Don’t call in sick.
Don’t take vacation.
Work long hours.
Always be on call.
Don’t complain you’re tired.
Don’t show any weakness.
Don’t go to the doctor.
It’s all bullshit.
So my whole working life I’ve had this drilled into me. That taking time off is slacking. That calling in sick or taking care of yourself is weakness. That if you’re not working all the time, not doing overtime, you’re not pulling your weight. You’re letting your team down.
It’s all bullshit.
The technology industry is particularly bad at this it seems. Everyone is expected to go above and beyond. All the time.
You can’t live that way. If you’re lucky you’ll survive. Many aren’t lucky.
So far I count myself to be relatively lucky. I’ve burnt out a couple of times in the past, it’s not fun. It’s difficult to recover from if you don’t have the support around you to identify the issues and work to resolve them.
One time I broke down in tears in the office & quit because I couldn’t handle the pressure. Luckily the office manager at the time recognized it, and helped steer me in the right direction. It still took a while to get myself right again.
Not long after that I started seeing various high profile people I follow on twitter talking about self-care, what it means, why it’s important. It’s easy to read those kinds of things and think it will never happen to you. Chances are, if you’ve been in the industry for any good length of time it already has, or you’ve come close.
I’ve been trying hard over the past couple of years to keep an internal check on my state of mind. It’s not easy. Often I’ve identified times when I’ve been overdoing it, and can see burnout approaching and have been able to dial things back a bit and take some time. A half day here, a long weekend there. It helps a little.
More recently, I’ve found it harder and harder to keep burnout at bay. I’ve found more frustration at work that I have previously. Changes in leadership & staff issues all around me. Stress outside work as well feeding into it all.
Earlier this year, I found myself standing in the middle of the full office yelling at my executive about some issues he wasn’t addressing. That’s a pretty big red flag. I’m lucky I didn’t get fired. I pretty much immediately took a week off to try to sort myself out before I did something really stupid.
A week off, with no on-call. No laptop. Forced myself to not check email. It helped, but didn’t solve any of the issues. Two days after returning to work, the frustration and anger was already building back up.
Now, most of the time I overdo things, I get sick long before my mental state goes out the window. In the past, that meant I’d be out for 4-5 days with some kind of cold or flu like symptoms every couple of months. It took me a LONG time to recognize this pattern for what it was.
As I started addressing that, I hit this point less often, however I’ve come to realize more recently that this simply means that my mental state has bigger blocks of time to devolve before my body tells me to stop.
I also grew up with somewhat expensive (non-emergency) healthcare, so going to the doctor was something you only did when you REALLY needed to. This naturally leads to a lack of normal maintenance. Which builds up. This also results in a stigma attached to going to the doctor. You only go when you’re weak. You don’t go just because you’re not feeling great, or to prevent issues. The stigma around mental health was even worse. Only crazy people go to therapy.
Now that I’m here in the US, I’ve found myself to have good health coverage through my employer, and have started overcoming this stigma and trying to catch up on normal healthcare maintenance. Turns out it’s a lot when you’ve mostly ignored it for 20 years. Trust me on this one – it’s a lot better to do it than to ignore it.
I’ve also finally been convinced that therapy is actually a thing that can help anyone. More than likely can help MOST people. I’ve started going, and it’s definitely helping me. Still a long way to go, however I’m getting to the point where I can discuss issues now, identify points of friction in my life, and starting to gain some tools to be able to address these issues before they become major problems.
While I don’t necessarily feel different externally, it appears that my demeanor has improved a bit too over the past few months as I’ve been working on things. Several people have made comments to that effect, which is eye-opening.
This tech industry, and infosec in particular, will take all it can from you if you let it. You need to build support networks, once you recognize the need, you seen the building blocks out there. Infosec twitter has been super helpful for me as a resource. While I still don’t participate a great deal, a lot of the prominent people there have talked about these, and other related, issues, and have helped me a great deal with the resources and discussions they’ve shared.
Even if you’re feeling fine, try to take a step back and look at yourself. There is always room for improvement, and self-care is 100% a necessity these days. Making the time for self-care can be tough, but a lot of tech companies have provision for support, or at least the flexibility to allow you to practice self-care.
It really does help, with your state of mind; with your relationships; with your work productivity. Burnout is not fun, and you should be doing all you can to avoid it.
Postscript
So I wrote the above a couple of weeks ago, but couldn’t post it for a various reasons, none of which are particularly relevant. Some of it doesn’t seem entirely coherent to me now, but I want to leave it as I originally wrote it. Perhaps there is some value in seeing writing from a different state of mind.
Since then, I’ve had a week off the grid to recharge a bit. I don’t think it was long enough, but it was the best I was able to manage at the moment, and hopefully keeps me going for a while longer.
On re-reading this now right before I post, and in light of a few things I’ve seen on twitter in the last few days, I have a couple of additions I think I should make. Some of these will likely duplicate what I previously wrote. We’ll see. I won’t be going back over it & editing it this time around, so please bear with me.
Mental health is important
If you’re not careful, it can get away on you without you realizing. This can have devastating effects on yourself and the people around you.
Burnout is a mental health issue
Make no mistake, burnout comes at the cost of either or both of your mental and physical health. It is a lot more common that most people realize, although the discussions around this are happening more and more openly.
Ask for help
Don’t be afraid to reach out to those who are openly discussing the issues, in my experience, the ones being vocal about the issues are also some of the most willing to help others who are unable or as-yet unwilling to be open about their experiences.
The tech industry can be toxic
The tech industry in general, and particularly the infosec industry, has a lot of work to do before we are fully accepting of a lot of things, D&I being one of the big issues, and this somewhat overlaps with mental health issues as well. The stigma around mental health issues in the industry is definitely still a major issue, but is being shoved out into the light be more and more people willing to discuss it openly.
If you are lucky enough to have health insurance that covers it – go and get therapy
Whether you think you need it or not, if you are able to find a good therapist, it will most likely improve your wellbeing. I absolutely, without a doubt, KNEW I had no need for therapy. I was wrong. I wish I had realized this some years ago.