Last week I quit my job due to “burnout”. The company I worked for was amazing. I worked with excellent people who I enjoyed being around. Good codebase. Plenty of autonomy. Flexible and very reasonable working hours, flexible working arrangements. I was never under any pressure. Company provided all the support I could ever ask for. It was a dream job.
And yet when I sat down to write code, I couldn’t do it. It’s difficult to describe - I was completely paralysed. The simplest of tasks required insurmountable effort. And trying to deal with that, day in day out, is the “burnout”.
Burnout may be likely or common in bad environments, but it isn’t the sole cause. In my case I can’t blame the company or the environment. It was about as far away from toxic as you can get.
I’m planning to take about a year off work, because that’s what the internet says I should do. But I really don’t understand what caused this to happen, or what I could do in the future to prevent it.
And yet when I sat down to write code, I couldn’t do it. It’s difficult to describe - I was completely paralysed. The simplest of tasks required insurmountable effort. And trying to deal with that, day in day out, is the “burnout”.
Burnout may be likely or common in bad environments, but it isn’t the sole cause. In my case I can’t blame the company or the environment. It was about as far away from toxic as you can get.
I’m planning to take about a year off work, because that’s what the internet says I should do. But I really don’t understand what caused this to happen, or what I could do in the future to prevent it.