Mental health in software engineering

In almost 30 years of software engineering, I came to the conclusion years ago that most deadlines were entirely arbitrary. The business isn&#x27;t going to fail if you slip a week, or frequently even six months and if it does its probably not the fault of engineering unless its so dysfunctional as to repeatably blow through its own delivery estimates. Sure there are regulatory deadlines, customer POC or delivery deadlines. But, truly hard deadlines won&#x27;t pop up as &quot;we need this done next week&quot; unless there is something fundamentally wrong with the business&#x2F;sales side. A good functioning engineering&#x2F;business unit will know far in advance of those kinds of deadlines and it becomes a question of whether the existing engineering org is capable of delivering the functionality within a heavily padded schedule.<p>Put another way, I don&#x27;t think i&#x27;ve ever seen a customer walk from a product because it wasn&#x27;t released on a cadence, in fact many aren&#x27;t actually happy about upgrades unless they are fixing a problem they have requested. And sales&#x2F;POC cycles are such that frequently the customer may not actually have an alternative solution, or if they do, the chances they will switch to your product simply because you have X this year instead of next year isn&#x27;t something that hinges on small factors that can be done by the engineering team in short cycles. You win because the product is better&#x2F;etc and that doesn&#x27;t happen overnight.<p>So, stressing and working endless 80 hour weeks likely is going to have the opposite effect and creates a low quality product that people are trying to get rid of because it keeps breaking.

I&#x27;m not terribly convinced that software engineering is harder on someone mental health than being a doctor, lawyer, sales, engineer, professional athlete, teacher, or any other white collar profession is.<p>All of these have their specific stressors, all of these professions have loads of articles about how people are leaving these professions due to how hard they are.<p>All of these jobs tend to lead to them consuming your free time if you don&#x27;t set boundaries, all have deadlines that lead to stress.<p>&gt;You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”<p>This hurt me to read on behalf of the OP.<p>I&#x27;m now 20 years into my career and never once have I come across this attitude. People take sick days all the time for mental health. I feel terribly for this person that they felt like they couldn&#x27;t but this is far and away the exception rather than the rule.<p>Has any company come out against mental health in the past 20 years?

I used to be in (moderate) awe of young college drop-out CEOs. Then I worked for a couple of them. Now I refuse to work for startups that have 20-somethings at the top, because they really do not know how to manage or lead. They are motivated by fear of failure and having accomplished nothing so far they treat others like garbage. Avoid.

&quot;An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can&#x27;t be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen.&quot;<p>At a certain point you have to just build a queue and start the next highest priority thing next. Too much WIP kills you.

I think it is so important to be able to disconnect from whatever it is that we are doing, even for a very short period of time. Go for a walk, brew a coffee or simply close your eyes and breathe.<p>Many times, stress is created artificially. It hurts our performance and deteriorates our ability to think.<p>Encountered numerous situations where work was &quot;urgent&quot; and would likely land a contract or sales for the company, and everyone would be a superstar if they delivered this &quot;crunch&quot;.<p>After 2 months of pulling all-nighters and sleeping for 3&#x2F;4 hours, we deliver the project ahead of time. Apathy begins to set in after management&#x2F;decision makers keep on giving these gifts we call &quot;crunches&quot;.<p>To help the company and go the extra mile is something most of us have done in the past and will possibly do in the future. However, it&#x27;s like the story of the boy who cried wolf, if everything is urgent and every task is to be done NOW, then there are bigger issues at play.<p>Like everything in life, there is usually a limit&#x2F;budget of money, time and effort. By abusing these limits and tolerances, people will lose respect for the people crying wolf and will put less effort into their work.

&gt;You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”<p>Yes, you can. You can say you need a mental health day. Adults will understand.

I&#x27;ve come to believe that there&#x27;s something about the practice of software development that <i>causes</i>, or can cause mental illness. I&#x27;ve seen a few colleagues over the decades have some very serious issues. It&#x27;s really quite a serious problem in our industry, imho.

