For the third time in my career in tech, I’m experiencing burn-out.
Part of it has to do with working at a start-up. But I think much of it can be attributed to what it’s like working white collar jobs in 2023, compared to twenty, thirty, forty years ago.
The promise of advancing tech was a reduction in workload. Yes it automated straight-forward tasks, but the vacuum did not provide a reprieve. Those tasks were simply replaced with ones requiring a higher cognitive load. Eliminated were the inherent breaks of walking to the printer or now with GitHub Copilot, even writing easy code. I always have to be “on”.
Then there’s communication. Whereas before you could only have a conversation with one person at a time or spend time drafting a letter – it’s now commonplace to have three conversations simultaneously on Slack. Again, no break. That’s also why I look at Shopify’s derision of meetings with dismay; I get it – meetings can be a waste, but it’s yet more mental pauses eliminated.
Finally, work used to end with leaving the office. That’s not standard anymore. Like so many in this business, I’m regularly on call and not compensated for it; when I’m not on call I’m still expected to be reachable 24/7, and my days get stretched by the other timezones some of our colleagues are in. Part of that is a scope creep to my occupation; we’re not just writing code but making sure production stays up, while taking advantage of that attention to pump out more features with less testing, causing more downtime.
I’m so exhausted. On my weekdays, I get up, go to work, and then as soon as I’m done I go to bed. The only time I have energy to do anything is on weekends. And yet I feel fortunate – I’ve watched so many careers outright vanish as a result of automation with nothing to replace them, and more yet face significant reductions in quality of life.
I feel bleak about it; everything is trending worse not better.