Burnout revisited
March 27, 2022 5:07 AM Subscribe
"Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become."
Yet burnout’s ubiquity cannot be attributed to Covid alone. While exhaustion among nurses, teachers, and other frontline workers accounts for some of the uptick in burnout talk, the term has been seized most avidly by highly educated remote workers in such fields as technology, finance, and media. Is burnout, then, really a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress, as the World Health Organization has classified it? Is it a form of depression? Or is it a mark of disillusionment with the fictions propping up our world of work?Previously: Burnout and PTSD
Jonathan Malesic’s intelligent and careful study, The End of Burnout, brings clarity to a muddled discussion. He casts a critical eye on burnout discourse, in which the term is used loosely and self-flatteringly. Journalistic treatments of burnout—such as Anne Helen Petersen’s widely read 2019 essay—tend to emphasize the heroic exertions of the burned-out worker, who presses on and gets her work done, no matter what. Such accounts have significantly raised burnout’s prestige, Malesic argues, by aligning the disorder with “the American ideal of constant work.” But they give, at best, a partial view of what burnout is.
The psychologist Christina Maslach, a foundational figure in burnout research—the Maslach Burnout Inventory is the standard burnout assessment—sees burnout as having three components: exhaustion; cynicism or depersonalization (detectable in doctors, for example, who see their patients as “problems” to be solved, rather than people to be treated); and a sense of ineffectiveness or futility. Exhaustion is easy to brag about, inefficacy less so. Accounts of the desperate worker as labor-hero ignore the important fact that burnout impairs your ability to do your job. A “precise diagnostic checklist” for burnout, Malesic writes, would curtail loose claims of fashionable exhaustion, while helping people who suffer from burnout seek medical treatment.
Malesic, however, is interested in more than tracing burnout’s clinical history. A scholar of religion, he diagnoses burnout as an ailment of the soul. It arises, he contends, from a gap between our ideals about work and our reality of work.
One bizarre feature of our present economic order, as Daniel Markovits points out in his recent book The Meritocracy Trap, is how hard the super-rich work. The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week.
I obviously have not read the referenced book, but I call bullshit. We all saw how Donald Trump "worked all the time". Playing golf with your fellow 1 percenters and claiming it as "business" is not working. Lawyers and specialist doctors are well known for billing extravagantly high rates per hour, yet only working a fraction of each hour and "rounding up". Don't tell me that's the same thing as the work the rest of us do day after day, year after year, without a raise.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [67 favorites]
I obviously have not read the referenced book, but I call bullshit. We all saw how Donald Trump "worked all the time". Playing golf with your fellow 1 percenters and claiming it as "business" is not working. Lawyers and specialist doctors are well known for billing extravagantly high rates per hour, yet only working a fraction of each hour and "rounding up". Don't tell me that's the same thing as the work the rest of us do day after day, year after year, without a raise.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [67 favorites]
Donald Trump isn't representative of the 1%. He's representative of the 0.0001%. 1% of the population aren't billionaires. The 1% are the people wealthy enough to be rich, but not wealthy enough to stop working and still be rich.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:15 AM on March 27, 2022 [23 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 6:15 AM on March 27, 2022 [23 favorites]
On the part about white collar workers complaining about burnout more than others recently, I note that burnout seems to be the mental equivalent of the sort of physical exhaustion or physical stress injury (either repetitive or acute) that can impact one’s ability to do the physical components of a job. Burnout (as I understand it) affects one’s ability to do the mental or emotional components of a job in similar ways.
posted by eviemath at 6:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [17 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [17 favorites]
who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week.
The word "report" does some extraordinarily heavy lifting in that sentence.
I've seen profiles of CEO days, and they read similarly to the NYTimes budgets of the folks "barely getting by" on $500K per year.
They check their email on their commute, so they count the commute. They go to the gym in the middle of their work day, but justify it as important to the process. They count their lunch hours as work as well. It adds up, but when you look at your average office worker, it's the same amount of time, the office worker just has to do these things unpaid and "off the clock."
The top 1 percent of the income distribution
This is also a clever sleight of hand. Our problem isn't the people who make the top 1% of income. There's a distinction between income and wealth/capital gains. The problem is the people who own everything and drain off the workers. Even the highly paid specialist doctor is a laborer to the capitalist oligarchs who own the hospitals.
posted by explosion at 6:25 AM on March 27, 2022 [86 favorites]
The word "report" does some extraordinarily heavy lifting in that sentence.
I've seen profiles of CEO days, and they read similarly to the NYTimes budgets of the folks "barely getting by" on $500K per year.
They check their email on their commute, so they count the commute. They go to the gym in the middle of their work day, but justify it as important to the process. They count their lunch hours as work as well. It adds up, but when you look at your average office worker, it's the same amount of time, the office worker just has to do these things unpaid and "off the clock."
The top 1 percent of the income distribution
This is also a clever sleight of hand. Our problem isn't the people who make the top 1% of income. There's a distinction between income and wealth/capital gains. The problem is the people who own everything and drain off the workers. Even the highly paid specialist doctor is a laborer to the capitalist oligarchs who own the hospitals.
posted by explosion at 6:25 AM on March 27, 2022 [86 favorites]
The fuller quote from George S. Beard is worth reading.
The new metaphor I’d hit upon for my autistic experience and the limitations it places upon me was that of a house’s electrical wiring.
Go figure.
posted by bixfrankonis at 6:28 AM on March 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
Edison’s electric light is now sufficiently advanced in an experimental direction to give us the best possible illustration of the effects of modern civilization on the nervous system. An electric machine of definite horse-power, situated at some central point, is to supply the electricity needed to run a certain number of lamps—say one thousand, more or less. If an extra number of lamps should be interposed in the circuit, then the power of the engine must be increased; else the light of the lamps would be decreased, or give out. This has been mathematically calculated, so that it is known, or believed to be known, by those in charge, just how much increase of horse-power is needed to each increase in the number of lamps. In all the calculations, however widely they may differ, it is assumed that the force supplied by any central machine is limited, and cannot be pushed beyond a certain point; and if the number of lamps interposed in the circuit be increased, there must be a corresponding increase in the force of the machine. The nervous system of man is the centre of the nerve-force supplying all the organs of the body. Like the steam engine, its force is limited, although it cannot be mathematically measured—and unlike the steam engine, varies in the amount of force with the food, the state of health and external conditions, varies with age, nutrition, occupation, and numberless factors. The force in this nervous system can, therefore, be increased or diminished by good or evil influences, medical or hygiene, or by the natural evolutions—growth, disease and decline; but none the less it is limited; and when new functions are interposed in the circuit, as modern civilization is constantly requiring us to do, there comes a period, sooner or later, varying in different individuals, and at different times of life, when the amount of force is insufficient to keep all the lamps actively burning; those that are weakest go out entirely, or, as more frequently happens, burn faint and feebly—they do not expire, but give an insufficient and unstable light—this is the philosophy of modern nervousness.Six months ago, I mentioned to my therapist that I’d thought of a new metaphor to describe my autistic life. I’ve been trying to find useful metaphors in part because at some point I am going to have to convince the nation’s disability system that I am, in fact, disabled. I’d been using the metaphor of having built the foundation for a house (my ability to live independently) but my inability to build anything atop it (for example, employment and so economic self-sufficiency), lest the foundation collapse.
