10th May 2021 https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210507-why-we-glorify-the-cult-of-burnout-and-overwork Overwork culture is thriving; we think of long hours and constant exhaustion as a marker of success. Given what we know about burnout, why do we do give in.........? More......
"We think of long hours and constant exhaustion as a marker of success". I sure don't and as far as I'm aware, absolutely noone I know *really* thinks that. Having grown in a communist regime, I'm also quite familiar with "doublethink" (as coined by George Orwell in his "1984" novel), it's effectively how normality looks under an authoritarian regime. If the corporate narrative requires glorification of overwork, people will obey (even though they think otherwise). And in the end the corporate police (HR, management layers) doesn't care what people think as long as they say and behave according to the rules. Authoritarian regimes also have another perverse mechanism to keep people in place, and private corporations happily embrace it. Essentially, you're always a little bit "breaking the law". But in it's generosity, the regime lets you go with it, as long as you behave. (Of course the perversity is that the whole "law" thing is deliberately set in such a way that you can't avoid breaking it). The tool of preference for keeping you in place in a corporate software development environment is agile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development The stream of work you are getting is calibrated in such a way that you are never fully able to keep your "commitments". And there's no time to pause or take it slowly, you always have to "sprint". So you are assigned a set of tasks and have to pledge "commitment" to finish them by said deadline. You've no authority over either the work or the timeframe but you are made responsible for delivering them. Inevitably, you will fall behind with some of your "commitments" and I underline it again - this is not a flaw of the system but how it works by design. Also the system doesn't really care that you haven't delivered all your "pledged" work, in fact it's pleased you didn't. Dare you finish all your tasks on time and flawlessly, with 100% percent your assigned work will be recalibrated so that you won't be able to keep up. Therefore at all times you are "breaking the law" (corporate law of making you responsible for things you've no authority and power over). So here come the long hours. You cannot possibly finish all your work (because by design it's calibrated so you don't), but as long as you put up that butt in the seat for 10-12-whatever many hours, you're good. Dare you leave home "early" (according to public / state law, 8 hour per day that is), you'll soon be pointed out your inability to keep up your commitments and if you don't submit to the "culture" and put up as many overwork hours as everyone does, you'll be let go. (Side note: to the idealistic and naive "dissidents" voicing - rightfully - against the exploitation and abuse of agile: even if you succeed displacing agile, the corporate will find something else, probably worse. They always do. I myself tend to prefer to live with the evil I know.) Final words, just go on some job board and search for "thrives under tight deadlines", you'll get plenty of results. It's gotten so toxic they don't even bother hiding it under some euphemism.
the cult of "bootstraps" carried a strong propagandistic message during the cold war among the pilgrim roots of this country.