Fantastic read, with resonance well beyond just programming. I went through years of teaching with a similar mindset. You start out and have a strong moral imperative to help your students, but...
Exemplary
Fantastic read, with resonance well beyond just programming.
I went through years of teaching with a similar mindset. You start out and have a strong moral imperative to help your students, but you don’t realize that there’s no cutoff for applying your time, energy, and resources to them. In fact, it can feel downright cruel when there’s a student in need, right in front of you, and you don’t do something to help them.
What resulted from that was that I worked way too much, exhausted myself by putting others’ needs before my own, and depleted my own resources.
I was working from the time I woke up until I went to sleep: planning, grading, communicating with parents, giving feedback, optimizing previous lessons based on what worked and what didn’t, learning about my students’ interests, etc. I worked most weekends too. I spent a lot of my own money on things: classroom resources, curricular materials, food to have on hand for students who didn’t get enough to eat at home, etc.
Imagine just one child. Consider how much time and effort you could put into helping them learn things. Not just your designated curriculum, but any and all subjects. How the subjects connect to one another. Their interests. Life lessons. Critical thinking skills. Synthesis. Empathy.
The amount you can pour into just one child is essentially infinite. Multiply that by 100-something, and you’ll see that the surface area for potential is well, an even bigger infinity.
In the area I worked in, beset by the horrors of poverty, there was already so much need and I was worried that if I didn’t do everything possible for those kids, then I was just one more structural factor in their lives working against them. It felt wrong to do anything less than everything for them.
I remember looking at other veteran teachers at my school who didn’t do what I did. I remember judging them. Did they even care? I thought. I remember scoffing at them, characterizing them as “lazy government workers leeching off the system for a paycheck.” The phrase “good enough for government work” was commonly thrown about in my childhood, said almost as a slur, about someone or something you didn’t really care about — something or someone that was lazy and substandard.
I can now see how malicious that caricature is (and why it was so prominent in my mind, having grown up hearing about it from so many adults in my life as a kid). To this day, many of them, including my own parents, don’t think that I have a “real” job and think that I went “below my station” in deciding to teach. I hate that I carried their prejudices with me into my own career. Thankfully, I no longer suffer elitist nonsense like that.
My starting school district’s turnover was outrageous. It lost 70% of its new teaching staff within their first five years. That is not a made up number or an exaggeration. SEVENTY percent. We were the definition of a revolving door.
When I returned for my second year at the school, I was considered a “veteran” teacher and in fact had more seniority than fully half of our staff. By my third year I was in the top quarter.
I can now also see that the veteran teachers I worked with did care. Very strongly. They were also very good at their craft. What they had learned was how to establish healthy boundaries on student needs. They had well established ways of prioritizing needs, and had developed wise discernment on what was theirs to deal with, what would be better served by someone else (such as a guidance counselor or community organization), and what was completely outside of their control (such as poverty itself).
Because they didn’t work 12 hours a day, I assumed they didn’t truly care like I did. This was false. The reality was that their care kept them in a job that implicitly demanded that they meet that level of need, and then they optimized the hell out of it. They had to, to make it sustainable. The fact that they were still there, teaching at that school, was a testament to this. Everybody else left, after all. That was by far the easier option.
I only made it three years in that school. I was one of the 70% that left the district within five. By that time I was fully burned out, fully depressed, and incapable of performing more than just the basic functions of my job — a weak “going through the motions” that happened out of a sort of impersonal, autonomous necessity. I felt like a drone, not a person. I was fulfilling a predetermined set of tasks simply because that was the action set I had been assigned to do. There was no joy, not excitement, no anything. I ran my daily program, then returned to my base to turn off until the next time I was scheduled to operate.
Dishes piled up in my sink and I didn’t wash them. Weeks later, after they started to really smell, I simply put them in a trash bag and took them to the dumpster. Cleaning them seemed an insurmountable problem. Once I had no more dishes, I simply started eating takeout or prepared foods. Stuff that came in its own container, that I didn’t have to cook, and that I could throw away immediately afterwards. No more hassle.
My car broke down. Instead of having it fixed, I bummed rides off of coworkers. As the weeks went on, my coworkers would politely say they weren’t going to drive me to work anymore, thinking initially that it was just a temporary favor, but now realizing it was becoming a new obligation for them.
They could tell that, at no point during that time, did I even try to get my car fixed. It would have been easy. I had AAA. One phone call and someone would have been there in an hour to tell me what it needed and tow it to a shop that would fix it. But it wasn’t in my programming.
Once I could no longer get rides, I simply walked to and from work, which took the better part of an hour each day. I have little to no memory of doing this, even though I did it for weeks. I was simply running my programming, nothing more.
One of my colleagues phoned me up one weekend. She was very frank and said she thought I was depressed. She wanted to take me out for a fun weekend. A getaway where we would see cool things and drink and dance and have nice coffee and do whatever we wanted to.
I can see this now for the kind, insightful gesture it was, but at the time I was livid. How could she think that was a good idea? I didn’t have the energy to wash a single plate, yet she thought I had the energy for an entire weekend of activity? That felt utterly impossible to me. I was angry at her for being so inconsiderate. For not understanding exactly where I was at and what I was going through.
She, of course, was nothing but considerate and had a deep understanding of what I was going through. I couldn’t see that at the time, and I didn’t understand that I was really angry at, well, I don’t know. Me? My situation? Poverty? The general unfairness of life? My brain chemistry? Anger wasn’t an emotion I usually felt. Depression has a way of sanding down everything into a dull and drab formlessness, whereas anger is sharp and cutting. It was unusual for me to feel anything, much less a frustration underwritten with contempt.
I have no doubt I was cruel to her in my dismissal of her invitation. I have vague memories of her trying to break through to me even after that, but I don’t remember the details.
I left that school after my third year, leaving teaching directly for a time and taking an auxiliary position in education that demanded very little of me. It also, correspondingly, paid nearly nothing. I was making $21,000 per year in a high cost of living area. Despite this, I remained in that position for three years, because I needed that time and the lack of demands on me to process my depression and my burnout and slowly rediscover a passion within me that had all but been extinguished.