The new metaphor I’d hit upon for my autistic experience and the limitations it places upon me was that of a house’s electrical wiring.
Go figure.
posted by bixfrankonis at 6:28 AM on March 27, 2022 [25 favorites]
Nurse here. Homesteading in the middle of Alaska looks nice. A fantastic steely coworker quit and is starting up an accounting business. Another had a baby at the beginning of 2020 and she never came back to work. A handful are hustling side gigs, hoping to make it profitable enough so they, with spousal support, can quit. Take me with you, I call out, weakly.
posted by BlunderingArtist at 6:31 AM on March 27, 2022 [27 favorites]
posted by BlunderingArtist at 6:31 AM on March 27, 2022 [27 favorites]
Eviemath, that’s an interesting analogy, white-collar burnout as the mental/emotional equivalent of blue-collar (or service collar) physical exhaustion or injury. It reminds me of how problems sometimes only become “issues” when they are found to affect not only an oppressed group but also others. Think of drug addiction among “inner-city” populations vs. the (white/suburban/rural) opioid epidemic.
posted by scratch at 6:38 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by scratch at 6:38 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I worked very hard for very many hours a week for very many years and it cost me far more than the money I was paid. The Hard Work == Success lie is the biggest scam ever pulled off.
posted by tommasz at 7:01 AM on March 27, 2022 [51 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 7:01 AM on March 27, 2022 [51 favorites]
The top 1% of the income distribution is part of the problem insofar as they benefit from the current system and vociferously defend it.
I suspect a lot of the "reported" very long hours are time spent worrying/thinking about work even if you're not technically at work. If you're expected to answer emails at any hour between 7am and midnight, even if you're not "working", it can feel as if you never stop working and the mental stress never ends.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
I suspect a lot of the "reported" very long hours are time spent worrying/thinking about work even if you're not technically at work. If you're expected to answer emails at any hour between 7am and midnight, even if you're not "working", it can feel as if you never stop working and the mental stress never ends.
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
My 14-year-long supposed dream job completely burnt me out on creating art. That was almost twenty years ago. I never recovered.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [33 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [33 favorites]
It was intended as a bit more than just an analogy (but thanks, scratch!): the times where I have felt burnout at work, it has felt the same for my brain as the times a physical stress injury has impacted my muscles.
posted by eviemath at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 7:18 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
oh, thorzdad, I'm so, so sorry.
i had a personal trauma and am only now picking up a guitar after 3 yrs. that loss of creative energy is crippling to my psyche.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:32 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
i had a personal trauma and am only now picking up a guitar after 3 yrs. that loss of creative energy is crippling to my psyche.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:32 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
The top 1% of the income distribution is part of the problem insofar as they benefit from the current system and vociferously defend it.
Speaking as someone in that 1% who wants to tear it all down Liz Warren-style, the wealthy and the inequitable structures and mindsets they perpetuate are far, far, faaaaaaar more of the problem.
posted by Gadarene at 7:45 AM on March 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
Speaking as someone in that 1% who wants to tear it all down Liz Warren-style, the wealthy and the inequitable structures and mindsets they perpetuate are far, far, faaaaaaar more of the problem.
posted by Gadarene at 7:45 AM on March 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
I only know a few people who are fully in the 1% by income, and they legitimately work crazy hours, in part because they have to match hours and attend meetings on European and/or Indian timezones, for example. One of them is clearly burning out and I think will resign soon (likely with an "exit package" that will dwarf my personal lifetime earnings), but the others don't seem to be, from what I can see. These are managers/executives, not medical specialists or lawyers, and I don't know how representative they are of people in that strata.
I think there is something in the author's point about burnout stemming from something wrong in how we organize work, while also being a term that excludes many of the people harmed the most by that organization.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
I think there is something in the author's point about burnout stemming from something wrong in how we organize work, while also being a term that excludes many of the people harmed the most by that organization.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
I just "woke up" the other day and realized that I hated myself for not being able to function in a system that apparently (22 interviews and no job) hates me. I am not pouting, I'm just ashamed that I bashed my head against what I thought was a door, and it was actually a wall. Hugs and love to anyone who is tired, who tried, who feels like they failed. Maybe it just is not for you? It was not for me.
posted by lextex at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2022 [26 favorites]
posted by lextex at 8:04 AM on March 27, 2022 [26 favorites]
Thorzdad: same, though I spent about ten years in my supposed dream arts career and it's been about eleven since I gave it all up and became a homemaker. I have to avoid the output from much of that entire field lest the guilt and envy drive me up the wall.
I took up making video games as a hobby about seven years ago, but have since resolved not to charge anything for the stuff I make (nor to pursue a job in the field), since I don't want burnout to ruin another personal interest. It's less stressful that way.
US culture being so centered around work sucks. Not having a "proper" career made me feel meaningless and irrelevant for a long time. I hate being asked "what do you do" when meeting someone for the first time. Homemakers with no kids aren't exactly well regarded in this country.
I realize I am incredibly fortunate to be able to live the lifestyle I do, but I would rather not be burnt out.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:24 AM on March 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
I took up making video games as a hobby about seven years ago, but have since resolved not to charge anything for the stuff I make (nor to pursue a job in the field), since I don't want burnout to ruin another personal interest. It's less stressful that way.
US culture being so centered around work sucks. Not having a "proper" career made me feel meaningless and irrelevant for a long time. I hate being asked "what do you do" when meeting someone for the first time. Homemakers with no kids aren't exactly well regarded in this country.
