[CaptSpify]

I would like to interject: This heavily depends on the boss. I've seen great bosses who will make stuff like this happen, and I've seen terrible bosses who don't give a shit. Make sure you work for the right-kind of boss if you are going to take this approach!

[baconner]

Speaking as a boss who I'd like to think falls into the former category... If you don't ask you won't know what they'll do for you or not. Could be your boss doesn't help or makes it worse then you know exactly what to do next - quit,move to another team, or take it to hr id its really hostile. That dick boss is probably the reason for your burnout (aka situational depression caused by work) so the solution is in moving on.

[eitally]

[Also as a boss] I'm fully convinced that a lot of the badmouthing you hear about "bad bosses" comes from people who never made any effort to create a functional bidirectional trust relationship with their boss. There certainly are bad bosses, and I would never claim otherwise, but I think we'd all be better off if there was as much employee development training on "how to build a relationship with your boss" as there is "how to be a boss" training.

[Flow]

I suspect many hacker types do have problems with the small talk, I know I do.

When I broke down and got sick I started cognitive behavioral therapy and among the things we talked about was expectations. It turned out that I didn't really know what my boss' expectation of me was. What I thought his expectation was were one of the things that broke me. And it was all fantasy. Lesson learned. Be frank and honest, don't be afraid to talk to your boss. Make sure you get answers that are explicit and something you understand. Make sure it's not cloudy company and management pep talk that you can't even remember a few minutes after the meeting.

Me and my boss talked a lot, and I ended staying in the company, but switched boss. :)

[baconner]

This is a great point. More times than I'd like to admit I've found out someone working for me had worked themselves up worried about something that we could've resolved in 5 min with a simple conversation. If you're anxious about something at work just come our with it and find out where you really stand. The thing about worrying is the vast majority of the time it's wasted on things that aren't true or will never happen.

Speaking on behalf of all non sucky bosses don't let issues fester - just tell us what's up. Maybe we can help.

[Ntrails]

The worst case scenario is your boss does nothing, you speak to your bosses boss who also does nothing, and you quit because that's your only route to retaining sanity which is essentially what happens if you don't talk to anyone anyway.

[dllthomas]

"Make sure you work for the right-kind of boss if you are going to take this approach!"

Also if you aren't going to take this approach (if you have the luxury).