I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression?
Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.
I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration.
My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.
> Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work?
For me it’s boring, meaningless and ill-defined tasks. Especially if you have many of those assigned without clear priorities.
I actually like a good crisis at work. E.g. a major production system suddenly going down. Suddenly, there is focus, interrupts go away, the desired result is completely clear and you feel like doing something that matters.
On the other end of the spectrum, working on some meaningless feature (e.g. adding some performance metrics to the system management decided could possibly be useful as if they actually bothered to look at them) has me completely exhausted at the end of the day.
We get stressed when job requirements mismatch our abilities. Usually there's too much work, and we deal with burnout. Sometimes, however, the mismatch goes the other way round, you are overqualified for the job and it becomes excruciatingly boring. That's boreout. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boreout
> Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.
The common thread of each of the examples you give above sounds like, "other people are incompetent."
Applying principle of charity and assuming they are all actually that bad, you've got to meet people where they are if you want to work effectively with them. Lots has been written on the responsibility of senior engineers in guiding and improving their teams without necessarily having a specific mandate from management to do so.
Perhaps you might also apply a bit of that charity IRL too though. Examine your perceptions and interactions critically.
There's no requirement in life that you have to make things work with any given team, anyway. The clueless and the checked out exist too. If you're surrounded by them and your not married to the org, consider other work.
Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.
I've been at the opposite end of things. I've had to sprint through terminals to catch flight after an incredibly slow deployment at a hotel like out of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller. I've crunched through long days before critical events, and then crunched even longer days to work through all the issues we came across afterwards. But these things usually resulted in satisfaction more than frustration.
My symptoms have been physical too. I've vomited before going into work at least a dozen times. I had to start embracing it to get on with my day. Thankfully this is no longer an issue for myself but I couldn't even tell you what had changed to start preventing that.