That was over a decade ago, and I wish I could say that I’m not burnt out anymore. I’m definitely in a far better place than I used to be, but the memories of that time (and other, similarly difficult situations such as suffering under an abusive coworker or COVID) still linger. As bad as they were, they were highly instructive to me. I, too, have learned to establish healthy boundaries at work. I too, have optimized the hell out of my job. A new, idealistic teacher might look at me and see someone who “doesn’t care” because I don’t take work home anymore, and because my classroom is kind of spartan and minimalistic because I refuse to spend a lot of my own money to fill it with comforts.
I’m writing this at work right now, on my prep period, because I’m now efficient and wise enough to know that I don’t need to fill every single minute of my day with productivity. Quite contrastingly, taking that time away from immediate productivity and focusing on things that enrich my soul are what give me long-term viability in this job. I still have a lot of years left in teaching. It’s a very long road. I need to make sure I have the energy to see it through, otherwise I’m going to head down the first fork that presents itself and go somewhere else. I cannot tell you how many times I have considered doing that.
I opened with talking about how this piece resonates across disciplines, and I want to end with that, because I worry people will take the wrong message from what I’m writing. I’m not doing this to gain sympathy for myself or teachers at large or try to compare our struggle against programmers or anyone else’s. I’ve long said that the rest of the world seems to have caught up with what used to make teaching such a difficult career, to the point that teaching now looks appealing in comparison because it’s seemingly the only career that gives you enough time off to address your burnout head-on (seriously: consider the personal and mental health value of having every summer off work, y’all).
Instead, I’m hoping that by laying out my experience I can show anyone finding resonance in this piece that they’re not alone and that they’re not selfish or misguided for feeling the way that they do. One thing that did help me in the throes of my depression was knowing that other people had been through what I was going through. That my experiences weren’t some anomalous outlier but were, in fact, quite common. Depression makes you feel alone, so reminders that I wasn’t meant a lot to me. They weren’t pops of color among my grays — instead they were the validating realization that I wasn’t the only one with all the grays in the first place.
I think people in tech are often subject to sort of malicious readings of their roles. How can you feel bad when you make so much money? or You’re really stressed out about such minor details? Seriously?! or You’re eminently employable and could work anywhere you want, so what’s the problem? or Does the coloring and sizing of that header really matter to anyone? Some of this might even be internalized, happening in your own head.
I like this piece because it lays out just how real our feelings can be and acknowledges that they come from a real place. From the responses here, it also seems like they’re quite common. I want y’all to know that I’m right there with you, and, above all else, I get it. People’s struggles always look smaller from the outside; solutions always look obvious when they don’t apply to you; and we all live in a culture in which hyper-judgments and malicious dismissals have now been baked into our communications for well over a decade.
I hope my comment comes across as the opposite of that. I want it to be a warm, knowing hug from someone who understands and wants everyone to feel okay with what they do and find ways to make it work for them, rather than against them. You’re not the only one painting with grays right now, and, even though it might not seem like it, and even though it might feel difficult or impossible, there are ways of getting other colors onto that palette too.
I'm posting this in ~health.mental because I think it speaks to the many here who've gone through the fires of occupational burnout. The Table of Contents will give you a feel for the scope of the...
I'm posting this in ~health.mental because I think it speaks to the many here who've gone through the fires of occupational burnout.
The Table of Contents will give you a feel for the scope of the article:
Technical Capability as a Moral Weight
One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy
Entropy Is Undefeated
The Illusion of Finality
Technical Work as Emotional Regulation
The Burnout You Don’t See Coming
Learning to Let Go
A New Kind of Skill
Though the focus of the writer is software development, you can substitute in any profession you're passionate and knowledgeable about. Anything where you're equipped to perceive problems and capable of solving them. The desire to "Fix all the things!" can become all-consuming, stripping you of your ability to live outside the spaces where you have the illusion of control.
This model doesn't fit the classical psychology of burnout, where people experience unresolvable stresses due to obvious lack of control of their workload or situation. It's more insidious. The tiny problems you can fix gradually metamorphose into a giant hairball of cumulative responsibilities that are overwhelming and unreasonable, the worse for being self-imposed. The nature of work in the 21st Century encourages this stress, since we're discouraged from seeking help or trusting others to hold to our personal and professional standards of responsibility. There is such a thing as excessively internalized locus of control.
This article also gets to the life satisfaction of maximizers vs. satisficers - the weight of "could it be better" vs. "good enough" decisions. If you always fall on the "it should be better" side of the line, it might be advisable to consider the incremental cost and energy you're investing, as well as the magnitude of the benefit you're striving for. [For the technically minded, here's utility theory evidence that maximally optimal solutions may not exist or be achievable with finite time and resources, especially with increasing complexity.]
I hope this proves useful and worthy of discussion.
I had a conversation with a buddy yesterday where he experiences all these same feelings about home improvement projects. He can't hire contractors because they don't do the job perfectly. For...
I had a conversation with a buddy yesterday where he experiences all these same feelings about home improvement projects. He can't hire contractors because they don't do the job perfectly. For example, when he paints a wall, every corner has to be perfectly taped, he removes electrical outlet covers to get full coverage underneath them, not a spot of paint can be out of place, etc. Does it look great afterwards? Yes! Does it take a lot longer? Also yes.
Multiply this feeling by the neverending list of home improvement projects that he can't get to because of his full time job. I think we all have something(s) we need to "maximize" and can't "satisfice." I only hope we can all figure out where to draw the line so we're not miserable.
This is a truly excellent post, and almost every word is something I find myself doing/thinking. I literally said, word for word, in conversation a few weeks ago: "I'm one of the few people who...
This is a truly excellent post, and almost every word is something I find myself doing/thinking. I literally said, word for word, in conversation a few weeks ago: "I'm one of the few people who happens to know how to fix <thing>, so I have a moral responsibility to do so".
At the very least I'd like to think I've developed a reasonable-ish ability to let things pass at this point, probably as much as anything from having a decade or two of head start in tech compared to the author. The much bigger struggle nowadays is "I know how to fix that, and not fixing it is causing people actual harm, and you won't let me fix it".
I've encountered this and managed to make headway by saying "Put your name to that" basically. If my manager says that the harm to others caused by this issue is not an issue, give me something in...
and you won't let me fix it".
I've encountered this and managed to make headway by saying "Put your name to that" basically.
