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For me, I've started feeling like I'm close to burnout. But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option. Could I actually take months off recovering? No

For me, I've started feeling like I'm close to burnout. But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option. Could I actually take months off recovering? No. I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before. Which brings me to my main point: I don't see an option where the work ever actually truly ends. There's always more. Always things I need to be doing. And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding. Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
Yeah I feel the same way. I work a stressful job that pays really well. If I leave, its unlikely I can land a job that pays the same. I just dont have the energy for leetcode. I am considering taking FMLA time off, which can be three months of unpaid time off. Just need a note from the doctor. I think three months is about enough to cure mildly bad burnout. Of course work will not be happy with me, but I have to lookout for myself. They have to honor my position upon return, the question being that my future on the team would be compromised. A more sinister idea is to take FMLA and leetcode full time for three months, then land a new role. Its kind of unethical, but life is so short.
- tcoff91 5y ago
  Are you sure you can't reach out to your network and get in the side-door of a company without leetcoding? If you have advocates on the inside sometimes you can skip all the rigamarole.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
    Not quite, there are roles I could get. But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience. But again, I am quite burned out, so in some ways its in their favor to put me through a rigorous interview process. Leetcode often filters out burned out employees
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - eropple 5y ago
      > But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience. Then do something else! There is a world beyond unicorns and FAANG companies.
      - yupper32 5y ago
        How much money is that worth to you?
        eropple 5y ago
        I own a house with a very comfortable mortgage payment less than a twenty minute drive or a 40 minute train ride from downtown Boston. I work from home on interesting problems and I have a great dog. So not a whole lot. There are better ways to live than sucking down cash to be miserable. You can't take it with you.
      - granshaw 5y ago
        Not if you want that level of comp (Sorry if you were already aware and are saying more along the lines of "money isn't everything", but I wanted to make the point)
      - tnorthcutt 5y ago
        Agreed. If you're burned out, consider moving to a lower cost of living area (assuming SFBA or similar is your current situation) and take a lower paying job. The stress of FAANG/startupville doesn't make sense for a lot of people.
        wonderwonder 5y ago
        This is good advice for a lot of people but a lot of us have a family and cant get passed the idea of uprooting them for ourselves. I am absolutely fried but I cant pull my kids out of school and my wife away from her family. So I just trudge on to the bitter end.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  You might be eligible for paid short-term disability leave with the doctor's note. Also, interviewing and quitting after leave isn't unethical. Do it, take care of yourself.
- nanidin 5y ago
  Have you tried talking about this with your manager? Jumping straight to FMLA is making a lot of assumptions about the company and what they might be willing to do to retain you. As an example: my SO was dealing with a lot of stress due to health reasons and tried to use FMLA. Her company let her do the paperwork, but ultimately let her take off 3 weeks of paid leave that didn’t count against her PTO. That gave her some room to breathe, but she started crashing again a few months later and tried to hand in her resignation. Welp. Her company is now giving her 6 months of paid leave with no hard obligation to return to work, just a request to be courteous and let them know if she’s not coming back so they can stop paying her. If the first time that your manager is hearing about your situation is also your request to start taking FMLA immediately or else resign, your manager isn't going to be able to do much for you (and probably won't want to either, given the tough situation you will be putting them in on short notice.) IMO our industry should really start considering sabbaticals as the next standardized perk. I think they would do a lot to prevent burnout and retain top performers.
  - d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
    +1 to sabbaticals. We had to end someone's employment and rehire them because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      You said: "because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave" I heard: because [support function] didn't listen to business. Whether the support function is IT support, IT Security, HR they should not be allowed to simply say "No.". If business wants to do a thing, then they should be saying "Well, this is how we can achieve that, the benefits and costs are these..."
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    IMO sabbaticals should totally not be introduced. I know they sound awesome. But why do some companies introduce them? What are you suggesting introducing them for? To combat burnout. I.e. hopefully shortly before someone really burns out or most probably after they burned out already and need recovery they can go on a sabbatical. How about not doing 80 hour weeks in the first place? How about not using arbitrary deadlines and throwing a fit over minor delays or changes to the plan? How about not doing all the crazy preventable things and pawing it off on other people. I know, might be too much to ask so to speak but I really wish that more people would just not take this abuse instead of asking for a sabbatical to recover from the abuse. Anyway, my $0.02.
