this creates something called an environment of cumulative stress where stress tends to pile up over time and devs end up feeling burnt out so this is where a lot of the devs that I've worked with will say like "Yeah this is not something I can do anything about right?" because no one is going to give
• 04:00 - 04:30 the feedback to the CEO that you can't do this sort of thing but if you pay attention to your work environments what you will find is that there are two kinds of developers there are developers who work really hard work all the time and sometimes don't even get promoted get blamed for the failures and then you'll have some developers who actually work less and will somehow get promoted will take credit for the work and this is a huge differential that we see especially in our coaching program so a lot of the things that we're going to
• 04:30 - 05:00 talk about today my guess is that you will think when you hear this oh this cannot be done at my job but there is a big difference between this cannot be done and I don't know how to do it because if you look at a population of people who become developers often times their soft social skills are not things that they have really buffed up or practiced they don't know how to set boundaries they think that boundaries can't be set because you have a narcissistic CEO but there are absolutely senior engineers at these
• 05:00 - 05:30 massive companies where you have incredibly narcissistic bosses who are able to be very successful so if y'all are interested in learning some of those skills we're going to teach a lot of this stuff to you here and now but if y'all are interested in like one-on-one feedback for your specific situation because this may not work for you then definitely check out the link in the description below for more info on our coaching program and so this feels like an impossible situation where you're set up to fail and if you fail you get blamed and if you succeed this becomes
• 05:30 - 06:00 the norm now we're going to dive further into the fundamental nature of software development work which predisposes devs to burnout and once we understand a couple of these fundamental mismatches it'll give us a road forward for hopefully you to feel a little bit better at work be a little bit happier be a little bit healthier etc so the first is there is a fundamental mismatch between the type of work and the environment of work in software development what do I mean by that so oftentimes the actual process of coding
• 06:00 - 06:30 involves deeply cognitive intensive work right so you're you sort of have this like vision of what you're programming you have to sit down you have to do a bunch of code that sort of fits into all these different things it's like cognitively incredibly intensive then there are a lot of other uh sort of features of software development work which burnout shows that these kinds of things decline like documentation process adherence and things like that right so there's a lot of complicated cognitively intensive work but the other interesting thing about software
• 06:30 - 07:00 development work is that developers are rarely given blocks of time to do that sort of work so the nature of the work means that we expect you to be on Slack we expect you to be on Teams we expect you to respond to messages respond to emails we expect you to take calls at midnight your time because the client is in a foreign country halfway across the world or you are in a foreign country halfway across the world whatever right so there's all kinds of invasiveness that does not involve the
• 07:00 - 07:30 actual coding right you have meetings at this time you have to respond to messages at this time and this creates a fundamental mismatch so I'll give you all like an example of what a healthier version of this is and this is what we sort of see so if I'm like an attorney or a medical doctor and I've worked with both right so I have periods of intensive work but like no one is expecting me to answer emails when I am actually like in an emergency room seeing patients so as a physician I have the luxury everyone sort of understands that like no one is scheduling a meeting
• 07:30 - 08:00 when I have like a an overnight shift in the emergency room but this fundamental mismatch between the type of work and the demands being placed upon you really leads to this sense of cumulative burnout the second problem is actually something that a lot of people want which is remote work so we all love remote work i work from home it has the advantages of being pantsless while you are at work it has the advantage of not commuting and studies show that if you commute more than 45 minutes one way it leads to a greater amount of of divorce
• 08:00 - 08:30 um you know it gives us so much more free time because now we have two hours that we're not sitting in traffic and things like that so there are a lot of advantages but this is where unfortunately there are a lot of disadvantages to remote work as well one of the biggest ones is loneliness and isolation for and for a lot of people their their ways of socially connecting are actually like with people at work instead what we see so much in our community is like I'm 32 years old i don't know how to make friends i don't know how to meet romantic partners i kind of work and like I I don't want to
• 08:30 - 09:00 commute but there's a certain cost to remote work and it's not just in terms of loneliness and isolation once you are at home it stops the barrier between work and home so when we work with software developers we see this way too often where it's like okay since my home is my workplace when does work actually end since your work environment allows you to work from home do they have certain expectations about your
