I don't feel that burnt out is coming from the coding, it's coming from the business side of things. When you're not aligned with the same goals or expected quality of work it'll slowly chip away at your mental fortitude.<p>Finding balance isn't something that is taught in school, in courses or in the professional setting. At least it hasn't been in my experiences.<p>It's taken me burning out and slowly and still recovering to find a balance I'm comfortable with. I code on weekends for fun sometimes but the project has to light that fire of inspiration otherwise it's just not worth it anymore.<p>That has been my experience post burnout anyway. If you're becoming cynical of your job role, or people you work with take a step back and check yourself for signs of burnout.. Change jobs and effort levels and find something you align with more.
Let's see...
14 days on call every 3 months.
3 releases a week.
All the normal review work. PRs, design, etc.
SCRUM meetings.
Meetings before the meetings.
Crazy deadlines which were arbitrarily given by someone in another group.
Being up late to make changes because the business deems it too risky to do it during regular business hours.
Endless performance testing, e2e testing which always generates defects that arent really defects but still need 30m of my time.
Upgrade this or that to the latest. version because xyz no longer supports what you have.
Endless security vulnerabilities that need to be upgraded.
Pipelines that need to be upgraded or fixed just to get a release.
Failing tests which need to be investigated.
Hundreds of configuration points which control process flows.
Never ending lower environment problems.
RTO.
Constant fear of being laid off.<p>Definitely no way anyone could be burnt out.<p>I actually want to work on my own projects during the weekends if I can. That somehow brings me happiness compared to what I work on at work, which is bogged down by external issues.
My personal projects I have no one to report status updates to, no one to tell me "I'm doing it wrong" no customers to support, freedom to mess up. Lol
Burnout doesn’t come from writing software in my experience. It comes from dealing with increasing amounts of bullshit in order to be able to build the right software. This isn’t a tech problem but a business one.
I wish they would link to the actual Jet Brians survey in the blog post which is far more interesting <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/</a>.
For me, "weekend coding" was actually important to avoid burnout and preserve the fun of coding I had decades ago as teenager.<p>In a "professional context" this can be quite challenging.
I think that software development moves in terms of tools, libraries and to a lesser extent, languages faster and more frequently than most professions. You're also largely expected to learn in your own time.<p>I've been at it since the mid 90s and the to spend 10-15 hours a week on my craft. From reading articles, looking at libraries to personal projects, it doesn't stop.<p>I don't expect everyone to do the same, but it does make a massive difference.
Most of the weekend coding is for learning stuff that is expected at work, but hardly given the time to learn, an escape to have fun with technologies that will never be allowed to deploy into production at work, and lately to keep the HR filters happy to be feed with some random Github content.<p>However only if there aren't more pressing matters from family and friends, which matter more than any line of code.
Coding in my hobby projects <i>alleviate</i> burnout for me in much the same way mediation, or just relaxing with my family does. It's a way to switch focus to something soothing.<p>There are time when I'm too mentally exhausted to focus on coding at all, but most "burnout" is not that for me, but increasing feelings of resistance against working on something specific. Sure, it can sometimes rise to a level where it expands and you shut down and don't feel like doing much of anything, but to me those hobby projects feel like they help avoid that.<p>Hacking on game with my son, or my many "productivity" projects that aren't so much about my productivity as about bikeshedding my own tools because it's enjoyable has very different properties to a work project.
Nice and quick article. It's kind of clear that the problem is not coding. It's fun and creative.<p>For me it's clear that most challenging thing is managing egos, not naming variables. Egos decide procesess and rules with insufficient data. Some egos even like to decide with insufficient data and twist the measurements later to conform their views.<p>So: Self ego, managers egos, shareholders egos, and the infinite edges between these entities.<p>It's certainly harder than rust and monads :D
A new software guy recently told me that he was planning to read a textbook over the weekend so that he could be prepared for a technical discussion meeting during the week. My thoughts were 1) you must be really bad at time management and 2) you must be really bad at setting work-life boundaries. If I were in that situation, I'd be asking for a charge code from management.
Coding and software development are an amazing outlet for creativity. Software developers have the potential to do truly amazing, fun, useful things.<p>I think that's why coding on the weekends is such a prevalent "problem". Of course, I don't think it's "the" problem at all.
"The fantastic element that explains the appeal of games to many developers is neither the fire-breathing monsters nor the milky-skinned, semi-clad sirens; it is the experience of carrying out a task from start to finish without any change in the user requirements."