Ask HN: Have You Burned Out? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have You Burned Out?

98 pointsdirtybirdnj146 comments

I am looking to discuss / talk to people who have burned out, whether or not you feel you've recovered.

I just got turned down for another job and I am at the end of my mental and emotional rope.

Tomorrow I have a second interview at a local retail store. I've been a web developer or software engineer for a decade but increasingly painful failures have ruined me as a person and I am lost and without purpose in life. I think I just need to give up on software, I no longer feel welcome or wanted.

I have read that burnout can take up to five years to be resolved, I'm about in year three at this point. It's kinda like a recession you can't see it coming but looking back its easier to see when it started and its root causes.

Even with resources (supportive wife, limited family, therapist) recovery is slow, difficult, confusing and not a straight path. I need a job and purpose before life can improve and I can find a daily existence that's not 90% stress. Until then every day is a catastrophe where I'm upset that I didn't solve "the problem" and all I can think about is fixing "everything" or I'll lose my wife, my house, my independence, my dignity...

If you are suffering from burnout I wish you luck in the eternal struggle for normalcy. I can't say it ever gets better, but try to be kind to yourself. Most of all be honest with yourself even if you can't be with others.

If this post in any way resonates with you feel free to respond or just yell into the void.

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Yes. I'm currently employed by a well known company but interviewing elsewhere. I've been a SWE for 10 years and even though I'm still able to smash tech interviews for the most part thanks to lots of grinding over the years I just feel so empty inside about working on computers. It's no fun. I feel isolated. I'm a very social person in real life so I live for the weekends and otherwise spend my mornings and afternoons stressed out about what to say at our daily standup because the truth is I don't care about any of it enough to get invested in a project. But it's hard to leave this field. I'm really good at interviewing and because of that I've been able to secure very good pay and conditions of employment.

In the past 4 years I've seriously looked into going to Nursing School and Cosmetology School respectively (Cosmetology School might seem silly but it's only a year, it's cheap, and it's something I'm interested in). The idea that I'd give up my cushy SWE job for much lower pay even in the case of Nursing says everything there is to say about how burnt out I am. In the end I probably will leave this field anyway. I don't suspect spending my middle age and above programming will be any more fulfilling.

Above all the weirdest part about burnout as a SWE is the GUILT that I feel about it. I get paid a lot. I have a very flexible job with a lot of autonomy. I am coddled but somehow I daydream about ... going to work from 7-7 at a hospital???? It makes me question my sanity.

> otherwise spend my mornings and afternoons stressed out about what to say at our daily standup because the truth is I don't care about any of it enough to get invested in a project

Oh man do I feel this one. I love the daily communication of the standup rituatl, but when its used as a cudgel by uncaring PMs it just becomes this daily shaming ritual used to extract maximum efficiency (under threat of pain) from terrified developers just trying to keep up.

My only advice is to get a plan together for when your runway suddenly ends. I hope your situation is better than the ones I was in, but I didn't expect to be in the situation I'm in and not planning for it (having better savings) made it a lot worse.

daily standups shouldn't be a thing

My team does them twice a week and I still dread waking up for the call.

Maybe if I felt like my department head actually did anything to unblock people but sit there, blink a few times before saying “ok who’s next?” I wouldn’t dread them as much.

As practiced though, I really don’t know who benefits from our standups anymore.

> As practiced though, I really don’t know who benefits from our standups anymore.

It's not for you, this is why it sucks. Standup could be better but it's not designed with concern for all participants, or at least it takes effort and empathy to run one this way. If doing it well was easy developers would all be tripping over their dicks to give standup updates.

tl;dr: stick not as effective as carrot, but stick is cheaper / easier / simpler so stick is the only option

It's sometimes the only way you get to communicate with all of the team during the week. So it's more of a social ritual than anything else and those are important too.

One way to avoid burnout is to achieve progress in the form of milestones.

Another one is the pure joy from achieving a difficult goal, e.g. a difficult problem that has eluded you for some time.

Those two things are what I am for to avoid burnout. And if there is no longer joy from the second option, then it might be time to call it quits.

It's good advice, thanks for it. We are in good financial shape and only plan to have our one child luckily. My partner is not working at the moment but he has a masters degree in engineering so I'm sure he could also find work.

I hope your situation worked out in the end too.

Speaking of standup, yeah.... It's obviously a way to keep people on track and apply some social pressure insofar as that. It's not too bad compared to other stressful jobs but it's annoying haha.

> [standup is] not too bad compared to other stressful jobs

My beef with the standup is that it does not serve the developers. It's simply the act of management pulling the oil stick from the engine, wiping it clean and firing the engine up REGARDLESS of what oil levels are present.

So many times I've had the standups used simply as a one-way process. People get their information but theres "no time" to discuss anything at length and the deciders are magically busy all day long afterwards. I don't think its wrong to have brief updates and not get into long-winded discussions during the updates, but if there's not ever time to discuss relevant issues this becomes a social / psychological tactic by deciders / planners to avoid "blowing scope" and "adding additional work" as I have experienced it. Fuck the people working on the thing, we already decided. Stop complaining nerd just sprinkle some PHP on it and get on with your life.

Granted, I am painting a worst-case scenario picture here based on my experiences. The alternative (no check-ins, or hardly ever) is actually worse in my opinion.

The common thread is give-a-shit. Do the people asking for updates actually care or are they simply collecting information to regurgitate to others. One of these two personality types brings value to the organization, which one do you think it is?

I will talk all day to people who are on the same page as me, or people who genuinely care and want to understand.

The ones who actively don't want to understand can go directly in the volcano.

If you can, find a remote job and move to a more social location. It’s not for me, but I see lots people loving coworking and coliving around me. Reduce your work hours to 25/30 per week and work when/where you feel like it.

> I live for the weekends

Why are you not trying to find some part-time positions, and then maybe decrease your SWE work to 20 hours per week and try out other things in the remaining time? I think this could be a good fit for your situation, and possibly be a transition to see if you really want another work or if not without completely leaving the field.

At this point in my career everyone wants to hire me at the equivalent of what would be L5/L6 at Google and at that level they all want me full time and want me to "mentor" people and be a leader. It's part of the problem of me doing really well at interviewing. I can solve your leetcode problems, design a distributed system, and tell you everything about how your operating system works down to the level of hardware interrupts so I pass these interviews left and right but I don't have the drive or passion to be a "leader" in this field.... Maybe this is the root of my burnout actually.

edit How can I even find a part time job at this point? I have executive recruiters sometimes even trying to get me to be a CTO. Everything points in the direction of companies wanting more of my time not less.

You mentioned in another post how rewarding it was for you to support a friend and how much more meaningful it felt (contrasted to your joyless office job).

You have a lot of expertise in your field, would becoming a freelancer trainer or coach be an option? For example, running short (1-5 days) on-site courses at different companies. I can imagine it might be rewarding to impart you expertise to the attendees - the feeling of satisfaction of helping others. Best of luck whatever you decide.

> How can I even find a part time job at this point? > Everything points in the direction of companies wanting more of my time not less.

You'd have to look for smaller companies without the clout to pick up FANG engineers. They desperately need folks, and can be negotiated with.

I've had two part time gigs. One was a food delivery app startup, but not as big as uber eats. They had a real patchwork of an engineering team, few contractors, few full timers. I just told them 20h/wk is my maximum and declined their requests for me to work more. They needed me, and hiring is very hard.

Another was a tiny payroll software company. Another small contender in a larger market. But they had their niche, and some real old software built almost entirely by one contractor at a time over the course of two decades. Moved at a real slow pace. Paid me $130/h if I remember correctly.

However.. since you sound like me in every other way (FANG, distributed systems, tech lead level), know that the work in smaller places like I describe is boring. It's cleaning up old cruft, shoehorning features in with no budget to rewrite any existing code, working with terrible tooling and documentation.. All good if you can turn off the part of you that wants to write sexy code and build beautiful novel systems. I lasted about 1.5y. But got to travel the US, play music, date, have serious side projects.. a good life for a while.

>But it's hard to leave this field. I'm really good at interviewing and because of that I've been able to secure very good pay and conditions of employment.

This is the first worldiest of first world problems, but it is something I have also experienced. A high paying career like this does end up feeling like a trap if you ever want a change. It becomes extremely difficult to make the jump and switch careers. Not only will I be giving up the relatively high salary I am lucky enough to have to switch to an industry that on average doesn't pay as well, but I would also need to start completely over in that industry making my new salary well below that already depressed average. I would be willing to take maybe a 20%-40% pay cut for my mental health, but it doesn't even feel like a real option when we are talking about something around 75%.

> I am coddled but somehow I daydream about ... going to work from 7-7 at a hospital?

I daydream about working as a barista sometimes. I don't even know anything about being a barista. It just seems like a job where I interact with people and the worst I can screw something up is a drink order, not a feature that millions of people use.

And the worst I can get stuck on something, is a machine breaking down and telling a customer "I'm so sorry, here's a refund, can we get you something else", not spending all morning banging my head trying to figure out why javascript won't let me iterate through an array and claiming it's not an array, or trying to figure out how to fix out complicated parsing function so it will properly parse some gnarly data coming in for a new query in a slightly different way.