&gt;<i>This was my perfect storm in 2017 — I was trying to control all of the uncertainty around me: (...) Trying to control the looming unrealistic deadlines. Writing a lot of the code myself to ensure we uphold our promises to stakeholders and none of our developers burn out. Which led to me working more and sleeping less. Worrying about next month’s payroll and trying to control our runway. Maintaining developer velocity and tight budgets, juggling future growth and current issues. Trying to control our developer turnover and making sure our juniors grow. There were days I&#x27;d be coding non-stop or in a series of back-to-back meetings, forgetting meals, sleeping, and even what it felt like to relax.</i><p>Sounds like trying to cope at a shitty nightmare job at a shitty company, and blaming yourself.

This is a person that should have never been in a leadership position. I have worked under these types of people that were great engineers themselves but couldn’t lead worth shit.<p>No trust in the team. Always doing shit themselves. No discussion. Backdoor discussions. Always bending to the will of management. Everything is “important”&#x2F;“critical”. It’s micromanaging to the worst degree.<p>At the same time, I would likely fail in the same way if given the position. Albeit, to a much lesser degree. I think management often puts us in these impossible positions without any good reason other than “to look good to X.” What’s even worse if it’s was just to earn fucking brownie points with some no name mid level director.<p>This is why I think unions in tech would be great. To set realistic expectations, approach management from a collective point of view.<p>Unfortunately companies today only aim to get that VC money with a quick exit and IPO. I think the general sentiment amongst the vultures is a union would make the quick exit less of a reality.

&gt; You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”<p>You can. I started doing this years ago and it has been an overall positive experience. Others on my team told me about their own struggles because I took the initiative to open up about mine.

This piece teaches me almost nothing about Vadim but shows me a ton about the environment he worked in. Someone built that culture, who are they? Why did they do it? Was Vadim complicit? Why did he feel so little control?<p>Hustle culture is not challenging, it does not help anyone grow, it simply exploits people. It&#x27;s common, banal stuff.

I worked in the Meta NY office for a while, and had a friend living down the block with anxiety, with a prescription to treat it.<p>Sometime during my tenure, her prescription started becoming unfillable; the pharmacies are only legally allowed to carry a limited quantity to combat substance abuse issues.<p>What was happening? Turns out the Meta office was staffing up rapidly and taking more floors in the building, and all of the engineers needing anti-anxiety medication started consuming all of the local supply.<p>This is a serious problem that we do not take seriously. Broadly speaking, startups in particular are aggressive and there&#x27;s still an air of machismo and bro culture (from which Meta was born) that prevents caring for one another in this way.

The way to get around some of this is to work on contract. I have found I am most free being a contractor. I go in to the gig knowing it has a definite end and do not care about any of the internal politics. It’s not a perfect solution but much better than being an employee where I have granted a company a monopoly on my time.

&gt;So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn&#x27;t the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life.<p>This is so important. Our work is an extension of us. Our state in the moment will bleed into all areas of life. There is nothing more important. As we are limitless potential. But only if we are living in the here and now.

I wish this person luck.<p>I won&#x27;t make any comments on their fitness&#x2F;accomplishments&#x2F;whatever. I am not in their shoes, and can only appreciate the honesty of their exposition (which they seem to be embracing and using as their platform).<p><i>&gt; In business, there’s no place for perfection. There’s no space for having everything under control. In fact, not only can’t you influence most of the things around you, but most of the things are uncertain.</i><p>I have found this to be true for life, in general; especially when dealing with other people.

