Trying to be managed by poor people managers is a very common accelerant to burnout.
I'd actually call it the #1 cause of burnout by far, if not the cause of about, oh, 80% of burnout cases in general. people can have the most ideal workplace in the world, but if their manager isn't any good -- or isn't any good *for them*, since there are tons of different management styles and needs for being-managed -- they will burn out very quickly and the only way to get them back is to find them a different team under a different manager and hope for the best. conversely, of course, people can -- and *will* -- put up with a *shitload* of poor process, inadequate tools, complex and fiddly work, demanding customers both internal and external, inadequate organizational vision, etc ad nauseam, as long as their direct manager is good at managing people and willing to devote time to the problem.
case in point: i managed the livejournal abuse team from 2002-2007 as one part of my (many) duties while working for LJ. the LJAT was perhaps the most universally-reviled collective i've ever been a part of. even the other support volunteers who thought the team were awesome people individually, and who understood that things were way more complex than they appeared and whatever controversy was making the rounds about an abuse team decision was being told by someone (the offender) who had every motive to paint the team in a bad light, would occasionally say awful things about them, and i know (for instance) a few abuse team members who wouldn't even confess to their friends that they worked on the team because they were sick of hearing the tirades against them. at varying times during my tenure, there was little or no organization-wide support for the team, the development time needed for producing necessary tools would be postponed and reassigned again and again, the work was incredibly stressful and emotionally draining, even people inside the company but outside the team would hear the outside story about an incident that had happened and flip out before even asking the team what had *really* happened, the workload went beyond "gruelling" and into "flat-out masochistic", and the average time between "shit's on fire" incidents was usually measurable in days, not weeks or months. a few of us did one of those "rate your workplace stress" type tests once for shits and giggles; the score was literally off the scale of the test. the test makers didn't think anybody would say 'yes' to all the questions on the list. we didn't think the list had enough questions to cover the deeply dysfunctional circumstances we found ourselves in.
and yet: the average length of tenure on the team was between 1.5 and 2 times the industry standard burnout time for front-line customer service people, and around four times the industry standard burnout time for high-stress, high-responsibility customer service people. today, five years after i quit livejournal, i still have people who served under my tenure coming to me and saying how much they enjoyed working on the team and how much they miss it. i'm still close friends with multiple people from the team, and they're still close friends with each other. (i was hanging out with someone i met through managing the team last week. many of the people who were part of the team still vacation with each other every year. there were even a few weddings.) when we started dreamwidth, about half of the first wave of volunteers came from people who'd worked on the abuse team (or the more general support team).
i'm not saying this to brag, not at all (and there were, of course, people who weren't suited for the work and left more quickly or were asked to leave, and people who looked like they'd be suited for the work and turned out to not be, and people whose being-managed needs didn't mesh with my management style at all; it took me a while to get anywhere approaching decent at spotting them ahead of time). it is, however, an excellent example of how reasonably good people management skills can shield a particular team inside what was (at varying times more or less) a deeply unhealthy, toxic organization, with zero support from higher-level management and while being denigrated by, oh, pretty much everybody, both inside the company and out. it's entirely possible, and it can be done in just about any team environment, no matter how distrustful or once-bitten-twice-shy or negative the team is at first, if the manager's willing to bite the bullet and earn the team's trust and confidence.
it's hard. it takes a *ton* of work. even now on DW, where i have the authority to do anything i need to fix a problem and the circumstances and company-wide environment are so much more pleasant there is literally no way to compare the two, i fuck up a bunch. it takes a ridiculous amount of time and energy; i spend at least 25-30 hours out of my 60-hour workweek doing one-on-one people management for the 75-100 people we're dealing with. in deeply unhealthy orgs, it takes an immense personal toll on the manager in question: to this day I twitch when I hear people referencing certain incidents, it took nine months after I quit for the physical effects of the stress it caused me to do it by the end to subside, and i *know* that it's had lasting long-term physical effects on me.
but it's possible.
there's a pretty common division of managers into "seagull managers" and "umbrella managers": a seagull manager is the one who swoops in, shrieks loudly, dumps a whole bunch of shit on the people below them, and then swoops out again. an umbrella manager is the person who holds the umbrella over the team's head to shelter them from the shit raining down from above. there are seven basic rules for being a good umbrella manager; once i have some more energy (and can type without looking like an emo kid with no spellcheck who's allergic to capital letters) i'll write them up.