But the pay cut would be obscene. I couldn't afford that. Otherwise I'd probably make the switch for a while.

Yes. The pay cut would be obscene. The only way I could justify it would be to think of it as a soft retirement.

(Because I suppose we're here to trauma dump I'm moving my stream of consciousness about wanting to be a nurse to this comment where it seems more appropriate.)

My daydreaming about being a nurse started again when I was taking care of a friend in the hospital after she had a serious blood clot. I was spending 15-20 hours a week there feeding her and stuff because she could barely move and thinking that it was the happiest I'd felt in ages. I should have been stressed out because I was coordinating with her out of town family, and taking care of errands for her, and coordinating with her job, and talking with her doctors and nurses and such but I would leave the hospital feeling so happy and recharched. Meanwhile I feel so drained after spending a few hours "coding" or reviewing design documents or, worse, writing design documents. I think I just don't like technology even though I learned a lot about it to make money.

> I just feel so empty inside about working on computers.

I feel similar. I used to love programming. Nowadays, it seems most of my day is fixing problems and patching things. I'm getting anxious every time I get pinged, and oncalls are the worse. The simplest things made me nervous as I'm worried I won't be able to fix them.

But then, the salary is comparatively so high that I may as well work a few more years in this field. I know I could just switch teams, or go work for a different FAANG. But even knowing that, it's hard to get detached from the work. It is very stressful, and I think not good from my health. One thing that put a lot of strain on me is thinking how my colleagues perceive me. They are all very good and it makes me feel bad not being at the same level (and not as passionate as them).

I think this form of imposter syndrome is fairly common. I feel the same way, quite often. I no longer feel like I don't belong because I'm not smart or skilled enough, but that I'm not passionate enough to keep my skills as sharp.

One thought that helps me deal with it, is that every company/team needs people like us. If everyone on the team is obsessed with the work, then it starts to create bad habits of overwork that will further alienate new people. So just by being less interested, we're helping normalize separating work from life, taking things slower, and hopefully preventing the whole team from burning out.

Some of the best programmers I know are lazy. They don't work crazy hours because they a) automate stuff b) don't reinvent the wheel and c) know what work is critical and what can be skipped

Overworking can lead to overengineering which has a knock on maintenance cost for years.

I knew a corporate communications writer that used to dream about being a cashier at McDonalds. The never ending pressure to meet deadlines was getting to her. The big plus in some jobs is that you can drop them as soon as you are off work. Other jobs you carry all day long until you solve them. A continuous supply of work means that you're working all the time.

I'm a true believer that a daily hobby you love gives you the opportunity to decompress. That's my first suggestion to anyone in danger of burning out.

Good advice, taking work home is not sustainable on a daily basis nor is working weekends.

If you're continuously put in those situations, then it's time to consider your options.

Actually, it's always a good idea to have a backup plan, just incase some unforeseen event happens at work.

Daydreaming is more fun than working though. I can daydream about working down a coal mine and engaging in that thought can be more pleasant than working on some boring coding task - but the reality is very different.

Nursing is a noble career but, especially in the US, it is brutal, will destroy your body, horribly paid (unless you're a travel nurse, which comes with its own downsides) and the working practices are essentially a non-stop wall of abuse. That 7-7 shift you dream of? Great news - your next shift begins at 9am, see you then!

Cosmetology is nice but the schools trained thousands and thousands more students than the industry required so your job prospects are close to zero.

Go work for a startup or find yourself an expensive hobby instead.

Very sober advice and I appreciate it. That's why I haven't done these things.

I left tech some time ago for medicine after being a SWE for 8 years (currently in Medical School, but I initially considered Nursing School too).

Burn out played a role, but the most driving factor was that I couldn't care about what I was working on most of the time. I didn't want to spend my productive years adding the next useless feature, "making that button pop", or tweaking the sign up form to try to increase sales. I felt that I wasn't using my time right.

I saved enough and quit my job. I could've made a lot more money if I kept working as a SWE, but now the feeling I have that I'm doing the right thing for me is well worth it. So far I'm very happy with the change.

That's really fantastic to hear. Another commenter said that Nursing is very brutal and abusive. I've heard the same said about medical school. How do you feel about this based on your first hand experience?

Med school demands a lot of my time and energy, way more than what I imagined before switching, but I feel an unexpected satisfaction learning about how the body works. I think it's because that knowledge is so universal (how the body and pathologies work is the same everywhere) and relevant to everybody. Plus I feel very grateful to be in a position to be able to do this.

Have you ever considered working in hospital IT? The past will be way lower, but you would spend a lot of time interacting with nurses (and whoever else is doing chat updates /data entry in a given facility).

To echo another commenter, nursing as a profession is noble but brutal. My cousin has what is considered a "cushy" nursing job working in pediatric oncology. He has stable hours, gets to work long term with a small set of patients and get to know them, and his work is less dangerous than many other specialities, but the work is emotionally devastating.

Autocorrect error: Second sentence should start "The pay will be way lower"

I've had burnout. I was 12-18 months in a startup before I realised it was not at all the right fit for me.

I was brought in as CTO to fix some stuff. I fixed that stuff and then realised that how I wanted the business to operate and how the CEO wanted to operate were very far apart.

It all came to a head when somebody got fired and I disagreed with both the decision and how it was carried out. This was just one item amongst a bunch of other things.

This drained me so hard emotionally. I was CTO at another startup for much longer and never got close to this level of burnout. I've talked to someone else about this (talking is helpful) and they had a similar experience. It's not always about the hours or the tenure. 60 hours/week in the right environment is very different to 40 hours/week in the wrong environment.

It took a few years for me to get over this. I took some less complicated jobs with less responsibilities and less personal investment before chucking myself back into the fire. It's going well so far and I'm definitely more resilient as I've been through some pretty dire work shit since then.

Sorry to hear you're having a tough time of it. Getting less personally invested for a while really helped me. I also took on some hobbies that I had total control over and that helped too.

Good luck :)

> 60 hours/week in the right environment is very different to 40 hours/week in the wrong environment.

Yes, exactly. Such an important thing to know. Even one day in a horrible position can be absolutely brutal.

> It all came to a head when somebody got fired and I disagreed with both the decision and how it was carried out. This was just one item amongst a bunch of other things.

I've never been involved in HR / sausage making you're describing but I can empathize so much with this feeling.

At one of my better jobs I was a developer on a backend app that would crash frequently due to queue processing issues. I kept getting distracted from what I was doing to fix this as it blocked account management teams from using the system (making money). I went out of my way to create a prototype tool to diagnose the issue (that I was fixing almost every day) and when I asked management for some time at work to finish it, they said no.

The way this was handled was fucking awful. They gave me a meeting to present what I created, but before it started the most senior person started things by saying "I'm going to let you present this but there's no way we're going to use it".

I wish I had just said ok I won't waste your time, I quit.

This is one of those PTSD trauma things I havent quite gotten over yet... it melted my candle in an unhealthy way.

It's especially sad for me because for a time (about a year?) it was the best job I've ever had and I really fondly look back on the things I did and (most of) the people I got to work with. It was a great fit for a time but it came undone in a way I was unprepared for.

Eugh :( Why couldn't that person have just let you know far far sooner? Some people just shouldn't be responsible for other people.

This person was responsable for multiple public HR debacles, their seniority meant everything was swept under a rug.

One employee provided a list of things "if we can't fix these, this is my two weeks notice" and this choad responded with "cool see ya".

HR got involved and after his two weeks was announced by choad he was suddenly back with the company, just kidding! Said employee stayed around for another month or two but ultimately left.

"I'm in charge, so I'm right" is the most cancerous personality to deal with. I pride myself on acknowledging when I'm wrong and I'm astounded and disappointed at the lack of ability in 99% of people to engage in genuine reflection / introspection.

In 2017, I was burnt out and at the end of my rope. All I wanted was to quit and run away and consider a change in careers, much like you. Without any backup plan, I quit my very lucrative job. Thankfully, my partner was okay with my decision. I was expecting to feel dread and constant anxiety that I wasn't providing for my family. Yet, once I walked out of that building, the opposite was true. I couldn't feel more relieved.

I took a few months off, which, I know, is a luxury that not many can afford. During this time, I took stock of what was important to me. Did I still love programming? And, was programming the thing that made me unhappy?

What I realized is that I didn't want to feel like a tiny cog in a giant machine, and I didn't want to work on something that wasn't in some way beneficial to others. I needed to feel like I was making a difference and not just burning my life away on something disposable for lots of cash.

I was lucky enough to find a contract with a healthcare startup where I'd be working on technology that would improve the real lives of actual people, not just another piece of software that would be discarded two years down the road. Eventually, they offered me a full-time position, and I joined as employee #9.

Am I happy now? Well, I'm happier than before. But more importantly, I feel that now I can attain happiness.

I gained a lot of clarity when I differentiated "programming" from "shipping code". I still enjoy the former, but the latter is becoming harder and harder to do at large corporations.