I realize I am incredibly fortunate to be able to live the lifestyle I do, but I would rather not be burnt out.
posted by May Kasahara at 8:24 AM on March 27, 2022 [7 favorites]
As someone in a white-collar management position in a media (in the general sense of the word) company, what I feel like I've experienced is more a disillusionment than a burnout, but I suppose its all semantics. Even prior to covid, as it became increasingly obvious the country/world was starting to break in some pretty fundamental ways, it was the growing sense of my work not mattering in the least. What I do doesn't make the world a better place in any way, and given the nature of my industry, sometimes I feel like it contributes to the problems. What I do is make money for other people, who go out and spend it on golf and cars and spend their time complaining about people who are actually trying to make things better.
I'm paid well for what I do, and "oh no you work in a well-paying job you don't like" sounds like a complete whine from a position of privilege, but I keep doing it because I want to make sure I can provide for my family as much as I can. And in the US we've built a system that the second you consider opting out, being able to provide becomes such a massive, massive risk. So I keep doing what I do until I can figure out a way to make the things I want to do be able to provide as well. But, yeah, as I do it, it's with a sense of how utterly pointless it is. I feel like I can't be alone in that.
posted by Zargon X at 8:42 AM on March 27, 2022 [22 favorites]
I'm paid well for what I do, and "oh no you work in a well-paying job you don't like" sounds like a complete whine from a position of privilege, but I keep doing it because I want to make sure I can provide for my family as much as I can. And in the US we've built a system that the second you consider opting out, being able to provide becomes such a massive, massive risk. So I keep doing what I do until I can figure out a way to make the things I want to do be able to provide as well. But, yeah, as I do it, it's with a sense of how utterly pointless it is. I feel like I can't be alone in that.
posted by Zargon X at 8:42 AM on March 27, 2022 [22 favorites]
I do data stuff for a fashion company. I am happiest at my job when I do not think about our product. When I'm focusing on making sure that everyone has the ability to access what they say they need. When the people and purchases are just numbers on the screen.
When I think about just how wasteful this entire industry is, when I contemplate how my work goes towards trying to get people to buy more shit that they don't need and then buy even more again, it gets disheartening. I absolutely love my manager and the people I work with and because of this, plus the fact that the company respects work life balance for lower level corporate employees, I actually really like the job. I don't think I'm going to burn out there, but that's down to corporate culture, not the industry or American business.
It's a run of the mill white collar job that puts me in the upper middle class. And yet, when I read these, I feel incredibly lucky. Maybe I won't after a few more years. Maybe the fact that I'm hybrid and am honest with myself and don't pretend to be working for the half of the day when I'm not helps.
But this should be the norm. I shouldn't feel like I hit the jackpot because I'm in a decent and semi enjoyable job that isn't trying to suck the soul from my body. But I do on a regular basis. I don't feel any loyalty to the company, but I have a great deal for my coworkers and the environment they've created.
posted by Hactar at 8:59 AM on March 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
When I think about just how wasteful this entire industry is, when I contemplate how my work goes towards trying to get people to buy more shit that they don't need and then buy even more again, it gets disheartening. I absolutely love my manager and the people I work with and because of this, plus the fact that the company respects work life balance for lower level corporate employees, I actually really like the job. I don't think I'm going to burn out there, but that's down to corporate culture, not the industry or American business.
It's a run of the mill white collar job that puts me in the upper middle class. And yet, when I read these, I feel incredibly lucky. Maybe I won't after a few more years. Maybe the fact that I'm hybrid and am honest with myself and don't pretend to be working for the half of the day when I'm not helps.
But this should be the norm. I shouldn't feel like I hit the jackpot because I'm in a decent and semi enjoyable job that isn't trying to suck the soul from my body. But I do on a regular basis. I don't feel any loyalty to the company, but I have a great deal for my coworkers and the environment they've created.
posted by Hactar at 8:59 AM on March 27, 2022 [6 favorites]
The term has achieved cultural prominence precisely because it resonates with affluent professionals who fetishize overwork.
This article is full of this thing Twitter calls "making up a guy and then getting extremely mad at him"
The author is pushing all of these weird contradictory assertions that have no proof and make no sense.
While exhaustion among nurses, teachers, and other frontline workers accounts for some of the uptick in burnout talk,
It's ok for people with real jobs to feel tired,
the term has been seized most avidly by highly educated remote workers in such fields as technology, finance, and media.
Ok. Could be true.
Is burnout, then, really a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress, as the World Health Organization has classified it? Is it a form of depression? Or is it a mark of disillusionment with the fictions propping up our world of work?
Here's where he does this thing of just .. literally begging the question I think? He's taking it as a given that if: people with email jobs are claiming burnout all of a sudden, (and we all know they don't have feelings????), therefore what else could be happening since it's clearly not any kind of legitimate ailment like depression etc, maybe they're just suckers who got taken for a ride? Yeah yeah that's it! And then this "fine book" that he's praising ends up with "maybe they should join a monestary". Like, not only a bad diagnosis but a bad solution too.
posted by bleep at 9:02 AM on March 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
This article is full of this thing Twitter calls "making up a guy and then getting extremely mad at him"
The author is pushing all of these weird contradictory assertions that have no proof and make no sense.
While exhaustion among nurses, teachers, and other frontline workers accounts for some of the uptick in burnout talk,
It's ok for people with real jobs to feel tired,
the term has been seized most avidly by highly educated remote workers in such fields as technology, finance, and media.
Ok. Could be true.
Is burnout, then, really a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress, as the World Health Organization has classified it? Is it a form of depression? Or is it a mark of disillusionment with the fictions propping up our world of work?
Here's where he does this thing of just .. literally begging the question I think? He's taking it as a given that if: people with email jobs are claiming burnout all of a sudden, (and we all know they don't have feelings????), therefore what else could be happening since it's clearly not any kind of legitimate ailment like depression etc, maybe they're just suckers who got taken for a ride? Yeah yeah that's it! And then this "fine book" that he's praising ends up with "maybe they should join a monestary". Like, not only a bad diagnosis but a bad solution too.
posted by bleep at 9:02 AM on March 27, 2022 [9 favorites]
i worked 60-80 wk the last 14 months. and i'm no 1%. then got sacked when the potential market collapsed (industry largely going with different tech). also, it was extremely late (newsflash: complex software is late). i am somewhat...disillusioned. ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
never doing that again, not without equity.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:35 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
never doing that again, not without equity.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:35 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
There was a Washington Post article about Ashleigh Barty's retirement (at 25) from professional tennis that contained this amazing quote:
posted by fedward at 9:50 AM on March 27, 2022 [17 favorites]
“I’m fulfilled; I’m happy; and I know how much work it takes to bring the best out of yourself,” she said. “I’ve said it to my team multiple times — it’s just, I don’t have that in me anymore. I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore.”I'm not saying I was performing at #1-in-the-world levels all the time writing software, but I am saying that when I realized I didn't enjoy actually doing that work all the time anymore it felt a lot like what she said there. Whenever I see the companies trying to hire only 10× or rockstar developers, I think about how doing that work at that level (or even close to it) requires a personal desire to be working that hard at it. I stopped finding it fulfilling around the third time I solved the same problem from scratch because the previous times I'd written code to do the same thing were another company's intellectual property. I can't unflip that switch.
posted by fedward at 9:50 AM on March 27, 2022 [17 favorites]
Who has this fantasy? it's not called the rat race, the grind, a treadmill, for nothing. What's lacking is any idea that the moment you step off you'll be okay. Our society is all about accumulating wealth (as time and inflation erase it) and never about creating the safety nets that allow for not being a part of that wealth creating machine.