If my manager says that the harm to others caused by this issue is not an issue, give me something in writing so that when a person encounters this issue I can give them your info. I don't demand that I be given carte blanche to fix everything how I think it should be, just accountability. My boss has a boss too and I'll give out their email if need be.
No one wants their name attached to 'bad' things and if the alternative is to let me pilot a fix, it's better than nothing.
Ah, I like this! You’ve absolutely identified that my frustration comes from not being allowed to fix what I know I can, and it’s specifically that manager who denies me the opportunity to fix it...
If my manager says that the harm to others caused by this issue is not an issue, give me something in writing so that when a person encounters this issue I can give them your info. I don't demand that I be given carte blanche to fix everything how I think it should be, just accountability. My boss has a boss too and I'll give out their email if need be.
Ah, I like this! You’ve absolutely identified that my frustration comes from not being allowed to fix what I know I can, and it’s specifically that manager who denies me the opportunity to fix it which is the issue at hand. Having them be accountable for their choice is certainly enough to pacify my frustration, so I’ll be attempting to adopt this mindset in future
I've got a monster case of serendipity, and this literally bit me in the ass today after I made this post. I conscientiously raised the alert on something last year that I could have fixed given...
I've got a monster case of serendipity, and this literally bit me in the ass today after I made this post.
I conscientiously raised the alert on something last year that I could have fixed given time and resources, got no leverage on it, and I'm scrambling because the broken things caused actual harm that I just learned about. [No details because potential legal action...]
And now I'm struggling with guilt and a sense of responsibility because I didn't fix the things hard enough.
Don't feel that guilt - Responsibility lies with the superiors. If they didn't want the possible effects, they should've heeded your warning. Just make sure all the regulatory agencies know that...
Don't feel that guilt - Responsibility lies with the superiors. If they didn't want the possible effects, they should've heeded your warning. Just make sure all the regulatory agencies know that you raised the alarm a year ago.
Ah shit, I'm so sorry to hear that. From what you're saying it very much sounds like you already went beyond your responsibility by finding the issue that others had missed and advocating for it...
Ah shit, I'm so sorry to hear that. From what you're saying it very much sounds like you already went beyond your responsibility by finding the issue that others had missed and advocating for it to be fixed, and that they did the opposite by ignoring the importance when you raised it. From where I'm sitting it seems to be fully on them, not you.
But still, I get you. I'd probably be feeling the same in your shoes regardless of the facts of the situation - it really sucks and I'm sorry it's something you're having to deal with.
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. I've had a day to get past the shock and gain perspective. There are other parties that had much more direct responsibility. My work is for a vendor...
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement.
I've had a day to get past the shock and gain perspective. There are other parties that had much more direct responsibility. My work is for a vendor of specialized software, services, and hardware systems. These products are not sold as life safety critical, in a field where all the purchasers should absolutely understand the implications of that limitation. We're not the party making decisions about how the system is used, or the party responsible for installation and maintenance. It shouldn't have been necessary to warn them if they were doing their jobs properly in the first place. And I'm now sadly and angrily responsible for the fixes after a tragedy has already occurred. [pinging /u/Carrie, because I hope this is a healthy perspective...]
Aside from the responsibilities of individual professionals and experts, we exist in the context of organizations whose motivations and reward systems are opaque to us, where humane ethics aren't part of their schemas. It's easy (and probably psychologically healthier) to limit our sense of responsibility to what's directly controllable, even if in doing so we're enabling the vast and cool and unsympathetic automata we call corporations and governments.
I'm flattered by the ping :) I would say, yes, your response is healthy, based on what you've shared here. Honestly, I think you have a really clear grasp on the whole situation, and you have been...
I'm flattered by the ping :)
I would say, yes, your response is healthy, based on what you've shared here. Honestly, I think you have a really clear grasp on the whole situation, and you have been put, and sounds like, are constantly put in situations that are literally life and death.
You are probably experiencing compassion fatigue or will eventually because of the nature of your job and your awareness of the implications or consequences.
I'd say the "healthiest" part of your response is to "feel your feelings" (I know, it's corny): "And I'm now sadly and angrily responsible". Feeling sad and angry are feelings to be had.
It shouldn't have been necessary to warn them if they were doing their jobs properly in the first place
This part is the haunting part, and I hope you find balance between feeling irritation(?) and other feelings. It's very hard to balance this emotion(irritation at preventable things? I'd probably need to feelings sort to get the true emotion labeled) out, when it does matter IMO (but I am a control freak lol so take that with a grain of salt).
I've heard we can engage with our desire to "fix things" or feel less out of control about larger existential things by supporting a cause close to us. What supporting means can be as big as volunteering to as small as donating small amounts of money or supporting a creator you like in some other way. Anything that makes you feel like you did something towards a cause important to you. I know it sounds like it won't work, but it does. Society may shame us and say things like, "as if recycling that bag is doing anything" -- well it's helping my mental state, which is doing something.
I appreciate you for your awareness of large problems and your desire to mitigate the damages from them. I find your prolonged thought about the situation, admirable. However, I hope you take care of yourself, because you deserve it and are worth being protected from the traumas associated with hyper responsibility.
I've got nothing meaningful to add, but that's an extremely tough situation to be thrown into dealing with, regardless of who caused it. The wider frustrations absolutely resonate, and the book...
I've got nothing meaningful to add, but that's an extremely tough situation to be thrown into dealing with, regardless of who caused it. The wider frustrations absolutely resonate, and the book looks fascinating - I'll absolutely add it to my list.
I outgrew this around the same time I became a home owner. Suddenly my time was better spent improving the house than improving anything on a computer. I think most people who fall into this trap...
I outgrew this around the same time I became a home owner. Suddenly my time was better spent improving the house than improving anything on a computer.
I think most people who fall into this trap (and don’t like it) should perhaps find a hobby thats not on a computer.
But, keep in mind, people like Linus didn’t get to where they’re at by choosing to mingle in their vegetable gardens instead of improving computer infrastructure.
I've actually found the opposite to be true here. I'm not a programmer and have written code exactly once in my life, in BASIC and I did not like it (although that was 25+ years ago. Although,...
I've actually found the opposite to be true here.
I'm not a programmer and have written code exactly once in my life, in BASIC and I did not like it (although that was 25+ years ago. Although, does HTML count? I did do a lot of that...), but once I owned a house, suddenly everything became my problem and in order to save ourselves money, I started fixing as much as I could.