Your post has a lot I agree with, I like that you actually acknowledge the privilege of taking time off you exercised. I don't begrudge people who can do it as long as they don't prescribe it to others.

I wish I could find a path towards what you have achieved but I have been so thoroughly discouraged from pursuing my career that it is emotionally painful to look at jobs.

How did you find the contract? Networking? Job sites? Did you discuss your burnout with the employer or did you feel things were more manageable by then?

I did not discuss my burnout with my previous employer since the corporation's internal structure led to my fierce desire to leave. It was a toxic place, and I felt like it robbed me of my will to carry on my day-to-day life.

I did discuss my burnout with my new employer and joined as a contractor in fear that the thought of being "tied down" by a W2 position would once again make me feel hopeless and trapped. They understood, and I initially only took on a few hours per week. Once I felt more comfortable with the workload and the company's culture, I increased the hours and eventually accepted their offer.

The contract itself found me when a past colleague of mine learned that I had quit. So, yeah, I must admit that my situation includes the privileges of an extensive network formed by a long career and a financial cushion that I used while mentally recovering.

I hope you can climb out of this hole that you're in. Speaking to the right therapist also helped me make sense of my options. Understanding that I wasn't stuck with my lot and had a choice in my destiny was the first pinprick of light in the darkness.

> So, yeah, I must admit that my situation includes the privileges of an extensive network formed by a long career

You should give yourself some credit for the effort it takes to do this.

> Understanding that I wasn't stuck with my lot and had a choice in my destiny was the first pinprick of light in the darkness.

This is one of the things I struggle most with. At times I feel like people can't see me and I don't really exist. Social / communication struggles keeps me isolated because I struggle to explain / ask for the help I need.

I have stopped asking for help because I'm so discouraged that either people will say no (why are you asking for help / do it yourself / you don't need help), or they will suggest unhelpful things that are gratifying for them to say (it worked for me / I'm so great so this will work / heres what you NEED to do ) but unrealistic / not applicable to me.

> I have read that burnout can take up to five years to be resolved

You are right.

Recovery from burnout takes years, not weeks or months. Years.

I recently got back my mojo and feel more inspired to create, and I'm quite enjoying it. It took me about 5 years to get out of a rut I was in.

One thing I will say: look for early signs of burnout and address them as quickly as possible. Burnout creeps up on you unannounced, so be careful.

My burnout started right around 2020, just as the pandemic hit. I'm just now getting little spurts of energy here and there again. The past 2 years has been an absolute drag for me, personally. I wake up feeling tired, I manage to get a couple of productive hours into the day, but by 1pm I often feel so tired that it almost physically hurts to keep sitting up.

I haven't seen a doctor but I'm not sure if I'm experiencing depression, or very low testosterone, or something else.

Do you eat cheese? Can you cut cheese for 2 days and see whether there is a difference? I wonder whether the sudden fat makes one sleepy all the time.

Eric Adams, is that you?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/08/cheese-is-li...

For real, I love dairy and cheese and I'll fucking mourn the day my doctor tells me to give this stuff up. It's coming. I'm not looking forward to it.

I still think Adams is a disgrace for the comparison tho.

I’m suspecting that a big lump of cheese makes me automatically noop for hours, as in, stare in the void, sad, only one or two neurons firing at a time, very slow thinking. The comment next to yours says the same.

Butter, milk and yoghurt (which I eat in quantity, all 3) don’t have this effect, so I’m just suggesting you eat other stuff for a few days, maybe French or Lebanese restaurants, or sushi. It would be logical, if true, that pizza eaters tend to be couch potatoes as well. If would be logical, if true, that I get depressed when I’m alone (it looks stupid but other people aren’t depressed in just 1 day alone), maybe I tend to have pasta-cheese when I’m alone, plus cheese before dessert, and bahm slowness and suicidal thoughts.

But I’m French and, like you, I couldn’t quit fromage - but maybe I should have various ones for taste, and not for quantity.

It sounds stupid, but seriously dairy causes a lot of issues for people. I hit rock bottom several years ago and did an elimination diet and found a few things I need to avoid, but the biggest one is dairy.

If I accidentally eat some dairy, starting about 2 days later and lasting for a few days, I'll feel really terrible about myself and like there is no hope. Often times there's some suicidal thoughts in there too. Absolutely not worth it.

Same, I’ve often had suicidal thoughts since I live alone. And it may not just be living alone, the intensity of the thought is surprising.

I’ve always eaten yoghurt and mill everyday in quantity, and a little cheese works well, but it’s only when I eat a quantity of cheese that I stare in the void for hours with 99% of my neurons off - Could the liver turn “depression mode=on, burn all neurons” when saturated in fats?

If you are willing to take anti-depressants, definitely go.

low testosterone though, is something many men (including me) have, but practically no doctor is willing to treat. They have one enormous range of "normal" that is calculated including 80 year old men and 20 year old men in the same pool (even though testosterone levels plummet as you age), and if you aren't in the 90 year old man levels (even as a 30 year old) insanely low category they'll just tell you "you're normal" and won't do anything.

After 5 years of getting worse and worse I read something online about that, and even though my levels was right around 300 (I'm in my low 30s) the doc dismissed it. I found a doc who would treat it tho. I'm on a small dose of testosterone replacement therapy, and I am already feeling so much better I can't even believe it. It honestly fills me with rage the way the medical establishment failed me and continues to fail men in this.

Digestive ability deteriorates under stress and usually snowballs into dietary sensitivities. The worst culprit for me was gluten.

I am burnt out, but not just from programming/software engineering. The older I get the more blatant it is that the 40+ hour work week, toiling away on some tiny part of something questionably significant is not the way we as a species should live. If I had a vocation, and not just a job, I'm sure it would be different but I've never found that "love what you do and you'll never work a day in your life" vocation. I've worked at jobs I've liked with good people. I just cannot fathom the point of getting up 5 days out of 7 to work the best part of the day and pretend it's OK, because it's not. I fear how juvenile that sounds but the fact that so many people waste their lives in toil for large corporations is maddening, and I'm a cog as much as anyone else. The older I get the more apathetic to work and career advancement I become. Money is vital, of course, but we're slaves to it at the end of the day...

I have severe burnout, if you can call it that. I'm from Serbia, and I worked for an exploitative international affiliate marketing company for two years throughout the pandemic. I worked as a content editor, proofreading and editing an average of 5-10k words a day. Later I got "promoted" to site manager, which involved everything from kw research to posting content via WordPress. I also edited an average of 5-10k words daily.

The job payed $1k a month, and I didn't receive a single raise for two years, which is another reason why I quit. It was only after stopped working that I realized I was completely ruined, both mentally and physically.

The worst thing about this company is they use employee time trackers that analyze and store your mouse and keyboard movements and take screenshots every 10 minutes. My contract stated I had to have an activity level above 50% if I were to get paid.

Currently, I work as a writer for a digital marketing company, and I am having a hard time getting used to the lack of micromanagement and the slower (and much more normal) pace of work.

I can't afford rehabilitation, I must continue working to be able to survive which is really hard for me right now. I have some kind of PTSD too, I keep apologizing to everyone even though I haven't done anything wrong. So there you go... Sorry for the rant. :)

That's really terrible. I hope you'll get into a better spot. Good on you for leaving that first job. Recognizing that it was bad and then acting on it took courage.

> I am having a hard time getting used to the lack of micromanagement and the slower (and much more normal) pace of work.

This has been a pain point for me as well, adjusting to newer, slower or more bureaucratic environments.

You deserve to honor your resilience and success in identifying your issues and working to resolve them. You are an inspiration that people like myself can struggle, and sometimes continue to struggle but not give up.

I first acknowledged burnout at the end of 2020. It took 6-12 months of struggling before a baseline could be established and to this day I don't feel "recovered" but I am improving. From reading a lot about burnout I realized people are different and what works for one person may not work for all. Looking back my burnout was caused by constant context switching and a self imposed requirement to always be available. In the moment I thought it was about the work I was doing and how I felt like it wasn't improving the world.

To ease the struggling stage my biggest win was acknowledging what is the minimum actions needed to take to keep coasting, Once I accomplish those things I didn't beat my self up. Examples of this would be acknowledge 6 hours of meetings in a day is a full day, and I don't need to do 6 hours of dev work on top.

To start the healing process I quit my fulltime job and took 3 months off. After that I started contracting instead, billing hourly, and working less then 40 works for my budget and the strong disconnect between working and not working is helpful to me.

I would ask your self the question, do you need to `fix "everything"`. Sounds like a lot of pressure to put on yourself, maybe you need that pressure, maybe you don't.

Thanks for your post, I’m curious to know how you go about finding work as a contractor, where are you based?

I was based in Denver Colorado, and years ago worked full time for an agency/consulting company. I got my one and only client through a contact I kept in touch with at that agency. After doing some work with that client I started traveling a bit. My hourly rate is lower then most others in the area but it is enough for for me since we don't spend much.

> I started contracting instead, billing hourly

This is a huge struggle for me. I have difficulty estimating tasks I don't know how long it will take. Then I can't provide cost estimates to customers who want pricing on things they don't understand to begin with. If I am lucky to deal with technical people its ok but I find intense social pain and failure when it comes to getting these important details across to people with a financial interest in not understanding or negging me down.