- Hippocrates 5y ago
  Tell your manager you’re burned out and concerned for your mental health and you might just be allowed to take a paid leave, on which you can leetcode or catch up on TV. I know several people who did this and even one who quit immediately on return.
pjc50 5y ago
> don't see an option where the work ever actually truly ends. There's always more. Always things I need to be doing. And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding. There's always another possibility: you might die. And then what would happen to the poor work?
- yupper32 5y ago
  I'm not worried about the work. But my family, who needs my financial support, would be in a much much worse position.
  - tnorthcutt 5y ago
    In that case I highly suggest you stop what you're doing and buy $1-3M of term life insurance, depending on various factors. I'm completely serious.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      I do have that, actually. I'd very much like to not rely on that, though :) My post you're responding to was a little dramatic and really just a response to the idea that I cared about whether the actual work gets done. I just care about my family.
      - rhacker 5y ago
        What ins. company are you with, also interested...
irrational 5y ago
This note about vacation is something I can relate too. Vacation never refreshes me. Going back to work after vacation feels so good.
- bluedevil2k 5y ago
  That’s kind of a sad statement. Your company doesn’t really care about you personally…if they could replace you with someone better and cheaper, they would. Why should you care so much about them? Why care more about a job than your own life?
  - irrational 5y ago
    I don’t care about the company. I’m just saying that I find vacations to be very stressful and work (regardless of where I am working) to be relaxing in comparison.
cdrini 5y ago
I'm sorry to hear that you're close to burning out. Having a family definitely complicates the situation. I imagine it's much harder to fly with the wind when you're helping carry others. If your work is remote, perhaps a change of scenery might suffice? I've been working from Albania, and with timezones, that basically means I get to go to the beach in the morning, then start work at 2PM-10:30PM.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Much of the battle is learning how to assert some control over your life. Burnout comes with significant learned helplessness - A feeling that you don't have any control over your life because previous attempts to take control have failed. The trick is to un-learn that helplessness by retraining yourself with small steps in the right direction. Jumping straight into hours of Leetcode grinding isn't a good small step. Setting a goal to solve 2 Leetcode problems per week is a good first step. Or even better, maybe skip the Leetcode and start pinging your network for any job openings. Not every job requires Leetcode practice. > Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Time to force some control over your workload. Does your manager try to shame you into not taking vacation? Or do they expect you to accomplish the same work whether your on vacation or not? Time to push back. If you're burned out and thinking of quitting anyway, what's the worst that can happen? As it turns out, you're not actually going to get fired quickly at most any company for simply limiting your workload to something reasonable. There's a hiring crunch right now and they'd have to replace you with someone else. Then you'd just get another job, which is what you wanted anyway. Time to start setting some boundaries, leading with expectations instead of waiting for them to be applied to you, and forcing some vacation time into your schedule. No one is going to make vacation happen for you, so get it done. Meanwhile, it's time to find another company. I agree that quitting isn't a great idea if it can be avoided. I've seen enough people quit due to burnout and/or depression, only to spiral further into burnout/depression in the ensuing loneliness and financial stresses. Better to switch to a new job where people actually enjoy working together.
- mettamage 5y ago
  > Not every job requires Leetcode practice. In The Netherlands, most jobs don't.
  - loftyal 5y ago
    Isn't it pretty much everywhere doesn't require leetcode, except the US? UK, Aus, and NZ definitely don't unless its with some American company.