From the washing machine to the water heater, doing my own network drops, repairing the dishwasher, solving pest problems and even extending well into automotive repair (I also don't trust a third party to do things right), I'm generally trying to fix something around the house. It brings me great satisfaction, but it also saves us a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on contractors.
Granted, I don't do everything and know my limits. I don't do construction, so we paid my brother in a law to do a lot of the remodeling we've done on the inside. But regardless, I feels like there's always something around the house I ought to be fixing.
I think especially with the internet though it's much more doable these days in a way that my engineer dad, despite trying never pulled off. He would start a lot of home improvement projects and...
I think especially with the internet though it's much more doable these days in a way that my engineer dad, despite trying never pulled off. He would start a lot of home improvement projects and never quite finish them because he wasn't a drywaller or plumber or any of those things. Remodeling a bathroom took years. It was my bathroom so I was cranky about it.
Now though I can do a lot more with YouTube and other people specifically teaching people how to do these things. And still sometimes I just need to pay someone even if I could do it because I have too much going on.
Though, as a parent, to give your Dad some credit: It's hard as fuck with kids to see things all the way through, if they're not day projects (and even then). I've been rebuilding an engine for...
Though, as a parent, to give your Dad some credit: It's hard as fuck with kids to see things all the way through, if they're not day projects (and even then). I've been rebuilding an engine for the last 6-years and only now is it getting close to getting back in the car and even then, it'll probably be another year before I actually get things hooked-up.
But even that, yeah, I'd be lost without Youtube. I have a friend who is more knowledgeable than myself, but I don't usually ask him too many questions when I can often get an answer immediately via Youtube; especially one that relates to my exact specifications, rather than some general advice.
Oh I give him a ton of credit, he was however absolutely undiagnosed ADHD. I share a large number of traits with him. And I'm sure he was trying to save money. But also this was my shower and I...
Oh I give him a ton of credit, he was however absolutely undiagnosed ADHD. I share a large number of traits with him. And I'm sure he was trying to save money. But also this was my shower and I wanted it back.
Fellow homeowner here - the nice thing about a house is that it's a collection of systems you truly have ownership and control over (within the bounds of building codes, family, neighbors, HOAs,...
Fellow homeowner here - the nice thing about a house is that it's a collection of systems you truly have ownership and control over (within the bounds of building codes, family, neighbors, HOAs, and such). You get all the duties, and all of the fulfillment, of making your space your own. But I do wish sometimes that the West had a more Japanese attitude towards housing - assume it's got a life expectancy of 50 years, and plan for replacement. Instead of the Ship of Theseus thing we've got going on, with our antique HVAC, unremedied lead pipes and paint, lack of insulation, etc. By the time you've paid for replacing all the rotten guts, even if you do the work yourself (opportunity cost!), you could have bought a new house.
Funny how you mention that, as I literally had a electrician out yesterday and he was going over how some parts of our house that were likely remodeled in the 1970's had aluminum wiring. This is...
Funny how you mention that, as I literally had a electrician out yesterday and he was going over how some parts of our house that were likely remodeled in the 1970's had aluminum wiring. This is ok, apparently, but I as he was telling me this, I was literally thinking about that Japanese philosophy of homes being "wear items" for lack of a better term.
There's so many things in our house that could be better if it weren't built in the 1960's. That said, I feel like there's so many things that could be worse, based on the mid-2000's house that my parents own, so it's a give and take, I suppose.
although, I've definitely heard of people who get this way with DIY projects around the house. I think the barrier to entry is usually a bit higher, which helps, but the projects do also take up...
although, I've definitely heard of people who get this way with DIY projects around the house. I think the barrier to entry is usually a bit higher, which helps, but the projects do also take up physical space that you literally have to live with! Like all things, there can be healthy and unhealthy degrees I think.
Any house has an infinite quantity of repairs, maintainence, or improvement. The severity of which is often directly correlated to the age of the house. I fall into the tech debt spiral easily....
Any house has an infinite quantity of repairs, maintainence, or improvement. The severity of which is often directly correlated to the age of the house.
I fall into the tech debt spiral easily. But the average time-to-breakage on my PC is much lower than anything in my house.
I'll need to replace my roof before my NetworkManager dispatcher scripts break.
And much like computing, the more you know about trades, the worse the same problem arises.
I found this article interesting, but beyond the obvious reasons, I like seeing cross over between multiple disciplines, and seeing the same patterns emerge. The author touches on a lot of topics,...
I found this article interesting, but beyond the obvious reasons, I like seeing cross over between multiple disciplines, and seeing the same patterns emerge.
The author touches on a lot of topics, but does not necessarily name them (maybe they are unaware of their names). But at its heart it discusses perfectionism and hyper-responsibility. These two characteristics are grown out of, in my own opinion, an obsession and addiction to problem solving. This addicition then shows up as obsessions around maximising and efficiencizing.
Perfectionism and hyper-responsibility are really hard to treat, because of how high the rewards are for pursuing these endeavors. Society highly rewards these behaviors, and purports a lot of characteristics associated with perfectionism and hyper-responsibility as traits we should strive to embody. How can you practice, "doing nothing" when we live in a "find it, fix it" kind of world?
There is a brief touch on burnout, and while I think it's clear how people end up burnt out (never saying no, fulfilling things at a non-sustainable rate, whether it's how many things you do or to what extent you do them), there isn't discussion on how to address burnout. I'd like to offer my understanding of how burnout can be mitigated, but have no real -- statements-- to make about how one recovers from burnout.
Burnout can be mitigated by team work and delegation and taking breaks. However, this requires that you have enough trust in your team members (above, below, side to side) to truly delegate or offload tasks. It also requires that you don't take on more tasks once you delegate. It also requires that you actually take breaks (long and short, mental and physical). Most of modern society is not set up for this, certainly not in the USA.