I really wanted to make consulting a thing for a while but the pain of working with non-technical people makes it almost unbearable.

I am very lucky, I don't have to do much estimation. I am just a cog in a machine, more senior people break apart work and I execute it. I tried to get a client who has a team in place and just needed extra velocity.

Non-technical people are part of the job, I try my best to explain the tradeoffs of different implementations and let their internal people make those calls. Long term problems are theirs so if they cut corners that is on them in 2 years.

I think this speaks to how much our identity and standing in society is tied to our job performance.

"Money is not everything but not having enough is" as the quote goes. Maybe there is a way to be happy without this attachment to job performance but it is a rare thing.

I burned out as a physician some 15 years ago and never returned to practice. Did college and med school in 6 years, top of my class, probably the best internship and residency in the country. Got a combined academic and clinical position at one of the best multispecialty clinics in the U.S. but year after year, became more and more disillusioned. Patients would roll in with suitcases full of records - literal suitcases, resulting from countless consultations with other doctors. They would plop down on the sofa in my office with the expectation that in the span of a week, maybe two, I would make them whole again. Day after day after day. I would spend hours and hours with each patient, but the administration didn't see the value in that. Basically "can you do it all faster?" I spent all of this time honing diagnostic skills and my ability to communicate well with people, but what matters is the bottom line.

I'd fill out institutional surveys that were aimed at figuring out the scope of burnout among the physician staff. But nothing ever changed. The final irony that precipitated my departure was that the guy running all of these burnout studies, a young junior faculty, used all of the resulting publications to leverage a cushy "Chief Wellness Officer" position at another academic medical centre.

I was done. I left my practice. My colleagues thought I had taken a dive off the deep end. But in some way, I thought they were secretly a little envious.

But if I've learned anything from this experience, it's that renewal can come in some of the most unexpected places. Just before quitting, my wife and I had a baby daughter. When she was three, we started her on Suzuki violin. Lo and behold, she was good at it. Eventually we decided to do homeschool, with me staying home to do the at-home teaching so that she could have time to practice. I became sort of the stage parent (in the best sense of the word!) Now, a decade later, she's 13 years old and is heading off to a full-time pre-conservatory program. If I hadn't been through the disastrous burnout, I would have been languishing there still and never saw the opportunity right in front of me.

It also rekindled in me a deep love of music, to the point that now, I work as a collaborative pianist and coach chamber music groups in a local music academy.

I'm not sure the hurt of burnout every completely goes away; to this day, people look at me and I'm sure are thinking "why would you throw away all that education?"

> It also rekindled in me a deep love of music, to the point that now, I work as a collaborative pianist and coach chamber music groups in a local music academy.

One of the things I see over and over in this thread is people finding meaningful work.

I am both encouraged and demoralized by this. It seems like such a whim of fate, a thing outside of ones control that you can have a choice in doing something you enjoy and also be compensated for it.

It feels like a cruel lie. I wish I could read something like your story and experience something other than jealousy and jaded critiques of how it's not realistic and this isn't right and any other hater bullshit my brain comes up with to deny me the idea any good can ever occur

I have been like this for years, but all this time people thought I was making excuses to avoid getting a job or whatsoever.

Then of course, the pandemic hit us all and those who were judging me got hit the hardest; now they don't have the courage to look me in the eyes, because they drunk the glass of bitter water as we say in my language and know exactly how I feel.

I don't know whether it has something to do with age (80's kid here), but it's a common trait amongst those who are around my age; we can't handle too much information at once.

If you want to have a chat, let me know.

> I have been like this for years, but all this time people thought I was making excuses to avoid getting a job or whatsoever.

I've gone from not ever being let go from a job (or even getting ahead of layoffs) to bouncing down the career ladder to lower and lower paying jobs. It's not that I'm unwilling to work its that my idea of what I'm worth or what I should even be doing has been so scrambled by the rejection from my chosen career and at times rejection from jobs further down the line too.

I have tried to go back to tech twice and had the most emotionally painful and abusive experiences to date.

I feel like there's a societal expectation that you should just relinquish any dignity or standing you once had when for immediate and maximal convenience to employers. Worked hard to get where you are? too bad! Life sucks it's not that way anymore you're only worth $13 an hour now. Is my resume a lie? Was the last 10 years a fever dream? Was any of it real?

HA! It feels like I'm having a discussion with myself right now!

Believe it or not, this is very comforting to know that others feel the same more or less, like me.

Burnout is something I have subconsciously been trying to hide for a long time.

This thread and all its responses have been hugely cathartic.

Thanks for engaging / participating in todays online group therapy session :)

What are you doing at this time (not meant as judgement or pressure)? I'm at a year (intentionally) unemployed, and I'm still not at the point where I feel like I can make meaningful progress on the projects I want to work on.

I can't really foresee a way that will get me going again, and I don't know that I really want to. I feel ashamed that my wife is now working, for less pay and objectively harder, when I could be making twice as much.

I have severe burnout, if you can call it that. I'm from Serbia, and I worked for an exploitative international affiliate marketing company for two years throughout the pandemic. I worked as a content editor, averaging around 5-10k words a day. Later, I got promoted to site manage without getting an actual raise. I did everything from keyword research to posting content via WordPress.

The job payed $1k a month, and I didn't receive a single raise for two years, which is another reason I quit. It was only after I stopped working that I realized I was completely ruined, both mentally and physically.

Currently, I work as a writer for a digital marketing company, and I am having a hard time getting used to the lack of micromanagement and the slower (and much more normal) pace of work. Unfortunately, I've grown to hate the industry, and I'm having a hard time getting motivated, especially with the media blasting us with negative information all the time.

I can't afford rehabilitation, I must continue working to be able to survive, which is really hard for me right now. I have some kind of PTSD too, I keep apologizing to everyone even though I haven't done anything wrong. So there you go... and sorry for the rant. :)

Yep, I've burned out. I was doing a finance/business job that involved overseas travel and frequent 80+ hour weeks. I would sometimes not wash, eat or sleep in order to deliver. I fell for the same trap that lots of insecure overachievers fall for after college: a strong desire to prove myself, inability to set boundaries and a lack of mentorship / welfare support (other than to 'lean in').

After about 3 years of this, in 2019, I was away on a work trip and decided to tag a vacation on at the end. And I just couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't even bring myself to get food sent up to my room. I had already felt pretty suicidal by that point and knew I needed help, so I used work medical to set me up with a therapist.

It's taken way longer than I anticipated, and Covid didn't help, but I'm doing better. I'm far less neurotic, I actually have hobbies, and I've managed to hold down a couple of relationships for the first time in my life. To get to this stage, I needed to seriously take my foot of the pedal: I functionally went down to a part time job (same company, different position) and I had to completely reconfigure my values.

I miss my old self sometimes - the one that would crank all-nighters for work, a job offer or a side-hussle - but I know that old person wasn't going to last very long in the modern world!

> I fell for the same trap that lots of insecure overachievers fall for after college: a strong desire to prove myself, inability to set boundaries and a lack of mentorship / welfare support (other than to 'lean in').

Oh man do I feel seen here. I worked at a commercial pizza kitchen for a few months, this led me to feel maybe I could try software again and had a really, really bad experience. It took a few months for me to apply again, which is the job in my post above. That desire to prove myself causes me so much pain and I wish I could give up.

Going to a retail job I have similar reservations, starting to feel like things have just changed and I'm the one who's not recognizing it trying to live in the past. I hope I can find a way to dig myself out of debt but it's going to take years at a drip drip drip rate compared to what I used to make in software.

Why do we have resumes and talk about our careers if we're just going to be accused of "living in the past"? I think it really just depends on whether you have a past you can be proud of or if you're embarrassed by it and trying to hide the shame.

I've been feeling burned out since just before the pandemic when my boss had a breakdown from burn out himself. He had sheltered the team quite a bit, and when he left, new managers tore the team apart and the purpose that I had for almost a decade disappeared.

That lead into a big downturn in my personal emotional and mental health, not helped by lots of issues in my personal life. I changed jobs, luckily still within my field, and now about a year later things are starting to feel more stable. My personal life is still in turmoil tho to the point where stress and burnout cost me the relationship with my partner, where we're in the process of separating now. It's been 2.5 years now, and I have no doubt that it will be years more.

It's burn out that started with work and just turned into full life burnout. The answer is always do less, not more. I've been trying to minimize my commitments and focus on what's core. Health, taking care of my son, my job, and my future. But it's all a setback where I wish I had been more proactive about my calm and my overall health. There's still lots of life left, this is just a wake up call about how to live the remainder of it well.

I worked 75+ hours a week and burned 40 grand on a startup that ultimately didn’t go anywhere after about a year. My stress levels were through the roof which I only realized after my first vacation at a new job three months in. This new job is very laid back with minimal responsibility and work compared to both the startup I worked on and the startups I worked for before that.

