The Developer's Greatest Enemy - Ed Finkler

Your host: Joseph Maxwell, Founder and CEO of SwiftOtter

Special Guest: Ed Finkler, Software Developer & Founder at Open Sourcing Mental Illness

Show Notes

“Burnout” isn’t a technical diagnosis. Unfortunately, when people experience burnout, their mental condition may even worsen due to the perception that nobody else identifies with their situation or understands the personal challenges it presents every day. Years ago, Ed Finkler took the opportunity to perform a series of talks about mental health challenges among tech workers, because he was beginning to recognize how our craft and the way that we naturally operate in this field tend to present unique personal challenges. Ed eventually came to the stern realization that the conversation around this issue had to be enlarged and that the stakes were high. As a result of that realization, Ed decided to start up Open Sourcing Mental Health (osmihelp.org), a non-profit organization dedicated to uncovering, explaining and fighting the issue of mental health among tech workers.

Do you feel like you’ve had a lot of bad days recently? Burnout is uniquely identified by the inability to manage stress levels properly, enjoy tasks that were once enjoyable, feel like progress is being made when tasks are completed, or even have a confident “sense of agency”, which is the conscious recognition that one has power over their own situation. Ed also added that burnout often causes a major lack of energy, so it’s typical for people who are struggling with it to start using sick days more often, because they really are sick. 

At the end of the day, the reality is that tech workers are constantly dealing with new problems to solve that require a sense of creativity and a lot of critical thinking. That doesn’t even account for how uniquely dynamic ecommerce development is. Ed explains that the difference between a programmer and a developer is simply that a programmer writes code while a developer serves the end users, utilizing technology to create solutions for them. This adds an astronomical amount of complexity to a daily routine. Programming is certainly a difficult job, but an ecommerce developer is the creator, ongoing maintenance provider and solution designer for online merchants who often demand a lot from them. The action really never dies down with how many different things developers have on their plates.

In summation, Ed revealed to us the reality that “burnout” is really just a euphemism for “episodic depression” and that it’s important to understand that everyone goes through this in different ways and for different reasons. While it tends to appear differently in everyone who suffers from it, the likelihood that a person will deal with this at some point in life is nearly 100%. While every case of episodic depression obviously doesn’t result in a suicide, the very reality that suicide is a possible outcome of this struggle should motivate us to be mindful of others and what they may be going through. 

Ed urges us to remember that our managers and coworkers (and sometimes even our clients) are a bigger part of our lives than we sometimes think, and that our greatest effort in the workplace should be to make people feel valued, heard and cared-for. Burnout cannot be remedied with more money, easier projects or the occasional pizza party. The sense that one’s peers truly care about them and desire to see them succeed is an incredible antidote.

One’s greatest asset is their mind, so how come it doesn’t seem important to take care of that thing? This norm has to change. There will be a true paradigm shift in every workplace when leadership decides to take mental health seriously and protect their greatest assets: the minds of their valuable employees. When was the last time your company sent out an email to their workforce listing convenient and accessible mental health resources? When was the last time employees were encouraged to take a day off, or even a half day when they know they really need it? When was the last time you saw a new mother get encouraged to take an extra week of maternity leave before returning to work? These things just don’t happen and that is where the brunt of the problem lies. Let us all move forward, with a refined perspective, and seek to renovate our workplace culture in light of these revelations.

Ed’s website: osmihelp.org

Ed’s additional recommendation: helpguide.org

(Theme music courtesy of Trending Audio)