The reason I have no suggestions on how to heal from burn out other than rest, is that I think a lot of people become hyper-responsible/perfectionists, because their trust has been broken, and thus they can't really trust other people to take any of their burdens away. They have learned over time that the only way to get what they want, is by doing it themselves. If you feel hyper-responsible AND you're a perfectionist AND you're capable, it's very hard to break this cycle. You will always feel let down by what others do, and you'll always feel guilt/regret that you didn't do it yourself. The author does a really good job talking about how they struggle with things that "could" be done a certain way, and also how things "should" be done. I like to joke that in the psych world, they should add that if you are constantly saying "should", you're probably a perfectionist (in an unhealthy way).
other ramblings
I find it funny how often people come to the conclusion that is stated in the Serenity Prayer:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
To be clear, I don't think the sentiments in the Serenity Prayer are unique to the Serenity Prayer or any specific religion. The ideas themselves manifest in many ways, all over the world.
I feel this, and have actually done the therapy to address burnout, perfectionism, and all the other "control freak" things. I have generally learned to let things go, become a better team player,...
I feel this, and have actually done the therapy to address burnout, perfectionism, and all the other "control freak" things. I have generally learned to let things go, become a better team player, delegate, etc. And still, when things go pear-shaped, like today's news, those old responsibility reflexes kick in.
This right here is why I enjoy programming, and why after long days of work meetings where nothing productive got done, I feel the urge to dust off personal projects and get work done on those -...
Programming gives you instant feedback. You run the thing, and it works. Or it doesn’t, and you fix it. Either way, you’re doing something.
That kind of agency is addictive. Especially when the rest of life doesn’t offer it. We program because we can, even when we shouldn’t.
This right here is why I enjoy programming, and why after long days of work meetings where nothing productive got done, I feel the urge to dust off personal projects and get work done on those - because then I am doing something.
I don’t necessarily feel the moral weight of knowing how to do something and needing to improve it, because I don’t think I end up in situations where I feel capable enough.
But this past week, my wife was doing some “no code automation” using Microsoft Teams/Power Automate and it was driving me crazy when she’d have a question…because if I had the /code/ I could likely easily do what she wanted, but in the “no code” framework I was lost (except for knowing the concepts she needed to look for).
Or the struggle any time I find myself editing a document that I can’t use vim motions in, because the ability to yank lines and words and move selected blocks around just feels so much better than copy and paste. (And the ability to record and playback commands).
Fantastic read, with resonance well beyond just programming.
I went through years of teaching with a similar mindset. You start out and have a strong moral imperative to help your students, but you don’t realize that there’s no cutoff for applying your time, energy, and resources to them. In fact, it can feel downright cruel when there’s a student in need, right in front of you, and you don’t do something to help them.
What resulted from that was that I worked way too much, exhausted myself by putting others’ needs before my own, and depleted my own resources.
I was working from the time I woke up until I went to sleep: planning, grading, communicating with parents, giving feedback, optimizing previous lessons based on what worked and what didn’t, learning about my students’ interests, etc. I worked most weekends too. I spent a lot of my own money on things: classroom resources, curricular materials, food to have on hand for students who didn’t get enough to eat at home, etc.
Imagine just one child. Consider how much time and effort you could put into helping them learn things. Not just your designated curriculum, but any and all subjects. How the subjects connect to one another. Their interests. Life lessons. Critical thinking skills. Synthesis. Empathy.
The amount you can pour into just one child is essentially infinite. Multiply that by 100-something, and you’ll see that the surface area for potential is well, an even bigger infinity.
In the area I worked in, beset by the horrors of poverty, there was already so much need and I was worried that if I didn’t do everything possible for those kids, then I was just one more structural factor in their lives working against them. It felt wrong to do anything less than everything for them.
I remember looking at other veteran teachers at my school who didn’t do what I did. I remember judging them. Did they even care? I thought. I remember scoffing at them, characterizing them as “lazy government workers leeching off the system for a paycheck.” The phrase “good enough for government work” was commonly thrown about in my childhood, said almost as a slur, about someone or something you didn’t really care about — something or someone that was lazy and substandard.
I can now see how malicious that caricature is (and why it was so prominent in my mind, having grown up hearing about it from so many adults in my life as a kid). To this day, many of them, including my own parents, don’t think that I have a “real” job and think that I went “below my station” in deciding to teach. I hate that I carried their prejudices with me into my own career. Thankfully, I no longer suffer elitist nonsense like that.
My starting school district’s turnover was outrageous. It lost 70% of its new teaching staff within their first five years. That is not a made up number or an exaggeration. SEVENTY percent. We were the definition of a revolving door.
When I returned for my second year at the school, I was considered a “veteran” teacher and in fact had more seniority than fully half of our staff. By my third year I was in the top quarter.
I can now also see that the veteran teachers I worked with did care. Very strongly. They were also very good at their craft. What they had learned was how to establish healthy boundaries on student needs. They had well established ways of prioritizing needs, and had developed wise discernment on what was theirs to deal with, what would be better served by someone else (such as a guidance counselor or community organization), and what was completely outside of their control (such as poverty itself).
Because they didn’t work 12 hours a day, I assumed they didn’t truly care like I did. This was false. The reality was that their care kept them in a job that implicitly demanded that they meet that level of need, and then they optimized the hell out of it. They had to, to make it sustainable. The fact that they were still there, teaching at that school, was a testament to this. Everybody else left, after all. That was by far the easier option.
I only made it three years in that school. I was one of the 70% that left the district within five. By that time I was fully burned out, fully depressed, and incapable of performing more than just the basic functions of my job — a weak “going through the motions” that happened out of a sort of impersonal, autonomous necessity. I felt like a drone, not a person. I was fulfilling a predetermined set of tasks simply because that was the action set I had been assigned to do. There was no joy, not excitement, no anything. I ran my daily program, then returned to my base to turn off until the next time I was scheduled to operate.
Dishes piled up in my sink and I didn’t wash them. Weeks later, after they started to really smell, I simply put them in a trash bag and took them to the dumpster. Cleaning them seemed an insurmountable problem. Once I had no more dishes, I simply started eating takeout or prepared foods. Stuff that came in its own container, that I didn’t have to cook, and that I could throw away immediately afterwards. No more hassle.
My car broke down. Instead of having it fixed, I bummed rides off of coworkers. As the weeks went on, my coworkers would politely say they weren’t going to drive me to work anymore, thinking initially that it was just a temporary favor, but now realizing it was becoming a new obligation for them.
They could tell that, at no point during that time, did I even try to get my car fixed. It would have been easy. I had AAA. One phone call and someone would have been there in an hour to tell me what it needed and tow it to a shop that would fix it. But it wasn’t in my programming.