However, I’m now at 9 months in and I still don’t entirely feel recovered. I still have to force myself to write code when it used to be enjoyable and find my mental and intellectual recovery happening through writing, fitness and other non technical work. I’ve slowly started to recover my enjoyment of technology but deprogramming myself from every technical thing I do has to make money to I can do this technical thing out of pure curiosity is slow going.

Would I do it again? Yes, I continue to generate ideas and make observations that I think have real business value but not for another 6months to a year and not the same way.

Been there.. and still am somewhat. I was a dev - got a lead position at a disorganized company. Product was very late on the market because of the management (no clear command chain, no clear end goal, multiple tooling…). I pushed the app on the market but very fast got burn by the environment. That with 2 young children lead to a disastrous situation… I don’t think develop anymore, nearly 5 year later. I’ve switched to management, to try to do better. At my current job, I can’t so… I quit for something else, 6 month after beginning there. I’m choosing my battles. My job is only there to pay for whatever my family and me need - nothing more. I’m lucky my current job is ending now. I´d probably be burned out otherwise. I feel like you can never fully heal… but you can learn :)

Now my end goal is to definitely quit IT and find something nice to do. But let’s be honest: what’s gonna me pay that much?

> I feel like you can never fully heal... but you can learn

I saw a graphic about "moving on" and loss / grief. It showed that most people think of you as jar and grief is a ball that shrinks over time.

The reality is the grief never goes away, its with you forever. You grow around it. Your comment really hit me in that one.

https://whatsyourgrief.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/growin...

Yes. I have a course that I don't know whether I will pass or not. I seem to have a mental block that just isn't helping me solve the assignments. I am also supposed to work because otherwise I won't be able to remain where I live due to costs.

I have unresolved ADHD issues too. I am burnt to a crisp and I don't know what to do.

ADHD here too. I find sometimes I need to engage in things that aren't what I am avoiding.

i.e. I want to go fishing but I have an assignment I have to do. Sometimes I just need to go fishing and once I get out there and relax (mentally decompress) I am finally hit with an overwhelming sense of not being able to fish but actually I wanna go do that thing I need to complete.

I am on the spectrum too (ASD) there is something with that + ADHD that makes this stuck-in-the-mud / "failure of executive function" so debilitating.

I fucking hate when people say this, but you're not alone. I see myself in your post.

1. Take a walk / try some meditation. 2. Go back to the assignment. 3. Get stuck / can't focus 4. Repeat step 1 till you can finish step 2.

I think what burns me and a lot of people in this industry out is the fact that you can be a consistent high performer but still feel stuck because landing a new job is so difficult. The whole interview process is so far removed from actual job requirements and the need to be a pro at leetcode problems is soul crushing.

This one hits so hard. I often get told I'm blaming others for failures but its hard when you are an expert on a subject (programmer) and you are surrounded by non-technical people (PMs) who want cheap, quick, easy solutions.

No fucking joke I had a PM who would ask that we "just sprinkle some PHP on it" when a complex topic came up she couldn't be bothered to mentally engage in. Cannot put into words how arrogantly disrespectful this behavior was, yet it was casually laughed off as "oh that's just how she is!" Yeah... she's that way because you have no accountability and let PMs treat your devs like shit. That's your company culture. This is a choice.

It's super counter-intuitive but sometimes trying to advocate for best practices or just improving the status quo can be HUGELY CAREER LIMITING and I cannot warn people enough against doing so. It has literally destroyed my career. You've been warned.

I was burnt out for about a year, two main symptoms for me were: I hated standups, felt a high degree of anxiety around them, even though I was a very influential and productive team member and I felt completely zapped of all my energy - waking up in the morning really struggling to feel any purpose behind my work or my life. Rather than dissociation and perpetuating the struggle, I resigned and then focused on a hardware/software startup. I felt I was in a good position to take on more risks, considering I have no children, savings and a relatively low cost of living.

It has come with a renewed sense of purpose and I wake up excited for the day and the years ahead, but its yet to been seen if it were a good decision financially, but I suppose anything is better than getting sick and dying

Best that happened to me was being so stressed and eventually depressed that I really needed to work with my abilities as a human being with the responsibility to take care about one self.

For a long period it was a matter of looking at a certain ask from someone and I would simply feel if I was ok with that ask.

I have quit a lot of jobs due to me not accepting how people manage their own responsibility and time, because it then hit me.

Listen, I feel you. But don't take shit from no one and especially if has cost on your well being. It is definitely not worth it. Absolutely not.

I hope you find your legs, get someone professional to talk to and get back in the game.

There is nothing wrong with any of us, but as we bend our integrity we slowly lose ourselves, and that's not good. Get back to your own self.

All the best!

> But don't take shit from no one and especially if has cost on your well being. It is definitely not worth it. Absolutely not.

One of my biggest struggles is that my brain CAN NOT live any other way. I am realizing that there are huge costs to living true to yourself and I often wish I could relax my morals or just "care less" as people tell me.

I wish I could say living this way is worth it, right now it's not. I wish I could help myself, and if I could my next goal would be to help others who are suffering the way I am. Nobody deserves this.

> get someone professional to talk to and get back in the game.

I will continue to tell people that I'm in therapy and advocate for taking positive steps to address mental health struggles.

I can't tell from your post whether you're currently unemployed or unhappily employed and looking for something new. I feel there's a big difference between "burnout" and dealing with the stress of unemployment.

I am currently unemployed.

Instead of continuing to apply to software jobs I applied to a local retail job. This feels like a huge failure and I am not happy about how it reflects on me and my career.

I have severe burnout, if you can call it that. I'm from Serbia, and I worked for an exploitative international affiliate marketing company for two years throughout the pandemic. I worked as a content editor, averaging around 5-10k words a day. Later, I got promoted to site manage without getting an actual raise. I did everything from keyword research to posting content via WordPress.

My burnout cure is to do exactly whatever I want until I'm not burned out. Maybe that's coding. Maybe it's the motorcycle. Maybe it's watching dumb YouTube videos. Maybe it's helping build a barn. Whatever I want.

The worst bout took me about a year to get over. Quit my job and rode my mountain bike a lot. I realized that if I tried to force myself back into some project, I'd just procrastinate and remain unhappy. So I only worked on whatever it was I wanted to work on that day. I'd actively ask myself "What do I want to do?" instead of "What should I be doing?"

That might sound selfish... and it is. 100% selfish. But I get burned out from giving more than I get, so sometimes I have to make time for myself to balance it out. Fair's fair.

I was doing a lot of stuff with GPS tracks because I love maps (cheap consumer GPSes were a relative novelty at the time). And I was processing one with a program called Viking when I noticed that Viking supported a new basemap layer: OpenStreetMap. What's that, I wondered? And then I got hooked, mapping my area which barely had any data (the Bay Area barely had any OSM data, if you can imagine!). And virtually no cities were named in the US on the map. But I could get the GNIS city name and location data... all that was needed was to write a Python script to import it all through the OSM API.

Of course there were some cities in OSM already, so I had to search to make sure I didn't replace any existing ones that were relatively close in location and name. And of course some were misspelled in one dataset or the other, so I used Levenshtein distance to look for closeness.

That was the first program I wrote after my year-ish off. And it was fun again! And I got there by doing what I wanted to.

A few months later, I took some part time contract work, paid hourly. It was a great way to dip back in.

The OSM stuff piques my interest. Sorry to ask a deep / dumb / lmgtfy question but did you uncover a way to extract vector data from that dataset?

I have a hobby of doing pen plotter maps, my data source is USGS and the process to prepare it is manual and awful. I've often considered switching to OSM but afraid of the learning curve. Please send a PM/DM about this if you'd like to chat more on maps.

Your on-topic comment is interesting because I can resonate with the whole "have to do something you want till your un-burned". My problem is that I can't do what I want and I feel blocked from getting that. I try to re-calibrate my desires (lower expectations) and then I get blocked from THAT. I have lowered my expectations so much that I have a negatively reflexive response to things being diminished in general for me.

I call it the "starving crackhead" mentality but I think the medical term is scarcity mindset. Pain causes unhealthy obsessions and maladaptive loops... like fishing lines getting infinitely knotted.

There are a few ways to extract data:

1. Use JOSM to download a chunk (this is what I do if I'm editing the map)

2. Use an API like Overpass to download larger datasets (e.g. "all the drinking fountains in North America")

3. Use a QGIS plugin to download the data directly into a project (this is what I do if I'm making a paper or PDF map)

Once you have the data in OSM format (just another point/line/poly XML format), you can convert it to other things with a tool like GPSBabel.

Re blocked on doing things you want, I think I tempered that with what I could do. And I was "lucky" that my burnout job was so time-consuming that I was unable to really spend money or take vacations. So I had plenty banked to be lazy.

"Don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Look at my cousin--he's broke, don't do shit." --Lawrence, Office Space

The bummer was when I'd iterate through the list of things I could do, and zero of them appealed. That was a hard place to be. One trick I used there was to increase the size of the list of things I could do. I did this by writing down every idea I was even inspired by. ("Learn to sketch landscapes!") Then I had a big list for inspiration. The larger that list, the less likely I was to come up dry when looking for a task for the day.

