Coding is something that fascinates programmers and software developers. You might have started coding for fun; it was your hobby, then it became your passion, and your passion became your job. In the beginning, you might have enjoyed it very much. You even stretched yourself and doubled your effort, worked for extra hours and had sleepless nights to prove the best programmer. After quite some time, you start experiencing fatigue even without doing anything. You lose your passion for coding or overload yourself with tasks, but you won’t achieve anything. Well, all these are signs of burnout in programming.
When it comes to burnout, no one is safe. Regardless of the industry, burnout is a daily reality that many employees face while at work. The tech industry is affected the most because of the high demand for productivity and work complexities. Working in the tech industry comes with plenty of fringe benefits. The pay is satisfactory, the job is beneficial, and there is room for development. When it comes to prompt working environments, some risks are associated with such environments. Developers are at a higher risk of burning out than employees in other industries. Burnout is a persistent and severe challenge in the tech industry. It usually happens that developers work very hard for extended periods, but they don’t seem to accomplish anything.
When you spot signs of burnout, take action before it’s too late. Developer burnout is very dangerous as it can make developers quit programming. Every programmer gets burnout at least once in their career. Therefore, it’s essential to be prepared for it when it comes.
What is developer burnout?
Burnout is a state of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion that involves a sense of minimised accomplishment and loss of personal identity. Professionals debate whether burnout is an actual disorder.
The World Health Organisation defined burnout as a sense of disorder objectified by dreadful workplace stress that has not been adequately managed. The idea of workplace burn was initially set forth by Herbert Freudenberger in 1974. From the research, he conducted on his workmates. He concluded that most burnout signs and patterns are related to persistent work stress.
Software development is very challenging, but you can hardly compare it to law, medicine or military professions regarding stress levels. The variation is that there are no boundaries to limit the stress in software engineering. The deadlines are usually unrealistic and are placed to make developers work faster and increase productivity. Managers and clients are impatient, which puts developers in a continuous state of aiming at a moving target since the tech changes swiftly and there is a lot of pressure.
Causes of Developer Burnout and What Managers can do to prevent it
When developers are affected by burnout, they cannot be productive or even think straight. They’re usually working all the time but don’t get anything done. Many reasons can cause developer burnout, and below are some of them as discussed.
Chaotic and Messy Work Environment. Developers require a very organised and quiet environment to execute their tasks without interruptions and obstructions. A disorganised workplace decreases productivity, whether it’s an actual office or a home office. You need to work in an environment where you know where to turn for questions, your tools are within reach, and you get peace of mind. Burnout is a very common workplace where employees feel insecure.
Solution: Put in place a filing system, acquire drawers, filing cabinets and other organisation tools that make your workplace more organised and productive. Reduce noise pollution around the workplace so that developers can have peace of mind.
Company Culture. Some organisations promote extensive working hours, and software development companies are no exception. Due to the complex task assigned to developers, they’re forced to work for extended hours to try and meet their targets. Others are asked by their managers to stay and try to get the job done. Because they’re always overwhelmed, developers get affected by burnout with time.
Solution: Establish a well-defined workplace and utilise it. Dedicate yourself to work for a specific number of hours and follow it, except in only extreme situations. Then you can opt for hours.
Pressure for Deadline. Developers are usually occupied with numerous complex tasks that they have to deliver on a short deadline. This makes them work under pressure, overthink and work for longer hours. In a fast-moving and stressful workplace, no employee will be able to execute their work without suffering burnout.
Solution: Talk to your boss directly, and explain why a particular project might take longer than anticipated to end. You can also limit your task during work to end the day with an accomplishment.
Numerous and Complex Tasks. When you have assignments parallel to your capacity, you can effortlessly get the work done and have time to rest, recover, and space for personal improvement. But when you’re loaded with numerous tasks, you barely have time to restore balance. It’s strictly work work work, and the result will be burnout.
Solution. Prioritise your work and develop a feasible plan of how you’re to accomplish the workload. You might as well delegate some of the workloads to some of your colleagues.
Mismatched Values. When you highly value a belief that your company does not, you may fail to resonate with your work and the organisation you work for. This can significantly drop your motivation to work hard and be persistent. Beliefs, ideas and reasons are usually deeply implanted in employees and companies. Therefore, be careful when choosing a company you’re to work for. It has to value the same beliefs and ideals as you. Employees in this situation usually find their jobs senseless, and as a result, they develop a burnout.
Solution. Consider whether managers in the company can adjust to the company’s values. If you spot room for adjustments, discuss with them to see if they can align the company values with yours so you might fit in nicely.
The Stages of Burnout
Burnout is like any other condition, and symptoms may differ from one person to another. In 1981, two authors, Robert Veninga and James Spradley, published a book explaining the five stages of burnout in association with work. Since burnout is ideally a work-related challenge, managers should be careful when looking for patterns and taking action.
- The Honeymoon Phase
The first stage of burnout is where developers are at their best. This stage comes with energy and optimism. It’s specifically relevant to a developer who’s new at the job or has been assigned new work and initiatives. In this stage, employees do not show or possess any signs of burnout. Still, they are usually experiencing job satisfaction, enthusiasm and commitment that results in productivity and better creativity. At this stage, you typically want to prove your skills and perform your best.
