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Burnoutindex.org

by hernantz on 2/13/20, 6:14 PM with 181 comments

• by sz4kerto on 2/13/20, 6:57 PM

  Be really careful with these surveys.

  The problems of these, among other things:

  - mixing up burnout risk with burnout

  - mixing up burnout with physical or mental fatigue

  - not serving any purpose (i.e. not providing good directions)

  Burnout is primarily a negative change in perception, and it's a spectrum, obviously. You get burned out when your perception of the same situation gets progressively worse. This can be caused by various factors -- exhaustion, doing stuff that doesn't match your values, etc. It can also be prevented in various ways; i.e. you can do very exhausting work and not get burned out.

  A really simplistic, but fun/useful way of detecting burnout (not the risk): if you regularly think that you and your team/company/environment work hard, but your customers/broader company/other teams are stupid/not intelligent/not constructive, then that's the first phase ('us vs them'). This can progress to the next phase, where it's more like 'me vs them', so you despise most of your environment. This is when people tend to leave. The last step is apathy, people rarely end here.

  It's not really possible to move backwards on this scale without changing roles/work/colleagues.

• by wcunning on 2/13/20, 7:00 PM

  I got a 2.1/6, which is less than 50%. Apparently this is a "high" risk of burnout... Why not replace it with a button that says "Do you work in tech?" Yes -> High Risk of Burnout, since that's the vibe they're going with.

• by bagacrap on 2/13/20, 7:46 PM

  When I joined the tech industry in my early 20s and for years after, I noticed that many in their 30s or older seemed burned out. It didn't make much sense to me, because to become a tech worker takes drive and ambition and how would you just lose that one day? Now, 12 years on I can definitely see how burnout is so prevalent.

  It's like living in the desert and hearing about people drowning. You'd ask yourself, "how is that even possible?" But now I feel as if I've moved to the beach, and can easily see the waves and how it's a real problem. I don't think I'm burned out, but I'm conscious enough of the possibility to keep an eye on the tide.

• by notJim on 2/13/20, 6:21 PM

  I immediately went to do this quiz, but then I couldn't help but wonder if this might be one of those Cambridge Analytica style "quizzes" where they're harvesting psychological data for unknown purposes. I'm not sure if this makes me sound savvy or insane.

• by harshvladha on 2/13/20, 6:49 PM

  I got 0.5/6

  and still it says "Your burnout risk is HIGH"

  I feel, it was because of little high Self-inefficacy.

  I experimented with different answers, once I got 0.6/6 and it said: "Your burnout risk is MID", but for that Self-inefficacy was LOW.

  It seems like Self-inefficacy has been taken as a high factor for Burnout.

• by tempsy on 2/13/20, 6:35 PM

  I don't think burnout is really about overwork so much as spending even 40 hours a week doing something that is contrary to your own personal values. I suspect a lot of people work on things (ads, selling more crap, getting people in more debt, etc.) that they ultimately don't think really matter or are a net benefit to society.

• by richardlblair on 2/13/20, 8:57 PM

  This misses so many nuances it's not even funny.

  I'm mentally and physically exhausted, yes. However, I'm exceptionally happy. I enjoy what I do. I want to do it all day long.

  We're working on something I think is useful, I think people need it, and I want them to have it sooner rather than later. This might mean I burn out and need a weeks rest come like... June, but fuck, I'm running straight towards that and I'm so happy I don't care.

• by chrshawkes on 2/13/20, 9:55 PM

  I feel this industry is burned out due to the fact that the magic doesn't feel like it's there anymore. If we want a salary we're forced to sign NDA's & NCA's and forego all our personal ambitions to the company.

  We have endless pointless tooling for basic shit like writing CRUD apps. Need to make a web app? Install Node to use NPM to install a million and a half packages to write a Hello World example. It's cool though, this project was made by so and so, even though the creators themselves aren't using it in production. God forbid you're writing an SPA, that will be 2 million dependencies. So many noob's entering the work force every day trying to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, constantly cheer-leading the latest worthless framework which is built upon the same old logic used for the past 40 years.

  Managers and tech leads suffering from blogitis reading some dumb ass opinion on why he chose React etc.. and pushing the entire team and company in that direction. As far as I can tell, our webapps are still a broken pile of patches just the same as they we're 10 years ago. Only this time around, they're much more difficult to write and maintain.

