I can relate. This is my first “real” full time job, and I’ve now been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack of trying.

Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the owners.

Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for superficial reasons.

I’ll do small things and get overly patronizing praise, and then when I try to initiate or lead something bigger, they crush it with passive aggressive, belittling remarks. They mostly just want me doing grunt work, despite my desire to do larger, “force multiplier” type work. Work that my coworkers and customers are asking for.

My self esteem is terrible and I haven’t left for fear that I won’t be able to “make it” anywhere else, paralyzed by the fear of ending up unemployed.

I’m angry that I have a 10 year career full of ambition that went absolutely nowhere, I want to leave, but it’s scary.

Your story gave me a great boost of encouragement to start seriously planning my exit.

There’s a site called interviewing.io or something like that (I have no articulation, I stumbled on it a couple weeks ago), and you can pay $100 or something to have an hour and a half interview with some FAANG engineer on whatever topics you want.

The point is that there are resources all over the place to help get you out of your rut, even if you don’t have a good support system. And if a site like interviewing exists, there have got to be other resources that help with your specific issues. But at some point, you must take action.

It’s hard as hell, I know. I’ve tried to kill myself five times (turns out I’m horrible at suicide!), and a lot of my issues stemmed from a fucked up relationship with work and money, and that had a massive impact on my view of self. I grew up in a household where I felt I had to perform exceptionally well to be lovable (I was worthless beyond my output; if this resonates with anyone, look into “performance based love”), and I took that into work with me, and tech is awfully hard to be perfect in, and it’s impossible to be the “best” at it, so now I’m never good enough.

Eventually the walls start closing in on me, and I feel like I need to escape, but I’m terrible, so there’s no way out. I have to live in this confined and uncomfortable space because that’s what worthless people like me do. Every time I get to this point, I find the same solution: look for doors instead of focusing on the walls. Very hard to do, and even harder to keep on doing when you’ve been rejected a dozen times, but eventually a door will open, and you’ll be better off.

Ouch, I am not sure if you meant it like this, but please don't take it as more proof of how you failed.

You did not. Your remaining desire to live was just stronger, otherwise you surely would be dead. So please live this life, because you want to, not because you have to. All the best!

Edit: And screw those performance based love idiots, they didn't know better and you had no alternative, but now you can find people who know better.

"but I’m terrible, so there’s no way out. "

Just keep in mind that once you start planning you may be tempted to start burning the bridge before you actually get out. Resist that. Plan A is still your paycheck until you actually secure plan B.

That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I need to gain some confidence.

I’m sorry for what you’ve been through as well. I can relate to much of it. The feelings of being trapped are a real thing.

I really appreciate the advice, hopefully you’re doing better. FWIW, what you’ve shared has already been a big help in my attitude.

This has happened to me over and over and I've seen it happen to others. It's not always obvious but sometimes business changes. Markets change, customer demands change, regulations change, competitors change. Strategies that made sense suddenly don't anymore. All the work that has been done is a sunk cost. You can't get it back, and if nobody wants the product anymore or it's not going to provide value, you just cut it off.

It sucks, but think about it, if you've been with the company 10 years and presumably they have been in business longer than that, they can't be complete idiots. Most small tech companies don't make it 10 years, or even close. Maybe the owners are assholes, but they are doing something right.

One thing that has helped is that I don't put my "heart and soul" into work projects anymore. I come in, work on the project in a professional, high-quality fashion, and go home at the end of the day. I get paid, and we're even. I've tried to make my relationship with work emotionless. It's a job. If you treat it like something deeply personal it's much more likely that you're going to end up angry or offended or taking business decisions by the owners as personal attacks.

Sometimes they are assholes and they are doing it wrong but it can work for a long time because there is still a market and no one want or can compete.

Say you own the only restaurant on top of a hill. There can only be one, as the space is limited, so it's only you. There will always be some customers are people enjoy the top of the hill view despite your shitty food. The owner of such an establishment can exist for longer than you can remain sane.

It's why lots of shitty businesses and bosses exist. These guys are immune, but a nice boss/business can die if the market changes.

> I’m angry that I have a 10 year career full of ambition that went absolutely nowhere, I want to leave, but it’s scary.

> Your story gave me a great boost of encouragement to start seriously planning my exit.

I worked for a shit software company in the midwest for a few years after graduating. I also felt scared I wouldn't be able to make it. I eventually landed a job in SF and learned my value as an engineer.

But I suspect a lot of people have similar stories to this.

You didn't ask for advice, but I'd like to offer some. I recommend, at least once per year, putting your resume out on the market and trying to get at least one interview. Don't consider it as part of a plan to leave your current job, consider it practicing the skill of job seeking.

You will get tons of useful knowledge performing this task. First, you don't feel need/urgency, because you're not planning to leave your current job, so significantly reduced interview anxiety. Second, you get better at the skill of interviewing. Third, you get a better picture of what the potential employers in your area are hiring for (skills, etc.). And last but not least, you really find out what the market is offering to determine if you're being compensated fairly.

What's the worst that could happen? Someone convinces you to take a better job for more money?

Most of the time, I feel that it is just the owner’s fear of losing control of some part of their business. Sometimes it’s just fear of change.

I decided to go into a different career path entirely and am working for myself now. It has helped my mental state incredibly.

I know it is scary, but sometimes you just have to take the leap.

Best of luck with your plans.

If you don’t mind me asking, how do you typically respond to those remarks?

Not trying to excuse their rude behavior or saying you shouldn’t move on to greener pastures, but if you let people “get away with” passive aggressive behavior, then it’s bound to happen again elsewhere. Leadership is always tested in ways like this and it’d be wise to learn how to respond in a constructive way, rather than letting it crush you.

To play devil’s advocate, if you can’t handle some glancing criticism, how can people trust you to carry a large initiative to fruition?

Some of this is a result to how their criticisms are shared. Often, they will initially softly praise my efforts (“that’s a good idea, but we need to discuss it more before going live with it”).

Then, time passes, we put out other fires, other ideas for unrelated projects get discussed.

Often throughout, the problem that my (now on hold) project attempts to solve will come up multiple times. At some point, I remind them that I have a potential solution ready to go, but we still need to discuss it before going live, as they requested.

I get a “yes we will, soon” response once or twice, until finally they mention something superficially wrong and easily fixed about it (“the order of the form items need to be switched around” or “we should add a summary screen” type trivialities) and is then used as a reason why, instead of spending a day finishing the project up, we should instead focus our time on x, y, or z (none of which are even actionable projects yet).

At which point I cave. Every once in a while I get irritated to the point of blurting out something snarky when the problem presents itself (“you know, we could be done with problems like these if we had implemented my idea”) only for me to follow it up with some joke to smooth it over and not sound so bitter.

I’m sure there’s a better way for me to fight for these projects, and I hope as I become more inclined to leave, I’ll have more backbone to try them out and commit to it.