If you simply can't financially afford to decompress, that seems a harder problem. I don't have a good answer there, except maybe a different gig entirely, tighten the belt, work with your SO to get through it, etc.

Burnout is an ongoing thing and while I've tried to stand up and keep going a few times there is a structural weakness that keeps me falling down. It feels like an infinite loop where I'm too weak to recover, to survive I have to get up but it takes all of my energy and I fall down. But I can only recover if I try to get up again...

I followed your IG account with my art project robotdrawsyou, one of my maps is on there. I need to follow up on the list of things you recommended it's a fantastic guide. Maybe we can chat about maps some day.

No. However, I used to feel that way. I interviewed for 18 months and I failed all the interviews. FAANG would not even grant me a graduate software engineer phone screen. I was bitter because of that since I studied/worked 8 years for that. In those 8 years I obtained 2 bachelors (one in information science), 2 masters (one in computer science) and 2 years of working experience (one year as an iphone dev, the other as a web dev bootcamp instructor). My GPA was high yet crickets.

My issue was that I only wanted to work for FAANG and being really honest. So whenever I applied for a non-FAANG company I wasn’t enthusiastic. It probably showed.

This whole ordeal toon 4 years. My resume is ragged, because it has been reactive since I almost never got a shot at working for the companies I wanted to work for.

So what changed?

Becoming less honest helps. Now I don’t mention that companies aren’t on the top of my list, I simply mention the positives and give them the impression that that is my comprehensive opinion of them.

The second thing that changed is not caring anymore where I work and not caring about the mission of the company. All I focused on was good working conditions. I now work 4 days per week, remotely. That is IMO the best quality of life boost that I have ever gotten as I am now traveling around Europe chilling wherever I go. The pace of the company is chill as well and it just so happens that I like their industry. The pay is okay for European standards and since I live frugally it’s more than I need (I save 30%).

I have severe burnout if you can call it that. I'm from Serbia, and worked for an exploitative international affiliate marketing company throughout the pandemic. I worked as a content editor and, later, site manager, having to do everything from research to posting content via WordPress.

The job payed $1k a month, and I didn't receive a single raise for two years, which is also the reason why I quit. It was after I'd working that I realized I was completely ruined, both mentally and physically.

The worst thing about this company is they use employee time trackers that analyze and store your mouse and keyboard movements, as well as take screenshots every 10 minutes. My contract stated I had to have an activity level above 50% if I were to get paid.

Currently, I work as a writer for a digital marketing company, and I am having a hard time getting used to the lack of micromanagement and the slower (and much more normal) pace of work. I can't afford rehabilitation, I must continue working to be able to survive which is really hard for me right now. I have some kind of PTSD too, I keep apologizing to everyone even though I haven't done anything wrong. So there you go... Sorry for the rant. :)

This absolutely won't apply to everyone -- at all -- but I recently went thought a good year of turmoil, burnout, career crisis etc. and relationship crisis and was just barely holding on. My sleep was getting worse some weeks, better others. I was just miserable, exhausted, brain fog, and just resentful for most of that year.

Then - for whatever reason my younger brother recommended I try taking Magnesium L-Threonate. I kid you not, I regained my zeal and love for the craft and the work regardless of the career challenges in a matter of just a day or two. Really. Within a month or two I'd dug myself out of that mess too.

I had every reason to be miserable between my work and relationship challenges. You couldn't have convinced me that there was a completely unrelated explanation / solution. It really opened my eyes to how little you can know yourself and how easily I could have spiraled out and ended up homeless if I'd stayed that way for another year or two.

All I can say is - keep an open mind - spend some time on your health. Just addressing the voices in your head won't necessarily guide you to what you need.

> I just got turned down for another job and I am at the end of my mental and emotional rope.

Try not to let being turned down for a job (or many jobs) affect you. It's a numbers game where you apply to 100 and 1 accepts you. Like dating - why get all hung up on one girl when you should be interested in 10 others at same time. It's all failures until you get 1 match.

I don't have time for a numbers game I need to pay my mortgage or I am faced with selling the house and leaving the state I live in.

I am not ok with this and it's a giant axe hanging over my neck every breath I take. This does not make me want to work harder and try again, I want to crawl under a rock and die and never come out.

I am demoralized and emotionally empty from the negativity and rejection its called learned helplessness. The rat is tired of being shocked and has given up. Usually at this point they discard the dead rat and try again, I'm not sure how that applies to me.

I'm sorry but the whole "try not to get down" thing is extremely triggering and upsetting. I know you mean well but it feels like toxic positivity.

Sorry my comment is upsetting. I actually wasn't trying to be positive. I was trying to reflect that I don't consider getting turn down by a job or a date as negative (nor positive with a silver-lining). I'm cold-blooded about the whole thing because the process is nearly all rejections.

I tend to work at smaller companies (almost startup size) so I've been laid off many times when the company fails, so I've had financial and family stress too. Nothing to do but to keep going despite how tough it is.

> Tomorrow I have a second interview at a local retail store. I've been a web developer or software engineer for a decade...

Do you mean to say you're giving up on dev due to failures to land a new dev job...or you are trying to transition out of dev and not able to find a job in a new industry?

I guess either way, an anecdote from own personal experience, I was looking at other options myself...I was burnt out on dev, looking to do something related but I thought might take a burden off my shoulders (QA/support), that didn't work out...but long story short, I just decided to embrace who I was--I'm a dev, and I'd like to think a good one, not to say a bigger transition is out of the question, but I found that it was more realistic to adjust my "internal" dials rather than escape to an entirely new career. That may or may not describe you, but I guess I would say to bear in mind the solution isn't always an external change of circumstances.

I know a couple people who escaped to QA. Some QA departments are serious software engineers, but others aren't. One good friend of mine now works like a couple hours a day on real work, and the rest of the day on his personal android app. His supervisor has full knowledge of it, so he is not doing anything wrong. He basically does all the work they have for him, and after that there isn't anything to do. Rather than make up busy work, they let him work on his app where at least he's building technical skills. There are days when looking for a similar gig is tempting :-D

> Do you mean to say you're giving up on dev due to failures to land a new dev job...or you are trying to transition out of dev and not able to find a job in a new industry?

Curious about this as well. I figured they were just trying to find anything to bring in money and thought they'd pick up a local hourly "unskilled labor" job until they landed another developer opportunity.I've tried this too but even though I have a lot of experience in restaurant work and "unskilled" manual labor, those who are hiring still only want to hire candidates which fit their expectation of who "fits" the role. And it's rare that a recently out-of-work software developer can adapt themselves to seem like they'd fit in.

So generally it's easier to find another developer job rather than a temporary unskilled labor position. It can also take 3-9 months to find that next developer job.

Good luck. Be kind to those around you and allow them to be kind to you.

> I figured they were just trying to find anything to bring in money and thought they'd pick up a local hourly "unskilled labor" job until they landed another developer opportunity.

Kind of. Need to pay the bills. Genuinely so burned out / emotionally destroyed that I'm genuinely questioning whether I want to do software anymore.

I find that when I can trick my mind into staying away from the negative I can engage in software and even enjoy it / have fun talking about it.

I love programming. I fucking HATE the people I have to deal with to get to do that activity and be paid for it. If you're a PM or other manager reading this I'm sorry. Your kind have destroyed me mentally and emotionally because it was too hard to be kind.

> Do you mean to say you're giving up on dev due to failures to land a new dev job...or you are trying to transition out of dev and not able to find a job in a new industry?

I genuinely don't know if I belong anymore. I want to say I'm still a software engineer but the impostor syndrome has overtaken me like a venom symbiote.

Maybe in some subconscious way I'm punishing myself for my failures by getting a "lower class" job? I hope it doesn't last forever but I am just so PTSD haggard from trying to prove myself in tech interviews. It hurts so bad to keep putting myself out there and getting denied.

I don't think it's a forever thing, but I also didn't expect to be in a multi-year career freefall. Overall it't not about what I want because I have no control over what happens. I can show up and try but ultimately success is not something I can dictate or manifest.

11 years in, took an 8mo sabbatical a few years ago but once I ran out of juice just having fun, got back into working again and hate it more than when I left. But I forced myself to take the job to get out of a depressive hole after attempting to found a startup and finding it to be a spiritually bankrupt path full of utterly vapid people.

Like many of you I contemplate changing fields but it's so expensive to live these days (in a place that I find desirable to live). I'm not sure that I'd like some other form of work THAT much more that I'd give up retirement 15y earlier.

Starting to give up the idea that some huge shift is possible (or the answer). And instead just aim for minor improvements, accept only getting 70% of what I want. Anything more is a culturally conditioned fantasy complex. Trying to focus on simple pleasures like a sunny day or cooking a good meal.

Make an appointment with a psychiatrist. Do it today. When you meet them, show them this post. Whoever is treating you right now clearly isn't achieving the desired outcomes. I've been in the rut that you describe and while meds will not solve your problems they will give you a tool to solve them for yourself. It's not fast though, it takes weeks-months.

(As for the job: for now, who cares? Just pay the bills - apply directly (avoid 3rd party recruiters*) for as many web dev jobs as you can, if you work for cheap in some role way beneath you then some employer will absolutely love that and you can use the spare mental energy to focus on yourself).

