Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
48 lines (38 loc) · 2.63 KB

04 - lets-talk-burnout-by-dave-rupert.md

File metadata and controls

48 lines (38 loc) · 2.63 KB
Raw

Let's Talk About Burnout (#burnout)

By Dave Rupert (@davatron5000) from Paravel Inc. on October 9th, 2017 @ 3:00PM

Description

The tech industry regards burnout like a weird badge of honor. Dave Ruperts holds a roundtable conversation to talk about burnout in the tech industry--bring your stories and ideas how to stop it.

Talk

  • #1 Rule for a Safe Discussion: No throwing coworkers under the bus
  • Act 1: A Case Study
    • You feel like you're designing / building the same thing over and over
  • Act 2: Causes & Effects
    • Suggestions to Causes of Burnout w/ Audience Participation:
      • The fear that it is never going to go away
      • No vacation
      • Constantly having to learn something else
      • Feeling of control over your work
      • Never really being off work since you're constantly hustling
      • Endless firefighting
      • All people see is that things don't ship and miss all the work that has been put into it so far
      • The feeling that your work is insignificant in relation to what is going on with the rest of the world
      • Under representation, sexism & racism are concerns that are draining to people.
        • "Sometimes I want to see someone else that looks like me."
      • As a freelancer, fear of leaving money on the table and not being able to say no to anything as a result
  • Act 3: Prevention & Cures
    • Boundaries to help signal when things have gone too far
    • Safety valve as far as giving you breaks from the work that's growing dull. Example of working on a project for 4 weeks and then getting a day to do whatever you want
    • Being conscious about whether what you're doing is causing other people stress (i.e., Talking about things to do on Slack that stresses other people out)
    • Having "tribes" of people that do something completely unrelated to the day to day
    • Being cognizant of time zones when pinging people
    • Recovery takes longer than people realize
    • Go into the woods with no devices
    • Getting perspective on projects by talking to people outside your project

Memorable Quotes

"How many more homepages can I make? The answer is 4 this year." - Dave Rupert

"Someone else's cure to burnout was to create this JS framework, which causes more burnout to all these other people." - Dave Rupert

"Your inbox is like a to-do list that someone else can use to give you things to do." - Dave Rupert's co-worker

Presentation Notes

  • Clever parody of NPR: This is a Developer's Life
  • The story-telling method is refreshing
  • Has a slide with [Insert Ideas Here] and starts a dialogue with the audience