This was sent out to my part of the Google Security Engineering org by myself after consultation and input with my local-group management peers. If you’re at Google, it’s visible as a /2020stress short link. This version of course has some edits.
I should preface this with my own perspective. My neighborhood in Security Engineering at Google has been hitting it’s goals very, very well this year. And thus I’m certain that we’ve got people who are working way too hard, because there’s no way we should be hitting all our pre-COVID goals in the midst of <waves vaguely at everything>. Then there were some conversations with people reaching out for advice about how they felt off and weren’t sure what was going on. Some of these people haven’t ever been “burnt out” before (have I mentioned, Google Security is a great place to work).
I realized that we had a mix of “a lot of our people are working too hard right now” and “a lot of our people are overstressed in new ways right now.” That’s a combo that causes a fragile risk. What if two TLs and two senior engineers burn out hard at the same time? Those green KRs sit there staring at me, whispering “we’re costing too much, and you can’t see it.” My management peers and senior engineers/TLs have been talking about it, and a concrete and sensible plan is being worked out. I decided it was time to do something proactive, even if a little messy, about the way people were feeling, and my peers were supportive.
I’m not claiming expertise at anything except “being a person with a hilarious amount of life-long generalized anxiety disorder” best summed up by this recent tweet:
Empathy
— daily daria number I lost count (@shadow) June 9, 2020
Maybe she’s born with it
Maybe she ... developed it as hypervigilance as a result of childhood trauma
The management team has had many conversations lately with people feeling out of sorts in ways that are new to those persons. In general, they frequently sound like people struggling with the impacts of background anxiety on their lives and work. Being that I’m pretty public about my anxiety and ADHD, I decided to talk about this. I am not a mental health professional, just someone who has walked some of this road. Seek professional advice before doing anything of importance based on any of this.
Here are some things you may be experiencing from time-to-time right now:
Not feeling very productive/effective, and beating yourself up about it
More worried than usual
Staying up later than you usually would, but not really doing anything
Finding it hard to focus when you want to
Irritability outside of the norm
Feeling like you’re burnt out, but it’s different, and you’re not sure why
Finding yourself resentful at the work or the interrupts
Finding yourself working functionally, but not really caring much about it
Having a hard time prioritizing work or private life, together or independently
Many of you are high-functioning people who haven’t experienced deep background anxiety before. I say “before” because you’re almost certainly experiencing some of it now. We’re all currently living with:
A global pandemic that is being managed to highly varying degrees of success
A global protest to the problem of police brutality in the United States
Working from home in environments that may be extremely non-conducive to being effective
Other nation-specific troubles that may be weighing on you, China, Hong Kong, and India are all struggling with things too
Working In a company culture based on spontaneously communicating in all internal directions, except now we don’t see anyone outside of deliberate meeting partners.
These things require extra thought and attention to deal with, and can suddenly steal focus and intrude on our minds. This can easily replicate much of the symptomatology of generalized anxiety and/or ADHD. Those of us who have lived with either of those for a long time can recognize them in the many of you. You may have been pushed into a very difficult situation without the tools to deal with it.
First, Google resources:
<internal links removed>
Second, I’m not going to give detailed advice on handling anxiety- or ADHD-ish symptoms in a general email. If you’d like to talk to me about it, book something, it’s off the record. I expect that for many of you, you’ll be relieved at just being informed that this is real, actually affecting a lot of people, and not something wrong with you. Your managers are all happy to talk about this with you.
Third, I am going to give general advice.
1. Take more time off. If it’s kids- or family-related, make use of our generous leave. It doesn’t have to be taken in chunks, you can book pressure valve days to spend focused on your family responsibilities. If you’re not experiencing stressors at home, you can and should still take more time off. In summary, take more time off. If you ever think “ugh, I need a break” stop what you are doing and find a slot where you can take an afternoon, or day, or week.
2. Accept that you’re not operating at full efficiency. Stop trying. Remember that we’ve got <link about no engineering heroics> codified as a norm here. Push back on work allocation that isn’t reasonable. Hold yourself and your managers/TLs/TPMs/peers accountable for realistic workloads. Realistic means “what you can do now” and not “what you’d have gotten done in 2019.” It’s not 2019 anymore and 2020 appears to be going to be a decade or two long. Settle in for a long haul and stop pushing yourself to work 30% harder to make up for all the various impacts to your functionality. I know it’s going on all over and I’m wagging my finger at all of it, including at me.
3. Define boundaries in your life and keep them. Stop working at foo o’clock. Decline meetings that stomp over your lunch break or personal/family time. This isn’t a repeat of #2. You should hold yourself accountable for realistic work output, but you also need to hold yourself accountable for keeping the space open to handle everything else, and recharge yourself enough to do good work when you are doing work.
4. Your leadership team really actually means the above. This isn’t a corporate “health is a P0” platitude. The overall situation is going to be going on for most of us through this whole year at least. We need you to be happy, healthy, and effective when this is over too. We mean it; ask us to help with it. Your entire management team are all thinking about this, we’re happy to talk about it with you, and we want to help and be helped.
5. Last, here’s some real red flags. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you are running into any of these, please strongly consider professional help:
- Thoughts of self-harm
- Finding yourself having the same worries over and over, especially if the cycle is increasing in frequency
- Feeling like your mind can’t stop and you can’t make it stop
- Worrying every day
- Worrying about why you’re always worrying
- Consistent thoughts of despair and hopelessness
- Unable to sleep because of worry or undefined dread