Developer Burnout

How you identify, treat and prevent the three types of developer burn out is an excellent podcast episode on developer burnout. This article is heavily inspired from it.

If you are feeling stressed at your work or are lacking motivation at work, you are not alone.

According to a 2022 survey by yerbo.co, 2 in 5 tech workers show a high risk of burnout. 73% of developers have experienced burnout at some point in their careers.

There are three major types of burnout.

Frenetic Burnout

This is the kind of burnout where you continue to work at an unsustainable pace leading to exhaustion.

Under-challenged Burnout

This is the kind of burnout where you do not feel being challenged or stimulated by your work.

Worn-out Burnout

This is the kind of burnout where you feel overwhelmed with your work, feel a lack of control or do not feel acknowledged/appreciated by peers/managers.

Why does it happen?

Since my entire career is involved with startups, I’ll try to explain why developers in startup community experience burnout.

The startup tech community, in general, loves to replicate something that is proven successful. With the success of Facebook, its internal motto Move Fast and Break Things might have influenced a lot of startup’s working style and work culture.

This meant that,

• Frequent requests for product changes.
• A lot of product changes are scrapped even before going live.

Frequent product change requests meant that developers always had some work on their plate. In this kind of fast-paced environment, target dates always fall short. This means developers have no other choice but to stretch themselves. This often leads to worn-out or frenetic burnout.

Some developers are emotionally attached to the code they write and maintain. If product changes or features are being scrapped on a frequent basis, developers tend to lose interest to work on any new feature requests. They tend to develop a sense that their work is useless. This typically leads to under-challenged burnout.

Do you feel like you are burned out? You probably are. Take this quiz to find out.

You can use the following strategies to prevent yourself from getting burned out.

Realistic Expectations

When asked to provide timeline expectations of a given task, a lot of developers that I see estimate by considering they have 8 hours of working time per day. But, you don’t work on these tasks exclusively. You have to attend meetings, respond to DMs, debug production issues, have lunch, gossip with your peers, etc… In the end, you only have 2–3 hours when you can be productive to work on the assigned tasks. So, you need to set expectations as if you only work for 2–3 hours per day.

Say NO

Saying no in itself is an art. In order to say no, you need to establish some boundaries.

• If you feel that a feature request doesn’t make sense, say no until you are convinced.
• If a feature request is not backed by data, say no.
• If you are expected to work extended hours, say no.
• If you are expected to work during your PTO, say no.

You cannot expect others to respect your boundaries when you do not respect them yourself. If you keep making excuses and ignore your boundaries, then no one will respect them.

I know that this is easier said than done. But you need to start somewhere.

Treat yourself

If you feel that there is no progress in your work, or you do not find it interesting, then give yourself a small task. This should be something you know that you can complete. For example,

• add a new linter/formatter for your project
• remove dead code
• add documentation to the core library or functions
• migrate the code base to new standards

These tasks should not be time-consuming, but they will keep you distracted and occupied for a short time. Once you are done with this task, you will feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement.

Non-work work

Keep yourself a hobby or a routine outside your work time. Any physical or mental activity that keeps you busy from work.

Talk about it

If you feel that you are getting burned out, talk to your manager. There is no one better to understand than someone who has probably experienced it.

Always remember, getting burned out is a health hazard. It is not a badge of honor.