Burnout is the most famous brother in the career family, or more simply, the most infamous. Almost every employee touches burnout at some point in their careers. There are plenty of articles, stories, and steps to address over-worked employees. However, I think there are other phases that employees can walk through in their time as a company that go completely undiscussed. They are far less infamous, but still valid experiences people go through as they work through their job and career. This is an exploration of not just burnout, but those other brothers in the family: Bored Out, Brown Out, and Bow Out. Understanding these phases is crucial for maintaining a healthy, productive and long-lasting work life. This essay explores these phenomena from my personal experience and perspective as an individual employee, offering insights into their causes, symptoms, and potential remedies.
1. Burn Out: The Overworked Employee
I’m not going to spend too much time here. Everyone is aware that burn out is a state of chronic physical and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged and excessive stress. For many employees, it manifests as a feeling of being overwhelmed, drained, and unable to meet constant demands. The workplace, with its high expectations and relentless pace, often becomes the epicenter of this condition. If you’d like to learn more from my own personal dance with burn out, I’ll direct you to my own story of self-martyrdom.
My own story highlights most of the causes of burning out. Excessive workloads with consistently long hours and numerous tasks. The lack of control with little ability to push back or adjust the work or job role, and of course unclear expectations on what a good job meant and what performance standards were even expected. In that link, I do try to touch on common remedies like reducing workload, improving communication channels with my boss, and taking time for some self-care. I’ll re-iterate here – take care of yourself and diversify your sources of joy.
2. Bored Out: The Under-challenged Employee
On the surface, bored out could be seen as the opposite of burn out, characterized by a lack of engagement and interest in one’s work due to insufficient challenges or stimulation. In my personal case, it was twofold:
- A natural over-correction to my burn out.
- Appropriate breathing room to focus more on raising my little humans and little less on my career.
I decided to purposely choose a role that was fascinating, but far less intrinsically challenging. This was my movement to the channel organization which let me learn a lot about partners, programs, and ecosystems without the breakneck pace and overwhelming stress of directly working customers and having a sales number to stress about. Throughout my time in this role, there were definite moments where I missed coding or the logic puzzles from my previous jobs. And despite the health benefits of moving into this more “boring” role, this condition ultimately lead to a similar aura of dissatisfaction. I was a builder, but in the wrong medium. Instead of code, I was building in legal contracts, marketing documents, and business processes.
This was definitely a lesson in poor job fit, and a set of tasks that did not fully utilize my background and skillset. Like asking Michelangelo to work in popsicle sticks, the outcomes were not going to be as good as they could’ve been. I was able to offset the boredom in different ways, and definitely enjoyed the extra energy and mind space with my family, but there was an increasing concern that my career was not going to grow the way I needed it with this detour into a less challenging sector – especially during the pandemic. Emotionally, there was definitely a growing apathy and lack of motivation. At a certain stage, I started procrastinating and focusing on other “more interesting” chunks of work that either were more technical, or more greenfield than my core responsibilities. At a startup, there are always shinier rocks out there.
I eventually found my way out of Bored Out by landing my dream role in Product Management. If you find yourself in a similar mid-career malaise, there are a few remedies. First, you can try to redesign the job a bit with your manager and peers to include more varied or challenging tasks that are more engaging. You can work to get additional training and professional development. Or, you could try building a more clear career path that gets you where you want to go, either within the company or elsewhere.
I also want to stress – its okay to be bored sometimes. It can be a nice pause or respite. It can come after a period of stress and mastery over some new skill. You can still relish, enjoy and learn from it. Careers are literally life-long marathons, and your priorities are going to shift as you go through life. Taking a breath is not a bad thing depending on your current local priorities.
3. Brown Out: The Under-Resourced Employee
Brown out occurs when employees feel they lack the necessary resources—whether time, tools, or support—to effectively perform their jobs. This situation can lead to frustration, decreased morale, and diminished productivity. It was a surprising outcome after initially landing my dream job as a product manager. I could finally create some art in my preferred medium! I was charged with improving the partner experience at my company, and I was initially provided single engineer and no design resources. As you can imagine, I had to reset my expectations immediately on what I could accomplish in any given quarter.