The money is there, we just redirect toward the investor class and the military. But try convincing the voters that they have the power to change it if only they would.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:53 AM on March 27, 2022 [26 favorites]
The money is there, we just redirect toward the investor class and the military. But try convincing the voters that they have the power to change it if only they would.
posted by OHenryPacey at 9:53 AM on March 27, 2022 [26 favorites]
never doing that again, not without equity.
Equity won't save you. Or at least, equity won't mean much when the bosses make a special deal with the new investors and you see your "equity" get diluted to 0.1% of what it was before. I know quite a few former web people who discovered that being employee number 3 and having a 20% equity share somehow ended up worth the tiniest fraction of that.
posted by tclark at 9:56 AM on March 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
Equity won't save you. Or at least, equity won't mean much when the bosses make a special deal with the new investors and you see your "equity" get diluted to 0.1% of what it was before. I know quite a few former web people who discovered that being employee number 3 and having a 20% equity share somehow ended up worth the tiniest fraction of that.
posted by tclark at 9:56 AM on March 27, 2022 [10 favorites]
how hard the super-rich work. The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week.
Yeah, this is a non sequitur, because the top 1 percent don't even count as the super-rich anymore. People in law, finance, medicine, consulting can work ridiculous hours. (I used to bill in six-minute intervals, and, while there's inevitably some imprecision in such a ridiculous system, I'm sure I wasn't defrauding my firm's clients.) But while these people are well compensated by any standard, they aren't the super-rich. With a handful of exceptions, the super-rich don't work at any job that actually supports their standard of living. This lack of insight calls the whole essay into question.
I'm often struck by the folly of people who have alternatives yet continue to live that way. Working yourself to the bone to defend death row clients or treat pediatric brain cancer is arguably worth it. Most of these jobs...are not. America seems to have produced a class of upper-middle/lower-upper-class people who can't think of anything else to do with their time. I like the nice things money can buy and I definitely have the financial insecurity of someone who grew up in an economically unstable household, but I also recognize where the marginal returns diminish.
posted by praemunire at 10:05 AM on March 27, 2022 [20 favorites]
Yeah, this is a non sequitur, because the top 1 percent don't even count as the super-rich anymore. People in law, finance, medicine, consulting can work ridiculous hours. (I used to bill in six-minute intervals, and, while there's inevitably some imprecision in such a ridiculous system, I'm sure I wasn't defrauding my firm's clients.) But while these people are well compensated by any standard, they aren't the super-rich. With a handful of exceptions, the super-rich don't work at any job that actually supports their standard of living. This lack of insight calls the whole essay into question.
I'm often struck by the folly of people who have alternatives yet continue to live that way. Working yourself to the bone to defend death row clients or treat pediatric brain cancer is arguably worth it. Most of these jobs...are not. America seems to have produced a class of upper-middle/lower-upper-class people who can't think of anything else to do with their time. I like the nice things money can buy and I definitely have the financial insecurity of someone who grew up in an economically unstable household, but I also recognize where the marginal returns diminish.
posted by praemunire at 10:05 AM on March 27, 2022 [20 favorites]
Agreed that this is a very odd, and confused-seeming essay. It seems like the nutshell is captured by this quote:
And, to be honest, the ways in which this article reads confusingly to me make me wonder if it is actually suffering from the results of burnout-induced cynicism (pretty prevalent in academia right now, whatever this author may be claiming).
posted by advil at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
Burnout, then, holds some limited potential in the fight for more humane working conditions. And in giving an account of how our mass delusions about work prevent us from flourishing, Malesic has done us a service. But “burnout” is, at best, a transitional term. As a topic of cultural fixation, burnout is, at minimum, highly vulnerable to elite capture. At maximum, it is almost entirely an elite phenomenon.But even a cursory search shows that the concept has been around since the 70s (despite the article's focus on recent discussions), is extremely well studied, and does not really seem to have any "elite" associations (and I wasn't super convinced by the article's implication, if I was getting it right, that recent burnout discourse excludes working class people -- what does he think happened in the restaurant industry??). To me, this article reads like someone who is themself fairly privileged, in an "elite" industry where there has been a lot of recent discussion of burnout, where the author feels that they aren't suffering from it for whatever reason and is kind of sick of hearing about it. And indeed, when I go look, the author is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Harvard who works on the depiction of idleness in literature.
And, to be honest, the ways in which this article reads confusingly to me make me wonder if it is actually suffering from the results of burnout-induced cynicism (pretty prevalent in academia right now, whatever this author may be claiming).
posted by advil at 10:13 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I don’t have that in me anymore. I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore.
I respect someone actually seeing this and saying this. I worked at a couple of start ups and what they could not recognize was that they were pursuing THEIR dream, THEIR eventual big payday, THEIR crowning achievement. I was just at a job. I have worked really hard in the past but I'm not really interested in doing that on a long term basis, even for my own stuff. That is part of what tired me out at an office job, you are always supposed to pretend that you passionately care about some longterm career arc. I want to not live in poverty, folks. But in the culture there is this idea that we all have some passion we would work at a superhuman pace for, we just have to discover it.
No. I want to rest and experience joy.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:23 AM on March 27, 2022 [41 favorites]
I respect someone actually seeing this and saying this. I worked at a couple of start ups and what they could not recognize was that they were pursuing THEIR dream, THEIR eventual big payday, THEIR crowning achievement. I was just at a job. I have worked really hard in the past but I'm not really interested in doing that on a long term basis, even for my own stuff. That is part of what tired me out at an office job, you are always supposed to pretend that you passionately care about some longterm career arc. I want to not live in poverty, folks. But in the culture there is this idea that we all have some passion we would work at a superhuman pace for, we just have to discover it.
