How to address work stress: is it burnout or time to move on?

Find yourself not enjoying work? Are you bored, disengaged, unhappy, overworked, or underpaid? In any job, remote or hybrid or on-site, finding fulfillment in work is hard. There comes a time when you might ask yourself if you’re burnt out, or if it’s time to go.

It’s hard to write about a current job without worrying someone might actually read the words and put together you’re talking about them. But isn’t that kind of the point? Ranting about unhappiness at work is an unhealthy way of expressing genuine feelings of difficulty. Ones that are actually better spoken.

While this can be difficult, it’s common in the modern workforce for workplaces to encourage employee engagement, on all levels. It most often manifests as super positive slack messages with a zillion emojis and company-wide zoom meetings with virtual games and polls and confetti.

But when it comes to reality and actually challenging circumstances, the confetti gets a little lost. What happens when you have a conflict with a manager or co-worker? What happens when a negative communication practice that has been previously called out, continues to occur? What happens when you lose interest in your job, feel unfulfilled, feel disresepected or micromanaged?

And what happens if the people doing it are your immediate superiors who are the leadership level of the company?

But let’s back up. Before getting into how to deal with workplace problems, let’s get into the feelings.

Diagnose

I currently feel blah about work. I’m currently a frontend developer making websites and in process leading a major website migration. I like the technical work. It’s interesting and challenging. I like that I’m getting to choose technologies. It’s also a-lot. It’s a huge task seamlessly moving a medium-to-large scale content website with a giant library of posts that all need to remain inteact. In tandem, it’s also big trying to plan how the company’s content creation processes will change and be affected by these choices moving forward.

I am also being seriously micromanaged. When I started, I had a great manager that I would call more of a friend than a higher up. There was trust, value, respect. That went out the window over the past 4-5 months. Mangers changes, priorities changes, processes changed, workflow changed, and management style changed. For the worse. And it’s taken a toll.

I am no longer engaged. I don’t care about the company or its goals beyond getting a paycheck. And having that be a pretty decent paycheck makes it tricky contemplating new jobs with two kids. I still get semi lost in technical problems and finding solutions but more than anything, I realize I am working for someone else.

Not my vision

My job is not my vision. It’s not my company. The product is not one I care about or would use if I didn’t work there. The owner is nice enough, but clearly in it for himself and to further his own brand. Which is fine. In theory there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s just not mine.

And it might be age but I’m realizing more lately that the time I spend on someone else’s vision is time I don’t spend on my own. Or it’s time and energy of mine that I spend dedicated to someone else.

Technically that’s the definition of a job: get paid for work you do in service of something else. You can’t expect any job to be a miracle of complete satisfaction. Even doctors work at hospitals and clinics run by other people, by higher ups, and have to answer to something bigger.

2 out of 3

I had a friend once tell me you can hope for 2 out of 3 at any job: 1) Code/product/work, 2) people/culture, 3) pay/compensation.

If the product/work is good, and the people are good, you can sort of handle a lower salary. If the pay is good, and the people are good, you can handle a mediocre culture. More than making the 3rd thing less bad, it’s about more or less knowing you can’t have it all in any job.

But what about when only one box is ticked? What if you’re just not into it?

Burnout

A lot of small companies and startups, especially in the tech world, have heaps of work and tight timelines. My current place has big ambitions which hinge on website development. There are new products that need new websites, new technologies, feature requests, new markets, new designs - there is no end. After only 8-9 months I am fried.

And while I like the work technically, I find my mind being overloaded. A lot. And any feeling of satisfaction from completing a task vanishes in the shadow of the next thing.

And it’s not just the work.

It’s the management. It’s the culture. From top down, life has changed. Deadlines are tighter, expectations are higher, communication needs to be more and faster. Positivity is less. I spend a third of my day telling people what I did. And y0ou have to make it sound good, so you can’t just point-form it; you need to write something good that sounds dense and like it took time.

So, what do you do?

I was shocked to read (this article)[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/still-mind/202210/knowing-when-its-time-to-quit-your-job] and find that I said yes to all but one of the criteria for “When to go”. And while shocked, I was also enlightened to see it in plain view. If I am saying yes to these questions, what does that say about where I am? And what I want?

Talk to and/or find allies

It’s good to have friends, especially friends in high(er) places. If you can’t talk to your boss or immediate manager, try to find people that are supportive and empathetic, and ideally ones that can help you get your issues heard, or offer advice.

A previous manager I had was supportive and encouraging. He bridged the gap for me on a number of occasions when I had questions and disagreed with management on strategy decisions. Later after I moved to another team, it was harder to get help from him with my new manager, but he remained an ally that was someone I could talk to and get advice from.

Talk to HR

Any company worth its salt should at minimum have an HR consultant on staff. As small and owner-operated as any company may be, there has to be a way for staff to work and exist and communicate honestly and freely.

Many companies now too are having quarterly “pulse-checks” to (on paper) empower employees, and offer a way for staff to air gripes, successes, failures etc. Bust despite this and the best efforts of HR managers and AI software everywhere, it doesn’t often mean anything, do anything, or go anywhere.

Consider the 2 our of 3

Could you improve one of the three and make life better? More money always helps, at least for a while. Better culture, less micromanagement, a promotion, something to make day to day more fun? Could the product/code/whatever you’re working on be better? New tech, new tasks, new approaches, more input, more autonomy?

If you answer no to any of these, or shrug your shoulders, it might be time to consider something new.

Roadmap to change

My wife made a great suggestion chatting about this. Come up with a plan for how to change what you don’t like. Call it an action plan, make bullets, and present it to whoever in your chain can do something about it. It can be hard asking for things you want when it’s possible your job just doesn’t allow for it, or your superiors won’t give it. But it’s better to ask than to not. If you can spell out the change you want to see, there’s a better chance you will either a) provide an actionable way for management and yourself to improve your situation, or b) get a firm No, that’s not gonna happen.

When to go

After a series of events over the past months, I’ve started looking for new jobs. I don’t at all love the job hunt. And apparently the market is cool and difficult right now for what I do. But it excites me more to consider a new job than it does to continue slugging it out where I am. What I’m trying to do differently this time is stick out the job until I actually get something better in place.

The trick will be how long I can manage that before losing it.

Conclusion

In the end, it’s tricky knowing what to do when you’re unhappy at work. Do you stay, try to make things better, ask for what you want, see if someone can address it? Or do you bail?

One thing to note that I’ve found is it’s hard for organizations of almost any size to really change.