Burnout is a symptom of exploitation but not all burnout comes from exploitation. You can burn out from non-work activities like caregiving. You can burn out as a business owner or a member of a worker-owned co-op. You can burn out at a job that only expects healthy hours because you’re an overachiever who refuses to take time off.
I have found it’s just as easy to burn out doing what I love as it was doing a job I hated.
Easier in some ways, because I don’t want to stop!
Hear, hear! You can burn out at anything, even your most beloved hobbies.
I was a video game modder for most of my life, but burnt out on the hobby completely after several years of maintaining a dozen or so mods for an early access game.
Making new features was great, and hunting down reported bugs in my own code was enjoyable. Constantly fixing compatibility issues due to updates (and having to rewrite perfectly valid code due to shifting or deprecated APIs) wasn’t.
I love modding, but even things you enjoy get old after a while, and the feeling of obligation to continue (even if only not to disappoint your fans) wears at you.
You can burn out at a job that only expects healthy hours because you’re an overachiever who refuses to take time off.
🙋😢
Exploitation Fatigue
That’s good. I was about to comment that exploitation is a much broader sense but exploitation fatigue nails it
I still like burnout. I think about it like a small electric motor being used on too big of a task for the job and burning out through no fault of it’s own, but on poor planning from those who designed the system it’s used in.
Exploitation is one potential cause of job toxicity that can lead to burnout (or other mental health effects). The relationship isn’t perfectly causal.
That said, in the current job market it seems that most jobs are exploitative, by far.
Working for wages is exploitation no matter how healthy the place is.
You sell labor in return for wages. Your employer pays wages less than what it’s worth to them and keeps the difference as profit. That’s exploitation already.
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