No. I want to rest and experience joy.
posted by Emmy Rae at 10:23 AM on March 27, 2022 [41 favorites]
"Yeah, this is a non sequitur, because the top 1 percent don't even count as the super-rich anymore. People in law, finance, medicine, consulting can work ridiculous hours. (I used to bill in six-minute intervals, and, while there's inevitably some imprecision in such a ridiculous system, I'm sure I wasn't defrauding my firm's clients.) But while these people are well compensated by any standard, they aren't the super-rich." This is a significant number of people I know. They're "affluent" but they work themselves into a mental-emotional gridlock.
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:33 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:33 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Who has this fantasy? it's not called the rat race, the grind, a treadmill, for nothing.
I think this is a key point. It’s a “fantasy” in the same way Soviet propaganda was all “fellow workers striving for the good of the collective”. It’s really the capitalist version. It’s the gospel we’re taught from day-1, and few of us have the wherewithal to refuse.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:35 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
I think this is a key point. It’s a “fantasy” in the same way Soviet propaganda was all “fellow workers striving for the good of the collective”. It’s really the capitalist version. It’s the gospel we’re taught from day-1, and few of us have the wherewithal to refuse.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:35 AM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
There are a *lot* of fairly-rich-but-not-truly-wealthy people out there in that 0.5-2% range that got there through extraordinary amounts of effort, running their own firms and building the companies that generated that money. The descendants of those people may be slackers, wastrels and fools, but the founders usually aren't. There are countless successful businesses out there doing nearly invisible things like manufacturing car parts, selling commercial real estate, headhunting IT people, etc, that take a lot of hustle to establish and maintain.
A few or many of them may be complete tools when it comes to their life priorities and how they spend their money, but it's usually really hard to become a first generation rich person and most don't get there by inventing Paypal and getting bought out. Burnout can happen anywhere you misprioritize things in your life to the detriment of your important, core self. Not even truly believing in the value of your calling (teachers, health care workers, clergy, etc) is nearly enough when you neglect yourself too much.
posted by Cris E at 10:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
A few or many of them may be complete tools when it comes to their life priorities and how they spend their money, but it's usually really hard to become a first generation rich person and most don't get there by inventing Paypal and getting bought out. Burnout can happen anywhere you misprioritize things in your life to the detriment of your important, core self. Not even truly believing in the value of your calling (teachers, health care workers, clergy, etc) is nearly enough when you neglect yourself too much.
posted by Cris E at 10:57 AM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
If there is such a thing as burnout it's not caused by something someone does to themselves. It's something that's caused by conditions that are imposed on you and that you have no agency to change.
posted by bleep at 11:19 AM on March 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
posted by bleep at 11:19 AM on March 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
the author is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Harvard who works on the depiction of idleness in literature
Fuck, why didn't I think of this in my twenties???
posted by praemunire at 11:27 AM on March 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
Fuck, why didn't I think of this in my twenties???
posted by praemunire at 11:27 AM on March 27, 2022 [12 favorites]
This is a significant number of people I know. They're "affluent" but they work themselves into a mental-emotional gridlock.
There is a certain bimodality problem here. If you're a lawyer with a strong pedigree, in normal times you can probably find a job that will pay you a lot to work a lot. Or you can scrape by in various more or less respectable degrees of struggling. It took me fifteen years after graduation, bouncing all over the income spectrum, to find a job that pays reasonably well but doesn't kill me (and doesn't make me feel like I'm contributing to the destruction of humanity, either). Other professions seem to have some form of this problem, too.
Nonetheless, a lot of it is driven by an unwillingness for people with good educations but underdeveloped selves to be rigorous about their values. I have a whole talk ready to give young lawyers who think they don't want to be beholden to corporate law firms for their entire careers, but I expect it would be wildly controversial.
posted by praemunire at 11:33 AM on March 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
There is a certain bimodality problem here. If you're a lawyer with a strong pedigree, in normal times you can probably find a job that will pay you a lot to work a lot. Or you can scrape by in various more or less respectable degrees of struggling. It took me fifteen years after graduation, bouncing all over the income spectrum, to find a job that pays reasonably well but doesn't kill me (and doesn't make me feel like I'm contributing to the destruction of humanity, either). Other professions seem to have some form of this problem, too.
Nonetheless, a lot of it is driven by an unwillingness for people with good educations but underdeveloped selves to be rigorous about their values. I have a whole talk ready to give young lawyers who think they don't want to be beholden to corporate law firms for their entire careers, but I expect it would be wildly controversial.
posted by praemunire at 11:33 AM on March 27, 2022 [8 favorites]
The worker becomes poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he produces. The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things. Labour not only produces commodities; it also produces itself and the workers as a commodity and it does so in the same proportion in which it produces commodities in general.posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:46 AM on March 27, 2022 [20 favorites]
This fact simply means that the object that labour produces, its product, stands opposed to it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labour is labour embodied and made material in an object, it is the objectification of labour. The realization of labour is its objectification. In the sphere of political economy, this realization of labour appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as loss of and bondage to the object, and appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.
The worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and moreover the most wretched commodity of all; that the misery of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and volume of his production; that the necessary consequence of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands and hence the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form.
-- Karl Marx, 1844
Just as an aside, as it's not mentioned in the article and doesn't appear to be in the book either, neurasthenia is one of an absolute pile of names that's considered to be part of the history of myalgic encephalomyelitis.
posted by jocelmeow at 12:32 PM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by jocelmeow at 12:32 PM on March 27, 2022 [3 favorites]
Whenever I see the companies trying to hire only 10× or rockstar developers, I think about how doing that work at that level (or even close to it) requires a personal desire to be working that hard at it.
I once told a recruiter that I'm not a rock star developer, I'm the grumpy old guy who knows music theory that you bring in to fix what the rock star screwed up. Mostly because I probably screwed it up that exact way and had to dig myself out of it at some point in the past.
These terms are purely a way to filter for people whose self image will make them easy to exploit. How effective a programmer can be is much more governed by their environment, the system they work on and in, and training (and whether you actually get any, whether it's formal, informal, or autodidactic).
I know that I have three to five hours of deep mental work a day that I can do sustainably. If you want more, you need to hire more people and deal with the communication overheads and onboarding costs that entails. If you add demoralization, toxicity, busywork that requires focused attention, or psychological insecurity to that, all those cost hours from that pool. Once the pool is drained, I will make more net progress over time by going home, relaxing, getting some sleep, and trying again tomorrow. People talk about interruptions being a problem, but very few are willing to point out that a couple of bad interactions with people in power can cost entire days of productivity in only a few minutes.
posted by madhadron at 2:48 PM on March 27, 2022 [70 favorites]
I once told a recruiter that I'm not a rock star developer, I'm the grumpy old guy who knows music theory that you bring in to fix what the rock star screwed up. Mostly because I probably screwed it up that exact way and had to dig myself out of it at some point in the past.