  On top of that we have endless meetings all day, arbitrary 1 - 5 ranking systems, biased promotions and endless arbitrary deadlines. Not to worry though, Agile and all it's pointless complexities to the rescue.

  Finally, we have smug spoiled people all over this industry talking down to us about the tech we use and how much smarter they are because they hit the jackpot due to mommy and daddy's connections etc...

  It's not the wild west anymore and tech isn't nearly as fun or as competitive for the individual. It's just a choice between the corporate grind or starving startup hipster.

• by swalsh on 2/13/20, 7:13 PM

  I burnt out several years ago, I was way past the point of return before I realized. I ended up changing jobs, and took a few vacations... even then recovery was slow. After that I returned pretty strong. Since then there have been a few times I recognized it happening again, but being cognizant of the signs goes a long ways towards preventing it.

• by cagenut on 2/13/20, 6:38 PM

  I have a working theory that basically all "devops engineer" jobs of the last 5ish years are more or less automatic/happens-by-default burnout traps. Hard to tell how much is that and how much is just we're all sliding into middle age, but man I have yet to see one that wasn't a steadily ratcheting wrench of pressure to keep all the old things running while doing the next new thing every month.

• by gowld on 2/13/20, 8:16 PM

  8 question survey (followed by a summary that explains the questions, but if you use browser navigation buttons it's irrevocably lost).

  1. I find it difficult to relax after a day of work

  2. After a day of work, I feel run-down and drained of physical or emotional energy

  3. I feel less and less connected and engaged with the work I do.

  4. I do not have a clear idea of the value and purpose of my job

  5. I am harder and less sympathetic with people than perhaps they deserve

  6. I am worried this job is making me harsher emotionally

  7. I feel that I am achieving less than I should

  8. I feel that I do not have time to do many of the things that are important for doing a good quality job

• by jdkee on 2/13/20, 6:22 PM

  Perhaps tech workers should unionize and demand better healthcare, 40 hour work weeks, etc.

• by brailsafe on 2/13/20, 9:07 PM

  I feel like one of the worst things you can do when you burnout or are on the way to burning out, is to get a new job. Imo, swapping in stuff where stuff wasn't good before is just a way to divert your attention in a way that doesn't let you redevelop your value system in a way that you really need to. Just stop for a while. Maybe a long while. Then see what you want to do.

• by samatman on 2/13/20, 7:54 PM

  This is useless, unfortunately. I answered it honestly; I'm someone with a low-agreeableness personality, and some health problems (which have been improving, but nonetheless) which leave me pretty drained of energy at the end of the day.

  This test doesn't even try to account for those things, and offers me a high risk of burnout despite low-to-perfect scores for everything else.

• by jlv2 on 2/13/20, 6:39 PM

  My burnout index is 5/6. No surprise there.

  I'm more interested in why the site reloads the top portion of the page after the initial load. You can tell, because the top image changes from the person sitting on the left side of the table a flipped one where they are on the right side of the table.

  left https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/5yT1ytvHM0WLTih13Y...

  right https://images.ctfassets.net/z2g90m75le4q/7kam7578mAMnVlgQTP...

• by jophde on 2/13/20, 9:15 PM

  Mostly just getting tired of not having a quiet place to work and needing to grind leetcode so that I don't have to worry about being un-hirerable in my free time. Besides that I generally like being an SWE. I'm also pretty tired of private companies wanting me to value stock options equally to dollars.

• by pizza234 on 2/13/20, 6:50 PM

  A bit (quite a lot) simplistic (but personally, I appreciate the idea).

  In order to get a "low" index in each parameter, one needs to always set the best possible scenario, which is not realistic.

  Even in the best possible scenario _in real world_, one could be less than sympathetic with somebody else once a month. That doesn't mean they're at "mid" level of a burnout parameter.

  And not reaching the productivity potential at times is normal (and cyclical). Again, not a burnout parameter.

  I see "Based on scientific questionnaires created by psychology professionals", but I doubt it's professionally assembled.

• by schwinn140 on 2/13/20, 6:47 PM

  This is great. Any interest in expanding the Roles available in the drop-down menu to be more inclusive of other Roles within a tech company.

  Speaking for myself, a tech industry Marketer, I'm pretty damn burnt out!

  Thanks for creating a tool to help us visualize and keep reference of where we're mentally at.