• 09:00 - 09:30 responsiveness so once you start working from home the luxury of being out of the office declines drastically the third thing that leads to developers being incredibly depressed and having high suicide rates is to be blunt that your colleagues often times suck so remember that software development often times selects for people who are not great at soft skills interpersonal skills things like that empathy and EQ tend to be a little bit on the lower side and so if you're surrounded by people who don't have the empathy to understand what
• 09:30 - 10:00 their demands are doing to you it makes it really hard for you to do your job if you don't know how to advocate for yourself in the right way and your boss is not really bothering to pay attention because they're not a great manager that can be really bad for you so what I've seen time and time again when I work with software developers is that the environment surrounding them is socially like really really inept right people will be brutal with you people will deliver feedback in very harsh ways
• 10:00 - 10:30 people won't credit you for your work people won't pay attention to the work that you're doing people won't be aware that once you do an excellent job and you work all weekend that they should not expect that from you in the future so this creates a situation that I see with devs that is almost like I don't know if you all have played Darkest Dungeon but I think this is the best example of like you start this process of software development right we call it a sprint or whatever ends up being sprint after sprint after sprint that
• 10:30 - 11:00 becomes a marathon and over time you get more beaten and battered down and your stress actually builds up there are actually studies that show that the development in software development the nature of stress is far more cumulative so you work all weekend and then you pull it out and then on Monday morning you don't get like 3 days off because you work two days on the weekend it's on to the next development cycle onto the next sprint and now that we've added a feature and gotten away with it we're going to start adding more features over and over and over again and if things don't work out you're the one who gets
• 11:00 - 11:30 blamed so it's kind of like you start this journey and you're young and you're fresh and you're making a lot of money and yay you get to work at one of these awesome companies but over time you get beaten down you get battered you take HP damage you take stress damage and then you start to really crumble and crack and when you crumble and crack people don't stop and think like "Oh what did we do to create this situation for you they just end up blaming you for it." And this is the other like really frustrating thing is that often times in
• 11:30 - 12:00 software development spaces you'll also have something that I call the MBA circle jerk so in your company you're going to have people who are technical people right like people like engineers who actually do the work and the layer above them is MBAs doing MBA circle jerk and they're like "Yeah we're going to optimize AI deliverables and KPIs and this and that that bullshit." They get together they have meetings all day that they want you in by the way but when we're all done with our meetings they get to jerk each other off and you have to actually go and code so it's
• 12:00 - 12:30 really crazy but like and they're not really aware of that right so like you have these MBA pencil pusher sort of project manager types that sometimes will like not really do a whole lot and then will take a lot of credit will give themselves pats on the back will get promoted and then you have like you down below who's doing all of this grinding work and so one of the things that we try to teach when people come to our coaching program and the reason we make videos like this is we need to teach you some of those MBA circle jerk skills so here's the first thing you got to learn
• 12:30 - 13:00 so developers tend to be very bad at stress sensing this isn't just stress management and a lot of times you know what'll happen is the NBA circle jerk will be like oh our developers are burnt out we will get you a subscription to mindfulness app and since you are burnt out use the app still come work all weekend you work 18 hours a day come to the meeting because I need to feel important and when you are done working 65 hours a week you will go home and do
• 13:00 - 13:30 meditation for 30 minutes do it on your own time don't exercise or anything like that we'll get you maybe gym membership too but you do it all on your own time right so we have all these like wellness benefits that often times de developers can't really take advantage of so the first thing that we see with developers is that their ability to sense stress is impaired so often times what you'll be sort of focused on is like "Oh my god I'm so stressed out i'm so stressed out and you don't really pay attention to yourself and good examples of this are
• 13:30 - 14:00 often times things like headaches muscle tightness GI upset not eating well difficulty with sleeping these are all of the signs of stress building up but developers don't we don't really sort of focus on those right so devs don't really think about like okay if I'm having headaches and trouble sleeping this is a problem that needs to be fixed instead the most common thing that developers do and this is what's really damaging so really pay attention to this is that you will try to eliminate the
• 14:00 - 14:30 source of your stress so let's understand this okay let's say I'm stressed out about work and my my boss comes to me and says "Hey I need this code finished before Monday morning because we have a you know an update that's going out on Monday morning and I feel really stressed out about this what I'm going to do is say oh my god this is a ton of work what is the way that I can fix this i'm stressed out i have to grind whatever then you think okay what I need to do is just do the work bang out the work right so once the work is gone then my source of stress disappears
