I spend most of my 15 year career working at startups I've worked long evenings, weekends, dealt with stress, tense situations (both commercial and social) and deadlines and never had any symptoms of burnout. I switched to a large enterprise company and enjoyed the relaxed pace for a year. The first 6 months took some adjustment but I quickly figured out that getting things done in a large company just required a bit of a different skill set. Sometimes it took weeks to get a simple configuration changed but when I finally talked to the guy I learned that he had 5 kids, three of them who were sick, instantly made me realize that my frustration about the pace was uncalled for.
Fast forward to the second year, I got a new manager who turned the office politics to 11, put people in positions that they were absolutely not fit for and in general made a huge mess out of everything, ignoring the advice and suggestions of the team while doing it while continuously reminding us engineers of our low place in the picking order. If there was a way to rank managers this guy would be in the bottom 5%, I've worked with about 30 managers (in one way or another) in my career so this was bound to happen at some point.
However, I was totally not prepared for the effect it had on me. Within months I was reduced to someone who was frustrated 24/7, unable to do even the most basic task, I was sleeping poorly and my physical health was suffering. It took an enormous amount of energy just to sit through online meetings without lashing out, the rest of the team was feeling the same so you can imagine what kind of environment it was. I was lucky to get a new job very quickly and after getting out of that toxic environment I was my old self again in mere weeks.
I can totally imagine how burnout can be modeled as learned helplessness. If, I, as young, healthy guy can be reduced to a wreck, in months, in a toxic environment, I can only start to imagine what people have to go through that don't have the luxury of switching jobs quickly (for whatever reason).
Fast forward to the second year, I got a new manager who turned the office politics to 11, put people in positions that they were absolutely not fit for and in general made a huge mess out of everything, ignoring the advice and suggestions of the team while doing it while continuously reminding us engineers of our low place in the picking order. If there was a way to rank managers this guy would be in the bottom 5%, I've worked with about 30 managers (in one way or another) in my career so this was bound to happen at some point.
However, I was totally not prepared for the effect it had on me. Within months I was reduced to someone who was frustrated 24/7, unable to do even the most basic task, I was sleeping poorly and my physical health was suffering. It took an enormous amount of energy just to sit through online meetings without lashing out, the rest of the team was feeling the same so you can imagine what kind of environment it was. I was lucky to get a new job very quickly and after getting out of that toxic environment I was my old self again in mere weeks.
I can totally imagine how burnout can be modeled as learned helplessness. If, I, as young, healthy guy can be reduced to a wreck, in months, in a toxic environment, I can only start to imagine what people have to go through that don't have the luxury of switching jobs quickly (for whatever reason).