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I'd actually call it the #1 cause of burnout by far, if not the cause of about, oh, 80% of burnout cases in general. people can have the most ideal workplace in the world, but if their manager isn't any good -- or isn't any good *for them*, since there are tons of different management styles and needs for being-managed -- they will burn out very quickly and the only way to get them back is to find them a different team under a different manager and hope for the best. conversely, of course, people can -- and *will* -- put up with a *shitload* of poor process, inadequate tools, complex and fiddly work, demanding customers both internal and external, inadequate organizational vision, etc ad nauseam, as long as their direct manager is good at managing people and willing to devote time to the problem.
case in point: i managed the livejournal abuse team from 2002-2007 as one part of my (many) duties while working for LJ. the LJAT was perhaps the most universally-reviled collective i've ever been a part of. even the other support volunteers who thought the team were awesome people individually, and who understood that things were way more complex than they appeared and whatever controversy was making the rounds about an abuse team decision was being told by someone (the offender) who had every motive to paint the team in a bad light, would occasionally say awful things about them, and i know (for instance) a few abuse team members who wouldn't even confess to their friends that they worked on the team because they were sick of hearing the tirades against them. at varying times during my tenure, there was little or no organization-wide support for the team, the development time needed for producing necessary tools would be postponed and reassigned again and again, the work was incredibly stressful and emotionally draining, even people inside the company but outside the team would hear the outside story about an incident that had happened and flip out before even asking the team what had *really* happened, the workload went beyond "gruelling" and into "flat-out masochistic", and the average time between "shit's on fire" incidents was usually measurable in days, not weeks or months. a few of us did one of those "rate your workplace stress" type tests once for shits and giggles; the score was literally off the scale of the test. the test makers didn't think anybody would say 'yes' to all the questions on the list. we didn't think the list had enough questions to cover the deeply dysfunctional circumstances we found ourselves in.
and yet: the average length of tenure on the team was between 1.5 and 2 times the industry standard burnout time for front-line customer service people, and around four times the industry standard burnout time for high-stress, high-responsibility customer service people. today, five years after i quit livejournal, i still have people who served under my tenure coming to me and saying how much they enjoyed working on the team and how much they miss it. i'm still close friends with multiple people from the team, and they're still close friends with each other. (i was hanging out with someone i met through managing the team last week. many of the people who were part of the team still vacation with each other every year. there were even a few weddings.) when we started dreamwidth, about half of the first wave of volunteers came from people who'd worked on the abuse team (or the more general support team).
i'm not saying this to brag, not at all (and there were, of course, people who weren't suited for the work and left more quickly or were asked to leave, and people who looked like they'd be suited for the work and turned out to not be, and people whose being-managed needs didn't mesh with my management style at all; it took me a while to get anywhere approaching decent at spotting them ahead of time). it is, however, an excellent example of how reasonably good people management skills can shield a particular team inside what was (at varying times more or less) a deeply unhealthy, toxic organization, with zero support from higher-level management and while being denigrated by, oh, pretty much everybody, both inside the company and out. it's entirely possible, and it can be done in just about any team environment, no matter how distrustful or once-bitten-twice-shy or negative the team is at first, if the manager's willing to bite the bullet and earn the team's trust and confidence.
it's hard. it takes a *ton* of work. even now on DW, where i have the authority to do anything i need to fix a problem and the circumstances and company-wide environment are so much more pleasant there is literally no way to compare the two, i fuck up a bunch. it takes a ridiculous amount of time and energy; i spend at least 25-30 hours out of my 60-hour workweek doing one-on-one people management for the 75-100 people we're dealing with. in deeply unhealthy orgs, it takes an immense personal toll on the manager in question: to this day I twitch when I hear people referencing certain incidents, it took nine months after I quit for the physical effects of the stress it caused me to do it by the end to subside, and i *know* that it's had lasting long-term physical effects on me.
but it's possible.
there's a pretty common division of managers into "seagull managers" and "umbrella managers": a seagull manager is the one who swoops in, shrieks loudly, dumps a whole bunch of shit on the people below them, and then swoops out again. an umbrella manager is the person who holds the umbrella over the team's head to shelter them from the shit raining down from above. there are seven basic rules for being a good umbrella manager; once i have some more energy (and can type without looking like an emo kid with no spellcheck who's allergic to capital letters) i'll write them up.