I actually laid out a plan to fix the automatic builds that were broken for months (and I had to them all manually), and the company owner completely rejected it and laughed me out of the room, only for me to turn around and have him do it himself. Virtually every great idea anyone had was co-opted by him, including another guy before my time who wrote us a complete iOS app in his free time, only to have the code completely scrapped and rewritten from scratch, again by the business owner.

About your 10 years experience: it is still 10 years experience. Go and get another job. Go interview. It sucks and it’s tiring but there's no risk involved if you keep your current job. With 10 years of experience I'm sure you’ll get something better.

I'm curious—do these business owners you work for have any software or management experience in tech? I've sometimes seen managers do this when they don't know what to do with an employee or don't know what career progression for an employee looks like.

This doesn't at all justify shitty behavior, but I've found it useful to identify motivations behind bad interactions as a way to avoid things that could lead to them in the future.

I suspect they are partially motivated (as other commenters suggested) by not changing too much of what they themselves built personally.

Partially out of a fear of change, but also partially out of a “if we find ourselves without employees and need to run the whole show on our own again, we can’t have a bunch of code we don’t understand” fear.

Which I understand. But fact is, we have customers and internal users who are overworked and have needs. Needs that we aren’t meeting because we never deliver the “right” solution in full, in part because so many parts of the system just seem unofficially “off limits”.

I’ve offered many times to start a regular engineering training and sharing session where I can help make others aware of how I’ve been building things and how they can help maintain them, to try to make everyone more comfortable with the front end, but that also has met the same friction as my projects.

You deserve better!

Don't let your passion for a project blind you to the fact that you have better options, to make better money, have better opportunity... and - by far - most importantly, to get treated the way you deserve!

Is it possible for you to only share "grunt" work with owners and talk about "force multiplier" only with who "gets it" ?

They had me working on low value BS, internationalization of an old product, etc. Just wasting my time. I don't think they had any idea of my capabilities (despite lots of proof of that).

When I finally said "I really want to be challenged here, I'm super capable, and I want to drive forward on meaningful work", I got no response, and shortly thereafter was laid off. Funny place. I then took another high paying job that assumed I was capable and pushed me hard - much better!

Sometimes you're just wading into interpersonal dynamics and low trust environments. If it's consistently weird, there really is just one choice: find a place that's doing hard work and will value your contributions. Life is too short to waste it with contributions to those who don't value them.

Another a second form of torture in this category is being treated like your app/role is being dead-ended, but also everything you are working on is super urgent permanent fire drill mode. Usually this is some flavor of an app being deemed "legacy" and most of the staff being moved to "the new thing" which is perpetually 5 years behind schedule. Someone once remarked that "legacy" is often better known as "production". So while you are told all about how your team/app is going away, there's nowhere for the users to go, so you are fielding the brunt of overnight pages, mid-day fire drills, etc.

Lastly, I can relate to "Recovery will take time but at least I know I wont get verbally berated every time something isn't perfect." I had two bosses like this in my career, and the behavior it encourages is for everyone to keep their head down and have sloppy shoulders. Don't be proactive, only do the immediate task requested of you because it minimizes the amount of things that could get you screamed at.

These guys are harder to screen for than you'd imagine, as both of them could turn it on & off, and appear as the nicest guys in the room, especially at the pub.

For me, all three are a form of feeling helpless and having lost agency.. which is what drives the most anxiety for me. Changing jobs every 4-5 years allows one to minimize their time in these situations as they occur.

This is 100% true. And the main reason is probably the fact you can never really focus on anything here.

You've got no 'official' work, so that can't use up your time. But you also can't go off and do something you'd want to do either, since there's always the nagging feeling of "what if something actually does come through, and I've got to be ready to handle it?"

So you just sit there wondering what to do, and probably end up either pointlessly scrolling through social media, or getting into whatever random unhealthy habit you're otherwise prone to (drink, drugs, too many snacks, etc).

It also likely does a lot of damage to your ability to focus on difficult tasks for a long period of time afterwards, since you're not entirely used to be able to spend hours on a single thing.

However, no-showing, visibly walking in hours late or leaving hours early, being unresponsive on slack/email are easily observed and the type of things that stick out to accelerate your being fired.

Eventually I got in yet another argument with my manager's manager, and decided enough was enough, and put in my notice, and two weeks later I was gone. The first day after I woke up and realized that I didn't have to work for Apple anymore, this wave of relief swept over me. I was so happy that I didn't even care that I had to give up several hundred thousand dollars of stock.

You only have one life, and you get maybe 100 years to live it. Don't waste it in a job that makes you miserable.

THIS.

I've been watching a lot of the Shawn Ryan interviews lately. The first one I watched was Cody Alford. Dude was a marine scout sniper, then joined force recon. His first two deployments were in Fallujah - one was during the Operation Phantom Fury. He also survived being shot in the head (he had his helmet on) and retells that story.

In short, dude went through a ton of stuff mentally and physically which caused him to retire from the military early. A lot of what OP talks about, he experienced in the military as he rose in the ranks (he was the fastest marine to E8) and the last part of the interview is where he lays out how he got his sanity back, the role of psychedelics in his recovery and what he's doing now.

The interview is over 6 hours long, but it's an absolute whirlwind and it's really inspiring to me to see someone who's already lived multiple lives over the span of his short life, telling people to "die living" not the other way around. I know his perspective has made me change a lot of what I've been doing.

Cody Alford - Marine Raider/MARSOC Sniper Who Became a Nomad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbdKhNiPWY

2022 comes around and we have a barely functional prototype that was initially due to be shipped in mid 2021, constant turn-over in software engineering and product management, the front-end that had been build didn't align with the back-end due to a complete lack of project coordination, but felt tied to the role due to stock grants.

Left to join a 4-person start-up founded by one of my good friends from college and haven't looked back since :)

I’ve seen situations where people have been at a company 20+ years, loved their work throughout all of those year, felt appreciated and more. Then one day they get a new boss and hated their job, hated the company and quit.

That said, Apples systemic bureaucratic policies were pretty maddening, even disregarding my management.

Maybe it was the wrong team for me, but it got to a point where I struggled to put in the work whilst in the office AND struggled to have a life outside of work because I hated the work so much.

My wife dealt with a lot of bullshit from me that year. She's amazing.

If you hate your job, LEAVE.

>Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap.

Yeah, this is something people don't realize until they're it in. It's not fun. Humans long to be needed.

>but I didn't have the courage to jump

This is one of those things I personally have trouble wrapping my head around, but I know it happens. Kudos for getting it done.

I had two short stints with government jobs (one working part-time while in college and once for a major defense contractor) and they were terrible. Strict rules prevented anyone from doing things that were fun and productive. At the end of the year, we once ran out of 'funded projects' and we were forced to work on trivial matters while tracking our time in 30 minute increments. It was painful to find a way to clean your desk for 2 hours. We would have a long meeting where nothing was really discussed just to have a few hours to charge to some check box item. This went on for several weeks.

