Don't Burn Out

There seems to be a lot of talk about burnout in the tech industry; software engineers working themselves into the ground then quitting their jobs to become yoga instructors or coffee roasters or just take a year off to try to remember why they enjoyed programming in the first place. While there is something romantic about such a grand departure from hardship, it would be even better to just avoid suffering in the first place.

Bad working conditions exist. Long stretches of hard work exist. Some people have more control over avoiding these hardships than others, but the point of this post is to not fetishize working yourself so hard that you have to quit what you do. Focus on finding balance in your work life rather than swinging from one extreme to the other. It won't make for as good of blog posts but your quality of life will probably be better.