* Usually I recommend them but in this case a company may not want to take a chance on you when they have to pay 30% of your salary to a recruiter as a fee - too much risk.

I really must do everything at my own pace, or suffer health consequences. I realized this in my teens, so I never held a job, instead I'm always building things without a boss, and without customers who act like I owe them something. At 30 my health is great, I've been lucky.

> I really must do everything at my own pace,

What do you do that affords you this accomodation?

From selling candy in the streets to travel salesmanning, MMO farming, painting replicas and ultimately SaaS. Currently taking a break.

I burned out hard towards the end of last year as an engineer. Fortunately, this preceded 4 months of paternity leave during which I was really able to think hard about what I wanted out of my career. I came back to a different position at the same company, as a PM on a new team. I'm enjoying the role for now, but I'm not sure if I'll convert permanently. If I do go back to being a SWE, it will be at a smaller company/on a smaller team where shipping code takes less overhead.

Generally my advice to anyone feeling burned out these days is to take a long break if they can, and use that mental space to strategize your next move. I appreciate that not everyone is in a position to do this, though.

I burned out bad last year and quit during the summer. As soon as I gave notice, everything became better. I spent the past year learning daytrading (not going well) and working on side projects (also not going well), yet it's not causing me the stress I felt on the job. But I'm about to start applying and trying to find work again. I fear I'm no longer cut out for software dev anymore. I need to find an easy laid-back job where I don't need to be a "leader". It was being a leader that burned me out. I don't want to decide on overall direction or use bleeding edge tech or be responsible for a project. I just want to work on well-defined CRUD.

This is essentially me, though I'm not day trading and I'm not sure how much better I feel since quitting. I am young, but I spent all of my time up until a year ago doing the best I could to understand what makes good products and how to write great software. This has made me a de facto leader in any team I've joined, including straight out of college. Now I have the work experience to be "senior" (whatever that means), but I've never had the mentorship or fact checking that I think reaching such a position requires.

I still don't feel ready to find a job, but I have no idea how I will ever hold one. Leading is so wearing, and I'm already in such a delicate mental state.

I hope you find where you want to be. For me, I think I _need_ to be where I feel I'm bringing some positive benefit to the world, and I hope that at some point I can find a way to both build good OSS and make some money doing it.

It took me 3 years to recover from a pretty serious case of burn-out, if there is any piece of advice that I can give you is take your time and do something entirely different than the thing you burned out on if you don't have savings.

I worked at my last job for over 10 years, and probably the last 5 were totally burned out. I quit 2 months ago, and I'm certainly not over it. Not even looking for other work right now, I wouldn't interview very well at all.

We've all burned out. We've all burned out recently. You're not alone.

Try to detach yourself from your situation as best you can. Take a mini-vacation, if possible. If you want to take a retail job for a bit and regroup, do it. The prescribed burnout period is however many days/weeks/months/years you need.

Failures == learning. Learn from your failures, make incremental adjustments and try again.

The burnout will end, and eventually you'll have another period of burnout, and that will end, too.

Everything is process and one must incorporate refreshing and rejuvenating aspects to this process. The mind rarely gets a break until we make time and space to provide one

I got in worst shape in October 2019, wanted to quit my job immediately. In February 2020 got corona directly from China and it was super awful 3 month long Covid. That changed my view towards employment completely. If my management does not care, why should I!!!? Today I am in same position at that company, run small consultancy in my spare time and things are great. My biggest problem today is my overweight, maybe I can fix that in coming couple years too.

Yeah, I feel it, I was feeling burnout post pandemic - I changed jobs... big mistake. Now I'm trying to go back to my old role, because its clear that the issue was not the job, it was me.

I dont know how to recover from it, I've never needed a job for meaning, I have plenty of other things to give me meaning, but the job is what pays all the bills for those otherwise very important things.

I'm seriously considering going back to university and becoming a teacher like I wanted to do in high school.

I ended up in SWE after all my teachers and parents told me "you can do much better than teaching" and pretty much forced me to change around my uni preferences.

It's not that I hate coding, but doing it professionally has sucked all the joy out of it

My burnout was a useful gateway to a new career outside tech in mental health as well as my first spiritual experiences. You can read about the transition here: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/

I had two breakdowns from burn out. Burn out was a culture at my previous company. I stopped working for about 8 months, left the industry, and got a new job in a new industry and new role. It took a while for the feelings of anxiety and incompetence if I wasn’t working to burn out to go away.

This thread is filling up fast! In my experience, it's hard to get over feeling like burnout is a "first world problem" and that I'm spoiled. Heh.

Best of luck to you in all your endeavors!

I feel like I burn out every few months or so. I just take a few days PTO and change up from the usual grind and try to tackle interesting/challenging work.

yea, 5 yrs experience and MS..

It's a really easy field to be burnt out in I think. Taking time off to focus on other goals in life. Ideally...I'd like to work on my own accord. entrepreneurship or consulting.

Doesn't help that the interview process is extremely taxing.

Just interviewed at 3 MAANG companies back-to-back..Felt like cramming for finals

I don't think I've burned out, but the emotions you describe are familiar. I just want to wish you luck.

Thanks don't give up

I am almost at the bottom. About 20 minutes ago I booked an appointment to see a doctor about getting depression medication because I feel increasingly close to 'the edge'.

I got 'moved out' of an insanely competitive, fast paced job at a 'scale up' 5 months ago, and I've taken the time out hoping to recover. I started looking for a job recently, but I don't really know what I want to do. I mean, I do, but no-one hires someone who just 'helps solve problems'. I don't want my job to be dragging JIRA tickets across the board. I want to coach. I want to stop management doing stupid things. I want to solve business-like problems that alter the way the world functions for the better, MAYBE with software. But I don't want to make software that I don't believe in anymore. But that means fighting for the right solutions.

My career has slowly been simultaneously disintegrating and advancing over the past 5 years. I keep getting better 'roles' or more pay, but I just fail harder each time. I'm coding less which means my saleable skills are atrophying. I've intentionally avoided becoming a manager, hoping I can keep one foot on the ground, and the other in senior management land and make things better for everyone. But I'm not really sure I'm succeeding at that.

I get really invested in the happenings at work - courtesy of a mantra I've carried my whole life - "If you're going to spend 8 hours of each weekday doing something, you might as well do it fully" - so I do. Let's do it well enough that we can all go do something better like, chill out on the beach, right?

In reality, I end up treading on peoples toes and end up in the firing line. Some people love me, some people hate me but I always get nailed on the cross eventually. I can't do a job where I keep my head down. I can't imagine anything more soul destroying than spending 8 hours of my day doing something that I don't fully believe in. So then I fight for what I believe in, and then I get shot. It's like a repeating cycle that I can't escape. Purgatory.

And now this time I'm alienating myself. I'm casting off friends and friends are casting me off. I can't see my future anymore. I don't know what job I would enjoy. I can't bring myself to take a 'lesser' role where I mindlessly code software I don't believe in. I don't know what to chase. I don't know what's supposed to motivate me. I don't know what the point of it is, if I'm not enjoying it.

And here it is: I wish I didn't think that way. But I do. I wish I could just "it's just a job/life, just do the crap they ask you to do", but I can't. I always look for a better way. I'm always finding problems with the current way it works. And I always think I can help people find a better way. And then I drain myself and others trying to convince people it should be a different way. And then people get annoyed with me. And then I become jaded and depressed.

Or maybe I'm depressed, which then causes the other things. I don't really know anymore. And I'm not sure I really care.

I've got a long term therapist. I've tried hypnosis, meditation, leadership coaching and psychedelics. I've listened to every self help book under the sun. "Fixing myself" is a full time job. But I'm really running out of options. I don't know what else to do except commit myself to a psych ward, get a lobotomy, become homeless, take up heroin or disappear.

And the worst part is that I have the wherewithal to see that I'm (somehow) doing all of this to myself, whilst crying for help. But I don't understand how to escape my own clutches - so that I can better those around me and lead a fulfilling life, where I'm understood and liked for the good nature, spirit and bravery that paradoxically lead to all of my troubles.

> Some people love me, some people hate me but I always get nailed on the cross eventually. I can't do a job where I keep my head down. I can't imagine anything more soul destroying than spending 8 hours of my day doing something that I don't fully believe in. So then I fight for what I believe in, and then I get shot. It's like a repeating cycle that I can't escape.

I feel this so deeply man. I said it in another thread I fucking hate when people tell me this but you're not alone.

I hope there is a day where both you and I find accepting organizations that can put our strengths and abilities to good use. A true mutually beneficial arrangement, not just "a job".

You're not wrong to want to work on something you are driven by and care deeply about. That this is a thing some people (myself included) actually want and is NOT crazy. You don't HAVE to be a mindless corporate zombie, professional bootlicker or other words for "subservient wage slave".

Unfortunately finding a situation like this requires INCREDIBLE luck or generational wealth.

