I'm absolutely convinced that burnout is a function of spending time on things you loathe to do. Not how much time you spend on something you love doing.
Most people I know that actually work all-the-time, not self-proclaimed "I work X hour weeks people that say it to sound 'cool'" people. Never have a burnout.
Most of those people also go on extended vacations of say 5-7 weeks. But still work 2-3 hours every day.
Burnout seems much more common in the average worker that only works a 9-5.
The commonality of burnout in some form to full burnout seems to be roughly 75% for employees[1] and roughly 70% for executives[2] and 25% ~ 75% for entrepreneurs[3].
That's a match for my experience so far. Never could have worked this hard for someone else.
Having full creative control, uncapped upside potential, and truly enjoying the work make it a lot easier to do every day.
As a long-term goal, I would like to restore better work/life balance.
But first, I'm trying to make hay while the sun shines, to hit escape velocity from corporate work permanently. Now that I've tasted freedom, I really don't want to be dragged back...regardless of the outcome with my current business.
To me, burnout is putting large amounts of mental and emotional energy into an activity where you don't have much agency on how it is done, or the outcome. That can happen in entrepreneurship, but much more common in corporate life. The actual amount of work leading to burnout is only a small component IMO.
Spot on. You don’t get burnout from boring tedious work. That’s a completely different form of exhaustion.
> That can happen in entrepreneurship, but much more common in corporate life.
Yeah but it’s not at all limited to traditional work. A common source of burnout is family issues. People burn out taking care of others, especially someone with psychological or substance abuse problems. Or co-dependence, terminal illnesses. Those things can become worse by trying harder, and that’s a potent recipe for burnout.
Can confirm, I work a 9-5 and have absolutely had projects where writing code felt like pulling teeth and I very much experienced burnout as a consequence of that.
Even now I have a project where I have to fix a bunch of hastily written code and while I’m making progress and it’ll eventually be fine, it’s quite unsatisfying.
That’s an important point. Stress is a key contributor to burnout. It’s very plausible that working 5 unstressed hours 7 days a week doesn’t lead to burnout, while the same amount of work that is stressful and leaves you think about work all day even “off the clock” does lead you to burn out.
Yeah, I don't know. If I love playing guitar, doing it 10 hours a day, 7 days a week, is going to get old. At some point it becomes counterproductive. Sometimes I sit in front of a screen, and I WANT to do something, excited even, but my brain is just not sharp enough.
With coding, it's also a matter of quality of work. You need to step back so you can look at your work with a fresh perspective, and oh, there are ALWAYS horrors you will find, the ones you created when tired.
Not an expert or anything, but when I looked into burnout it was predicted by lack of expected reward. So there's two things you can change. The expectation or the reward.
This matches siblings comments where employees experience burnout more probably because employees are rarely rewarded for their best work. But executives and entrepreneurs are.
I suppose even if the reward is intangible that protects from burnout.
Until they are not. The most promising entrepreneurial project can take an unexpected turn south, and if you’ve worked yourself past the burnout threshold at that point it can be hard to come back.
Mine, FirstDirect in the UK, recently dropped the password from “between 5 and 9 case-sensitive alphanumeric characters” to “exactly six digits” and claimed that this was just as secure as before…¹²
My guess is that either they were cutting support costs and wanted to reduce the number of calls from people who forgot their more complicated password!. Either that or they are trying to integrate a legacy system, don't have the resources/access to improve that, so reduced everything else down to its level. When raised one on of their public facing online presences someone pointed out that it is no less than other online banks do, but if they are happy being just as good but no better than other banks there is nothing for me to be loyal to should another bank come up with a juicy looking offer.
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[1] because of course 13,759,005,982,823,100 possible combinations is no better than exactly 1,000,000 where you know most people are going to use some variant of a date of birth/marriage and makes shoulder-surfing attacks no more difficult </snark>
[2] The only way it is really just as secure as before is if there is a significant hole elsewhere so it doesn't matter what options are available there. Going from zero security to zero security is just as secure as before, no lie!
