Good analogy presented here, except some situations can be far worse - what he's describing is best case scenario. You can very easily end up in toxic teams/situations or with a toxic boss that makes every day miserable for absolutely no reason. Plus all that other stuff.
Burnout is real and if I get a whiff for it I immediately seek other options. Having experienced it before, it took about 6 months to recover. There are a lot of warning signs I had ignored when it happened.
Unlike the author, I don't find any particular joy in programming for the sake of it. It is difficult though, sometimes you can have an extraordinarily complex task that requires a flash of inspiration to solve. The kind of rumination that leads to these flashes typically comes to me in non-working hours, so I feel like I am never "off." You can't just force that kind of thing. If you're burnt out, that dynamic is even worse.
I like my job (I think..) and am on my third burnout. There's no worse feeling than being barely able to muster pinky finger strength equivalent brain processing power over an 8 hour working day, on high viz projects with tight time lines and daily stand up reporting on progress. Today I literally noped to bed with the laptop, looked at the problem a few times and concluded it can wait until Monday.
Yeah, true. I learnt to avoid those pretty quickly thanks to my fairly disagreeable and risk-tolerant nature. Still had some not very good experiences though.
Burnout is real and if I get a whiff for it I immediately seek other options. Having experienced it before, it took about 6 months to recover. There are a lot of warning signs I had ignored when it happened.
Unlike the author, I don't find any particular joy in programming for the sake of it. It is difficult though, sometimes you can have an extraordinarily complex task that requires a flash of inspiration to solve. The kind of rumination that leads to these flashes typically comes to me in non-working hours, so I feel like I am never "off." You can't just force that kind of thing. If you're burnt out, that dynamic is even worse.