31 karma · joined June 20, 2019
Thanks for the advice and encouragement.
It helps to hear from others who have gone through the same thing, and who have come out the other side. Glad that you made it out, and hopefully I will too soon.
I have managed (through meds/therapy) depression/anxiety. The startup I'm currently working for has no work/life balance, which is severely starting to affect my health.
Engineers are on call all the time. Having to check email on nights and weekends is just a normal week now. There is very little task management, so everything is an emergency and needs to be done right away, regardless of prior tasks or schedule. My previously managed anxiety has gotten much worse from all this.
I'm burnt out, trying to make it another couple months to have enough saved up to take a sabbatical. There are days when I just want to quit and go buy a cabin somewhere and live there for a few years. I'm struggling.
At the end of the day what he says goes, so if it really is what he wants, better to make it clear, and then say, ok, I will then prioritize the new Task B instead of Task A and set expectations.
> some of this can be mitigated by having more people involved
This is definitely a good point - we really are missing some sort of lead or manager to filter things for the devs.
> consider joining an org that isn't a startup -- some mature small/medium business, or a larger org that has a more professional work culture and has some understanding of management.
This is something I have come to appreciate during this process, and after you mentioned it, I do think working at a startup might just not be for me and my personality.
I really appreciate all the points you made - I think now I have some good steps to go forward with.
For some reason I thought I could stick it out, but I'm trying to make it to the end of the year and then take a break to refocus.
Money only gets you so far - at some point people need a supportive work environment and a sense of ownership at their job.
Very glad to see that both points turned out well. I was really not looking forward to trying to find/learning yet another JS framework.
I've had both in my past several years working, and the biggest difference to me is that you can tell that the good managers want you to succeed and go out of their way to help you succeed.
The poor managers expect you to succeed and diminish you if/when you don't.