In the unforgiving realm of tech, where deadlines loom like tempests and demands soar higher than the tallest spires, a tale unfolds of a coder besieged by the storms of expectation. Leadership, with eyes set on horizons unseen, oft chart courses riddled with contradiction, whispering of features promised to titans, each deemed the pinnacle of priority. Yet, amidst the clamor for creation, a truth, stark and unyielding, emerges: to elevate two masters to the zenith is to court the abyss.<p>Thus, ensnared in this labyrinth of urgency, our protagonist wrestles with the specter of impossibility, urged ever onward by the mantra, &quot;Make it so.&quot; A counsel of despair, for within the crucible of incessant toil, the spirit wanes and the flesh wearies.<p>In this odyssey of turmoil, the narrative delves deep into the quagmire of mental strife that ensnares those who toil in the shadow of unyielding expectation. It casts a light on the sanctity of boundaries, the paramount importance of safeguarding one&#x27;s inner citadel, and the somber realization that, though we may strive with Herculean fervor, the fates of our endeavors lie beyond the realm of our dominion.<p>Herein lies a clarion call to the sentinels of the digital frontier: to honor the sanctity of mind and spirit, to question the altars of perpetual labor upon which we lay our offerings, and to seek a horizon where success is measured not by the quantity of our toil, but by the quality of our lives.

I saw Bryan Cantrill&#x27;s talk on [Intelligence is Not Enough][0] opposing some opinions on AI&#x2F;ML is gonna do to the industry... but I felt like it touches on some ideas that can relate the topic of mental health as well.<p>Many software shops&#x2F;enterprises don&#x27;t value the necessity of <i>embracing failure</i> and making space for <i>curiosity</i>. That&#x27;s fine, but then these shops should be strict about using Boring Technology they can just buy support for. If such companies have too much product ambition in the mix, then you need to give devs the ability to be engineers by giving them space to fail, try new things, refactor, rewrite.<p>We can&#x27;t do that when the pressure is on to ship in unsustainable ways! Failure is not an option. We spent all that money writing that MVP, what do you mean you need a team to just maintain it? We have features to build!!<p>Not everyone is competitive enough to work with excellent engineering culture and we trade mental health in for it sometimes.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=bQfJi7rjuEk</a>

My wife is a dentist in the bay area - she can tell which patients work in tech based on how ground down their teeth are.

&gt; You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”<p>“I’m taking the day off.”<p>Your coworkers don’t need a reason. If your employer demands one, then that’s a different issue.

industrial revolution broke backs, tech revolution breaks brains

Glad he quit alcohol as I did at 21. I found out then that marijuana is the best antidepressant and anxiolytic, Xanax second place. But benzos are anticonvulsants with significant withdrawal effects.<p>I dread having a mandatory talk therapist and am not sure how that helps social anxiety. Free book warns to not trust psychiatrists because you may go in for stress and never be allowed out. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;scl&#x2F;fi&#x2F;ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw&#x2F;quackLawApr92024.txt?rlkey=z9y61ogwxonz6q042vu6ddq75&amp;dl=0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dropbox.com&#x2F;scl&#x2F;fi&#x2F;ocxbp8l5uo6anu7us7fjw&#x2F;quackLa...</a>

It&#x27;s too triggering to do any more than skim the article, but having got the general gist of at least some of it, I shall write my top tip here in case it helps anyone (who manages to do it):<p>Negotiate prohibitively high overtime rates.

It’s challenging for people because you are often put in positions you can’t control the outcome of.<p>All you can do is your best, and if you fail, there is little safety net to help you. At least in the U.S. major items are tied to your job.<p>You can also be put in situations where people want you to sacrifice like you have equity in the company, but at the same time treat you like you are replaceable.<p>There is also a lot of people that are willing to over promise and blame you when things fail. At the end of the day it is the company over everyone.

As the founder and CEO of a two-year-old startup, seeking certainty in the direction amidst uncertainty (determining which products can bring customers and profits) should become my instinct.

To paraphrase a famous quote...<p><pre><code> &quot;What do you think about mental health in software engineering?&quot; &quot;I think it would be a good idea.&quot;</code></pre>

