[brandon_wirtz]

I think most the people who write these posts are clueless as to what burnout is. You can give people money, pats on the back, pizza parties but if you run them hard enough they will burn out.

I have been working without rest for a year on a project (http://www.stremor.com) that has had huge amounts of progress. It pays well enough, I like the people I work with, we have achieved great things, and we have gotten recognition. So by all these measures I should have no burn out.

I have been burned out several times. You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out. The Addiction to progress I have had me doing 80 and 100 hour weeks. I was burning my self out. Not because my needs weren't met, but because the brain just can't do that much work for that long.

I would sleep through an entire weekend after 2 weeks of 100 hours. But the addiction to progress and the excitement of the work meant that I didn't want to "go play".

What it really comes down to is people have limits. Those limits are additive. If you are at 40% of your financial stress limit, and 40% of your relationship stress limit, and 40% of your Micro-Manager driving you batty limit, then you are at 120% of your limits. And you can run for a while at over 100% but not indefinitely.

Even when all my Career, financial, physical, sexual, and other limits are at 5% if my Hours of intense concentration limit has been hit I will burn out. And so will employees.

The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output. Every time you push the employee at 150% for 2 days, you need to let them recover at 75% for 4 days.

Burn out isn't a bad thing as long as you can refuel and keep going. It is about managing the sprints, and preventing the burn out from causing failures.

[saidajigumi]

> The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output.

I find it ironic that you describe the very real negative effects of burnout, but then describe a recipe for inducing ... burnout.

May I suggest that you read Tom DeMarco's book Slack? It specifically addresses what I'll term "operational fallacies" like this regarding knowledge work, and covers making an organization more effective (doing the right work) vs. merely efficient (doing lots of work) by adjusting the character and pace of work.

[hkmurakami]

I personally feel that a manger's responsibility to his team is to have enough people so that an individual doesn't have to be pushed to his/her mental limits like this (and also rebuff demands from upper management that go beyond the team's reasonable limits).

It's a difficult balance between one's responsibility to his team members and to the bottom line of the company, but at least for me, a manager (I guess), I like to side with my team. Shareholders can expect a "reasonable return" (like it says in J&J's credo), not "maximum return".

"When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return"

http://www.jnj.com/wps/wcm/connect/c7933f004f5563df9e22be1bb...

[gnosis]

"You can't do genius level work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks and not burn out."

Sometimes you can't do 20 hours a week, or even 10.

A lot depends on the person, what their emotional state is, whether the work is stressful or not, how they deal with stress, how their coworkers, bosses, and customers behave, etc.

Sadly, most companies still treat their employees like robots, and expect them to put work first ahead of all other priorities (above physical and mental health, above sleep, above family, above having any sort of life outside of work).

Very sad, and there's really no indication that things are changing for the better for workers. In fact, with all the outsourcing, "free trade" agreements, and rabid opposition to unions in the tech sector, it's become a race to the bottom.

[Tyrannosaurs]

I agree largely with what you're saying, though not quite with what you say about limits being cumulative.

Personally I find that some stresses multiply more than others. For me lots of areas of work stress are often better than the same amount of stress across your whole life. If there's going to be an amount of shit then I'd rather contain it in one area so I can get away from it from time to time. For me the worst thing is where you have no area where you can get away from it.

[mindcrime]

The task of a good manager is to run an employee up to the point of the Mental limits and make sure all those other limits are at 5% so they can maximize the employee output.

WTF? Not unless your definition of "good manager" includes "motivates employees to on a killing rampage and then commit suicide" or "has numerous employees keel over dead on the job from heart-attacks at an unusually early age".