Five ways to burn for a programmer

From translator
Burnout in a programmer's life can happen for a variety of reasons; If we aim at enumerating all the ways in which it creeps up on us, then this listing alone will take a lot of time. This is another reason why you should not underestimate the process of burnout - otherwise one day you will have to find a way back, and it can cost you a lot. The last line is not at all unsubstantiated - only the love of the code once helped me - when it seemed that everything was already fed up and didn’t want anything, the reading of McConnell turned up inspired memories of how I once liked programming. And today I like to do it again.
And now - the word author.

I moved away from my burnout only recently - despite the fact that it happened a few years ago. Yes, I was not easy ... very difficult. When I think about what happened, many reasons come to mind about what happened to me - but the most interesting thing is that I have never attached importance to each of them. Want to repeat my path and burn out? Please, I have a whole list ready, how to proceed in this case:

1. To think about the project and only about it

Admit to yourself: a business wants you to create the best product “for our customers.” You put off indefinitely any functionality due to the fact that you do not have time to deadline. You plan the project and analyze it from all sides in order to break it up into several “digestible” parts, which then have to be embodied by one of the coders (in the role of a monkey, or code monkey, by the way, you can be one). You create a working prototype, then get feedback and do another iteration. And all this - without a single thought about yourself loved.

In this case, I have news for you: once you started programming just because you enjoyed this activity. Why not continue to do it because you have fun again? Spend quite a bit of time to make the feature that you so wanted to see. Or throw yourself a little challenge - do something that previously seemed impossible to you. Show the result to all your friends, and do not just collect "feedback" - praise what you did.
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2. Negative attitude towards everything

- Familiar with Docker? Sucks! Who will ever entrust their production to a new, unstable toy? ..
- go? Am I like the one who really wants to write each library by himself? .. All I need is already in PyPI. And in general, the project I'm working on is so severely limited in the choice of technologies that I don’t need all this.
- Jenkins, speak? In the yard that 2008? ..

To fall into this trap is very easy. It is easy to tell other people what choice is wrong. I have a theory that this is connected with the programmer’s activity itself - we constantly have to look for errors in our code and fix them, because if we don’t find them, someone else will find them.

But it does not seem to me that we should be so negatively disposed about our work, the decisions made (even in the case when these are not our decisions) and what we are working on. The best of the projects in which I had the opportunity to participate were such because of the good and positive-minded teams. We liked to come to work every morning, discuss our project with each other, restrain critics and turn their efforts into good.

3. Use only familiar means, because it's faster

You are a Java + Spring guru + Hibernate. Or suppose no one even dares to question your knowledge of Python. Each of your projects, including personal ones, should be made on what you know best - because the main thing is business, right? Well, not that.

Although it speaks well of you as an “entrepreneur”, it is better to create a prototype and play around with it, becoming an expert in some new unfamiliar technology - and you can safely choose new, still “immature” means. Advice, it would seem obvious and repeated at every corner - but the more experience you get, the harder it becomes to follow it.

4. Often change jobs

Also known as the "pursuit of luck." It became boring to do what you are working on now? Is it itching somewhere? Time to blow the dust off your resume!

This is a very, very, very bad practice.

When you quickly change several places of work, it usually helps your salary to grow a little, but you yourself take away such buns as:

• Growth in the company (developer -> manager -> director)
• The acquisition of expertise in their field. For the sake of obtaining a scientific degree, people spend from 4 to 6 years - just imagine how much you can learn in such a period of time at work.
• Everything will have to start over.
• If you are a good developer, you will first have to prove it before someone listens to you.

How does all this relate to burnout? Your career is marking time, you do not delve into any of the topics (develop only the breadth of knowledge), people in new jobs do not trust you, and you constantly have to prove something to someone.

5. Work very hard, ignoring your life.

“You don’t have to work a lot, but the best prefer this way.” You want to impress the bosses, or to hell with him with the bosses - yourself, and give up all your strength to have time for an unattainable deadline. You have time to pass the project on time and with all the features you wanted to do. You are a true hero, and - lucky! - even get a bonus.

For example, for the first time, this is all wonderful. But what about the second, third? .. Not always and not everything goes smoothly. This is a time bomb - you never know which of the "times" will explode.

TL; DR
Burn out - it's easy!
If you want to burn out, just use the above methods.