• 14:30 - 15:00 entirely now I have fixed the problem that is causing me stress so you double down you work really hard now the problem with this is once again if you all have played darkest dungeon you maybe will understand this so like sometimes in this game you know people will like enemies will do stress damage to you and when they do stress damage to you there are kind of two strategies here one is that you can try to zurg down the enemies that cause stress damage right so like if I'm in if I'm fighting a mob you can sort of have this like zero healing approach where I'm
• 15:00 - 15:30 just going to go all DPS and I'm going to try to destroy the enemy i'm going to try to grind really hard and finish the task before 3 days of no sleep catches up with me and I I fall apart right this is the strategy that software developers do i have this source of stress out there which is that I have to build this feature i better build that feature because once I build the feature then I can relax but this is analogous to in a video game sort of trying to zerg down opponents and not spending turns healing
• 15:30 - 16:00 yourself right so if we look at like video games what we know from video games is usually the zerging down strategy may work for like one mob like if you have one mob left you can maybe zerg them down without healing but generally speaking the right strategy is to not just eliminate the sources of damage but to spend some turns actually healing yourself and those are the ones that actually not only perform better that their code adherance is better their code quality is better but they tend to do better get promoted and all
• 16:00 - 16:30 that other good stuff and this is what we see in our coaching program is when we teach devs those kinds of skills it's very specific to you and and things like that that these people tend to do incredibly well so the first thing that we have to do is learn how to sense stress so what are the signs that you are actually burning out the second thing is to address those problems directly spend a turn healing yourself instead of just grinding through and trying to zerg down the boss that is this particular task and this is
• 16:30 - 17:00 literally what leads to burnout because when you zerg down the boss what happens on Monday your boss is not saying "Hey you did a really great job i think what I'm going to do is talk to the CEO and say "Y'all need a break and we're going to give you a week off i want you to go to a spa i want you to go to a yoga class take care of yourself maybe we're going to get you like a Steam gift card or whatever like just have some fun relax you deserve it." That's not what usually happens right what usually happens is "Yeah you guys worked really hard really great job we've got a
• 17:00 - 17:30 meeting on Monday where there's an NBA circle jerk and they want to talk they want to spend an hour and a half talking about how y'all did such a great job that's what we're going to do they're going to give y'all a gift card to Chili's or Denny's or whatever for $25 and then it's back to work on Tuesday like I have seen this literally happened to people like software developers okay so we have to start by learning how to sense stress there's another thing that people will oftenimes do so this is kind of highly specific where if you look at developers who are burnt out oftentimes what they will do
• 17:30 - 18:00 when they are stressed out about a particular task this is so terrible is they will replace it with other kinds of work so they procrastinate on the task that feels overwhelming because it requires a lot of focus time and you keep on getting interrupted with like Slack met notifications and meetings and things like that so there's this big feature that you need to dive into and build and so research shows that what a lot of developers will do to deal with that overwhelming sense of stress is to
• 18:00 - 18:30 do easy work so I know this sounds kind of crazy but like people will do things like uh junior code review i don't even know exactly what that is but that's what the research shows so they will sort of like end up dealing with work like in different ways so they'll do other kinds of small tasks catch up on emails but they kind of like they're stressed out about this sort of work which then is sort of like dealing it's like dot damage right because you have this big project looming over your head and then what happens is you end up spending 3 days at the office doing a lot of stuff that isn't actually super
• 18:30 - 19:00 important allows you to procrastinate on the work but is still work so this is another pattern that I want you all to pay a lot of attention to so what are the signs of your stress when you feel stressed out what are the things that you do to alleviate that stress do you grind extra hard do you distract yourself with other less important tasks that make you feel good and this is where you really need to do a lot of introspection to sort of figure out what is going on here the next thing that we're going to talk about is actually kind of surprising y'all are going to
• 19:00 - 19:30 hate me for this there's one thing that if you look at developers that say my job is stressful or my job is not stressful there's one variable that separates these two people and the variable is going to blow your mind it is how familiar they are with things like the employee handbook and resources provided by HR so remember that the MBAs that are circle jerking the wellness stuff so it turns out I know it's insane that not all of these people are idiots
• 19:30 - 20:00 and it turns out that the people in your HR department some of them are actually really dedicated especially if you're at a prestigious company and they work really hard they're the best in their field and literally there is research that shows that what separates devs who are happy with where they work and unhappy with where where they work one of the biggest variables is awareness of employee benefits so I know this is crazy this is going to be super concrete advice but what I strongly encourage you all to do is read the employee handbook