For those unfamiliar, a brown out is an electrical term describing when the voltage drops or dips below the usual mains supply level. Brownouts can be damaging to electrical equipment. In many ways, they can be more disruptive than a total blackout when the power simply goes off. During a brownout, devices continue to receive power but at a reduced level. This can cause some devices to malfunction (or teams to lose morale).
The primary causes of a brown out seem pretty clear. Inadequate staffing led me to make a lot of oxygen choices focusing on improving the bare minimum experience for my internal and external customers. Understaffing made it near impossible to make any substantive net-new contribution. This led to my own stress and additional inefficiency in quarterly preparation and planning. Brownouts can also occur due to insufficient tools or technology, or can represent a lack of support and guidance from leadership. Leadership expectations ultimately set the potential voltage difference to begin with.
The primary symptoms of brown out include frustration and a sense of helplessness. There is so much you want to accomplish, so much that the team is demanding be accomplished, but ultimately you can only deliver on the basics. This can lead to some missed deadlines and reduced engagement. As well as physical symptoms similar to Burn Out – chronic stress and fatigue. In my case, I tried really hard to manage expectations up and out on what could be improved when, and simplifying design flows where possible.
The ultimate remedies are pretty straightforward – leadership need to ensure employees have access to the tools, technology and staffing required to meet business needs. They also need to properly align expectations (the voltage difference) in times of lower staffing. Regular feedback and clear communication can help reduce the stress of a brown out. Like its namesake, a brownout should really be a temporary condition with a known end whenever possible.
4. Bow Out: The Ex-Employee
There comes a point when an employee may need to bow out or leave their current position or company. Recognizing when this decision is necessary can be difficult but is crucial for a variety of reasons – long-term career satisfaction, developing new skills, diversifying experience, and driving more robust well-being. Sometimes you just have to close the door in order to open up some new ones.
Deciding when to leave a company can come from a few causes. One is persistent dissatisfaction. The key word being persistent. Like the old phrase – Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. Another reason is when values no longer align with changing cultures and directions. In my experience, this was watching a large, global corporation grow around me, who still had a very startup mindset. Finally, a common cause is the lack of growth opportunities and career advancement. Given the various phases I highlighted above, its very easy to feel like career progression has been stunted between under-challenge and under-resourcing.
So, if may need to ask: Am I still enjoying my work? Can I perform the way I need and want to, or have performance and motivation started to stall? And similar to burn out, have been any negative health impacts from job-related stress? I recommend doing a solid self-assessment on the type of work that brings you joy, exploring some career options, and talking with professional and personal mentors for some perspective on any future transitions.
Change is the only constant, and the best careers are never straight lines. Combined with the reduced incentives for business loyalty, and you’ve got to make sure to keep learning and driving to the career of your dreams. I’ve enjoyed the mindset from Shobhit Chugh. You should manage your own career like a product. What is on your roadmap? What marketing do you need to do?
Go ahead and build and build the career of your dreams.
4B or not 4B – What is a good employee?
The longer I’ve had a career, the more I’ve realized its never really smooth sailing. Navigating the complexities of the modern workplace requires a nuanced understanding of various career challenges. Burn out, bored out, brown out, and bow out represent distinct yet interrelated phenomena that can significantly impact an employee’s well-being and career trajectory. By recognizing the symptoms and causes of these conditions, employees can take proactive steps to address them, whether through workload management, seeking new challenges, ensuring adequate resources, or making the complicated decision to leave. Employers, too, play a critical role in creating environments that support and nurture their employees, fostering a culture where individuals can thrive and contribute meaningfully. Ultimately, understanding and addressing these challenges is essential for maintaining a healthy, productive, and fulfilling career across a wide range of environments.
Let me know your thoughts and experiences below, am I missing some letters that map you your experience?