But they do ask you only two digits of the pin on each try and they probably will lock your account after three incorrect attempts. Not saying 6 digits is secure, but it's better than everyone using "password" if they have a string policy on incorrect attempts.
And don't hm they have 2FA for executing transactions?
I'm pretty sure banks are some of the most targeted IT systems. I don't trust them blindly, but when it comes to online security, I trust that they built a system that's reasonably well secured and other cases, I'd get my money back, similar to credit cards.
> there is a proposal that suggests individuals nearing retirement should work in a social service job for a year
And what about letting people live their lives without constantly micro managing their fate. What happened to freedom?
As long as I pay my taxes, don't infringe on the basic universal sane laws (you know, don't kill, steal etc) leave me the fuck alone.
I don't know for Germany but France, my country, starts to ask too much in exchange for what they're offering. Can't do this, can't do that, pot holes everywhere, prices and taxes skyrocketing, impossible to find a doctor that will receive you the same day and now they want to send us to die in Ukraine?
I think the problem is that society is not offering enough, not demanding too little.
I did my conscript service in Sweden at a time when only 8000 did. 10 years earlier, 50,000 did. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Sweden has now joined NATO. People are simply clueless about the needs of the Defense.
I have since moved to Switzerland where the military is still fully staffed by each generation. I believe this is a link that should never be broken.
Additionally, I believe countries like France and Germany are too big and should reduce in size, but that’s another discussion.
> military is still fully staffed by each generation
There was an interesting comment recently that discussed the development of a 'warrior caste' in the US military, which to no-one's surprise largely overlaps with poor people. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40787714
When you are 65 then you already have done a lot for the economy of the country. The probelm at hand is that 30% of the workforce will retire in 2030 because of the baby boom in 60s. In the 2030s there will be many open jobs for young people to show their talent and AI will help them to be even more productive. There is no need to bother old frail people into social service. Very often people in their 60s are burnt out and will not be very helpful for the society anymore.
> Very often people in their 60s are burnt out and will not be very helpful for the society anymore.
Cynical takes being de rigeur on HN, I’m not surprised to read this comment here; but it’s sad nonetheless. I suppose in a very narrow economic context of “utility”, you may be right. But it would be a truly impoverished society that marginalized the non-economic contributions of its citizens 60 and over.
I’m just shy of one of those “people in their 60s” and volunteer many hours a week at a music school. I’d like to think that I’ll continue being useful to society in that way and in other ways less formalized.
Could you provide a link to these datasets? People always talk about data but never show it. I wanted to make an opinion but couldn't find the data at all - not counting obviously opportunistic inconclusive studies designed to support a predetermined political opinion.
The topic is so complex that I don't think I can satisfy your curiosity.
AI is just the next step of technology development, so it will just increase the rate of change we see for last couple of decades in the same direction.
And while technology is indeed helping people to be more productive, it also allows megacorps to capture the added value. You can see it in different economic benchmarks - that while there was an enormous economic growth in the past decades, there is increasing gap between classes, people outside of tech feel the decrease of their purchasing power and quality of life in general throughout the developed world.
There is a powerful systems forces in play, so it is not political, but rather more like a natural force of progress and especially automation.
If you're young and work in tech, you may notice that you are being disproportionately rewarded for your effort from the rest of the world for building tech.
> When you are 65 then you already have done a lot for the economy of the country
My hunch is that in some cases boomers have been and will continue decreasing their net contribution to whichever economy they live in, which shouldn't be the most important thing in evaluating the value of someone's existence, except that in this case everyone servicing them is also being squeezed by the tax system, and the same people they're servicing. Could be living in a boomer's basement making less than them but paying 1/2 your check, or in a managed rental that's owned by a reit that's invested in by their pension fund.
This kind of shallow dismissal is very hard to take seriously for those of us who personally know soldiers from NATO countries who are currently "on vacation" (officially) in Ukraine. This approach, by the way, has been borrowed wholesale from Putin's playbook in Crimea back in 2014. But officially you are right, they are not there.
