Ask HN: How to manage burnout / jadedness and job hunt?

"It's impossible to get the stink of desperation off and causes me to interview very poorly."

followed by

"I have been abused and neglected for so long that I'm unable to let go of my victim complex. Please help.

If you need a remote web developer with 10+yrs of PHP / Node experience please DM me"

is kinda rough...

It seems like you may be your own worse enemy here. You usually don't need portfolio pieces to find a new job. You have 10 years of experience. I can't speak to your mental health, and I wish you the best on that. However, appearing desperate in a job interview is in general a red flag (and you know this).

Just keep on applying and interviewing. Stop brooding over the things your coworkers are doing wrong (guess what: they probably can say the same about you). You don't need to give specifics about where you work so much, you can "make things up" (just don't lie about your abilities). Also, if you don't have savings for extended job breaks, that sounds like something you should start on because a job is not worth ruining your life over.

Good luck :(

I agree with this. You must embellish in interviews. The person hiring you is going to talk-up their company or team and leave out the bad - you need to do the same.

I'm sorry to hear that. I hope you find a new job.

I am in a similar situation. I have been repeatedly passed over and screwed over by my company for the past 5 years. They also don't follow their own policies and show poor leadership as you mentioned.

I handle this situation by trying to ignore the facts and tell myself I have a good job (the company's propaganda helps). I was once told by a manager that a high rating is awarded, not earned. This mindset helps. I was also told by a manager that not everyone can be more than an intermediate developer, so this helps me accept that I won't be promoted again.

It's a little disappointing to live like this, but it will be ok. I notice a degradation in performance and joy, but I still have a job.

I think your position is similar to many others', like mine. Just live life and pretend your job doesn't matter.

Step back and realize your situation is simple.

Goal: Get a new job.

Actions: 1. Live healthy, sleep well. Run. 2. Spruce up resume 3. Apply for jobs 4. Cruise at current job

I find that when you think you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, super straightforward tasks seem insurmountable.

Think of it like a dumb person would: “I don’t like this job. I’m gonna get a new one”

Everything except this in your plan is doable:

>4. Cruise at current job

It's such a chaotic shit show... more people are leaving in the next few weeks and it's going to very negatively affect me.

>I find that when you think you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, super straightforward tasks seem insurmountable.

It feels unsurmountable because I have no viable path to success or resolution right now. Whenever a new job lead or something else comes up it is an instant uplift of spirits. If only we could schedule success.

I really appreciate your simplifying of things and reminder of the things unrelated to programming that are essential to success.

The situation sounds impossible. I hope you are able to manage when more people lave.

That being said, what's going on right now? Literally right in this moment.

What is the next, smallest, most immediate action? Do that.

Have you tried automating some of your work? It helps if the works is automatable and mundane.

I think you just need to get a new job. Start applying today.

I started as a dev in a small software consultancy and worked there for 9+ years. I too felt the owner was too concerned to saying yes to every customer and contract and gave short shrift to the technical side of the business. I also felt similarly oppressed by management.

It's not always clear cut though - since running my own development company I've come to appreciate the difficulty of making payroll, of keeping the contracts coming in so that there's never a month where we're short and have nothing for our team to do.

It's tough, certainly for you, but also for management too. Try and see both sides, I guarantee there are few bosses who are intentionally malignant, just unintentionally so!

Regarding your skills stagnating, yes, that's partly on your employer for having a boring and crufty tech stack but it's also partly your responsibility.

I spent close to a decade focusing exclusively on my employer's tech stack, it was pure JSP/Java 6 built around an old school asynchronous messaging engine. Whilst I am a proficient back end architect I ignored the world of HTTP, REST, Websockets and web development so by the time I left my employer and entered the job market I didn't even know what a HTTP verb was!

It took 6 months of intensive crash courses and small side projects around the training to solidify the current web paradigm. That de-skilling was on me.

It would've been great if my employer actively sent me on mentoring and training programs, etc. but even when I've contracted at super large companies they often pay short shrift to training in hot new skills and focus more on health/safety training and other corporate compliance.

Your skills and qualifications are on you.

As far as motivation and burnout goes, this one is a bummer. Towards the end of it I was literally having difficulty breathing whilst working for my previous employer. I found it impossible to get up before 10am and struggled to stay motivated. My health started to inexplicably fail and I was getting aches all over. I eventually found out I had symptoms of depression and to get out of it took a long time.

