How to Prevent Burnout
Angie’s List: A Case Study
Angie’s List is a company that consolidates reviews for home contractor companies, whose services include gutter cleaning, plumbing repair, roof repair, and more. In her interview with Guy Raz on the podcast How I Built This, Angie discusses the early days of the company and the mistakes that they made regarding her workload that led to burnout.
Many early startups have problems with overwork, often pushing their employees far beyond what they can handle. Startups cannot afford to rapidly burn through their employees, even if everyone is all hands on deck. Managing workflows when startups begin is challenging but absolutely necessary for long-term survival.
In the beginning, Angie went door-to-door on a daily basis. This work required her to interact with often hostile people for hours, work she was ill-suited to as an introvert. Because of the stress from this work, she broke down in front of the company’s other founder. Breaking down, especially in public, is a sign that you are already burnt out. The company should have restructured her workflow so she wouldn’t be so overwhelmed.
Instead, the company pushed her into taking more roles, Angie eventually becoming the company’s customer service representative, secretary, magazine writer and editor, accountant, advertiser, and salesperson. This is a very common problem for startups, where more responsibilities are piled on as a response to burnout instead of the company addressing what caused the burnout.
Angie didn’t realize what was happening sooner because Angie’s List was her first real job, so she didn’t have a threshold for what was expected. Academia has a heavy workload, which sets first-time workers’ expectations for “good work” very high, without accounting for the lack of breaks in startups. Angie eventually burnt out to the point where she needed to take a break.
She used this break to go to business school and get her MBA. This is common for people after burnout. They tell themselves they need more skills and so they go back to school, when it’s really the familiarity and the organized work structure they look for. You must be aware of what people are capable of doing to make sure they stay in the company. Project management can help managers and founders prevent employee burnout through managing workflows and responsibilities. Angie did go back to the company, after some difficulties with projected overhead.