Society is designed to keep us out and only recently has acceptance for neurodiversity been even a thing people would speak out loud.

i used to then i went for a job at a mid size company. i settled for less money.

i log out when its time to clock out.

someone told me the higher the salary, the more tasks and stress come with it.

Appropriate question for a Monday morning.

I’ve been running my company which focuses on helping people find purpose (novel job app). I’ve been building it for almost 5 years. When I started it was only for foodservice and when Covid hit I lost all my customers overnight. So I pivoted to include all industries. I’ll mention here I’m a solo founder with no tech background and I live on and off in South America with my outsourced team - constant bugs, behind deadlines by six months, extraordinary high bills for terrible quality of work in my opinion. I’m the product manager, QA, sales and marketing, etc. they just drop the ball and I’m running around picking up the pieces for things I don’t even understand - I didn’t go to school for this stuff.

Anyway, after years of +12 hour days seven days a week - I’ve taken about 4 weeks off total these past years - I can say that I super burnt out and have been for some time.

There are times when I can’t do anything, literally. It is terrible. But I just push through - I have no choice as my whole life and all my money are tied into this. Plus, I am really passionate about what I’m doing to help others (even though it seems almost everyone is trying to just rip me off as I delegate work).

Anyway, the thing is - from my life and observing others that I’m helping find jobs and purpose…you must have purpose or inspiration or you will get burnt out. If you don’t you will think what’s the point of working if you don’t find a purpose in your job or that you are really creating value in anything. Or if you have nothing going on in your personal life with purpose, then you will get burnt out on that. Without purpose you just always think what’s the point- why do anything, it’s a waste - bad place to be when the world is very full of opportunities.

You need goals and intrigue to keep going and not flop from your burnout. The burnout will probably always be there, it’s just having the inspiration to continue, like small wins towards that purpose. Small wins for me are seeing the amazing reviews on the App Store…like higher rated than the incumbents without cheating ;)

It was the win the other month speaking in front of my state senate to successfully lobby a bill that passed that will help a lot of people. It is the progress I’m making on writing my book about how to find more opportunities in life - a kids book for adults. It’s the fact that I’m in my late 30s and live with my dad who I never had a great relationship with (single dad raised me since I was 1) and I now do after trying so many years to have one. My purpose, my small wins. They keep me going.

So, if you feel stuck, the only thing I can say is keep changing things, trying new things, challenging things - the way you think and what you do. With enough change you will find something that inspires you eventually I hope. The rate of change you allow will determine how quickly that happens.

Best of luck - just remember there is a lot of stuff in this world, enough to keep you occupied with something interesting until you die I hope.

I was suffering from this recently, but I'm in recovery.

I grew up in a bad area and programming/computers were my way out to a better life than that of my family or the people I grew up around/with.

For decades it was a core part of my identity. I always had to be working on something. I had trouble sitting down to play a game because I'd think about how I could be working on something. This of course leads to a long trail of incomplete projects as I move from one fleeting new shiny project to another.

I started burning out slowly at first after getting burned by a position that I had deeply invested myself in (I believed in what we were doing, it was helping people). They wrung me out for all I was worth and left me out to dry in the end. I then moved to another position that was more opaquely abusive and toxic. This started the downward spiral of me "falling out of love" with programming.

This gave me something of an identity crisis, without programming who was I? What was my worth as a sentient being if not _creating_ things? This story is also combined with the general apathy/depression/dismay that came with all of 2020. First this feeling was that of loss, then depression, and then apathy. I was spending all of my time watching Youtube videos, browsing reddit, and sleeping. Work, consume, sleep, repeat.

I've only recently managed to break this cycle. Part of it was thanks to my incredible partner helping me to realize that I am more than the sum of my ability to contribute to the perverse growth demanded by capitalism. Another part of it was getting therapy to help me address the underlying emotional issues I have with binary interest (things are great or things are shit). However the most significant development is that I've started exploring hobbies completely unrelated to programming.

Now I do my work, give it an honest effort, and then clock out and put programming and work behind me. My free time is now spent trying new things and exploring possibilities that I had previously decided were not interesting or (more often) not possible. For me that involved drawing, painting, and now finally music production. I'm not any good at it, I likely never will be, but it's something I can do for myself, purely for enjoyment rather than _productivity_. Nobody will ever profit from my shitty music, and I'm not defined by it. It's just a thing I do for fun.

Hopefully this is helpful, try finding something completely out of left field from what you've been doing. The change of scenery in interests may help.

It is helpful to read something I can identify with that makes me feel positive. Thanks.

Happy to help. I'm starting to think there's a reason so many of us end up going off to live in the woods.

Don't be afraid to try new random things, not everything will resonate with you until eventually something does. You've got nothing to lose but time, and odds are that is already being wasted in ways that don't positively contribute to your well being.

Yes

yes

I've been burned out for decades. I deal with it by not making work my priority. I do solid work, put in my 40 hours a week, and maintain an Iron Curtain between work and the rest of my life. And I tell other people that careers are for suckers when they make the mistake of asking me for advice.

How do you find work that you can be emotionally de-vested in?

I find it extremely difficult to stay engaged with work I don't care about, this creates a negative feedback loop that's the kiss of death for me at any job.

It's OK to care about your work, just put limits on it to allow time for other things in your life.

> How do you find work that you can be emotionally de-vested in?

You know the "alienation" Marx and Engels write about in the Communist Manifesto and Capital? I lean into that shit like a motocross racer doing a tight turn. I'll take just about any kind of paying work as long as it's not for the military or law enforcement, but otherwise I simply don't give a shit. I don't get emotionally involved with my code any more than I did with the toilets I used to clean when I worked as a supermarket janitor to help pay for college. Either way I'm mainly just dealing with other people's shit.

> I don't get emotionally involved with my code any more than I did with the toilets I used to clean when I worked as a supermarket janitor to help pay for college.

I am genuinely in awe of this. I've made so much of my personality caring about my work that it's hard to even conceive of not caring about what I do. Every job or success has been built upon previous jobs... the idea of a ladder moving up.

I've never once thought about it like a horizontal plane with multiple doors all at the same level.

I'm jealous of your thinking and I wish I could care less about what I spend my time on. I hope to find a healthier balance closer to your viewpoint.

Aren't you French?

That's just my handle.

Le Handel.

Maybe I'm missing something.

But this feels less like burn out, and more like a very healthy work / life balance to me.

Maybe, but the people around me are overfond of false dichotomies and excluded middles. They think that if you aren't gung ho and giving 110% on a 996 schedule, you must not be passionate about your work.

Which I'm not. I'm passionate about having food, shelter, water, electricity, internet access, and keeping my wife happy. However, that all costs money, and we don't live in a fully automated luxury communist utopia so I've got to work for a living.

Yes. Failed startup and haven't coded in four years. Ears blown out from a failed non-starter music career. And, stopped being able to process being part of a google-led surveillance society via no-opt-out malicious or amoral psyops that egregiously abuse my provided personal data and other undisclosed non-provided personal data in a soft-real-time stream-of-consciousness manner.

I am homeless. I have no address. On foot now, walking to get food, since I have no transportation of any kind. I have about $80 on cashapp and apple pay thanks to some folks here who tried supporting my renewed desire to write software again. That desire is gone and I would like to be gone.

My food stamps just got cancelled yesterday since I have no addr and since I missed required paperwork. It's the final straw that has pushed me to the end. I've been getting tumbled around and held under a rogue wave for years now and have reached a breaking point where my ability to avoid suicide is dissipating.

I am not likely to code or work again. Likely outcome is suicide by rope, which I hope to complete this week after the $80 runs out.

This is really dark. How did this all start. Were you employed at one point or did you start that startup? How old are you? Where do you live?

I was a software dev mgr for a multi data center hosting company, then became the technical cofounder for a startup. Mid 40's in the USA in a great climate (won't freeze).

Failed lives are hard to identify root causes. I didn't adapt to society. We only have control over ourselves, ultimately (despite the notion at malicious evil corps like Google that automated behavior control is possible).

Hey, note for Susan Wojcicki. You are an irresponsible sociopath. I've thoroughly vocalized my grievances about your firm's data abuse practices, which fell on (your) deaf ears.

If Google agrees to open up 100% of their dossier they secretly maintain on me, I'll stick around. Otherwise, I plan on committing suicide this week.

Before you take such a drastic action you should try to visit a shelter or an outreach service of some kind and keep an open mind and an open heart about any services they offer you. Wishing you the best.

Thanks for your well wishes.

Please keep going! Get help!!!

Ms. Wojcicki and Mr. Pichai:

I need your help. Please open up 100% of your dossier on me so I can begin to regain a sense of normalcy. I need you to do this for me so I can come to grips with nonconsentually participating in your respective firms' data abuse and behavior control experiment practices.

Your non-response amounts to gaslighting. You count on civilians submitting their private lives to you without questioning what you do with their data. You are not responsible stewards of our personal data. Cybersecurity is only half of the responsibility equation. You are a failure and blight on society regarding social responsibility. I already know you will not respond to me, a person who is adamantly opposed to your data abuse practices, and who is willing to wager eternity to protest your rule over our data.

You are primarily concerned with your own control, wealth, and power. Shame on you.

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