- The Onset of Stress Phase
Eventually, the honeymoon phase diminishes; some days are less satisfactory than others. You begin to notice various ups and downs with your job. There is job dissatisfaction, and productivity dwindles. At this stage, you begin to see family and friends less and lack time for your personal needs. You start to experience physical fatigue with time, making it hard to sleep and avail yourself of activities outside of work. As this stage kicks in, pay attention to any material and mental signs as you might lose focus and become less productive.
- The Chronic Stress Phase
If developers fail to manage job stressors, their signs and symptoms in stage two will worsen. You start experiencing high-stress levels regularly and are persistent. As the stress piles up, you begin to struggle with motivation, you postpone your tasks, and your efforts do not seem to drive the same productivity as before. Developers in this stage start obsessing about frustrations from work, experience hopelessness and self-doubt, and might withdraw from work-related conservations.
- The Burnout Phase
This is the phase where you set foot on your limit and cannot operate as you usually would. At this stage, the several indications experienced in the preceding steps escalate and begin to occur continuously, perhaps reaching a critical point. This makes it difficult for you to meet work demands. The repetitive sense of failure and ineffectiveness leads to the idea of despair and disillusionment. At times, you might feel numb and come against maximum self-doubt. Physical symptoms become more intense, causing chronic headaches and gastrointestinal issues.
- The Habitual Burnout Phase
This is the last stage of burnout. You may not recover from burnout in this stage because its symptoms are now implanted in your life. They can easily be mistaken for physical or emotional problems, yet it’s just burnout. Burnout should be treated when it is spotted, or it will eventually cause anxiety and depression. At this stage, efforts to heal yourself from burnout are usually more demanding than before. At this point, you lose interest in your hobbies, you don’t feel like doing anything, and you’re always sad and depressed.
How to Avoid Burnout?
It’s usually challenging to fix burnout when you’ve been affected for weeks or months. Try as much as you can to choose a lifestyle where you continue to execute your work in a way where you can prevent yourself from burnout. Burning out diminishes your productivity to almost zero and makes your life sorrowful. Burnout is a pit you don’t want to fall into. It’s intense that you’ll have to struggle to get out of it. Therefore, avoid it before it’s too late. Here are some tips you can utilise to prevent burnout.
- Evaluate your work tasks, prioritise the essential duties and handle them first. Create ranking criteria for every task and inspect the quantity of effort required to execute each task. Do away with stuff that has less impact and calls for extensive action. Align your attention and focus to the stuff that requires minimum effort and has a positive impact
- Don’t stick to the same approach to doing things. Working with the same old tech stack day in and day out makes you bored and limits your creativity at work. Some developers have jobs where their tasks don’t allow them to exploit several technologies or change approaches. Still, you can find a way to do things in your style. Allocate about 20% of your time to acquiring new tech knowledge or building your project and work plan. Try new libraries, participate in open source and explore ventures past your comfort zone. This is not a short-term benefit, but it will be of use in the long run. This approach will improve your productivity and make your job better.
- Take constant breaks throughout the day. Working for extended hours in front of a computer without breathing space reduces your productivity much as it looks like hard work. Scientifically, a human being’s productivity steeply reduces after four hours of deep work. So, stretching or taking a walk every hour helps you put your brain together and focus more. You might talk to your workmates and ask them whether they need some assistance with their work or something. In coding, taking a break is essential, especially when debugging a project.
- Don’t code throughout. Give yourself a break from programming at least every three months and go for a vacation. This is one of the best approaches and refreshing things you can utilise to avoid burnout. Take a break and try to spend time with family and friends. Catch up with your hobbies such as reading novels, listening to podcasts or writing articles.
How to Recover from Burnout
Despite the clutch that burnout has over many developers, there is still hope for recovery. There is no shortcut to recovery from burnout, and it does not go away by itself. Instead, it worsens when the primary issue causing it is not addressed. Here are some tips you can implant in your life to help you recover from burnout and have a healthier state of mind.
Keep tabs on your stress levels. This does not matter whether you’re a developer or not, acquire stress trackers to help monitor your anxiety. Trackers also assist you in acknowledging your stress patterns and behaviours and how you react to them. Also, trackers will help you pay more attention to rising stress levels. So you can tackle them when they’re still weak.
Be aware of your stressors. Recognising your stress triggers helps you avoid them when you feel the stress rising again. Pay attention to the incidents, situations and people that repeatedly trigger anxiety. Identifying your stressors helps you plan on how to reduce the stress levels.
Avoid overworking. Sometimes you can say no in your job when allocated several tasks. It’s better to focus on 3-5 functions at a time rather than overburdening yourself with many tasks without concentrating on them. Be realistic with tasks you can execute and those you can not do with the available resources.
Change your working environment. You can change your office and code outside your laptop. If you use Windows, try moving to Linux or Mac. You can also try changing your programming language and learn new things that will assist you in getting your passion back.
Seek help from a professional therapist. It’s encouraged to start seeing a professional therapist when facing burnout at work. When you talk to a therapist, they will know your problem and experience and advise accordingly. Sometimes personal issues can also cause burnout at work, so that a therapist will help you separate work from personal life.
Conclusion
If you burn out, you will not be productive. Therefore, it’s essential to take a break when you spot any signs of burnout. These signs might include deadline pressure, mismatched values, complex tasks, etc. Burnout is like any other condition. It can not go away by itself if you don’t do something about it. To recover from burnout, you’ll have to seek help from a therapist, track your stress levels or change your working environment. These small steps will assist you in avoiding the deadly path of burnout.