I started by chipping away at simple things. Walk after dinner round the block, every day, non-negotiable. That morphed into daily exercise, which morphed into eating better, which gave me the energy to start weekend coding and training on the skills I was missing.

It's still tough, I still miss workouts all-the-time and I still lapse into a funk - but it's good knowing the funk is temporary, that the mind plays tricks on itself and catastrophises or kids itself that the present situation will stretch into eternity. Everything is temporary, which is good because bad situations can turn into good situations.

It takes time, don't be hard on yourself, or blame yourself. Recognizing that just as I had a hand to play in putting myself into a predicament so too I had a part to play in getting myself out of it. It takes baby steps and time.

Good luck!

to start, i would see if you can switch to 30 hours/week.

so, you stay full time, keep the bennies, take the 25% pay cut, done.

if you can actually get there, that alone would be a huge win.

if you're not too worried about losing your job (you should be), then just ask your boss today - right now - stop reading this, slack your boss, "Hey boss - can we have a quick phone chat? Short story is -- I wanted to see if I could switch to 30 hours/week, stay 'full time' (i.e. keep my benefits), take 25% pay cut. That's the gist of it."

Why?

Ugh. I don't know, honestly. Make something up that sounds reasonable. You want to learn how to paint watercolor.

You're not burned out, you're not unhappy, you love pandemics and life and you're so gd thankful for everything all the time and happy and god bless america, but for some reason you only want to do 30 hours/week. Ideally in 4 days a week instead of 5, but even 5 is doable -- 6 hour days instead of 8.

see what the answer is.

worst that can happen is you get shitcanned on the spot, and now you're in deep shit.

so, tread carefully.

but let us know if you decide to do this, and if you got shitcanned or not.

outside of that, i'd suggest as many of these as you can do, even if sporadically, etc.:

   - meditate 5+ minutes/day (headspace)
   - fast 16:8 (zero)
   - exercise/walk 12+ miles/day (pedometer step counter)
   - eat veggies (even if you still eat a bunch of shit)

my personal fave of those is the exercise. even walking - at least 90min - can make a _big_ diff in your mental and physical. and you get to listen to some great stories/pods/books.

i feel like i've been where you are -- about 20 or so times -- really -- so nothing will _actually_ help, except changing jobs -- but the goal is to stay semi-sane and ideally employed while you sort shit out.

yeah, crushing yourself with real endurance exercise, is a great way to go.

also take a week+ vacation if you can. again, try not to get shitcanned.

also, small web dev shop seems like an awesome place to be. but might depend what you're looking for. i've always wanted to be closer to 'the business' -- i.e. the 'sales/dealmaking' -- but your tone regarding the owner makes you sound like...me and every other nerd who has at least at one point in time despised the sales folks for '[insert reason here]'. point of this graf is...put yourself in the sales folks' shoes. my current take on the 'business' vs. 'tech' debate hasn't shifted much in the last 20 years -- once I figured out how important sales was to business, and tried to do it myself, i started getting a _lot_ less cranky about shady/shitty business/sales folks. and the point of the empathy is it might _greatly_ reduce your jadedness, and make you happier/healthier/smarter/better.

shoot - one thing i never tried but think would have been cool -- try to help the company get some sales. but i would not go out there and try to get sales myself - i would ask the owner.

"hey bro, i still love nerding out, but i'd like to learn more about sales and getting customers and return work and all the things that make this company go. i have no idea how i could possibly help, but...i do follow tech and business news, and...".

ok, that's hella awkward, but the point is, imagine you were for a day put in charge, by the supreme being of this dystopia called Earth2020, of helping your company grow - make more money/revenue, get more customers, sell more shit -- what would you do to achieve this goal?

start reading more about Apple's VR play, and how small businesses might be able to benefit? look to sell solutions that just happen to coincide with your dev interests? you ask bossman, "What do you think about when you call a previous customer? Do you just call and say hi, or do you have a specific idea, or shoot the breeze, or talk about VR, or...?"

i do like the idea that...if you're about to try to do something that is relatively or extremely uncomfortable for you to do, it's relatively or extremely the right thing for you to do, respectively. act upon the universe. impose your will. all that type of shit.