The best jobs were the ones I had freedom to build what I though the customer wanted. I would sometimes work until 10pm not realizing that quitting time occurred hours earlier (I was still single at the time otherwise my wife would have interrupted).

Startups can be some of the best places to let your creative juices flow. They are not the most stable for guaranteed income, but they can be very rewarding in other ways.

I could very happily set and achieve little goals for the rest of my life -- in video games, education, little creative pursuits, and hobbies -- and never once look back. Really don't care for externally set goals or validation.

It is funny though, the number of people I know who got there and then went back to work for "the man" again. Not for the money, but for having people they could hang out with and talk about things with. They sometimes find happiness working for a company where they have the freedom to be completely honest because "losing your job" isn't a threat that bothers them.

In the US managing health care is annoying, of course if you can live without working in the US then you can likely live as an ex-pat in a country that has decent health care included. It has its own set of tradeoffs (languages, community, Etc.)

And for some the "little goals" start to feel dishonest, kind of like knowing that you could do "anything" with your remaining life and you are doing little goals you made up for "fun." I know it doesn't sit well with people who were raised to "make a difference" and "be the change."

Giving back can be rewarding, mentoring younger people, people who are coming up the ladder. Working with organizations staffed with volunteers brings its own set of quirks. Sometimes "prima donna" doesn't quite capture it :-).

At some point you really internalize "hmm, I'm going to be dead and do I care what others think of how I spent these years?" Facing mortality sometimes re-arranges what is, and what is not, important to you. Depending on how close one sees the "finish line" that can be either empowering or depressing. Often a little of both.

I wonder, why? Sisyphus was condemned to aimlessly push a rock forever, but isn't that basically just the human condition? Most of us convince ourselves we're doing something, but it's narrative. Very little materializes, very rarely as intended. We like feedback and certainty in the face of randomness -- it's the attraction to slot machines. But musicians rarely predict their most popular songs (and sometimes come to hate 'em), founders toil away pivoting for years before they stumble on something that works (but most give up first), artists often only have their work recognized posthumously.

I'm drawn to characters like Jerry in Parks and Rec or Stanley in the Office because they embrace the rock. They aren't revolutionizing or disrupting. In a certain way they're really very heroic. They meet the soul-crushing apathy and uncertainty of their place in the universe head on without complaints, excuses or lies. Though mocked and derided as lazy, incompetent fools they steadily carry on. They're stoics in a modern bureaucratic context. And really there's a certain beautiful zen to that. It's very unrelatable for me and, I assume, most of the tech world.

If you could convince the company to make you a part of a mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as long as it benefits the company then I don't think anyone would object to it from a mental health perspective.

This is my lived reality right now. It's not necessarily super fun in the long run. It can get draining to work on new thing after new thing, only for it to get shut down because it doesn't _quite_ fit the company strategy or they can't find anywhere internally to anchor it.

Plenty of good ideas have died that way.

That said, I think it also heavily depends on the company. If the work you're doing is directly feeding into the development pipeline, it sounds like fucking heaven. Mine, however, is not.

A few years ago I had a tech job where they straight up didn't have work for me to do. For the first month it was amazing. But after a few months a day of doing nothing was completely draining. And my dads words rang in my head again, and I was like damn that as true now as it was when I was 11.

Doing nothing is shockingly hard mentally. We need to be engaged in stuff day to day, and without that engagement it seems like we spend a lot of energy trying to find something to do.

Meanwhile hopefully the market/regulation sorts itself, and your boss loses his job, because someone does something worthwhile elsewhere.

However, nobody was grumpy at me at any time.

What are good sources for learning more about how my body works and how to fine tune it?

Is someone responsible available for that revenue generating, or loss preventing, "thing", that has a high enough uptime to not attract anyone's wrath? OK then.

I think a lot of it boils down to these factors:

- SUNK COST FALLACY. A lot of people work at one place for many, many years. When you're happy, your natural inclination is to not look around. So when the ball drops and things change, you long for the good old days and stay hoping for the things that kept you around to come back. Concurrently, your resume stale and you begin to forget what interviewing was like. As a result, when you finally realize "Oh my! I hate this fucking place!" you feel stuck.

- FEAR/LACKING SELF-WORTH. Maybe you have kids, a mortgage, a fancy remodel you're paying for, whatever. You are scared that your skills aren't attractive to employers. You're also scared you'll get found out and fired for treason or something. So you make do. (I was scared of this for a bit. The truth is, everyone knows when everyone is looking. "I'm feeling unwell" is the oldest lie in the book, most of the time.)

- FEAR OF CHANGE. "What if the new place sucks as much as this place?" This one's actually valid, but to that I say "What have you got to lose, except leaving a place you ALREADY KNOW is awful? Worst case, you leave and try again, which you can do now because you rock at interviewing!"

Between personal survival and tribal survival (a sort of partial gene survival pattern) It makes a lot of sense.

until recently (and even currently in some places). If you do nothing you freeze, starve, and fail to attract a mate for procreation.

Until recently if you were not a net contributor to the tribe, you risked being ejected.

We likely have hardwired circuits that ensure we are actively contributing (ie needed).

Because I love the phrase, but I'm not a native speaker, and unable to coax google into clearing this up.

Would you use this in written form only or when speaking too?

(third opinions are also very welcome!)

It communicates that you're in the middle of something chaotic/stressful like a jungle. The phrase is very natural for native speakers.

Safe to say that no, not idiomatic. And if you use this phrase as quoted people will be very confused and have no idea what you're trying to communicate.

OP if you read my previous comment, then that does not apply to the phrase that ethanbond corrected.

There are people who I feel are annoying and toxic, but I don’t get rid of them because I am afraid of the reactions of those who are left. They are talking shit about the company to others and spreading discontent and it’s easy to feel like firing the person will somehow prove them right to everyone else.

Then after actually getting rid of them, suddenly a bunch of people come out the woodwork and talk to me about how the person has been terrible for years and the how they are so relived that they are gone. I get told so many stories which make me understand that things were much worse than I even realised.

Why was nobody saying anything before! That would have given me so much confidence to get rid of them sooner!

In reality, I do understand why. Talking shit about others is exactly the behaviour that the toxic people who need to be removed are doing. Well adjusted people don’t want to do it.

But still, it proves the point. Trust your gut. Don’t let a bad situation persist based on what others will think.

Is this a manager issue? Non-believers have never interfered with my work, and are much preferred to the more common species “the manipulator”, also known as social climbers. Interfering is their MO, and toxic positivity their hallmark.

I don't really know what to do. I have tons of skills, across multiple domains/industries, yet I can't seem to get a job. I'm in that weird middle ground of having too much experience for entry-level positions but not enough for anything more. Employers literally won't give me the time of day, and I'm decently certain it's not my appearance or attitude in the interview (could be wrong, but it doesn't seem that way). I've had several potential employers comment that they'd hire me but they don't see why someone with my experience would be after such a mindless position. I need money to live is why. Then I apply for the higher positions, and they don't like the fact that I don't have a degree or employment history in that field.

