I worked at Napster. I saw well over a hundred people burn out over the course of a couple years when we were being sued by half the entertainment industry. I've known people who have burned out during college too from undergrad to grad school. I knew someone who was so burned out, he moved to a anti-technology cult in Canada ten years ago. This had nothing to do with resentment. It had to do with stress.
Just because a few people like Mayer have no need for an emotional or stress outlet doesn't mean burn out doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Maybe for her, stress doesn't exist, but for the vast majority of the world, it is quite real.
The fact that this woman runs a company full of people who have to have approached or are burned out is, quite frankly, amazing.
This hints at the real issue, but it's much worse than that. One could even say it's insidious.
Burnout has been studied for decades by occupational psychologists and is a well understood subject. Whenever a CEO makes pronouncements on stuff and doesn't so much as make reference to existing research on the matter at hand anyone should ask themselves what that person wants.
And stress is not just about demanding experiences. It's about whether they are balanced with (personally meaningful and experienced, not externally defined) satisfying rewards / rewarding experiences.
Sufficient stress may overwhelm any reward. But lesser stress with no reward may still be a problem, especially as a chronic condition.
P.S. I'm not finding a better word than "reward", but I mean it in terms of positive experience, not a "check" or service plaque or the like, and not necessarily or even preferentially part of of the work experience itself. (It might be family, friends, and the ability to pursue personal interests sufficiently.)
>I don't really believe in burnout. A lot of people work really hard for decades and decades, like Winston Churchill and Einstein," says Mayer, a former Google engineer and one of Google's earliest employees.
Logic like this is so baffling. Look, I can think of one or two people that don't seem to suffer form X, so clearly X doesn't exist! Alternate explanation: Churchill and Einstein were freakish and don't represent normal humans, thus using them as exemplars is likely not going to be useful.
The rest is just her extrapolating her personal experience as a template to be writ large with 0 evidence behind its accuracy other than her claims that it 'worked for her' (maybe, people have an amazing ability to conflate 'I was succesful' with 'what I did clearly is right/effective').
I burned out at my last job because it was 9 hour days and I wanted to invent stuff at home. It wasn't so much about the work itself. I also had a mountain of debt so 100% of the money I made was gone the moment I got it. So after 3 years, I was toast, and now I work for myself.
It's going to take a special kind of incentive to get me back in a day job. I'll only work for someone who understands the opportunity cost of me working for them, and that everyone has unique contributions/needs that should be considered. I'm actually hopeful that will happen though, amazingly, even here in little old Idaho.
I worked at Napster. I saw well over a hundred people burn out over the course of a couple years when we were being sued by half the entertainment industry. I've known people who have burned out during college too from undergrad to grad school. I knew someone who was so burned out, he moved to a anti-technology cult in Canada ten years ago. This had nothing to do with resentment. It had to do with stress.
Just because a few people like Mayer have no need for an emotional or stress outlet doesn't mean burn out doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Maybe for her, stress doesn't exist, but for the vast majority of the world, it is quite real.
The fact that this woman runs a company full of people who have to have approached or are burned out is, quite frankly, amazing.