What in software engineering adds more than the usual stress to working?<p>- Automation is the rule, not the exception. Replace your own work with a script, whenever you can.<p>- Our work product in theory works forever (i.e., until conditions change). You really are not needed when you&#x27;re done. Script monkeys can copy and fix your stuff.<p>- New technologies and platforms: hardware drives software and vice-versa, leading to frequent choices whether to upgrade to enjoy new benefits. Your skills become dated, and the process of upgrading requires whole-world knowledge no one has.<p>- High competition: with low barriers to entry, you can do great stuff but still be a smidge worse, and lose the entire race. Close is crazy-making.<p>- Low management: with automation the professional process, the employee-manager ratio tends to be very high, typically with senior technicians enlisted for administration (which also makes them more compliant). As a result, employees are not buffered from business forces.<p>NO other profession has all or even most of these features. The closest I can think of is the bench scientist (and they might be in a worse position b&#x2F;c they have very few alternatives). And AI will amplify both automation and new technologies and will likely increase the employee&#x2F;manager ratio.<p>But ironically, few professions offer as much leeway for mental derangement. I&#x27;m shocked how off some people are, but they still function just fine, because the main determinants of productivity is whatever weird programming model evolved at the company: master that, and you can perform well, so long as you avoid triggering your manager or someone important.

Fair. I’ve been there too. Exploitation is our industry standard unfortunately. Like everybody (I suppose) in that position, I’ve been trying to understand the root cause of the problem. IMHO the root cause is in the structure of “teams” and related responsibilities&#x2F;positiins. I’ve written “teams” in quotation makrs, cause most of them are simoly a group of people without any real shared goal. Real teams are structured in a way that enables real cross-dependence of their members. In a group each member is accountable individually, and individual accountability stands in opposition to team work. If we structure teams to work as teams (together, not alone), and enable collaborative processes and architecture (structure, process and architecture all have to work together) - we enable many ways of support among individuals, and thats where the team gains powers to form a self-awareness and heal itself. Without an intervention of HR, organizing coffee breaks over Zoom half an hour each week, or other nonsense.

&gt; An example of uncertainty in business is when your CEO tells you they promised a feature to your biggest client and it needs to be built ASAP as highest priority, so all hands on deck. Then a day later they tell you another feature, completely contradictory to the first one, needs to be built as well and is also highest priority. When you tell them they both can&#x27;t be highest priority, the answer is: make it happen.<p>Hardly.<p>What I&#x27;ve found to work best in such scenarios is to always chop up the task at hand to essentials and nice-to-haves[0]. If another task comes up before you&#x27;re finished, chop it up as well and ask your leadership what&#x27;s more important: the essentials from this new task or nice-to-haves from that previous one.<p>It&#x27;s never the nice-to-haves.<p>Also it always helps to not promise something you can&#x27;t deliver - this applies to every level in the hierarchy.<p>[0] Sometimes, if essentials are the vast majority, you can produce versions of them which are simpler, but still workable from a business perspective, and have bringing the full-featured versions as a nice-to-have.

&gt; I was now in charge of a small team of developers, and our startup has made many promises to many partners<p>This was the problem. I saw it myself in one place. The sales guys go out and promise the moon on a stick. After all, they&#x27;re incentivised to sell, and the won&#x27;t be one ones stressing to get the job done. They probably have no clue that that one feature they&#x27;ve just agreed to is massively complicated and probably not that important anyway.<p>Unless a decision is made with the CTO&#x2F;an architect in the loop, forget it.<p>If it was and is unreasonable just tell them and then forget it.<p>You only get stressed if you accept other peoples&#x27; made up deadlines. They probably get you to do this with the promise of a meagre bonus or something. Just don&#x27;t buy into any of that nonsense.<p>The other source of stress for a founder is the illusion of control. Just do what you can and keep shipping. It&#x27;s a marathon. Be kind on yourself.

I have experienced most of what you have written about and have taken many similar steps :) The major difference being I would describe myself still at the level of a juniorish engineer.<p>My only addition and I&#x27;m very curious as to your opinion: I think mental health &#x2F; physical health is more impactful in software engineering than most other professions. At least for me, if I&#x27;m sick it directly impacts my working memory and ability to focus. I always tell my friends I could do yard work just fine, yeah I&#x27;d feel like crap still but I could do it. If I&#x27;m trying to code something difficult often times I can end up making zero progress or arguably negative progress if I&#x27;m sick long enough as I lose context of code changing around me.<p>The same holds true if I&#x27;m stressed or anxious or whatever.<p>This can probably become a cycle with the things you mentioned that makes it easy to trend downward.<p>Thanks for sharing your story :)