I do work, I'm a carpenter aside from being a hobbyist sysadmin/programmer, but it's drying up. People don't have dispensable income anymore and aren't having work done. When they do have work done they want the absolute minimum to save on time and money (my paycheck).

Two years ago I had to tell people they'd have to wait a month or two before I could start on their job, now they have to tell me we can't start today. We used to talk about "where are we meeting tomorrow", now we ask "are we working tomorrow".

On the other hand, I'm making progress learning how to do sysadmin and programming stuff. It's kind of it's own little prison. Why am I even doing it? Should I just focus on my current "career" and be a better carpenter, or should I realize the loss and focus on becoming a tech wizard instead. I'm at the point where I want to start setting up servers and whatnot, but is that a wise investment in my current situation? A homelab is basically a resume, so it could help me land a good job, but it could also just financially ruin me even further.

Sorry to make this about myself, just felt very relatable.

From how you described, I think you're naturally interested in computers and servers, and will likely continue studying and experimenting anyway, even if it hasn't yet led to paying work. You can gain knowledge and experience through these side projects, and that can prepare a way for you to make a full career transition. I don't have any answers or advice, as I'm still trying to figure it out myself (currently in a fairly demotivated phase, looking for the next step up) - but I wish us all good luck in our endeavors. Personally, I believe you're on your way to becoming a tech wizard. The question is finding someone, maybe a smaller company/startup, who can recognize your value, talent, and potential.

If your current situation sucks and you can step away (NOT end your life), do it. Whatever chance exists for things to get better, it's better than sticking with something you know is bad.

I've been there as well and I'm thankful to the people who shared, sometimes hard to swallow, truths that helped me see clearer. That being said, the grass is not always greener elsewhere. Consult people around you and listen to their opinions, an outside perspective can give you great insight to your current situation. Sometimes the change needed is within yourself. Also, if you see a firend in that situation, be there for them and be honest, people get stuck in this and it can take them into really dark places.

Glad you got out and found something better OP. Don't resent past experiences, it's a waste of the time you saved. Take it as a learning experience, we all do mistakes.

And this underlines what stress is all about: Not working hard, but spinning your wheels and going nowhere. It will make a mess out of you.

And yeah, for whatever reasons the tech startup world can be ultra-nasty compared to everywhere else. The level of vindictive, nasty, hateful behavior can get completely out of control, often happening right out in the open. Not sure why, but when startups go bad, they can go ultra-bad.

I know what I'm capable of, and when I compare it to what I've done lately, it just crushes my spirit.

I was in a bad situation in a job, completely burned out. It was only when I had the opportunity to move in with family that I could quit and get my life back together. If I had the ability to just quit and spend some time collecting myself a year earlier, who knows how much happier and healthier I'd be, and how much sooner I'd have been able to return to productivity?

Also, there are enough other people around you who are taking their time that you don't feel like garbage for not having a job (somehow in the US, even when I was more than financially secure, I felt like it was 'not ok' to not be working)

I was working my ass off pulling 18 hour days climbing the corporate ladder, trying to get wealthy and I was absolutely miserable. Happiness doesn't come from money, it comes from having everything you need in front of you. It took watching my dog gnaw a bone to make me realize that.

I punched out, went back to the startup world for way less pay working on problems I actually enjoy solving, at a pace that isn't detrimental to my health, and I have been much happier.

I also gave up a lot to do so - in time and money - but I have zero regrets. At least I learned a really valuable lesson about myself.

Whenever you think to yourself "why bother changing, it's just going to be as bad as it is here" that is learned helplessness, and you correct that the way you did, by leaving the situation. It's a coping mechanism for people that doesn't have the physical, mental or emotional energy to endure a change to get themselves out of a bad situation and it's a trap.

Congrats on working your way out of the bad situation and hopefully this empowerment continues with your for the rest of your life!

Burnout & depression suck. They're cycles that area easy to get stuck in and hard to get out of. When it comes to avoiding such situations in the future, therapy and personal boundaries are the tools I personally reach for, but recovery is a long journey. Don't let them drain you of the energy you need to make life worth living.

As a mentor told me, "Illegitimi non carborundum".

Sometimes you don't realise how GOOD something is until you leave.

Regret follows both.

In my case, my age was the "elephant in the room," at my interviews.

I feel as if the original in-house recruiters (different beast from the "outhouse" recruiters, though), and even a couple of managers, had no issue with my age. As soon as even one tech person became involved, however, the temperature dropped twenty degrees. They were usually quite brusque, and I knew that I was screwed. After that, the company usually "ghosted" me. I stopped following up, because even the enthusiastic and supportive recruiters and managers wouldn't talk to me.

It was very depressing. It was not my imagination. They really didn't want me, and they didn't care whether or not I knew it. No blowing sunshine up my butt, or stringing me along. They wanted me gone, ASAP.

The few companies that seemed interested, did so, on a pretty nasty footing. They made it clear that they would be doing me a huge favor, by offering me a job, and that I'd be treated like garbage, if I took it.

That was why I threw in the towel, and just decided to retire. I was more than willing to do a pretty awesome job, and take chances with risky companies, for a fairly low wage, but this did not seem to matter (indeed, it seldom even got to that point).

But it's all actually been for the best. Nowadays, I can't even imagine going back to the rat race (I liked that "Happiness" cartoon, that a previous post linked[0]).

It was very sick, and I never want to go back to that, ever again.

I want to work, and I do -harder than I ever have in my life, but I will not be treated like garbage, anymore. I know that it's a rare luxury, to have the means to quit, and I'm grateful.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk

I learnt it long ago and watch for it now, after I had a similar experience but not conditions, just low salary.

After years of low pay, my last job gave me a 20% increase (which was substantially better than previous positions), and my current job gave me a 60% increase on top of that, because according to the technical test I did, I was actually one of the most capable developers they'd interviewed and gave me the maximum salary for the position, not the value I'd requested (which was about $15K less).

Paging the soul of David Graeber. Graeber: we've got another data point.

When I was an intern at a large company, I rotated through a TON of departments until I found what I liked.

https://www.issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html

I literally just sent an email to HR, talking about how my new boss is horrible - I've only had him for 2 months and now I'm home on sick leave from stress.

I'm hoping he gets the boot - still in his trial period, even! But truth be told, the experience burned me so much that I think I'll just leave for something different.

I can definitely relate to having the mental snot beat out of you. I began to doubt my own skills, because I basically haven't been allowed to do anything technical since late November.

Yesterday, I had an interview with the CTO of a super exciting, fast growing company with an awesome product. The interview was scheduled for 1 hour, but we went 2.5 hours because there was just so much interesting stuff to talk about. I felt like I was myself again. I still got it baby!

What I guess I'm saying is, I can relate, it's fucking tough, and it's fucking awesome that you've moved on! Congratulations. Now make sure you heal.