These terms are purely a way to filter for people whose self image will make them easy to exploit. How effective a programmer can be is much more governed by their environment, the system they work on and in, and training (and whether you actually get any, whether it's formal, informal, or autodidactic).
I know that I have three to five hours of deep mental work a day that I can do sustainably. If you want more, you need to hire more people and deal with the communication overheads and onboarding costs that entails. If you add demoralization, toxicity, busywork that requires focused attention, or psychological insecurity to that, all those cost hours from that pool. Once the pool is drained, I will make more net progress over time by going home, relaxing, getting some sleep, and trying again tomorrow. People talk about interruptions being a problem, but very few are willing to point out that a couple of bad interactions with people in power can cost entire days of productivity in only a few minutes.
posted by madhadron at 2:48 PM on March 27, 2022 [70 favorites]
These terms are purely a way to filter for people whose self image will make them easy to exploit.
bing bing bing bing bing
posted by praemunire at 4:34 PM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
bing bing bing bing bing
posted by praemunire at 4:34 PM on March 27, 2022 [4 favorites]
For me, and I make no claim of being representative of anyone or any group, it's the depersonalization and futility that are hitting a lot harder than the hours.
I'm an educator. I'm running all the way out of patience with students, and the program I primarily teach in is declining precipitously in quality due in large part to understaffing and disrespect for the skills involved, and nobody cares.
I have an interview with a think tank (in an area I do actually care about) tomorrow morning. I can't teach under these conditions any more, not to any standard of quality I can accept from myself.
posted by humbug at 5:19 PM on March 27, 2022 [15 favorites]
I'm an educator. I'm running all the way out of patience with students, and the program I primarily teach in is declining precipitously in quality due in large part to understaffing and disrespect for the skills involved, and nobody cares.
I have an interview with a think tank (in an area I do actually care about) tomorrow morning. I can't teach under these conditions any more, not to any standard of quality I can accept from myself.
posted by humbug at 5:19 PM on March 27, 2022 [15 favorites]
I once told a recruiter that I'm not a rock star developer, I'm the grumpy old guy who knows music theory that you bring in to fix what the rock star screwed up.
As an IT professional who has occasionally been a professional musician, I’m always tempted to use the term “session player” but I’ve found that only other musicians know what that really means.
posted by fedward at 5:20 PM on March 27, 2022 [16 favorites]
As an IT professional who has occasionally been a professional musician, I’m always tempted to use the term “session player” but I’ve found that only other musicians know what that really means.
posted by fedward at 5:20 PM on March 27, 2022 [16 favorites]
Where my burnout comes from:
(a) Everything is always getting worse. Especially workloads and angry clientele.
(b) We canNOT keep enough employees for shit. We probably have more people leave per year than we are permitted via HR to hire. HR hampers the shit out of our hiring process. Not QUITE as bad now as it was during the start of the pandemic when everything was canceled and you had to plead your case to three different committee levels before you got permission, but still pretty much "it's at least a year most of the time." We're back to a revolving door of temps that we love, frequently want to hire, and are only allowed to keep for six months if HR fucks us over on hiring. I think we haven't had a full staff in my unit since 2018 and that only lasted TWO MONTHS before someone got another job. We're supposed to have three managers and six full time permanent staff and we're down to two managers and 4 full time permanent staff (we hired two and two quit), and one of those remaining just became ill and had surgery, so guess how that's going.
(c) There are so many problems that we can't fix, that we need other offices to fix, that refuse to fix them. We have a 15 character limit on names in the computer. I've been here 20 years and nobody is willing to fix/change this because "it might cause other problems." "Like what, we ask?" and we get ignored. Meanwhile we have angry clientele, have to do manual fixes forever, etc. We used to have our own in-house programmers, lost them, and now we can't get any of those programs updated/fixed. "Add it to a list," we get if we ask, at best.
(d) A certain office refuses to move with the times and straight up cockblocks us and ignores that their rules are causing an enormous amount of work for our office to work around their limitations. They are such a fucking sacred cow. Our last leader (when we had one) got punished for trying to get things changed. Nobody above us that hears our plight will do anything-- they say they will and then we never hear again--because they are such a fucking sacred cow.
This is ONLY a quirk of my giant organization and other similar organizations think we're insane and say that THEIR office equivalent lets them do whatever they want, easy-peasy!
I'll put it this way: I could be pregnant, give birth tomorrow, and decades from now my grandchild could get a job where I work--and the same problems will still be existent and never change.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:40 PM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
(a) Everything is always getting worse. Especially workloads and angry clientele.
(b) We canNOT keep enough employees for shit. We probably have more people leave per year than we are permitted via HR to hire. HR hampers the shit out of our hiring process. Not QUITE as bad now as it was during the start of the pandemic when everything was canceled and you had to plead your case to three different committee levels before you got permission, but still pretty much "it's at least a year most of the time." We're back to a revolving door of temps that we love, frequently want to hire, and are only allowed to keep for six months if HR fucks us over on hiring. I think we haven't had a full staff in my unit since 2018 and that only lasted TWO MONTHS before someone got another job. We're supposed to have three managers and six full time permanent staff and we're down to two managers and 4 full time permanent staff (we hired two and two quit), and one of those remaining just became ill and had surgery, so guess how that's going.
(c) There are so many problems that we can't fix, that we need other offices to fix, that refuse to fix them. We have a 15 character limit on names in the computer. I've been here 20 years and nobody is willing to fix/change this because "it might cause other problems." "Like what, we ask?" and we get ignored. Meanwhile we have angry clientele, have to do manual fixes forever, etc. We used to have our own in-house programmers, lost them, and now we can't get any of those programs updated/fixed. "Add it to a list," we get if we ask, at best.
(d) A certain office refuses to move with the times and straight up cockblocks us and ignores that their rules are causing an enormous amount of work for our office to work around their limitations. They are such a fucking sacred cow. Our last leader (when we had one) got punished for trying to get things changed. Nobody above us that hears our plight will do anything-- they say they will and then we never hear again--because they are such a fucking sacred cow.
This is ONLY a quirk of my giant organization and other similar organizations think we're insane and say that THEIR office equivalent lets them do whatever they want, easy-peasy!