I&#x27;ll dump this one here as it&#x27;s still annoying me a bit. So one afternoon I&#x27;m sitting there and our sales guy John came in (you know who you are if you&#x27;re reading this) and described what he&#x27;d managed to sell a client. I sat there and I scribbled on bits of paper for hours, did some research and went back to him with the point that it wasn&#x27;t possible from an algorithmic perspective. Basically he&#x27;d assumed that if it worked for a couple of steps in Excel it&#x27;d be fine up to a few hundred. I scribbled out the mathematics a few times, wrote some prototype code and no the scalability characteristics approached &quot;all the energy in the universe&quot; levels of compute pretty quickly. O(wtf!).<p>So I go back to him and he accused me of lying and went and told the CEO. The CEO, a pretty chill guy with a doctorate, I was expecting to have a rational discussion about with but not he screamed at me too. I was downtrodden emotionally so I sheepishly said yeah I&#x27;ll have another look and went back and started at it for another couple of days. No it was impossible. At that point I was stuck in a situation. I&#x27;ve got unemployment on one side and I&#x27;ve got getting screamed at inevitably. I just sat there in a depressed little hole with no options. I was angry, isolated and had no one sympathetic around. I suspect many people end up here.<p>Slept really badly that night. Woke up, got in the car and drove into the office. Got half way and got distracted by a cafe and decided I&#x27;d get breakfast and think some more about it. Sitting there eating a fat sausace, something just went ping, I SMS&#x27;ed John and the CEO with &quot;fuck you I quit&quot;. I moved back in with my parents, did fuck all for 6 months, got another job, which was 80% less shit and the company I worked for went down the shitter about a year later because they couldn&#x27;t deliver it.<p>If you feel like shit in a job, just leave. It&#x27;s not worth it.

I think the conclusion is spot on:<p>&gt; So, I will repeat it again: our greatest asset isn&#x27;t the code we write. It’s us, alive, and living the life.<p>Happy people work harder, get more done, are more creative and ill less often.<p>It pays off for employees as well as employers to put life happiness first.

&gt; People not getting their salaries and the company going bankrupt. I think that’s a big enough reason to risk burning out.<p>Like for deadlines : most of the time it isn&#x27;t. People can get new jobs. You can found a new company.<p>But burnout is like losing a limb : you will never be able to operate at the same level again (not to mention the months it&#x27;s going to take before you can start do even part-time work again).<p>There are very few situations where such a sacrifice would be worth it. Probably only those involving family members, and consider that after that they will have to deal with your now relatively crippled status for the rest of your life.

One of the primary responsiblities as you climb the hierarchy is to protect your team &#x2F; teams &#x2F; departments from maniacs in other places fo the hierarchy.<p>That means standing up and saying &quot;No&quot; and sticking to it. Overtime it will show that your people perform better than others since they have a sane person ensuring that they are not on death marches to failure.<p>Or it can mean losing your job, in some instances.<p>What would you rather do?<p>Kill your team by imposing impossivle tasks, due to pressure form the top in order to climb higher in the hierarchy or at least maintain,.<p>Or be straight and honest, and if nescessary take one for the team-+

Anyone else feel like agile is partially to blame? The constant treadmill of work items, the stress of getting things done before sprint end, the demos failing, the anxiety when you get a bug report?

I haven&#x27;t worked in a team or with a manager that wasn&#x27;t receptive and empathetic to burnout or more serious mental health concerns. Guess I got lucky.

Most firms screen for people that will not challenge their existing process. Whether it is &quot;Culture fit&quot; discrimination, neurodivergent specialists being exploited for not being ambitious in traditional ways, and or outright cons ripping off junior staff with insane contracts.<p>White Knight Syndrome is very real... The trick is knowing you have a problem.<p>Best of luck out there, =)

One thing I&#x27;ve realized more and more over the years: it&#x27;s the operational roles (infra, SRE, Devops) that are actually most stressful. Sure, if you&#x27;re building product, you get deadlines, but they are predictable and they come and go.<p>But being oncall for a shakey infra stack? That shit is hell. No deadlines, just the threat of incidents or downtime at any time of day.

