Regarding remote work, developers, depression, and dopamine

A somewhat eye-catching title, but for a good reason.

This text intends to help someone, make someone relate to it, and empower them to take control of their emotions, professional and personal life, and seek professional help when necessary.

First of all, I wanted to give you a little context about myself: I started working as a programmer around 2011. Initially as a Java developer in a small company in my hometown, in a small office located on the second floor in the city center. And I have been working as a developer ever since.

It’s been quite a long time.
The world has changed, and so has the way we work.

In 2019, I started my first fully remote job. For a company based in São Paulo, far from my city in the interior of Paraná. I had nothing to complain about the job, just the small things that programmers always complain about :)

Okay, good salary, great technology, interesting projects, a supportive and excellent team (perhaps the best I’ve worked with so far), an exceptional leader, 100% remote work, and occasional trips for in-person team meetings. In my reality, it was everything I wanted and sought.

Until things weren’t fine anymore.

Days went by, and I felt like an impostor within my team. I procrastinated on my work for too long, avoided hard work, and one day I simply couldn’t find happiness in anything I did. We try to find reasons within our work to justify how we feel, but in the end, they were just excuses.

Endless fatigue, the desire to just sleep and watch the day pass. The excuse generated in our heads is that everything will get better if we find a new job as if that alone would magically make everything better.

It started affecting my life. I became apathetic, lacking the desire to interact with other people. In work meetings (often informal and enjoyable), I put on a facade that everything was fine.

My breaking point was during a family gathering on New Year’s Eve. I isolated myself, and couldn’t interact with my niece who wanted to play and have a little attention. Problems with my spouse. Throughout the day, I felt depressed as if nothing was okay, and burdened as if I carried all that negativity on my shoulders.

In 2021, after a recommendation from my doctor, who didn’t find anything “wrong” in my tests, I sought help and started therapy. With the fear of what people would think: “You go to therapy? Do you have problems?”, “You’re so privileged and still need therapy?”

After many sessions, delving deep into your problems and discovering who you truly are. And realizing that you are just the sum of all your experiences.

Was it the remote work’s fault? No.

But it brought my problems to the surface. How does it expose your problems?

By leaving you alone with yourself, with your thoughts, and in that moment, automatic thoughts become your main enemy.

Being surrounded by people in an office (with a healthy environment, of course) has its benefits. You have people to talk to, make friends, and receive daily feedback like “Wow, that’s great what you did!"—things that make you feel less alone. When I transitioned to remote work, I was there, in my home office, with no one around, interactions happening through messages on Slack, and meetings on Google Meet, but still physically alone. With this “freedom,” I procrastinated, watched YouTube whenever I could, got distracted with games, and social media, feeding my brain’s dopamine, and at the end of the day, I felt worthless for not giving my all.

But tomorrow will be different, right? It wasn’t. This day after day only made me feel worse. Worse for not progressing as much as I wanted, for wasting opportunities to grow as a developer, the feeling of not deserving it all, and so on. And I coped with all of this by indulging in more procrastination, YouTube videos, Twitch, and anything else I could find to alleviate that negative feeling.

I created an imbalance in the famous pleasure vs. pain scale described in the book Dopamine Nation.

So we increasingly seek “pleasure” to alleviate the pain/depression, and the more we seek quick pleasure, the deeper we fall into the pit. Creating an endless cycle.

So, how can you feel better? The first thing is to admit that you’re not okay and try to understand yourself better (use therapy for that), to realize that every day is a struggle, and you cannot falter yourself and give in. Each person has their demons to face; your problem is no less than someone else’s. You just need to take care of yourself.

I understood a lot about myself after reading this article Programadores e depressão, I recommend reading it, including the references to Greg Baugues talk about depression in the IT field.

Here’s what I took from this whole experience:

• Understand your anxiety, why you have it, and try to be more realistic in your thoughts.
• If you feel bad, find someone to talk to and open up, a friend, a family member, or a psychologist. By talking about yourself, you bring your thoughts into reality, and that will help you understand who you really are and often shed light on your flaws.
• Life is not a competition; comparing yourself to others won’t help, it will only diminish your achievements and keep you in a state where you always feel inferior. Learn to value yourself.
• When you have a better understanding of your flaws and their root causes, it becomes easier to deal with them when they arise.

Today, in 2023, I continue therapy.
I still work remotely, and yes, much better.

However, I now have a much better understanding of everything that happened during that time. And I hope this text helps if you feel something similar—talk to someone and don’t suffer alone.

We, people related to IT, often have the small impression that we have complete control over our lives or our mental state and that we can learn anything on our own. Sometimes not everything can be solved with an answer from StackOverflow, and very little is said about it among people in the technology field. Perhaps you’re going through it, or you know someone who seems to be.

Life can throw much bigger problems at you, and you need to be well-equipped to face them. Dealing with depression also means understanding your problems and placing a level of priority and control over them, keeping the small problems within your control.

Take care of yourself!

pt-br version: https://medium.com/@lenish/sobre-home-office-desenvolvedores-depress%C3%A3o-e-dopamina-db6834dcde30