Burnout is caused by resentment

I'd agree.<p>Every time I've quit, it's because I felt I was repeatedly getting the short end of the stick, and management was expecting me to roll over every time I brought such things up.<p>I quit my first job at 15 1/2. I worked at a Wal-Mart during the summer to buy a computer. I covered 200% more departments than I was hired for. I never took a day off, despite coworkers just not showing up so they could go to the beach. My department manager LOVED me. After my 3 months, I got $0.24 of my $0.25/hour potential raise. I asked the store manager responsible as to why I didn't get the other penny. His answer was utterly asinine. He expected me to go back to work, understanding. Instead, I called my mom and went home, never to return.<p>The next two jobs I was vastly underpaid. I knew this because vendors, contractors, my own boss and even the office manager told me, quite literally, that I was getting screwed. I was told to man up in response to crappy raises. Instead, I found better jobs that were willing to give me 25-30% more just to walk in their door.<p>At one place I blew the doors off of all expectations. I qualified for well above the normal bonus. 32%. I was denied because in order to get the bonus I had to have been there since July 1st. My start date? July 3rd. It's not like it wasn't going to be pro-rated, or cut in half. I simply wasn't going to get it. 32% of my salary was a chunk of change large enough to buy a family sedan, cash. Obviously, I made an issue of it. I had vacations denied and had already dealt with that. When a partner said that there was nothing he could do I gave him my curt two-word response and walked out the door... to basically get my lost bonus half as a signing bonus, and the rest over the next year.<p>Employment is a two-way street, and when you also decide to make it known that my contract is "at will", be advised that I'm aware that I can just not show up anymore, just to make the point. And even though I won't do that, I know I could. At the very least I ask that you demonstrate it, and ensure that I feel appreciated. If you don't, don't be all that surprised when I jump ship at a moment's notice. It's not rocket science -- put your best foot forward, and if you can't, explain clear as day why you can't. Show some humility, and don't expect me to simply sit there and take it, especially in this market. I'm pretty good about making my happiness unknown, and giving organizations months and months to respond before I finally depart. However I've worked with folks that their mentality towards burning bridges is more akin to Aliens: they don't burn bridges -- they nuke them from orbit, just to make sure.<p>People do business with people they like, and your employees are not exceptions.

no - resentment leads to "being pissed-off enough to go work somewhere else".<p>please, lets keep "burnout" for <i>burning out</i>. you know: when you're in a foetal ball sobbing, begging for it to stop; when you need years before your work is enjoyable again; when the client liaison goes on leave after an "accident" with a knife.<p>there is a difference between that and "resentment".

Haha. I am currently going through this phase at my current firm. I can almost track how I have reached this phase:<p>1. I find on the first day that in the nine months before I joined the company, three people who were doing the same stuff I do were fired.<p>2. I make an expensive move from a different state. Then on the first day get told that the move in contract had changed and was forced to be sign the new one. An interesting contract that tells me even if the company folds for no good reason of mine, that I would have to payback moving expenses.<p>3. I get to spend a significant amount of my personal free time outside of company hours on company "bonding activities". I don't mind being told to go on company dinner fests but don't make it a habit and make me miss my own personal life. I like you as people I work under but you are not my friends and you are certainly not my life.<p>4. For a company that makes $2000 plus per engineer, its fun to see how cheap they are. A nice ergonomic chair? Nope. Traveling 50% of time across a few time zones? Make sure you book the cheapest possible flight that you get (irrespective of the number of stops that you have).<p>Tiny small things that added up gradually and have led to this situation.

This is wrong. It is only one reason for burnout. I have another.<p>I burned out because I can no longer care enough about what I'm doing at work to motivate my mind to work on the task at hand. It seems fruitless. People can try to convince me there is some good it is doing, but I see only waste and politics. That resentment is not because my workplace doesn't care about my family. They treat me better than any place I could ever hope to work for. The only sacrifice I've had to make for work is my sanity. I cannot stand development anymore, nor technology, nor I.T., but I'm incapable of doing anything else. I've read the books that say I must love what I do, but I don't, and there is no option to love what I do. I have chosen an occupation and career that no longer suits me, and I have no alternative. I am the only one with a job in my family. I cannot fail. I have to trudge on. This is burnout. I have no where to go.<p>Therefore, I would state instead that burnout is caused by lack of hope.

I find that wasting my time is a larger annoyance than monetary compensation. As I get older I have less tolerance for meaningless meetings and the requirement to work specific hours or be in a physical office for a client just because it makes a manager feel better.