• 20:00 - 20:30 go to HR and ask them "Hey I'm feeling kind of like under the crunch or I'm feeling a little bit burnt out what resources are available?" And I've been on the other side of this okay so there are the these things called employee assistance programs i've sort of done some work with EAPs one of my uh mentors was huge at the EAP program at Massachusetts General Hospital so this is like a Harvard medical school hospital where you know all kinds of like prestigious companies would come and seek medical care there and it's
• 20:30 - 21:00 actually provided by their employer so doing work in addiction psychiatry you know if someone has a drinking problem by the way there's a bunch of research that shows that another unhealthy method that software developers use to cope with stress is cannabis use so you know you got to get kind of get high to decompress and and whatever but like this is where I know it sounds really stupid but like just read your employee handbook and go talk to HR and it turns out that there may actually be really good resources at your disposal that you
• 21:00 - 21:30 can take advantage of and sort of going through the HR route I think is also can be incredibly helpful so a lot of people are worried that if I complain to HR or I say "Hey HR I'm burning out." That like this will give you a red flag but often times I find that it's the other way around right because like I don't know if this kind of makes sense but when you're getting promoted there's going to be often times an HR professional in there and the HR professionals are like they're in this corner where they don't get as much respect as the CTOs and the CFOs and the CMOs right they don't get as much
• 21:30 - 22:00 respect as the CEOs like people tend to on HR so if people engage with their services they tend to be really strong advocates for the people who are like "Yeah you know this person is like really engaged they came to me they're really focusing on like being more productive and things like that they will oftenimes be an advocate for you and this is one of those really simple EQ skills that if you're a software developer and you spend a lot of time on Reddit or your social media of choice generally speaking there is pooping on the HR department but these people can
• 22:00 - 22:30 be your allies and I can assure you that the people who get promoted and the people who tend to do really well are taking advantage of these resources now there is a concern and I think this is a valid concern that a lot of these wellness resources are not really designed for your wellness but are your employer's way to extract as much productivity from you as possible and I've seen this as well in the EAP program uh when I've done some work there where like sometimes you know employers would come to me with
• 22:30 - 23:00 employees and they're like hey we want you to patch this person up so that we can send them into the grinder again very common at places like investment banks so that can happen and I've seen some really insidious versions of this so there was one company that was using I think the Microsoft Viva to had cameras that were measuring employees like facial expressions and posture and like they were watching you while you work and were feeding all that data into like an AI algorithm to isolate and
• 23:00 - 23:30 determine who is burnt out who's depressed who's anxious there's kind of this big data big brother kind of stuff happening that presumably was being used to try to detect this is how it was originally labeled they they use this technology to detect early signs of burnout so that employers could in intervene and kind of support you in that so I I think there's a lot of good reason why people feel paranoid about a lot of these wellness things right and I've seen bad versions of this which is like meditate here's a subscription to a
• 23:30 - 24:00 meditation app this should fix this should just fix the burnout and now we give ourselves a pat on the back and we give ourselves a promotion and I I I get that but in my overwhelming experience there is a range of support resources available at work and the most common thing that I see in software developers is that they're not even aware of it right so before you decide ahead of time that HR is crap and your employee handbook is worth worthless and
• 24:00 - 24:30 you have no employee resources is do yourself the favor of like not getting not drinking the Reddit Kool-Aid and like actually take a look at that stuff because there may be something really useful for you there so software development is one of the hardest jobs out there primarily because a lot of people aren't really aware of the stress that they're putting on you you're put in this situation where you're set up to fail blamed for the failure and even if you succeed people will often demand more for you this is exacerbated by the fact that software developers often times don't take care of themselves
• 24:30 - 25:00 their solution to fixing their stress is solving the problem that is creating the stress but then this can sort of lead to a cumulative buildup of stress so what I strongly recommend that you'll do is first of all be aware of the signs of your stress try to target those directly and one of the key things that is actually shown is that software developers who try to learn about themselves and wellness by doing things like reading self-help books watching YouTube videos like this this actually
• 25:00 - 25:30 does lead to a stress improvement productivity improvement so this is great so like learn about yourself learn about your stress and then be super careful about zerging down the problem because that'll probably lead to burnout over time and the last thing is I know it sounds crazy but give HR a chance and read the employee handbook hey y'all hope you enjoyed today's video we talk about a bunch of topics like this on the channel so be sure to subscribe for more if you're already subscribed GG and we'll see you in chat