I've never personally experienced true burnout, but I also have a policy of taking it seriously and making sure that I do something about it long before it becomes a permanent trauma, and I have had to call a couple of multi-week vacations with relatively short notice, or perhaps announce a vacation a month before the end of some important project. Sometimes it's even as simple as waking up on Friday and just realizing that today is a "Nope!" and taking it off. I think if you nip it in the bud you often may not even need to do it that often. But take it seriously.

And if your job won't let you do that, take seriously the possibility of finding a new one. Yeah, finding a new job sucks, but permanently burning out sucks way more.

Sometimes I'm just really not feeling like work and take a day off. Unless something important is happening that day, management could care less. Sometime I stay up late the night before because something caught my attention outside work and I couldn't put it down. I'll take the next day off.

Helps that my company have a seemingly generous PTO policy (at 5 years it a bit more than a day per paycheck (every other Friday)). If you're not a problem employee everyone just wishes you a good day.

But, I don't think I really felt burnout before the pandemic. Working alone has pushed me to the point where focusing feels like a strenuous task. My most productive stints (in my subjective self-opinion) are when I'm working with other people on a call (my role is basically half research / half implementing it).

Part of me hopes going back into the office will help calm my mind but I'm just not sure.

I'm on medication now, going through therapy, and still at my current gig doing better than ever.

So, what I want to say is that if you are concerned you are burnt out - it's very possible work is burning you out, but it's also possible to seek treatment before making a big decision like leaving a workplace with tons of great benefits and healthcare to support you.

I also suffered burnout at a job, but I didn't realize it until I was receiving therapy related to my anxiety. I don't know anything about meds or ADHD since that isn't anything I have experience with, but I think it's worth doing some introspection on one's self to see if there are thoughts or tendencies that are also there underneath the burnout.

To be clear again, I am not advocating for everyone to assume their burnout is due to some sort of mental health issue - but to also not discredit exploring this prior to making a big emotional decision like leaving a job, and possibly making symptoms even worse if not addressed.

I've had a lot of hard times in life, including the end of a relationship that for some reason left me with tremors in my hands for a couple years afterwards. That eventually went away. I know what suffering is, I can push through it for sure.

Today I'm in the same job, but I think I burned a few work relationships. Not on purpose, I certainly didn't want to. But I'm able to again get myself to work, I no longer feel like I can't control my own actions.

I think everything above is not burnout, but I've never had the luxury of burnout. I'm on my own and I think lose my marriage if I lost my income, I don't want that to happen, so it's do or die. I'm expecting to die early of cancer or other ailment but with no family support financially/emotionally/psychologically, in fact they drain people.. it's pretty much my place in life to make a rich man richer and that's the end of it. I'm happy I can at least be my own man and hold a job. My journey has changed my political view on the world, I started off being one of those competent, capable right wing guys. I still am competent and capable, but I now view the world as unnecessarily harsh on those not born at the finish line. I believe for people that reach retirement age, at bare minimum, Social Security should be guaranteed to be there waiting.

I would do the same thing you are. Leave once they're into college or otherwise move out. A spouse can think you're just some lazy, but it's harder than ever to maintain employment and being a developer is actually more stressful, not less. It always is for me, I'm pushed pretty hard. It's definitely not loving. I told my wife who has been struggling that we'll use all our resources to make her comfortable. To quit her job or whatever changes we need to make to where we live and the rest. My condolences to you, I think it's impossible to know what type of person you're with until you're in certain situations like that.

While true, this can be a very self-defeating way of thinking about it. The reality is that we are paid quite well, and it takes an entity with lots of resources to be willing to take on the risk of a fulltime hire like us.

It's not easy to build a business that gets to that stage; believe me, I tried. So on the whole "working for the man" is a very rational choice, your end of the deal isn't too bad in the big picture, and you shouldn't feel bad about it.

What you're describing is far more rare. Building a product out with no buyer waiting at all. It happens, but that's generally known as bad business and a prototype is at least shopped around before any big money goes in. Usually the client has already signed on to start paying as soon as I join to work on it.

The rich man you're making richer is typically only different from you in that he's paying you less than the value you're creating. He's just holding the contract as a middle-man and his value add is perhaps limited to managing the project or relationship at most. Which you can end up handling as well in most cases.

The way you know my story is reality is because anywhere the money does not come in, you're let go. It's all contingent on you paying your own way and making the employer wealthier than they already likely are.

Employment is actually not a favor as people see it. It's a predatory arrangement with an extreme imbalance of power in the employer-employee relationship.

Finding a workers' cooperative resolves this conflict, or a professional lobbying organization (which are essentially de facto unions).

That's it. Reminds me of the start of Allen Ginsberg's poem America, one of my all-time favorites:

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. [1]

[1] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49305/america-56d22b4...

Then, I got into tech. I hear "war stories" from people about sleeping under their desk at their cubicles. I hear people tell jokes about how their career strains their marriage. I hear about people wasting their 20's working every hour they can for a FAANG to get ahead... It was like that whole "work ethic gets you ahead" culture from my childhood got turned up to 11.

I'm meandering here but overall that poem reminded me of a blog post from long ago stating "Never Save Anything for the Swim Back. Ever." [1] which was introduced to me by a manager using it as justification to work a 60+ hour crunch week. I guess where I'm going here is these sort of idealizations of fiction where "work ethic trumps all" really clash with this poem. I feel like idealizations like this serve the interests of those who are capitalizing off of labor more than they do the general worker/person.

[1] https://joshldavis.com/2013/08/31/never-save-anything-for-th...

You come first. No exceptions.

I feel the same way at my FANG job. The spiral has been astounding.

Most people I know at the same company already see therapists and take SSRIs. I know I could go down that path and force my body to adjust and perform as I need it, as if my body and mind are a horse that just needs the right kind of whip to get racing. It feels so much healthier and less stressful to leave and address my root cause (the isolation of wfh).

Currently looking for a new in-office job outside of FANG in a more chill location, and planning on quitting in 3 weeks regardless of the outcome.

I had a similar experience 7 years ago (also after a year of working remotely), and the freedom I felt after quitting was sweeter than any amount of money they could paid me.

Take care

Bit it's a different business so it feels fresh enough.