Burn out is hard to manage; its something that happens in the cruisy 20-something hour a week job as well as the 80+ hour pressure cooker. Probably not to the same degree sure, but its not the only thing going on here.
Its a whole lot more sustainable if you can build an identity around "here is my team, we are building {___}", and its a lot easier to get there if you meet in person frequently.
Genuinely clear objectives can also be a great asset here; but I find that clarity doesnt scale. When Ive been a contractor working on projects measured in weeks or months with small teams, full remote is easy. At corporate gigs where the thing you are doing might be several abstraction layers from a customer; its harder to answer "why are we doing this?". In the second case being able to share in person is important; because its not just the work its the context and other people doing it thats grounding.
That motivation brings efficiency; at least for myself.
> Burn out is hard to manage; its something that happens in the cruisy 20-something hour a week job
Usually burn out is also caused by bad management. For instance, noisy open plan office where developers are mixed with sales and other departments to "cross pollinate" and have "creative juices flowing". Most people can't really focus on work and then are blamed for poor performance. If you have bills to pay, you often actually work after work, when you go home, to meet deadlines. Other instance I saw - "busy" meetings throughout the week, repetitive stuff, so certain people can be seen as they are "managing", also peppered throughout the day so you don't get more than an hour of uninterrupted work. Then again blame "why this and that is not delivered?".
> and its a lot easier to get there if you meet in person frequently.
I accept that some people struggle to adapt to online asynchronous communication, but in person meetings are inefficient from creative point of view. They disrupt flow and don't give opportunity for everyone to be heard. Some people can give answers or ideas instantly (not necessarily a good ones) others need information to simmer in their heads for a while. You of course get a sense of achieving something, but this won't be optimal. Basically just cheap dopamine.
> its harder to answer "why are we doing this?"
Answer is actually simple. To pay the bills, have roof over one's head, to have kids in good school, to enjoy life outside of work. If you are employee or contractor, you are not building your own thing. It's good to always remember that and keep a healthy distance.
Its not really about building your own thing, its about identity... You are what you do.
If you dont understand the impact what you are doing has once its out of sight, how can you understand yourself as part of society?
Contracting is simpler in a way, "I made a tool for Steve so that he can better do his job" is an easy to understand story, and doing that 10 times a year makes your connections to the world fairly clear (Not to mention it builds on itself, as more people know you as someone who can make things for them).
Big corporate jobs, especially highly distributed remote ones, can make it nearly impossible to clearly draw a line like that. The narrow context of "I improved a tool that the Widget team uses to support the Tools team who build visualizations for the Documentation team" thirty layers down before you get to a thing customers touch. In person becomes important, because it lets you better understand the context of your work as "Part of the institution that makes fighter jets".
There's actually a fair amount of research on burnout. (Disclaimer: while I have read a bunch of this in the past, I do not have any links handy.)
From what I've read—and my first- and second-hand experience bears this out—some of the most important factors in whether someone burns out on their work (besides straight-up overwork, which should be painfully obvious) are
1. Feeling like their work is meaningful (as opposed to just shuffling numbers from one spreadsheet to another or something)
2. A sense of autonomy and ownership over their work (as opposed to being micromanaged and ordered to do a bunch of work that they don't understand the purpose of—see #1—or actively disagree with)
3. Feeling like they themselves are valued, in the ways that actually matter to them (as opposed to being given "participation prizes", told thank you for your 4-week 100-hour crunch sessions, here's a $10 gift certificate, etc).
(Note that #3 can be the trickiest, because what feels validating for one person might not for another. In particular, from my own experience, one of the things the division someone I know was in liked to do as a "reward" at the end of a particular period of work was to host a social gathering or party...but the person I know working there was introverted and shy, and this felt more like a chore than a reward. For others, though, it was meaningful and fulfilling.)
From everything I've seen, it's true that it's often easier to build these things with an in-person team, but a lot of that is just because that's what most of us are used to and have experience working with. I firmly believe that as we move forward with more remote work, we will, as a society, get much, much better at building the kind of camaraderie and bonding over the Internet that we have well-understood methods of doing in person now.
Its a whole lot more sustainable if you can build an identity around "here is my team, we are building {___}", and its a lot easier to get there if you meet in person frequently.
Genuinely clear objectives can also be a great asset here; but I find that clarity doesnt scale. When Ive been a contractor working on projects measured in weeks or months with small teams, full remote is easy. At corporate gigs where the thing you are doing might be several abstraction layers from a customer; its harder to answer "why are we doing this?". In the second case being able to share in person is important; because its not just the work its the context and other people doing it thats grounding.
That motivation brings efficiency; at least for myself.