Once I could no longer get rides, I simply walked to and from work, which took the better part of an hour each day. I have little to no memory of doing this, even though I did it for weeks. I was simply running my programming, nothing more.
One of my colleagues phoned me up one weekend. She was very frank and said she thought I was depressed. She wanted to take me out for a fun weekend. A getaway where we would see cool things and drink and dance and have nice coffee and do whatever we wanted to.
I can see this now for the kind, insightful gesture it was, but at the time I was livid. How could she think that was a good idea? I didn’t have the energy to wash a single plate, yet she thought I had the energy for an entire weekend of activity? That felt utterly impossible to me. I was angry at her for being so inconsiderate. For not understanding exactly where I was at and what I was going through.
She, of course, was nothing but considerate and had a deep understanding of what I was going through. I couldn’t see that at the time, and I didn’t understand that I was really angry at, well, I don’t know. Me? My situation? Poverty? The general unfairness of life? My brain chemistry? Anger wasn’t an emotion I usually felt. Depression has a way of sanding down everything into a dull and drab formlessness, whereas anger is sharp and cutting. It was unusual for me to feel anything, much less a frustration underwritten with contempt.
I have no doubt I was cruel to her in my dismissal of her invitation. I have vague memories of her trying to break through to me even after that, but I don’t remember the details.
I left that school after my third year, leaving teaching directly for a time and taking an auxiliary position in education that demanded very little of me. It also, correspondingly, paid nearly nothing. I was making $21,000 per year in a high cost of living area. Despite this, I remained in that position for three years, because I needed that time and the lack of demands on me to process my depression and my burnout and slowly rediscover a passion within me that had all but been extinguished.
That was over a decade ago, and I wish I could say that I’m not burnt out anymore. I’m definitely in a far better place than I used to be, but the memories of that time (and other, similarly difficult situations such as suffering under an abusive coworker or COVID) still linger. As bad as they were, they were highly instructive to me. I, too, have learned to establish healthy boundaries at work. I too, have optimized the hell out of my job. A new, idealistic teacher might look at me and see someone who “doesn’t care” because I don’t take work home anymore, and because my classroom is kind of spartan and minimalistic because I refuse to spend a lot of my own money to fill it with comforts.
I’m writing this at work right now, on my prep period, because I’m now efficient and wise enough to know that I don’t need to fill every single minute of my day with productivity. Quite contrastingly, taking that time away from immediate productivity and focusing on things that enrich my soul are what give me long-term viability in this job. I still have a lot of years left in teaching. It’s a very long road. I need to make sure I have the energy to see it through, otherwise I’m going to head down the first fork that presents itself and go somewhere else. I cannot tell you how many times I have considered doing that.
I opened with talking about how this piece resonates across disciplines, and I want to end with that, because I worry people will take the wrong message from what I’m writing. I’m not doing this to gain sympathy for myself or teachers at large or try to compare our struggle against programmers or anyone else’s. I’ve long said that the rest of the world seems to have caught up with what used to make teaching such a difficult career, to the point that teaching now looks appealing in comparison because it’s seemingly the only career that gives you enough time off to address your burnout head-on (seriously: consider the personal and mental health value of having every summer off work, y’all).
Instead, I’m hoping that by laying out my experience I can show anyone finding resonance in this piece that they’re not alone and that they’re not selfish or misguided for feeling the way that they do. One thing that did help me in the throes of my depression was knowing that other people had been through what I was going through. That my experiences weren’t some anomalous outlier but were, in fact, quite common. Depression makes you feel alone, so reminders that I wasn’t meant a lot to me. They weren’t pops of color among my grays — instead they were the validating realization that I wasn’t the only one with all the grays in the first place.
I think people in tech are often subject to sort of malicious readings of their roles. How can you feel bad when you make so much money? or You’re really stressed out about such minor details? Seriously?! or You’re eminently employable and could work anywhere you want, so what’s the problem? or Does the coloring and sizing of that header really matter to anyone? Some of this might even be internalized, happening in your own head.
I like this piece because it lays out just how real our feelings can be and acknowledges that they come from a real place. From the responses here, it also seems like they’re quite common. I want y’all to know that I’m right there with you, and, above all else, I get it. People’s struggles always look smaller from the outside; solutions always look obvious when they don’t apply to you; and we all live in a culture in which hyper-judgments and malicious dismissals have now been baked into our communications for well over a decade.
I hope my comment comes across as the opposite of that. I want it to be a warm, knowing hug from someone who understands and wants everyone to feel okay with what they do and find ways to make it work for them, rather than against them. You’re not the only one painting with grays right now, and, even though it might not seem like it, and even though it might feel difficult or impossible, there are ways of getting other colors onto that palette too.
I'm posting this in ~health.mental because I think it speaks to the many here who've gone through the fires of occupational burnout.
The Table of Contents will give you a feel for the scope of the article:
Though the focus of the writer is software development, you can substitute in any profession you're passionate and knowledgeable about. Anything where you're equipped to perceive problems and capable of solving them. The desire to "Fix all the things!" can become all-consuming, stripping you of your ability to live outside the spaces where you have the illusion of control.
This model doesn't fit the classical psychology of burnout, where people experience unresolvable stresses due to obvious lack of control of their workload or situation. It's more insidious. The tiny problems you can fix gradually metamorphose into a giant hairball of cumulative responsibilities that are overwhelming and unreasonable, the worse for being self-imposed. The nature of work in the 21st Century encourages this stress, since we're discouraged from seeking help or trusting others to hold to our personal and professional standards of responsibility. There is such a thing as excessively internalized locus of control.
This article also gets to the life satisfaction of maximizers vs. satisficers - the weight of "could it be better" vs. "good enough" decisions. If you always fall on the "it should be better" side of the line, it might be advisable to consider the incremental cost and energy you're investing, as well as the magnitude of the benefit you're striving for. [For the technically minded, here's utility theory evidence that maximally optimal solutions may not exist or be achievable with finite time and resources, especially with increasing complexity.]
I hope this proves useful and worthy of discussion.
For anyone hitting the paywall, here’s an archive link of the Maximizers vs Satisficers article.
I had a conversation with a buddy yesterday where he experiences all these same feelings about home improvement projects. He can't hire contractors because they don't do the job perfectly. For example, when he paints a wall, every corner has to be perfectly taped, he removes electrical outlet covers to get full coverage underneath them, not a spot of paint can be out of place, etc. Does it look great afterwards? Yes! Does it take a lot longer? Also yes.
