RE: Re: how hard is this?

[Mike Sofen <msofen@pacbell.net>]

Tom,
I've worked for many years in the software industry and burnout is real.

I'll put it in terms that you'll understand: burnout in the software world
is akin to an extreme case of over training a horse.  I suppose you call
those horses chickenshit instead of abused.  It has nothing to do with
mediocrity and everything to do with desire - an owner's desire to win
races, a corporation's desire to be first to market...it doesn't matter that
you burnout a few horses/software developers along the way because there's
always more where they came from, right?

The irony here is that the most gifted and brilliant developers - rather
than the mediocre ones - are the most prone to burnout precisely because of
their drive and desire to create AND complete, on time.  Good management
will protect their developers from going "catabolic".

You might instead explain to your daughter that no job is worth dying over.

Mike Sofen (ex of Microsoft, Expedia, Elekom, Boeing, etc)

-----Original Message-----
From: Tivers@aol.com [mailto:Tivers@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2000 11:23 PM

Ah, a gentleman for the "burnout" school of apologists for mediocrity. My
daughter is doing super in a computer sofware company, but the worload is
Rough, plus she's constantly having to learn new languages (computer--she's
already fluent in Japanese and Spanish). She says her lazy bosses keep
warning her about burnout. I keep explaining to her that burnout is another
word for chickenshit.

ti