I believe the implicit claim here is that regardless of whether the computer system is a contributory factor to burnout that association does not imply that it cannot be a factor in restoring one's self. Let's say, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water."

I suspect it is a response to a future decision the author intuits large groups of computer laborers may make: that computers, in general, establish a unique, more intensely stressful baseline type for burnout cases. Usually the standard response (or rather "therapy") to burnout, even in the professional, occupational setting, in engineering and technical jobs involves doing something unrelated to that type of work. It is Feynman's point made official through the history of its adoption in business and corporate settings. But _physics_ isn't tossed out; a particular _institution of physics studies_ is tabled. This point is going to be made for _computer systems_ as well; perhaps the author is now asserting it. Web building will soon become a respectable science, wherein its general idiom becomes abstracta that support true, albeit horrifyingly misleading, statements like "My Internet does not work" or "I read ten articles on the Internet today" which people use in everyday conversation.

As Wittgenstein would say,

"I launched the ball!"
"He recoiled at the thought."
"She exploded with joy."
"The Sun gave me a sun burn."
"My grandmother is a dinosaur."
"Astrology is not a true science."
"She turned at a right angle."

Is there anything essential as a response to burnout that involves stepping away from the computer system? What does it truly mean for us if "Internet" becomes a household name? How are people thinking about it? What are their statements about it? Why does most advice seem to suggest "stand up and go smell a flower, seek pleasure". Is the Web not pleasuable? Seeking _it_? Working on _it_? -- It seems clear to me that the author is making a very simple point: whence come hedonism of the craft? -- To me, it sounds like: "step out of the machine!" I believe this is what motivates the couched "freedom of will" discussion (burnout is a "wall"). Intuitions about Robert Nozick's Experience Machine are what are stake here.

Let's assume that "go outside and smell a rose" is the description of a machine. Our author, I suggest, argues that "write code for pleasurable project" is another description for a machine. What is assumed is that one can choose, regardless of practicality (that your project may be even less successful because of your choosing is irrelevant here, being compelled to make the decision does not necessitate that one should make it). What is at stake here, again, are intuitions about the machine, and namely what it affords at all. Choosing to take an experience of another sort involves concepts of continuity, roughly, I believe, Nozick's discovered intuitions of we have:

1. (Here I can only hope my analogy fits, but I believe it motivates, essentially, any apologetic position toward burnout:) "we first want to do actions" which gives any consequent desire for the experiences of those actions. In development and engineer jobs, technical jobs in general, we call this "burnout"; experiences (stress) eventually overwhelms desire to work (want to perform those actions). The storehouse of experience (one's work history) becomes nothing more than the description of some machine (a set of experiences one has had). So, there is an imperative to reject that machine. My follow-up is: Why does this response to burnout logically resemble Nozick's discovered intuition/response of: "Do not enter the machine"? -- "Step out of the usual."
2. (Again:) Whether it is choosing to code a fun side-project or going out to build a doghouse, we are enjoying our freedom. What's not important here are practical considerations, the limits of one's autonomy cannot be defined only in terms what one perceives as one's own limits; one's autonomy is not established through the capacity of one's epistemtic assessment. Going with the flow because the current is strong only establishes the acceptance of a machine-like existence. So "go fly a kite" to assert one's freedom.
3. (Again:) One's reality is limited to workflows and projects. "Leave the machine."

My general point here is that the structure of the argument: "go do something different," to me, looks very similar to our intuitions as to why one would reject the machine.