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A Developer’s Guide to Burnout

What exactly is burnout? Some days, you just don’t feel like working. You find yourself distracted, returning to the same line of code over and over before realizing that it just won’t happen today. If a good night’s sleep can get you back on track, it’s just a hiccup. If the struggle continues for weeks, it might be something deeper.

Burnout often translates to a total disconnection from your work – where fatigue intersects with apathy and requires a concerted effort to recover. They say that “you can’t burn out if you aren’t on fire,” so the good news is that it is likely you really care about what you are working on. But the goal is to keep that fire burning without extinguishing it. 

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A Stress-Free 2022

There are ample resources available online to deal with burnout in your job, but I want to share a few ideas that I will be using this year. The WHO says: “Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” You know that it is happening to you when a part of your inner self is screaming that you have had enough. Perhaps, you want to say it out loud, too. IT jobs seem to have a high percentage of burnout, and Electric identifies that it is rising.

January is the month when employees return from a festive break to start afresh and tackle new challenges. However, IT professionals return to the unfinished backlog, pushed deadlines, and overcommitted sprints from December. Long hours, growing to-do lists, work setup issues, uncountable Slack messages, and remote teams all contribute to stress. We all face it. Long hours and working over the weekends contribute to the biggest reasons for burnout. Teams work throughout the week, release during the nights, and provide support over the weekends, and the cycle continues.

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Software Development Trends for 2022: Remote Work Is Here to Stay

In March 2020, the working world changed forever. By April 2020, about half of all companies reported that more than 80% of their employees worked from home because of Covid-19. Most never went back to the office—remote work is here to stay.

Forced to take life online, technology became of primal importance. Digital transformation is now a basic requirement for any organization wanting to keep up. Technology workers, already in high demand before, are now even more sought after to help build a world where we all rely on technology for the most basic activities.

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Managing Burnout During COVID-19

During this crisis, we’re all trying our best to keep ourselves and others healthy, manage chaotic homes, and prioritize our mental health. However, this can be difficult even when we’re not experiencing a pandemic. With the added stress, burnout is occurring at an alarming rate with people unable to separate home from work, the increased burden of keeping everything on and heightened on-call loads, and the strain on communication.

Somedays, you might find it difficult to unplug and relax. Others, you may dread logging on. However, this doesn’t mean you’re not good at your job or capable of remote work. Instead, this is likely a version of burnout that none of us have experienced before. It’s difficult to overcome, but there are some ways to combat this and keep yourself and your team from burning out.

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5 Pro Tips for Dealing With Burnout on the Job

If you just don't want to, read on.
Photo credit by Unsplash/Arthur Savary

According to the Mayo Clinic, job burnout is "a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity."

The reasons for this unfortunately common condition are varied, though it generally arises out of the inevitable despair that accompanies a spectacularly terrible career choice.