I was actually terrified of moving on for the longest time, as there was a lot of impostor-syndrome from all the micromanagement, but now I'm actually moving to a higher-paying job, over twice as much and much more in line with Silicon Valley payment. And yes: the previous job paid terribly even for European standards: 80k/year. I'm finding that bad salaries walks hand in hand with bad culture.

But quitting multiple times from jobs that I did not enjoy is not one of them. Even though some of the times I didn't have something lined up immediately. The only regret is not leaving sooner.

In my 20s I had a boss who strung me along for 4 years.

It was a shitty little services agency building custom software.

He would say things like, "Oh, I know I need to get your pay up... just give me until next quarter, budgets are already set." And every time he had a little somewhat plausible excuse. "Oh, we didn't get all the new clients we had hoped..." (even though we got every client where I had been on the pitch) or, "Oh our revenues aren't up because projects you aren't on have taken a loss, can you cover more projects? I can't afford to have anyone else do them... if you save the day, I'll make sure we get your pay and bonus up to compensate."

And after 4 long years, where the last year was just him avoiding me, and where my Christmas bonus was literally a $25 iTunes gift card, when I was running projects worth like like 90% of the company revenue, I was like, "Y'know... I love my co-workers, I got to hire a lot of them, and that team meant a lot to me... but fuck my boss, he's a real twat." And I got an job that paid nearly 2x what I was making. And I helped the people I cared about find new jobs too.

And never looked back.

Lesson learned... Any time you have a boss who gives you a "slow no" you need to run. Don't walk, run away. That person is just using you.

> I was driven to actively contemplate suicide due to my boss and his shitty attitudes and issues but no one actually seemed to care.

I'm sorry to hear you were feeling this way. I hope that you have people in your life who care, even if not at work.

I also hope that in time, you can come around to the idea that your boss did not cause you to feel these things. It is a choice, even though it might not feel like one, to give other people control of our feelings. One of the things I like most about non-violent communication [0] is its emphasis that we feel things because our needs are or are not being met, and it's up to us to A) identify our needs, B) seek out situations and people that help us meet them, and C) not expect particular people to meet them if they can't or won't.

A workshop facilitator said, about his dad's inability to meet his need for emotionally honest dialogue: "I don't go into a hardware store expecting ice cream." That stuck with me.

Good luck.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263894

A while ago my self-confidence was really low. I tried jiu jitsu, and I had a lot of fun. I was also impressed with the positivity and camaraderie. I started going regularly, and even though I started off much worse at it than everyone else, I was constantly improving a little bit at a time and getting reassurance that the struggle to go from beginner to intermediate and beyond is something everyone experiences.

The act of exercising regularly, combined with improving at something I enjoy and making new friends along the way, was a huge boost to my confidence. Playing a sport has improved my mental health immensely. It is also something in my life I can lean on when my career is rocky or challenging.

I know it can be a lot of commitment for someone with a family, or daunting for someone who is a bit older. With that recognized, I still suggest you try a sport. I have been doing jiu jitsu for five years, and I have also started wrestling and judo. I've trained with people of all ages, from Division 1 college wrestlers, to active hobbyists like me, to parents and grandparents who just want to try something new.

It sounds intense, but it can be adjusted to any age, body type, etc. I've even had the pleasure to practice with a retired, blind champion grappler. She knocked me over again and again, just by feeling. All this to say, if you accept your limitations, there is a way for you to participate safely and have fun.

Regardless if my advice helps, I wish you a lot of luck, and thank you again for sharing.

When I finally did make the jump to a new position, I landed in a great company, with a great manager, and everything turned around.

One thing I'd advise, now that you're in a better place, is to try to work past the resentment. As long as you carry that in your heart, the old boss still has a hold on you. It'll take time to get it out of your system, but do try to get it out. You'll find that a more positive and productive attitude creeps in to the space that resentment once occupied, and your level of happiness goes up another notch.

In case you're interested, I posted about that job gone sour at https://sheprador.com/2022/04/worst-manager-ever/. The guy wasn't mean. He just didn't care. And writing the post made me laugh.

Congrats for the new career. Enjoy, and the take hard the lesson with you. :) You paid for it, after all.

As a software engineer, I was never happier than the job I took with a smaller local firm after quitting a 500. The firm paid competitively (no longer getting those sweet Fortune 500 stock options, but who cares the stock market's a crap-shoot anyway and the stock I got from the old company is already past its peak value right now as it is) and my manager was the best I've ever had.

Being in a bad management chain at a major corp can make you miserable. I've found it to be worth it to switch to a smaller corp with a better management chain.

(All of that having been said: smaller companies can be more vulnerable to market disruption so of course sometimes one trades out the stress of bad management with the stress of maybe not having a job in six months. But as Google just demonstrated, working at the big firms isn't really a guarantee there either).

The lesson I learned is that if work feels really bad you should leave asap. No one is going to care for you. The company is only going to even consider fixing it after everyone leaves and work stops getting done. Work isn’t worth your mental or physical health. Sometimes it is just a bad fit, but often it is just a badly run company, division, department, team or whatever.

I had a pretty large incident that lead to a broken knee, ribs, and hand. The team was mostly distributed and the C-suite was all in town. CEO insisted on holding a meeting at my house because everyone was in town. I remember none of it, I was catatonic in bed. I’m told everyone found the scenario one of the most uncomfortable professional experiences ever.

About a year after leaving I went from 6 hours of sleep to 8-9. My hair regrew. Took a couple years more to get over the anxiety that came with NOT working on holidays.

It’s wild how miserable I was and bore through it. It makes me enormously grateful to be working at a great company that actually disabled your GitHub if you’re working too much.

There is a story about two buddhist monks who were captured and imprisoned by an invading army. Eventually, after ten years, they were released and went their separate ways. Ten years later they bumped into each other again. "How are you finding freedom?” said the first monk. “Wonderful” said the other, “But I’ll never forgive those bastards who took us”. The first monk replied, “I am sorry to hear you are still imprisoned.”

I was on medication for all this, I think there were other factors, but it was a massive relief when they were gone. I am now on a new team and killing it, later I found out the manager trash talked me behind my back, other people left as a direct result of working with them/under them, and their attitude is carried into other environments and their new role, where its highly unprofessional.

I was the perfect target for narcissists- any abuse or negativity would cause me to feel guilty and responsible, and try even harder to give them what they want.

It was border line toxic environment. So many new folks were getting hired and being shoe horned into random things.

My manager was new and a bit biased. Kinda racist who assumed white = smart, not so white = not so smart.

Both my grandfathers had passed from Covid after a few months. I was really depressed.

I felt suicidal sometimes. Left a few months after and never felt better.

Have no equity, but no amount of money is worth tolerating passive racism.

But what specifically was bad (project? the company's product/service? customers? market? internal stuff? development process? middle managers? team?), and was it only like this for you, or your coworkers? It's impossible to get an inkling from reading this. (Equivalently, if you could have changed three things about the company/dept, what would they have been?)