I'll put it this way: I could be pregnant, give birth tomorrow, and decades from now my grandchild could get a job where I work--and the same problems will still be existent and never change.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:40 PM on March 27, 2022 [5 favorites]
See also:
The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind / Jan Lusassan. Yale, 2021.
Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots / James Suzman. Penguin, 2021.
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. David Graeber. Penguin, 2019.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work / Alain De Botton. Vintage, 2010.
posted by mfoight at 2:59 AM on March 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind / Jan Lusassan. Yale, 2021.
Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots / James Suzman. Penguin, 2021.
Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. David Graeber. Penguin, 2019.
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work / Alain De Botton. Vintage, 2010.
posted by mfoight at 2:59 AM on March 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
>”Malesic writes, would curtail loose claims of fashionable exhaustion, while helping people who suffer from burnout seek medical treatment.”
Shouldn’t the managers, CEOs and investors demanding burnout from their employees be the ones who undergo medical treatment?
posted by Skwirl at 7:59 AM on March 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Shouldn’t the managers, CEOs and investors demanding burnout from their employees be the ones who undergo medical treatment?
posted by Skwirl at 7:59 AM on March 28, 2022 [2 favorites]
Unsurprisingly, superheroes won't solve the problem either.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:39 AM on March 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 9:39 AM on March 28, 2022 [3 favorites]
> I once told a recruiter that I'm not a rock star developer, I'm the grumpy old guy who knows music theory that you bring in to fix what the rock star screwed up. Mostly because I probably screwed it up that exact way and had to dig myself out of it at some point in the past.
As a hiring manager, this would have been a plus in your favor during the interview. I am so very, very tired of rockstar/cowboy programmers.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 12:55 PM on March 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
As a hiring manager, this would have been a plus in your favor during the interview. I am so very, very tired of rockstar/cowboy programmers.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 12:55 PM on March 28, 2022 [4 favorites]
Everyone starts out being told they're going to cure cancer instead of just getting it.
It's the "just-one-more-thing" lie we've all been sold since we were children. Just sit down and be quiet. Just listen to mum. Just listen to dad. Just listen to nonna. Just listen to pappy. Just listen to Mister Wendigo. Just be a good boy and don't cry. Just colour inside the lines. Just eat your apple slices. Just do good at school to get in to uni. Just do good at uni so you can go door-to-door with your CV to eventually get an "entry-level" pink or blue collar job. Just get another blue or pink collar job. Just get a third. Just work your way up to manager. Just move over into the professional white collar space and get some experience there. Just start your own business. Just learn to code. Just learn Mandarin. Just cut back on your living expenses. Just eat three glasses of fruit a day. Just just just. Everyone who has had it solved for them will give you the solution: you should have just.
There's no "just" any more. You either luck into it, or you don't get it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:19 PM on March 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
It's the "just-one-more-thing" lie we've all been sold since we were children. Just sit down and be quiet. Just listen to mum. Just listen to dad. Just listen to nonna. Just listen to pappy. Just listen to Mister Wendigo. Just be a good boy and don't cry. Just colour inside the lines. Just eat your apple slices. Just do good at school to get in to uni. Just do good at uni so you can go door-to-door with your CV to eventually get an "entry-level" pink or blue collar job. Just get another blue or pink collar job. Just get a third. Just work your way up to manager. Just move over into the professional white collar space and get some experience there. Just start your own business. Just learn to code. Just learn Mandarin. Just cut back on your living expenses. Just eat three glasses of fruit a day. Just just just. Everyone who has had it solved for them will give you the solution: you should have just.
There's no "just" any more. You either luck into it, or you don't get it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:19 PM on March 28, 2022 [6 favorites]
I 100% believe that the myth of work as passion is part of how capitalism exploits labor. I 100% believe that there is a toxic culture of overwork, and in many cases, the money isn't worth it. But putting those beliefs into practice is hard. Especially in these precarious times. And keeping people feeling under threat is part of capitalist exploitation also...
posted by prefpara at 5:40 PM on March 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by prefpara at 5:40 PM on March 28, 2022 [5 favorites]
Passion is just a Latin word for Suffering.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:24 AM on March 29, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:24 AM on March 29, 2022 [5 favorites]
Say what you will about Marx's proposed solutions, but his critique of capitalism was, and remains, spot on.
posted by Gelatin at 5:52 AM on March 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Gelatin at 5:52 AM on March 29, 2022 [4 favorites]
One bizarre feature of our present economic order, as Daniel Markovits points out in his recent book The Meritocracy Trap, is how hard the super-rich work. The top 1 percent of the income distribution is composed largely of executives, financiers, consultants, lawyers, and specialist doctors who report extremely long work hours, sometimes more than seventy a week.
I obviously have not read the referenced book, but I call bullshit. We all saw how Donald Trump "worked all the time". Playing golf with your fellow 1 percenters and claiming it as "business" is not working. Lawyers and specialist doctors are well known for billing extravagantly high rates per hour, yet only working a fraction of each hour and "rounding up". Don't tell me that's the same thing as the work the rest of us do day after day, year after year, without a raise.
I do wish that the psuedo-precise "1%" could disappear from the conversation because it generates this kind of stuff.
First, the "super-rich" and the 1% are not the same, the super-rich are the 0.01% of wealth. The overwhelming majority of the "1%" are people who work highly compensated jobs for very long hours, not people who own assets that would make money in their absence. So Donald Trump has nothing to do with the lives of the mid-ranking executives, financiers, consultants, and lawyers. I can assure you that those people are absolutely not playing golf in the middle of the work day (a work day is every day except for a protected half day on alternate Sundays).
Guess what? Those people also hate the system. They're trapped because our system makes it so awful to be poor that they will do anything to reproduce their class in their children and that is monstrously expensive. Why do you think that bankers and silicon valley dudes are always after "fuck you" money? It's literally central to the culture that this work sucks and everyone wants to make enough to not have to do it anymore.
posted by atrazine at 6:13 AM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I obviously have not read the referenced book, but I call bullshit. We all saw how Donald Trump "worked all the time". Playing golf with your fellow 1 percenters and claiming it as "business" is not working. Lawyers and specialist doctors are well known for billing extravagantly high rates per hour, yet only working a fraction of each hour and "rounding up". Don't tell me that's the same thing as the work the rest of us do day after day, year after year, without a raise.
I do wish that the psuedo-precise "1%" could disappear from the conversation because it generates this kind of stuff.
