Monday, April 10, 2023
How to Spot Signs of Burnout Culture Before You Accept a Job
lifehacker.com: It’s normal to feel overtaxed by your job once in a while, but when that feeling becomes persistent no matter what you do to pull back or redirect your efforts, you may be experiencing burnout—and the problem probably lies with your employer.
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5 comments:
I think that this article is both extremely helpful for people who are entering into “grown up jobs” for the first time, as very often younger people are given information about job markets and cultures by older members of family or their teachers whose advice is unfortunately outdated. The job market has changed significantly from how it was when many older members of community were applying for jobs. Therefore these role models are not cognizant of the large amount of burn out culture that exists in jobs nowadays. I will also say that seeing the phrase “ We’re like a family here” on this list to be very telling. People use it as a way to guilt people into doing more than their job for free out of care for the company which, by nature of being a company, does not care about the individuals that comprise its workforce. I know that non profit organizations are especially guilty of this type of guilting.
The thing that really hit me about this article is how many of the things they say to watch out for are present in theatre expectations. The nature of theatre is just different from your usual 9 to 5 job, and tends to require a lot more grit and willingness to put up with some stuff. That’s why burnout is such a big thing in theatre schools and programs across the country. Although I guess now there’s a movement to make that not the case. However, that means it’s even more of a struggle to break away from practices that are so deeply ingrained into the industry. The example I always come back to is something one of my high school math teacher told me: some people are “live to work” people, and other people are “work to live.” Most theatre people are live to work, and that’s great because it means there’s passion, but there still needs to be work-life balance, which is something we all have to improve on.
This is definitely something that I'll be looking out for in the future. Although I knew that Carnegie Mellon had a work culture as well as a burnout culture, I kind of dismissed it when I was first applying to the school and didn't realize that it would be the way that it is as I continued on with my education. Although it's fine and I can handle it and I'm not exactly upset about it , I think that in the long run it might be better for me to look for a job that doesn't exactly have that burnout culture. I think that I'll be able to handle the four years of heavy material here, but as I begin to go out into the industry it's probably better that I make sure that the work environment is pretty good. I also went to a high school with a pretty large burnout culture, and although it didn't affect me all too much I definitely thought about what was happening all around me, so it'll be good for me to be working in a place that doesn't exactly have that.
I enjoyed this article – but what do you do when a company has a great reputation and gives you some great credits, and you KNOW it will burn you out? A lot of more known companies and schools that will get you that “recognition” are the ones that will burn you out, is it worth it for the lines on your resume? I feel as though in the last several years as a young professional I have experienced almost nothing besides burnout. As a young professional, you attend these programs for your BFA and potentially your MFA, and the more “recognized” programs burn you out, quickly. Then what? Summer work to build that resume, where do you work as a young professional? Internships, apprenticeships, summer stocks – what do those tend to do? Burn you out. But what do you “need” to get a job in the “real world” (I hate this term) as professors love to say? That degree and those summer credits. By the time we even enter the “real world” we are burned out. I would love to read about how to prevent that.
I find that one of the biggest challenges for me this year was realizing that after over 2 years of working and doing theatre and getting an education all on top of each other, I have been burnt out for an extremely long time, even if I didn't quite realize it at first. I think that one thing I wish this department took into consideration is that the people who make up this department are real people with actual lives and experiences, and different mental states to go with them. For people like me, who work two jobs on top of unpaid labor and vigorous amounts of classwork, the raw amount of commitment this program needs you to have both physically and emotionally breaks you to your core at times, and there is not any room for you to try and take a break, because there is always more work to be done. Even when burnt out, you never have the time to step back and take in the scenery. I have not even been able to see Pittsburgh, or the museums, or anything, because I simply have no time, and certainly no time to sight-see. When burnt-out, it sucks to see that this program forces you to continuously prevail.
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