Perhaps one of the causes, but in times past I've definitely started to get burned out on projects I did not resent- that were simply truckloads of work, with limited time for sleep/food/unwinding.<p>On the bright side, that was much easier to recover from than the soul-crushing burnout I associate with resentment.

Most here have commented 3-4 hours ago, but 2 hours ago Isaac Yonemoto left an excellent comment on the blog. So if you read this message, because you're checking the thread for new discussion, I encourage you to check out his comment as well. :-)

I agree. The biggest reason why employees (or hell, founders too) quit is because they don't feel appreciated.<p>If I'm working 60-70 hours a week and have a never-ending stream of people inside the company griping at me about why I wasn't able to get non-essential-to-my-role task X,Y, or Z done for them (this is what being in a big company feels like) - that really starts to mount even for employees who know that they're appreciated by their immediate peers and leadership.<p>Being appreciated by your managing team or your peers isn't enough - YOU need to feel like you're doing a good job. Even someone with a stalwart self-sureness will crumble if they feel like they're constantly failing to deliver what the business needs.

Most people on the thread have this correct: there is a difference between resentment and burnout. I understand this innately, as I've been there with both feelings, and they are quite different.<p>When I felt burned out, it was literally like a flame on a match stick. I was exhausted and didn't see a way out of the situation (amazing what a little perspective will get you.) I didn't want to do my job, because my head was full and it felt heavy to me.<p>Contrast that with resentment, and I was pissed off (and motivated.) I had energy to change the situation, which was entirely different from feeling burned out.<p>One situation gave me energy and focus; the other felt like an immovable burden. Big difference to me.

What are the average work hours per week and days' holiday a year taken by a (US) Googler?

At the risk of making everything about Google... I'm going to talk about Google (with the disclaimer that I've now worked here for only ~1.5 years so I'm not authority, etc etc).<p>stcredzero mentions a laundry list of soul-sapping bad behaviour and in previous jobs I've suffered through (or quit over) probably all of them at one time or another.<p>There are some subtle yet fundamentally important differences in how Google (from my experience) approaches software development that end up addressing a lot of these.<p>1. Most (if not all) engineering managers are... engineers. I've seen internal job postings for engineering directors (to put that in perspective, an eng director might have 30-100 engineers under him or her typically with some engineering managers in between although some particularly senior engineers may report directly to their director) that call for "deep knowledge of C++". Some eng directors still submit CLs. This is something Google takes very seriously;<p>2. As an engineer, I don't have to work for you (where "you" is any particular manager or director). This is <i>incredibly</i> important because it puts strict limits on how much crap you can be given because (assuming you're in good standing) you can request a transfer to any team that will take you (within limits and your existing manager can delay you but can't block you);<p>3. Internally, Google is <i>extremely</i> open with what's going on in the company. There are a handful of things off-limit but in almost all cases you can view the data and code and announcements for almost every project in Google;<p>4. The level of meetings and overall bullshit has been, in my experience, incredibly low compared to previous employers;<p>5. Performance reviews are peer-driven. This system is not perfect and you'll have critics who point to thinks like you need senior people around you to get promoted. Some of these claims have merit but the system while not perfect is still (IMHO) very good; and<p>6. Gratitude. As Steve Yegge [1] puts it:<p>&#62; You can't help but want to do your absolute best for Google; you feel like you owe it to them for taking such incredibly good care of you.<p>I find many of these alleviate burnout by way of mitigating resentment. I'm not sure I fully agree that burnout is solely caused by resentment however. I've known people who have been well-rewarded and respected for what they've done but they just reach a point where they need a break and have to do something else. I'd characterize this as burnout but perhaps definitions vary.<p>Lastly, I'll touch on a point someone else mentioned: as time goes on my tolerance for bullshit and time-wasting goes down. No I'm not going to your daily standup ("mini performance review") because it's a waste of my time. No I'm not going to work on your shitty project that's made shitty technology choices for political rather than technical reasons. I don't have the time nor inclination to indulge you in this.<p>[1]: <a href="http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html" rel="nofollow">http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile...</a>

You can get burnt out all by your lonesome self just fine without resenting anybody or anything at all.

Unplug for merely a week? How very masochistically American. Let me teach you something about burnout, you poor, pathetically narrow-minded little man. I'd like to unplug for six months out of the year, at an absolute minimum. That's burnout, my friend.

Read the first comment in the page by Isaac Yonemoto it's better than the post.

I agree with this.<p>My problem is that I have a big problem sacrificing my free time for my regular paycheck while the boss makes potentially millions.

I'd agree I almost never burn out because I workout everyday. I really believe the studies that says fit people are happier because nothing clears my mind like working out or playing basketball especially after a long coding session.