> I am however still resentful over the lost years.

I really don't see framing things like that is helpful. You chose to stay out of (extreme) fear; you could have left. Again, what did you learn about what you most wanted as changes in the company, or about yourself or your psychology? Unless you can articulate (/reframe) something positive, I don't see there's much other people or you yourself can extract from this account. (For example: when you see management hierarchies of bullies, incompetent, cronies and no accountability, you learn the signs to look for so you can detect them the next time, at interview or even before. What are those signs?)

A superb book is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" (1946/1959). TLDR: no experience is inherently negative or positive, you can always reframe it to extract something positive. This determines your outlook. People here cite it often: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=+%22Man%27s+Search+for+Meaning%22

We should aspire to be like that boss.

There are a lot of notions in common culture that's outright misleading.

For eg. Time is NOT money. It's way more than that.There are higher order exchanges than money: time, energy, identity.

The best criteria for the next move is not necessarily the absence of anxiety but rather more aliveness. We keep chasing happiness not realizing, it can only ensue, not pursued.

Sorry if it sounded cliched...looking back there were a bunch of frameworks that became obvious in hindsight...I wrote about them...you might resonate with some of them:

https://www.leadingsapiens.com/essential-career-change-frame...

Several years later, after some meaty mergers and exec shake-ups, it changed into a product-driven culture. It was less about boldly exploring and more about shoring up the product line and making sure it was as all-around essential as could be.

Then, the MBAs swarmed in. Average tenure went from double digits to mid-singles. Another round of exec shakeups and the new order was clearly marketing: protect the franchise at all costs. VPs who had shone a little early on were now erratic and damaging - to products and morale - with little attention from corporate. It was not about creating amazing things. It became about circling the wagons and squeezing every fraction of a penny everywhere possible.

Working on a more niche line of products, it was an almost Brazil-like routine of pointless effort being praised, ignored, then quickly forgotten. When the trends presented became apparent, then it became a blame game of who was at fault, rolling downhill, of course.

It wasn’t until I was actually on my way out I could recognize how toxic it all was. Like a cancer that grows so slowly, you don’t really notice that small bump has become a bowling ball sized tumor on your neck.

Not sure what advice I have other than to trust your gut, and put aside any loyalty or connections you have to the things you helped create because they’re not yours and will be handed over to the next person without any fanfare. You are not the company you work for. Disconnect the feelings of identity and cut the umbilical as soon as you feel it attaching itself.

A corollary I think for me was that for many of the same reasons I didn't recognize the problems -- or maybe because I didn't recognize the problems -- others really couldn't grasp the depths of them either. Sometimes I think other people are better at recognizing problems than you are if there's a bad situation, but sometimes (maybe more often than society realizes) I think people just tend to assume that their functional situation applies everywhere, and so interpret things through that lens. So if you complain about X, they tend to (subconsciously maybe even) think "oh they must have not really meant X, they must have meant less serious version of X".

I'll be earning less, yet I'll gladly leave a situation where not a lot of persons have a clue what our industry means let alone our specific domain.

This is so true. In my experience, it can sneak up on you over the course of months and years so you don't realize how depressed and burnt out you are. You don't realize that working late so that you can catch up is something that shouldn't be the norm. When I finally quit and joined a functional software company with clear work/life balance it was an absolute shock. It felt like someone had suddenly turned a light on and I could see everything clear as day.

After months of battle I finally was able to prove my case, the person got fired but at that point I had no motivation or energy to stay. I left for a different company and I don't miss that hellhole AT ALL.

I was really worried about compensation, optics etc... but life is too short to go through stuff like that for a job.

I ran into a guy in the early part of my job at a company several years ago. We had a 30 minute discussion about how to collaborate. By the end he was screaming at me.

I realized there was something deeply wrong. I realized he was completely incompetent in his job and was very threatened by being “exposed” by having someone like me (knows the market) enter his space.

He then started spreading rumors about me and trying to humiliate me in public. He screwed up and dropped the ball on a major deal I referred to him worth millions.

I was so fed up with him I told him exactly what I thought of him. He escalated it to Hr and it blew up hilariously in his face.

Incompetent people are the most dangerous and nasty people, and most vindictive. You have to be so careful.

If a manager sees a report as a troublemaker, slacker, or someone overstepping, things can get difficult for the report. And likewise if a report doesn't respect a manager, or thinks they could do better, or acts competitively, the manager will have problems managing.

Also IME: if a relationship between manager and report starts in the wrong foot, with impossible expectations, or even without proper recognition of each other's roles and talents, it's something that's very difficult to fix, but there's no way around fixing it. Time only makes it worse.

After I quit my second job (41 years ago) I felt a tremendous relief that I did not immediately understand. Things had gotten worse there over time, and like a frog being slowly brought to boil, I did not realize how bad it had become until after I left.

It's usually pretty easy to see the signs that your future is limited, and that is the time to start looking for a new position.

In the end, it's only a job, and your life is far more important.

I think this is a common problem. At some point you gain enough experience you are not really a candidate anymore for most jobs listed on Linked, Indeed etc. You also become expensive for your employer given that they could get someone much cheaper to do the same job by hiring remote or younger. You likely should have been your bosses boss which is a real problem.

I would be curious as to how you found your new job?

A bit of a tangent, but there is always learning to do. Reading documentation on the tools in use.

They cannot take your brain away (without breaking the law). A minimally good day consists of walking out of the building smarter.

Yesterday I learned that the WindowKey+RightArrow will make the application with focus occupy the right half of the screen.

The famous song/saying - "Don't know what you got 'til it's gone."

It's important to take inventory on your life and your feelings regularly - so you don't end up in a situation you shouldn't have been in for a long time, and also so you don't leave or end something that's really good.

This happy time of starting a new chapter is a honeymoon that can last between 6 to 12 months before it fades away.

Remember, any business would only care about profit, and wouldn’t blink before deciding to let anyone go. Everyone should act the same, do whatever is good for your personally.

You have already recovered in the sense of being a normal human being. Sure, it make take some extra "time off" for you personally to feel better, but make please understand that you are already a better person by doing the right thing.

Thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work!

In the past I've used these kinds of situations for personal development. Linkedin learning, oreily, certifications, youtube tech talks etc.

No one has complained about it yet. /shrug

That said, I don't think I'd do it because of the risk of producing software that may be company property since it was done on company time and on company hardware.

Additionally it's going to be hard to argue against(or sue) if you're improving a FOSS that your company depends on and benefits from a feature you add.

There are managers who actively look to destroy people. It happens, for various reasons, including favoritism, nepotism or whatever. It isn't mine to know why. It is mine to know that it happens. And I've seen it plenty.

When negativity is in charge.... negativity wins. When zero and negative sum is the only game to be played... those of us who play a positive game suffer.

I'm glad you've never seen these dynamics, and been able to dodge them. But trust me. I've seen it, and I've seen it destroy great teams.