First, the "super-rich" and the 1% are not the same, the super-rich are the 0.01% of wealth. The overwhelming majority of the "1%" are people who work highly compensated jobs for very long hours, not people who own assets that would make money in their absence. So Donald Trump has nothing to do with the lives of the mid-ranking executives, financiers, consultants, and lawyers. I can assure you that those people are absolutely not playing golf in the middle of the work day (a work day is every day except for a protected half day on alternate Sundays).
Guess what? Those people also hate the system. They're trapped because our system makes it so awful to be poor that they will do anything to reproduce their class in their children and that is monstrously expensive. Why do you think that bankers and silicon valley dudes are always after "fuck you" money? It's literally central to the culture that this work sucks and everyone wants to make enough to not have to do it anymore.
posted by atrazine at 6:13 AM on March 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
This article hit me very hard and has helped me understand what has happened to me recently.
I have been a management consultant for just under seven years and recently left work with no new job to go to. I am unemployed and living off savings and the goodwill of family, who help me with rent by allowing me to live in a rental property for free. I am definitely a part of the whole "Great Resignation" zeitgeist.
The strange thing is, I wasn't even working that hard when I quit. I was tagged to a client that couldn't use me due to a confidentiality issue. They didn't want to take me off the programme, just in case they did eventually need help (it's easier to hoard resource than let someone go and find a new person). So I was kept in a holding pattern until they could find something else for me to do.
My days were not hard. I was working from home. I clocked on at my desk at 9.30 or sometimes 10, twiddled my thumbs, occasionally helped my team bid for new client work (which involved tons of powerpoint and internal bureaucracy). And generally contributed absolutely nothing useful to anyone.
I found this agonising. I had a terrible crisis at the start of this year. I had hoped some time away from work over Christmas would refresh me but when I came back, the sheer dread of starting work again was too much and I handed in my resignation in my second week back. I had recently changed teams, then hung on for a promotion, all in the hope that it would reinvigorate my interest in the work. It simply didn't happen. As interim reviews neared I began to feel a pressure to appear succesful and useful when I was anything but. I realised I had felt this pressure my entire career and had to stop.
"How can this be burnout", I asked myself. Burn out is something that happens to stressed people with long hours. I was working 9 to 5, sometimes less, and padding my timesheet with busy work. I wasn't overworked, just just empty, miserable, resentful about the wasted opportunity to develop skills I might have valued, and unable to contemplate a lifetime of feeling this.
This article has helped because it has handed the word "burnout" back to me as a descriptor. No, I wasn't exhausted from long hours. But my cynicism and sense of ineffectuality and futility was intense; I had lost faith that the work had any meaning whatsoever. The article has also helped me understand that my desire to quit was not a failure of ethic or character.
Consulting, at the least the kind I did, has little to do with producing good work, or being useful to clients. Nor do the promises to junior staff about pay and advancement come true. The only thing I was getting good at was navigating Byzantine internal bureaucracy which had no value in the outside world. To a lesser extent I was learning the commercials of the business, that subtle art of separating the client from as much of their money as possible and delivering as little as possible in return; often by putting inexperienced people into situations they are not qualified or compensated to handle, and then convincing the client that their output was worth the cost. It was unbearable trying to keep up this charade any longer; I firmly believe only the more sociopathic of my colleagues could find this justifiable or emotionally easy, and they are naturally the ones who progressed into the partnership.
I am in my fourth week of funemployment. I am grateful to have this time, which I must stress again is only possible because some financially succesful people love me and don't want me to be unhappy anymore. I still occasionally feel useless and pathetic for needing to quit. I would like to work again and am concentrating on developing new skills that would hopefully allow me to do a version of my old job that I would find more bearable.
posted by Probabilitics at 12:47 PM on March 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
I have been a management consultant for just under seven years and recently left work with no new job to go to. I am unemployed and living off savings and the goodwill of family, who help me with rent by allowing me to live in a rental property for free. I am definitely a part of the whole "Great Resignation" zeitgeist.
The strange thing is, I wasn't even working that hard when I quit. I was tagged to a client that couldn't use me due to a confidentiality issue. They didn't want to take me off the programme, just in case they did eventually need help (it's easier to hoard resource than let someone go and find a new person). So I was kept in a holding pattern until they could find something else for me to do.
My days were not hard. I was working from home. I clocked on at my desk at 9.30 or sometimes 10, twiddled my thumbs, occasionally helped my team bid for new client work (which involved tons of powerpoint and internal bureaucracy). And generally contributed absolutely nothing useful to anyone.
I found this agonising. I had a terrible crisis at the start of this year. I had hoped some time away from work over Christmas would refresh me but when I came back, the sheer dread of starting work again was too much and I handed in my resignation in my second week back. I had recently changed teams, then hung on for a promotion, all in the hope that it would reinvigorate my interest in the work. It simply didn't happen. As interim reviews neared I began to feel a pressure to appear succesful and useful when I was anything but. I realised I had felt this pressure my entire career and had to stop.
"How can this be burnout", I asked myself. Burn out is something that happens to stressed people with long hours. I was working 9 to 5, sometimes less, and padding my timesheet with busy work. I wasn't overworked, just just empty, miserable, resentful about the wasted opportunity to develop skills I might have valued, and unable to contemplate a lifetime of feeling this.
This article has helped because it has handed the word "burnout" back to me as a descriptor. No, I wasn't exhausted from long hours. But my cynicism and sense of ineffectuality and futility was intense; I had lost faith that the work had any meaning whatsoever. The article has also helped me understand that my desire to quit was not a failure of ethic or character.
Consulting, at the least the kind I did, has little to do with producing good work, or being useful to clients. Nor do the promises to junior staff about pay and advancement come true. The only thing I was getting good at was navigating Byzantine internal bureaucracy which had no value in the outside world. To a lesser extent I was learning the commercials of the business, that subtle art of separating the client from as much of their money as possible and delivering as little as possible in return; often by putting inexperienced people into situations they are not qualified or compensated to handle, and then convincing the client that their output was worth the cost. It was unbearable trying to keep up this charade any longer; I firmly believe only the more sociopathic of my colleagues could find this justifiable or emotionally easy, and they are naturally the ones who progressed into the partnership.
I am in my fourth week of funemployment. I am grateful to have this time, which I must stress again is only possible because some financially succesful people love me and don't want me to be unhappy anymore. I still occasionally feel useless and pathetic for needing to quit. I would like to work again and am concentrating on developing new skills that would hopefully allow me to do a version of my old job that I would find more bearable.
posted by Probabilitics at 12:47 PM on March 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
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posted by adamvasco at 5:37 AM on March 27, 2022 [13 favorites]