  It might be a cool feature to have the ability to save your report and trigger repeat measurements over time. With that data, you could then 'map' the mindspace of the user and how they are hopefully working towards triggers and burnout.

• by redisman on 2/13/20, 10:24 PM

  Honest question, is someone not mentally drained after programming(or just working) all day? That has been my experience for my 10+ year career every single day. Am I doing it wrong?

• by Waterluvian on 2/13/20, 8:28 PM

  Maybe I'm not burning out. Maybe I'm just tired and intellectually drained after 8 hours of intellectual stimulation. And maybe that's totally normal.

• by maxk42 on 2/13/20, 7:39 PM

  This seems to rank nearly everyone as burned-out. Reeks of agenda.

• by annoyingnoob on 2/13/20, 9:52 PM

  I think burnout happens when you cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, when every week is darker than the last.

  My last job offered unlimited vacation. But if I ever took any vacation I'd get a message from my boss the night before I got back with a laundry list of the things that need attention ASAP - I couldn't really finish relaxing before I was vacuumed back into the soul sucking darkness.

• by CrankyBear on 2/13/20, 7:25 PM

  I don't buy it. With a very low score--hey I like what I'm doing--I'm still at a high-risk of burnout. I Don't Think So.

• by pinopinopino on 2/13/20, 8:36 PM

  I am never sure about what a burnout really is. It is not in the DSM yet, but that doesn't really say anything. It shares a lot of properties with depression. Weird stuff.

  Test is bogus of course. With nine questiI got a high risk, because I scored a bit high on cynicism. But hey, I work in the advertisement business. I am not kidding myself that I add any value to this world at all.

• by whalesalad on 2/13/20, 6:56 PM

  My mind immediately went to the other kind of burnout where you shave a few 32nds off your tires.

  Might need to do a few of those because I scored a 5.6.

• by cryptozeus on 2/13/20, 10:42 PM

  This is total scam covered with nice UI. All the results indicate burn out is high if you select tech industry.

  Do not take the survey.

• by cbanek on 2/13/20, 8:29 PM

  With my luck, I found a bug. If you press one button for an answer, then press another one, I find that the button is not selected, but the length of the button is shortened. It's strange. After clicking again it seems fine.

  Other than that, cynicism checks out on the results. 5.1.

• by janee on 2/13/20, 7:03 PM

  I'm a sucker for questionnaires, but this just seemed to simplistic. I'd say you might as well replace the questions with a single "how burnt out do you feel" input.

  Would love to see how different industries compare on some of these scores.

• by teddyh on 2/13/20, 8:45 PM

  I am reminded of the “Free Personality Test”s which inevitably shows you have some grave personal problems which can only be helped by Scientology (and certainly not by those evil, evil psychologists).

• by monksy on 2/13/20, 8:16 PM

  There should be an option for "fuck, I'm far past on being worried about this." (I.e.: the option of do you worry about your emotional state)

• by vanusa on 2/13/20, 7:20 PM

  Massive, built-in selection bias.

  People who have time for (or need the distraction of) surveys like these tend to be, of course... the already burnt out.

• by finnthehuman on 2/14/20, 12:35 PM

  I wonder what happens with the data collected by this website. I’m afraid to let them know anything about my mental well-being.

• by ARandomerDude on 2/13/20, 7:15 PM

  Meh. So much of these end up being self-fulfilling prophesies. Instead of telling someone they're at high risk for burnout, we should tell people to be reasonable with their work/life balance.

  Burnout is as much an employee problem as an employer problem. We all need to put our big boy pants on and take some responsibility for our actions and the consequences of those actions.

  Disclaimer: I don't supervise anyone.

• by geoffbp on 2/13/20, 10:14 PM

  My wife has helped me to put things in place to prevent burnout, mostly little things outside of work

• by rezeroed on 2/13/20, 6:41 PM

  Good site. This frog is boiled. I'll be returning periodically.

• by runawaybottle on 2/13/20, 6:32 PM

  I agree burnout is real, but I have never run into a someone working that doesn’t make a fuss about how ‘busy’ they are. I feel the results are going to be ‘yep, everyone is burnt out’.

• by unixhero on 2/13/20, 7:03 PM

  Works fine for me. Great little tool this.

• by skrebbel on 2/13/20, 6:28 PM

  I love the illustration