Not to be too cheeky, but take javascript out to the woodshed and I expect a marked improvement in mental health all around.

Everybody understand and recognise physically demanding work, but for scientists and more in general for people experiencing that kind of &#x27;stress&#x27; it&#x27;s still hard being recognised. Some of the other fields also have associations and so on, while in our field we are typically on ourselves.

This is an awesome post. I noticed this for long time back, software engineer some time can be very frustrated emotionally by his work, or his code. I really like this topic becoming a serious one. More than that, I hope somebody can come out some idea to resolve this problem

&gt; You cannot take a sick day by telling your team, “I have mental issues and need a day off.”<p>Actually, that is exactly what you _can_ do. It just takes more transparent communication about your needs and desires and more trust and safety within you r company and team...

It&#x27;s great when this stuff is talked about.<p>The action item is always disappointing: some flavor of &quot;take care of yourself.&quot;<p>If we were trees in a forest fire, then yes. Making ourselves more fireproof is the best we can do.<p>We&#x27;re not trees, though, are we?

Kudos for speaking out<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=anPb6X-sXxI</a>

It might be helpful to catalog a few reasons why software engineering can be so stressful. Many of these are common to other professions as well, to varying degrees.<p>* It&#x27;s hard to predict how long something will take so you stress out when you take longer. Even if requirements are clear, all sorts of things can delay implementation: debugging, build issues, plugging in dependencies, bugs in underlying libraries. All these can take a limitless amount of time.<p>* Complexity can be overwhelming. Staring at a thousand line, convoluted class can make you shut down, just because it&#x27;s too much.<p>* Being new and not able to produce at the same level as others. This one hopefully goes away after some time as you ramp up, but you might be new at different projects in the same team.<p>* Changing requirements, increasing scope.<p>* Priority inversion - you depend on another team for your work, but they aren&#x27;t working on it, and you have to answer for that.<p>* Having to give an update at a status meeting when you know you haven&#x27;t made as much progress as you&#x27;d like.<p>* Feeling bad about your productivity, so you don&#x27;t take care of yourself (wasting time at night), are tired, and aren&#x27;t able to be productive the next day. This whole loop can last for a long time if you can&#x27;t break it.<p>* You can&#x27;t ask for help because you feel like others will think you&#x27;re stupid for asking those questions. And you can&#x27;t make progress bc you really need to know those things.<p>Many of these things are exacerbated by life circumstance, social position, personality, previous mental health history, and management&#x2F;peers. The way you can improve this stuff for yourself is by having a solid wellness routine (exercise, sleep, diet), good communication with your peers&#x2F;manager (this is a chicken&#x2F;egg situation), and pushing for reasonable organizational changes. Of these, only wellness is totally under your control. The others require people around you to change, which may not be possible.

“Your lack of planning is not my emergency”

&gt; We go to the doctor for a physical ailment; why should our mental health be any different?<p>Most health insurance system do seem to think there is a difference. Just like teeth seem to be luxury bones and eyesight is kinda optional.<p>Why aren’t all these things first class in most health systems? Coverage is usually pretty decent for physicians, but if you have a problem with your mind (or teeth, or eyes) then good luck here is a fraction of what the therapy costs and don’t bother us with it again.

Morale of the story: don’t apply for a CTO position. Apply for CEO: more money, less pressure, and you get to be as incompetent as you want.

mental health issues in swe can be rampant and it is a superset of just anxiety &#x2F; burnout

link appears to be dead

A mental health article about the rank &amp; file? Not about bloviators?<p>&gt; , especially those of us who&#x27;ve taken on the challenge of leadership.<p>Nope.

Hold On, You are not far away where you will be able to track your mind.<p>We are on the way to develop the device,which will help you to reduce the Mental Stress so far.<p>To know more Visit:- Edenband.io