Well, I happen to know people in the US military who have been on this vacation since the beginning of the year. I am not particularly social or well-connected, so the fact that I know someone like that means it's widespread. Downvotes or no, that's reality.
it doesn't logically follow from the fact that you know about a group that there are similar groups.
for example let's say you know a few people who work for the military and they happen to work at Area 51. sure lots of people know military personnel, but your sample is still pretty special. without a good representative sample we simply have no idea.
First let’s get one thing clear: NATO sending personnel is not France sending personnel. The two are distinct and anyone who would make a valid point in a conversation about this understands that.
Second, Putin’s playbook is to sow discord by introducing a bunch of FUD into the political discourse across the world, something which you are doing here. So the remaining question here is: are you doing so willingly, or are you just prey to the same?
Because this is HN, I always believe it’s the latter. Still, your comment is unsourced, your account is four months old, and all your historical comments are systematically pro Russia and/or peddling common Russian talking points that “get people thinking”. Not a good look, huh?
Leaving you and anyone else alone - be they young, old, male, female, blue, furry or even ... American - implicitly requires the continuation of politics that will make sure that you are in fact left the fuck alone.
You are probably not going to be surprised, but things are not going great.
I think you're misinformed or showing anti-Ukraine bias. No one would send their military there, but could get sent in aid to another EU/EEA/NATO member.
Anyway, I agree that mandatory drafting should not be reintroduced.
Doesn’t matter. If a real war starts you want a lot of men and the only reliable way is conscription. No one could have fought WW2 with a volunteer military. Ukraine aren’t relying on volunteers. Israel don’t rely on volunteers. You do the best you can with what you’ve got available.
Peace-time armies will not ask for that, that’s for sure, but when a real war is on the table (like it looks to soon be the case here in Europe) then things change.
This is definitely one of those citation needed comments.
Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.
Secondly, the above comment completely sidesteps the moral aspects. Why should the burden of military service fall predominantly on the poor and the desperate? Why should decision makers be able to only send other people’s children to war?
To your first point, it really ought not require a citation to understand that people who have been training full-time for years make better soldiers than people you pull out of civilian life and ship off to the front after a few months, and who want nothing more than to exit the service.
There is no modern, professionalized army that wants conscripts. None. Conscripts are a liability, and a measure of last resort.
To your second, it’s far from just the downtrodden that fill the ranks of professional armies. In many countries, e.g. France (where I served), the upper classes of society (grande bourgeoisie and nobility) are over-represented in the ranks.
> Firstly, professional armies are recruited from the general population and are on average no better or worse than conscripts.
This isn’t true. The US and UK conscript armies of WW1 and WW2 were significantly healthier and better educated than the general population. Lots of people grew up in wretched poverty and had deficiency diseases or were malnourished or had parasites. Those people were rejected.
It is illegal for the US military to accept recruits with an ASBAB score of ten or below, roughly equivalent to IQ 83. The military is in some sense representative but it is not a random sample.
Why do you imply that non mandatory conscription means that the poor or desperate will be the ones to enroll?
In Romania around 2008 mandatory drafting was removed from the constitution and yet we still have an army. The reason why we have such a small army is in a significant part due to pervasive corruption in all of the state's structures, low salaries and abusive higher ups. We have an interesting documentary about the subject (has english subtitles) about the ridiculous state of the army due to reasons mentioned. https://youtu.be/0_YnxJJcC7M?feature=shared
That's a very un-European view that would mark you as crazy here. Nobody goes to the army to get a job, not even those who can't find a job, and the unemployment office won't try to suggest it - it's not considered a job here, it's a service duty.
In my country we don't have mandatory military service. The "employer of the last resort" is the unemployment office and welfare, not army. I have never heard of anybody going to the army for any other than duty/ideological reasons, desperation for a job might even disqualify you - they want people who are motivated to join the army, not poor desperate people looking for money.