Multiply this feeling by the neverending list of home improvement projects that he can't get to because of his full time job. I think we all have something(s) we need to "maximize" and can't "satisfice." I only hope we can all figure out where to draw the line so we're not miserable.
This is a truly excellent post, and almost every word is something I find myself doing/thinking. I literally said, word for word, in conversation a few weeks ago: "I'm one of the few people who happens to know how to fix <thing>, so I have a moral responsibility to do so".
At the very least I'd like to think I've developed a reasonable-ish ability to let things pass at this point, probably as much as anything from having a decade or two of head start in tech compared to the author. The much bigger struggle nowadays is "I know how to fix that, and not fixing it is causing people actual harm, and you won't let me fix it".
I've encountered this and managed to make headway by saying "Put your name to that" basically.
If my manager says that the harm to others caused by this issue is not an issue, give me something in writing so that when a person encounters this issue I can give them your info. I don't demand that I be given carte blanche to fix everything how I think it should be, just accountability. My boss has a boss too and I'll give out their email if need be.
No one wants their name attached to 'bad' things and if the alternative is to let me pilot a fix, it's better than nothing.
Ah, I like this! You’ve absolutely identified that my frustration comes from not being allowed to fix what I know I can, and it’s specifically that manager who denies me the opportunity to fix it which is the issue at hand. Having them be accountable for their choice is certainly enough to pacify my frustration, so I’ll be attempting to adopt this mindset in future
I've got a monster case of serendipity, and this literally bit me in the ass today after I made this post.
I conscientiously raised the alert on something last year that I could have fixed given time and resources, got no leverage on it, and I'm scrambling because the broken things caused actual harm that I just learned about. [No details because potential legal action...]
And now I'm struggling with guilt and a sense of responsibility because I didn't fix the things hard enough.
Don't feel that guilt - Responsibility lies with the superiors. If they didn't want the possible effects, they should've heeded your warning. Just make sure all the regulatory agencies know that you raised the alarm a year ago.
Ah shit, I'm so sorry to hear that. From what you're saying it very much sounds like you already went beyond your responsibility by finding the issue that others had missed and advocating for it to be fixed, and that they did the opposite by ignoring the importance when you raised it. From where I'm sitting it seems to be fully on them, not you.
But still, I get you. I'd probably be feeling the same in your shoes regardless of the facts of the situation - it really sucks and I'm sorry it's something you're having to deal with.
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement.
I've had a day to get past the shock and gain perspective. There are other parties that had much more direct responsibility. My work is for a vendor of specialized software, services, and hardware systems. These products are not sold as life safety critical, in a field where all the purchasers should absolutely understand the implications of that limitation. We're not the party making decisions about how the system is used, or the party responsible for installation and maintenance. It shouldn't have been necessary to warn them if they were doing their jobs properly in the first place. And I'm now sadly and angrily responsible for the fixes after a tragedy has already occurred. [pinging /u/Carrie, because I hope this is a healthy perspective...]
What's really grinding me is that this situation is common. Increasingly so with the rise of complexity in the systems we depend on, the perennial failure to plan for ongoing maintenance, and the dismantling of regulatory regimes. I highly recommend a read of Dan Davies' The Unaccountability Machine - Why Big Systems Make Terrible Decisions, And How the World Lost Its Mind.
Aside from the responsibilities of individual professionals and experts, we exist in the context of organizations whose motivations and reward systems are opaque to us, where humane ethics aren't part of their schemas. It's easy (and probably psychologically healthier) to limit our sense of responsibility to what's directly controllable, even if in doing so we're enabling the vast and cool and unsympathetic automata we call corporations and governments.
I'm flattered by the ping :)
I would say, yes, your response is healthy, based on what you've shared here. Honestly, I think you have a really clear grasp on the whole situation, and you have been put, and sounds like, are constantly put in situations that are literally life and death.
You are probably experiencing compassion fatigue or will eventually because of the nature of your job and your awareness of the implications or consequences.
I'd say the "healthiest" part of your response is to "feel your feelings" (I know, it's corny): "And I'm now sadly and angrily responsible". Feeling sad and angry are feelings to be had.
This part is the haunting part, and I hope you find balance between feeling irritation(?) and other feelings. It's very hard to balance this emotion(irritation at preventable things? I'd probably need to feelings sort to get the true emotion labeled) out, when it does matter IMO (but I am a control freak lol so take that with a grain of salt).
I've heard we can engage with our desire to "fix things" or feel less out of control about larger existential things by supporting a cause close to us. What supporting means can be as big as volunteering to as small as donating small amounts of money or supporting a creator you like in some other way. Anything that makes you feel like you did something towards a cause important to you. I know it sounds like it won't work, but it does. Society may shame us and say things like, "as if recycling that bag is doing anything" -- well it's helping my mental state, which is doing something.
I appreciate you for your awareness of large problems and your desire to mitigate the damages from them. I find your prolonged thought about the situation, admirable. However, I hope you take care of yourself, because you deserve it and are worth being protected from the traumas associated with hyper responsibility.
I've got nothing meaningful to add, but that's an extremely tough situation to be thrown into dealing with, regardless of who caused it. The wider frustrations absolutely resonate, and the book looks fascinating - I'll absolutely add it to my list.
I outgrew this around the same time I became a home owner. Suddenly my time was better spent improving the house than improving anything on a computer.
I think most people who fall into this trap (and don’t like it) should perhaps find a hobby thats not on a computer.
But, keep in mind, people like Linus didn’t get to where they’re at by choosing to mingle in their vegetable gardens instead of improving computer infrastructure.
I've actually found the opposite to be true here.
I'm not a programmer and have written code exactly once in my life, in BASIC and I did not like it (although that was 25+ years ago. Although, does HTML count? I did do a lot of that...), but once I owned a house, suddenly everything became my problem and in order to save ourselves money, I started fixing as much as I could.
From the washing machine to the water heater, doing my own network drops, repairing the dishwasher, solving pest problems and even extending well into automotive repair (I also don't trust a third party to do things right), I'm generally trying to fix something around the house. It brings me great satisfaction, but it also saves us a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on contractors.