The way he can change his state is exactly how he did: Leave. Sometimes it really is that bad. May it never get there for you.

The stock options/golden handcuff is a real arse to deal with. Slogging out at a place where you really don't belong (or want to belong) is as you've so clearly described, a massive shitfest.

Sometimes, the money, or promise of money isn't worth it.

As far as being paid to "do nothing", I think the core issue with that is it's never actually doing nothing. When you're doing nothing at work, your job is actually to _appear_ busy and to seem relevant. Not only is it difficult, but it's unpleasant, dissatisfying, and demoralizing. There are times when I've been effectively paid to do nothing, and it sucked because I could almost never work on anything that was interesting or mattered.

On the other hand, if I were paid to truly just "do whatever", that might be a different story. I can always identify interesting and even important problems to work on. In the "do nothing" paradigm, usually I'm told not to do such things but instead work only on anything that comes across my desk, and those things may not arrive regularly. That's what sucks.

Just a thought.

I remember a job I thought was bad/toxic as you described. Months/years later, it turns out I was wrong.

This sounda pretty easy to be empircal about. What % of people who quit jobs regret it vs. regret not leaving sooner vs. have no regrets? Is it higher/lower in tech?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17840275

It consists in creating a hostile environment so that you are forced to quit.

It is illegal. You have to document everything, create a solid case, then sue the company.

EDIT: 1) Don't even need to go to court. 2) It's a nice F-off to the boss because their boss and above will now know what's happening.

You use it as fuck you money for your next job.

It sounds like the poster stayed a long time and got paid for doing nothing. The details of the actual "came to a head / moved on" are missing.

I don't think going after the company is a good idea based on the facts presented.

This is the crux of the problem. A job is a job, just move on.

Minor point, but it seems like another one for the "receiving actual money is better than stock options" column.

Thanks for posting.

A few years ago I started working at this startup. Initially as a contractor, but I came up full time pretty quick. They were well funded, had a great team, and I had no complaints.

About a year in I had the opportunity to scale a project I had started. At the same time we brought on this new guy. He's held very senior positions at companies that are well known in our industry. He had a growth strategy that impressed everyone.

I've never seen a company pivot as fast as we did then. We raised a lot of money. It was a super exciting time.

I really enjoyed working with this new dude. He was often advocating for me, and I often had the opportunity to get involved with his projects and learn from him. Arguably the first time in my career I really considered anyone to be a mentor.

Not that I had a bad relationship with my co-workers. The CTO had also gone out of his way to help me out on a few occasions. But this new guy just went well out of his way to "have my back".

His project was spun out into the "b2b" side of our company. Technically I was a part of that initiative as well, but his was just so much larger. If needed, I was asked to lend a hand while we got on our feet. I saw it as an opportunity.

One of the first things I was asked to do was to help manage the team he had just hired. It was supposed to be just a daily check in kind of thing. I would follow up on tasks and report back to management. They were supposed to be trained specifically in the task they were hired for, even having experience working on an identical project. They did not. Somebody needed to train them.

This dude had hired these contractors because he had a relationship with that company. He had worked there for almost a decade. So he would talk to them about finding more experienced talent, and in the meantime I'd learn how to do the job and train the people we had.

it was a ton of extra work, but this was for a client who's monthly fees would match my target for the entire year. So realistically, how could I justify working on my project? It made sense to put it on the back-burner.

Next problem. Our client didn't actually want to start with the "full" job we had contracted for. It was quite literally 0.01% of the order volume we were expecting. They wanted to make sure we could deliver before giving us all their business, the deal was already worked out. No big deal, if it was easy to make money everyone would do it.

Also, we couldn't actually deliver what we had promised. I was very concerned about it. The bossman was not. He said he had been doing it a long time, he thought I was doing a great job, and it was hard to really benchmark anything at the scale we were operating within. The expectations were to figure out our strategy, so I should just keep at it.

I figured that, surely, he'd be a little more concerned if this was unexpected. Whenever I identified potential solves to issues we were having, he was more concerned that I was getting off track and that I hadn't given his plan a fair shake. So I kept at it. After all, i'd only been working in this specific part of the business for a few months. Surely somebody with as so much experience would have a understanding it would take to be successful.

things kept getting worse. I had just started to get our team to a point where they could work independently, and then they were all swapped for different staff. I found out that they were not actually full time, and just being assigned based on what they perceived our workload to be. I had to jump through a ton of hoops to figure this out. I started to think that maybe this dude was not as smart as he said he was.

he probably spent so much time in executive roles that he did not realize how much work went into this. I am new to this, so I probably just don't know how to execute.

I had several very real feeling conversations with this dude where I was like "look, this shit aint working. we need to try a different approach". and he was open to it. I always felt like we made progress, though he was skeptical. Yet I always felt like I was getting stonewalled. Going through very specific benchmarks would be passed off as 'not seeing the bigger picture' or getting hung up on some stupid detail.

At one of these meetings I had come prepared. He had been promoting this "new strategy" that was extremely similar to the old one. I had irrefutable data that showed that we had tested everything in his proposal. I had an alternate plan to refocus on the few areas we had seen performance. I figured that if we tried to scale them aggressively, we might not miss our targets by a huge margin.

Not perfect by any means, but it was way better than the trajectory we were on. He had a lot of input, but seemed be willing to shift gears.

he was already covering most of my meetings for me so I could stay heads down. we reduced this again to a 1/2 hour every other day and I worked on building out a compromised strategy we had agreed on. It was supposed to be timed so that we he presented our new targets, we could show progress on the solution.

When it came time to present, I joined a company wide meeting. During this meeting he announced the launch of his own V2, which he had been working on with a few other people in the company. It was the exact same thing I had questioned before, only now the value proposition had changed something so abstract that it could not be measured. I was left on mute the whole meeting.

It was at this point that I realized that all the work I had done was just a distraction. He fed me bullshit every meeting and reported to the rest of the company that everything was going peachy. After speaking to the CEO, I learned that they were also completely in the dark about the actual situation. they thought we had a decent chunk of money coming in, and that everything was fairly successful.

It was pretty obvious at this point that this guy was not dumb, he didn't make a mistake. He was clearly just trying to save face. All of the red flags I had overlooked were suddenly very obvious. To date I am still caught off guard by how much stuff I was willing to overlook. It just felt insane to even consider someone I really enjoyed working with would be operating with so much hidden motive.

I had been on the same calls with my coworkers, and we all had completely different interpretations of the facts. This manager had habits like cutting people off, dominating a conversation, booking meetings during hours where half of us couldn't make it. And it never seemed all that unusual.

The whole thing left a really bad taste in my mouth. I couldn't stop going over all these little things that should have tipped me off that something was up. Obviously I must be completely incompetent to dump as much energy as I did into something that was very clearly flawed.