I am in the United States. It isn’t a categorical truth here, but many people here have and do join the US military because that is the “ticket out” that they have access to. I saw it a lot in my high school. I had some friends who were good people but they were not terribly academically gifted, their families were poor, and college wasn’t a realistic option for them. Several of them joined the military in part due to the recruiters that would visit the school. During my senior year of high school one of those guys ended up being the recruiter that visited my high school. It was interesting to see a bit of a cycle there.
It’s almost a trope here. I expect that’s why the original commenter said that the military is the employer of last resort. In the US that is often the case for many young people.
Yeah I know it is in the US, but military recruiters visiting a school class would be a major nationwide scandal here, comparable only maybe to visits of some political or religious figures. The only approvable way is a moderated discussion where both positives and negatives are (must be) voiced in age-appropriate way.
The entire culture around the separation of state, its components and citizens is very different here. We really don't want another 40 years of dictatorship - best to stop it right at the beginning.
Different culture and society. Here you get paid better as a supermarket clerk with overtimes than a soldier, or clearly better if you get promoted from a clerk to/pick another role (shift manager, or warehouse work). And our desperate also use the travel flexibility to work in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Denmark, than here. We used to be the source of manual labour during summer in many of those countries.
This topic was talking about conscription though, a measure of last resort.
If we really reach a point where conscription is required, it also means that carrying an uterus is probably irrelevant: it's either kill or be killed.
Hopefully that's never going to be a thing again in as many countries as possible
Yikes. You can't post like this to HN, and we ban accounts that do.
I'm not going to ban you right now because you have a sizeable history here and don't seem to have been in the habit of breaking the site guidelines, but please don't do this again.
Thanks for your kind words. Could you please show me the sentence or paragraph in the guidelines where 'post like this' is mentioned? Or must I assume that because this is an anglosaxon site, automatically the political correctness illness takes effect?
I’m fine with personal freedoms "American style" but you’re a fucking dangerous redneck if you ignore red lights. I see morons like that all the time and, thanks to them (not you I hope), I’m almost killed once a year.
I live now for a decade in a country where traffic lights are just a non-binding recommendation, and I never got almost killed or even hurt for that. You just have to drive slowly and watch and communicate with the other traffic participants. In some cases, morons are made, not born.
Home-Manager is a project that brings declarative user home directory management to Nix. You can have it set up dotfiles, user systemd services, etc. All the things to do with stuff in your home directory.
The documentation for Home-Manager that is generated is an extremely large html file with every option listed. It is not easy to read or discover options in. The linked tool provides a search field to query the available options for Home-Manager, making it much easier to digest. This is similar to the NixOS Options search tool which does the same job of providing search for NixOS options.
Declarative home environments are pretty great. Being able to reproduce your entire user setup is fantastic when you manage multiple machines or want to make future migrations.
I run NixOS and use Home-Manager as well. This lets me define my entire system in addition to my user home contents declaratively. So with this configuration I can apply NixOS & Home-Manager to get the same results anywhere.
Where the "home config" in this case can be much more than just text files and, for example, can include the actual apps installed locally. So when you define your `.git/config` file, you can include `diff.external = ${pkgs.difft}` to refer to a locally installed version of app `difft` and home-manager does the right thing. You can also manage your user services through systemd or launchd.
Many command line programs keep their configurations somewhere under $HOME. These are often called "dotfiles".
If you ever use more than one machine, likely you'll want the same configuration available on all those machines.. so you'll want some way to copy them to a new machine.
Home Manager from the Nix community is a bit more sophisticated. It allows for writing configurations in the Nix language, which is nice if you know/like Nix. (Nix is a powerful/expressive package manager. Nix is to apt-get what vim is to notepad).
Fear not, these are configuration options for a project called Home Manager, which manages your user configuration and dotfiles with the help of Nix the package manager:
If there are, a bridge could be made willingly or not. OFC it's more secure than everything on the internet.