Granted, I don't do everything and know my limits. I don't do construction, so we paid my brother in a law to do a lot of the remodeling we've done on the inside. But regardless, I feels like there's always something around the house I ought to be fixing.
I think especially with the internet though it's much more doable these days in a way that my engineer dad, despite trying never pulled off. He would start a lot of home improvement projects and never quite finish them because he wasn't a drywaller or plumber or any of those things. Remodeling a bathroom took years. It was my bathroom so I was cranky about it.
Now though I can do a lot more with YouTube and other people specifically teaching people how to do these things. And still sometimes I just need to pay someone even if I could do it because I have too much going on.
Though, as a parent, to give your Dad some credit: It's hard as fuck with kids to see things all the way through, if they're not day projects (and even then). I've been rebuilding an engine for the last 6-years and only now is it getting close to getting back in the car and even then, it'll probably be another year before I actually get things hooked-up.
But even that, yeah, I'd be lost without Youtube. I have a friend who is more knowledgeable than myself, but I don't usually ask him too many questions when I can often get an answer immediately via Youtube; especially one that relates to my exact specifications, rather than some general advice.
Oh I give him a ton of credit, he was however absolutely undiagnosed ADHD. I share a large number of traits with him. And I'm sure he was trying to save money. But also this was my shower and I wanted it back.
Fellow homeowner here - the nice thing about a house is that it's a collection of systems you truly have ownership and control over (within the bounds of building codes, family, neighbors, HOAs, and such). You get all the duties, and all of the fulfillment, of making your space your own. But I do wish sometimes that the West had a more Japanese attitude towards housing - assume it's got a life expectancy of 50 years, and plan for replacement. Instead of the Ship of Theseus thing we've got going on, with our antique HVAC, unremedied lead pipes and paint, lack of insulation, etc. By the time you've paid for replacing all the rotten guts, even if you do the work yourself (opportunity cost!), you could have bought a new house.
Funny how you mention that, as I literally had a electrician out yesterday and he was going over how some parts of our house that were likely remodeled in the 1970's had aluminum wiring. This is ok, apparently, but I as he was telling me this, I was literally thinking about that Japanese philosophy of homes being "wear items" for lack of a better term.
There's so many things in our house that could be better if it weren't built in the 1960's. That said, I feel like there's so many things that could be worse, based on the mid-2000's house that my parents own, so it's a give and take, I suppose.
although, I've definitely heard of people who get this way with DIY projects around the house. I think the barrier to entry is usually a bit higher, which helps, but the projects do also take up physical space that you literally have to live with! Like all things, there can be healthy and unhealthy degrees I think.
Any house has an infinite quantity of repairs, maintainence, or improvement. The severity of which is often directly correlated to the age of the house.
I fall into the tech debt spiral easily. But the average time-to-breakage on my PC is much lower than anything in my house.
I'll need to replace my roof before my NetworkManager dispatcher scripts break.
And much like computing, the more you know about trades, the worse the same problem arises.
Tangentially related
I found this article interesting, but beyond the obvious reasons, I like seeing cross over between multiple disciplines, and seeing the same patterns emerge.
The author touches on a lot of topics, but does not necessarily name them (maybe they are unaware of their names). But at its heart it discusses perfectionism and hyper-responsibility. These two characteristics are grown out of, in my own opinion, an obsession and addiction to problem solving. This addicition then shows up as obsessions around maximising and efficiencizing.
Perfectionism and hyper-responsibility are really hard to treat, because of how high the rewards are for pursuing these endeavors. Society highly rewards these behaviors, and purports a lot of characteristics associated with perfectionism and hyper-responsibility as traits we should strive to embody. How can you practice, "doing nothing" when we live in a "find it, fix it" kind of world?
There is a brief touch on burnout, and while I think it's clear how people end up burnt out (never saying no, fulfilling things at a non-sustainable rate, whether it's how many things you do or to what extent you do them), there isn't discussion on how to address burnout. I'd like to offer my understanding of how burnout can be mitigated, but have no real -- statements-- to make about how one recovers from burnout.
Burnout can be mitigated by team work and delegation and taking breaks. However, this requires that you have enough trust in your team members (above, below, side to side) to truly delegate or offload tasks. It also requires that you don't take on more tasks once you delegate. It also requires that you actually take breaks (long and short, mental and physical). Most of modern society is not set up for this, certainly not in the USA.
The reason I have no suggestions on how to heal from burn out other than rest, is that I think a lot of people become hyper-responsible/perfectionists, because their trust has been broken, and thus they can't really trust other people to take any of their burdens away. They have learned over time that the only way to get what they want, is by doing it themselves. If you feel hyper-responsible AND you're a perfectionist AND you're capable, it's very hard to break this cycle. You will always feel let down by what others do, and you'll always feel guilt/regret that you didn't do it yourself. The author does a really good job talking about how they struggle with things that "could" be done a certain way, and also how things "should" be done. I like to joke that in the psych world, they should add that if you are constantly saying "should", you're probably a perfectionist (in an unhealthy way).
other ramblings
I find it funny how often people come to the conclusion that is stated in the Serenity Prayer:To be clear, I don't think the sentiments in the Serenity Prayer are unique to the Serenity Prayer or any specific religion. The ideas themselves manifest in many ways, all over the world.
I feel this, and have actually done the therapy to address burnout, perfectionism, and all the other "control freak" things. I have generally learned to let things go, become a better team player, delegate, etc. And still, when things go pear-shaped, like today's news, those old responsibility reflexes kick in.
Ouch. This is me. It cuts me to the quick. I'm going to be thinking about this.
This right here is why I enjoy programming, and why after long days of work meetings where nothing productive got done, I feel the urge to dust off personal projects and get work done on those - because then I am doing something.
I don’t necessarily feel the moral weight of knowing how to do something and needing to improve it, because I don’t think I end up in situations where I feel capable enough.
But this past week, my wife was doing some “no code automation” using Microsoft Teams/Power Automate and it was driving me crazy when she’d have a question…because if I had the /code/ I could likely easily do what she wanted, but in the “no code” framework I was lost (except for knowing the concepts she needed to look for).
Or the struggle any time I find myself editing a document that I can’t use vim motions in, because the ability to yank lines and words and move selected blocks around just feels so much better than copy and paste. (And the ability to record and playback commands).