I thought, "fuck the stock options, i'm just going to walk". I quit via text.

the story should have ended there, but I had a solid conversation with the previous CEO who asked that I stay and try to see if there was anything that could be done with what we had built. I actually got something running and did $40k in revenue. Then was promptly let go. I'm still fighting with them over $20k in salary, and the other guy who started this whole project is now the CEO.

A few weeks later I thought to myself "ok, I may be a fucking idiot. but i'm also a professional computer toucher. I can get paid for performing simple tasks. At least I don't have to cover up my complete lack of any tangible skills with an elaborate house of cards. that's nice."

Second, please don't play your life on hard mode, utilize the resources the humanity has for getting out of this hole:

* Therapists are walking knowledge bases which have studied all the ways people are driven into awful states, and can help you understand both why you got there, how you got there, and where you need to go to get out of there faster.

Not using therapy = wasting time on reinventing the wheel to arrive at the same answers by trial and error years later.

* Coaching augments therapy by helping you set specific goals, and helping you get there. Therapy helps you understand what to do, coaching is about doing it.

* Psychiatry augments therapy by giving you access to tools beyond what you already use go get you into a state where you are able to actually do the changes in your life that are necessary to get out of the hole.

People use and abuse caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar drinks, weed, etc. to cope with unbearable situations and/or get the kick to get going, often with detrimental health effects.

We can do better than that. Modern psychiatrist is 99% a potion expert, who can guide you to finding the right potion tailor-made for your specific type and state of mind.

Psychiatry alone won't solve your problems, just like getting a rifle isn't going to win the battle. You've got to actually use it. But having one helps a ton.

As humans, we are similar in many ways. The problems you just wrote about are shared and experienced by many among us, as are the solutions.

Going at it alone is like going into a battlefield before stopping by the armory and getting your mission briefing.

You may get out, but the statistical casualty rate indicates that it isn't a solid idea.

To that end, analogies:

* Therapy = strategic command

* Coaching = tactical planning

* Psychiatry = getting your kit

Or, if you are more fantasy inclined:

* Therapist = spell master

* Coach = swords master

* Physiatrist = potion master

Your job is one of your mental health battlefields. Going unarmed and unprepared when you're losing hit points is not going to help you beat the odds.

Personally, I can attest that I couldn't make the jump the OP did without all three backing me up.

The silver lining was that all three were provided as a part of the benefits package. For anyone in the same boat:

* Therapy was listed as "free counseling sessions"

* Taking time off to take SSRIs and let them kick into gear was under "short term disability"

These words are deliberately off-putting so that people are discouraged from getting what they pay for. In particular, short-term disability package is an insurance, and if you're at a point where your productivity drops, it applies.

It doesn't mean you are disabled. What it means is that whenever a doctor can vouch that your performance is negatively affected by health reasons, whether it's a broken leg or severe anxiety, to the point where you're struggling to meet expectations, the time off you take to get treatment is going to be reimbursed by the insurance you already paid for, up to three months in CA, and this can't be held against you.

That's to say, they can't use that as a reason to fire you.

Unlike whatever assignments you half-ass while being miserable and not getting help.

Reminder: for software engineering, most common mental health issues will generally fulfil the requirements necessary to get a short-term disability leave approved, as our work is mental work.

Note: looking for a different job during your leave is explicitly OK, so if you find yourself in OP's shoes, find a psychiatrist who will do the short-term disability paperwork. It's a simple, short form.

Note 2: y'all be thinking "it's not that bad" — it is that bad. I've been there, and I lied to myself too.

Do NOT let yourself get to the point where you're contemplating suicide, like OP, or having suicidal/self-harm ideation, like me (i.e. you don't have plans, but the idea starts to seem appealing). If you don't feel revulsion at the thought of suicide or self-harm, WAKE UP CALL: seek out ye potion master.

Here's another reframing that can help you get over the internalized stigma:

* Short-term disability leave = prepaid sabbatical

Remember, STD leave — if available — is an insurance that comes as a part of your benefits package, i.e. out of your compensation.

You not only deserve it, it benefits your employer for you to make use of it before it gets real bad. To them, it's fleet maintenance. Y'all are money-making vehicles, your brains are engines, so take time off to change that timing belt before it snaps and renders the entire machine unusable (and unprofitable).

Taking advantage of these resources is conspicuously missing from OP's account, so I hope this will be of use to others.

To the OP: you are out of the toxic quagmire, but the very same resources can significantly speed up recovery, increase your productivity and boost both your career and your utility to your employer.

If you aren't using these resources already, do that. If benefits don't offer them, online counseling like BetterHelp / Cerebral / etc. is an affordable out-of-pocket option.

And all those who aren't in the hole now: find out what resources are available now, before you need them. Burnout is very common in our field, so it's best to be prepared.

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It's dangerous to go alone, take these:

* Therapy/counseling = strategy

* Coaching = tactics

* Psychiatry = ammo

* STD leave = ceasefire

More so if you already paid for all of those as a part of comp.

In 2019 I've had burnout because of team members that didn't care about being in a team. They just messed up the team dynamic completely and I just couldn't handle it. I asked my supervisor to act upon this, but he didn't, so I went on sick leave (Netherlands). Nothing happened for about half a year when I was sidelined in another team.

In 2020 and 2021 I just had nothing to do. Or just stupid chores doing rework or refactoring, but it just didn't do it for me. I asked constantly for work, but there wasn't any. I had to, however, justify my hours, which was becoming impossible.

Whatever I did finish, often didn't make it in the final product. Or I got berated for spending too much time, without getting any time allotted prior. It destroyed my motivation for working.

In the mean time I was looking out for other jobs, but not finding anything that suited me. You see I'm visually impaired, so I hate commuting as it costs me quite a bit of energy, which I'd rather spent on something else.

In the end of 2021 I urged my supervisor to find a solution as it was becoming dire to me. He promised that he would, but as you can guess, he didn't. Going into 2022 I wrote him a letter saying the situation was unsustainable for me. I had quite a lot of panic attacks, especially before starting a new week. That didn't change anything. So in march of 2022 I went on sick leave.

During 2022 the situation only deteriorated. Everyone 'tried their best', but without any results. I got assigned a budget for 2500€ for external help. Which wouldn't be sufficient for any meaningful help. But inquiring on how I could use that budget left me with no answers. This finally resulted in conflicts with my supervisor, HR supervisor and the CEO. And still no help. No psychologist, nothing.

I also went to my GP in May of 2022, but the waiting list for mental help are extremely long. I just got my first appointment last week. In the mean time my mental complaints only increased. I'm now suffering from depression, anxiety, anger, suicidal thoughts and being unable to stay asleep. Because of inflation financially things are getting harder too. It's just stress upon stress upon stress.

I just want to leave. I want to get out of this situation. I don't want anything to do with these folks ever again. They fucked me up by sidelining and ignoring me. And finally they don't take any responsibility. I don't even enjoy my computing hobby anymore.

I just wanted to ventilate my story to a bunch of strangers on the internet, like you. Thanks again for posting this and I hope I can start over soon. Good luck!