    - 5y ago
unclebucknasty 5y ago
>But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option. Once you hit full burnout, you'll realize that you don't really have a choice, unfortunately. You will have to stop. Whether that means quitting depends on your situation but, in any case, you won't be able to continue on your current path. >And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding. This is the trap that pushes us into burnout. By definition, it happens when we get to a place where we're making enough that retirement (or other financial goal) becomes an option on some timeline we think we can stomach. Then, we worry that the cost of improving upon our current situation (or even replicating it) is too high. So, we settle into a game of essentially trying to outlast the misery. In reality, our quality of life is so miserable that it's simply not worth it. We recognize the problem, but we convince ourselves that we don't have a choice. But, the premise itself is an illusion. There are always other options, some of which are far less costly than we imagine (and certainly less costly than destroying ourselves). It sometimes takes walking away from the burnout situation to recognize our full option-set, so we get stuck in a loop, the confinement and stress of which adds to our burnout. One way out is to simply say to yourself, "I can no longer live this way" and intenralize that it's really not an option to continue. You will then be able to see new opportunities for change, as well as assign the proper cost to making those changes. In other words, you'll start to gain the perspective you need to move forward.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  To underscore this, there's a specific meaning to 'you will have to stop', and it isn't 'you will choose to not work as hard, you will lose motivation'. You will BREAK. You will be unable to think. The think no work. You no work. Not be fix thing today. Or tormorwo. blah. Plenty of people in this HN post who are flirting with this. It's a natural outcome of motivation so strong that you'll push yourself to the limit, without flinching or weakening. I don't know where everyone else gets that. Childhood stuff? Social conditioning? Most people don't have it that bad. Most companies aren't SV unicorns. Success on the grand scale, rides on the back of people like this. Some of them don't break, and some do. If you do, you will break. Not your will, not your motivation… your MIND breaks and you can't think. And then it's the months or years of down-time. You burned out.
blahblahblogger 5y ago
Same here. I joined a company pre-IPO several years ago and even though though Wall-street just punished us (hint hint) I'm still making close to 1m per year due to stock appreciation vs when I joined. Unfortunately I'm not worth getting paid that much, so my statement isn't a humble brag or anything, it's a realistic observation that my role + work isn't special and I shouldn't be making this amount. With rest/vest I will likely never get this high of a salary + equity package again. In that sense I feel like I'm currently at my maximum earning potential even though I'm a mid-level engineer. Plus going back to leetcoding? Pfft.
- anon9001 5y ago
  Similar situation here. With full honesty, if they worked me 18hr/day, I'd just have to put up with it until vesting is complete. Thankfully, most public companies don't seem to have management that will look at your vesting schedule and try to abuse you maximally. I'm really not sure why, they probably should be doing that.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago
    I know a capitalist when I see one!
    - anon9001 5y ago
      I suppose so, but reluctantly. My actual choices are to labor aggressively in the hopes of some day entering the investor class that doesn't need to labor for survival, or to do less labor and hope socialism builds me a safety net before I run out of funds. If there's another option, I'd like to hear it, but I'm already pretty far down the capitalist route. Also, the pandemic has really shattered any illusion that we could all work together to achieve any sort of universal good, which probably makes capitalism a better bet.
      - tharkun__ 5y ago
        If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit and sell. Then invest this in a diversified portfolio (I'm assuming you have a few million by that time) that pays dividends. Take a regular job. Try the best you can to find a nice position so you don't need to hop too much but basically the point is to find a good company that you can have fun at and still feel valuable. And if they try bullshit you don't care because you have all those dividends and you probably don't even need most of the salary. To me at that point the salary and steady CV would be reassurance against bad stock performance. The dividends are reassurance that I have to take absolutely zero abuse at work and can even use that to make life better for the rest of the employees by being able to speak the truth from a position of financial security. The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon (sure, take a year for traveling the world or whatever but chances are you won't make it through a full year at a time anyway. Maybe contracting is best, schedule wise.
nicoburns 5y ago
> And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before. Would that really be so bad? If software dev is burning you out then why try a different career and a cheaper lifestyle. Or simply a lower-pressure job and a cheaper lifestyle (there are plenty of companies that don't do leetcode interviews).
eropple 5y ago
> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before. The former is untrue, in my experience. The latter is worth it. > Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Work somewhere humane and this really, truly isn't an issue. It isn't. There is sustainable work out there, and you do take a haircut to do it, but it's far from unlivable. Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year. I could have made several. But--would I be happier? No.
- yupper32 5y ago
  > Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year. This isn't helpful. I thought HN would understand more than most, but a lot don't seem to. It's more like--great I make a ton of money. now that you're here, try to keep it going. Taking a pay cut (which would be significant my comp is ~FAANG level), feels like gambling. Is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to gamble that my new lower paying job is less stressful? There are some success stories, but do we hear of people who left their high paying jobs only to be just as stressed in their new positions?
  - davidwf 5y ago
    I personally left my FAANG role behind for a role that had way more of what I wanted to do (coding) and way less of what I hated (paperwork), and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. I think it's important to keep in mind "signal bias" -- I'm never on other social media, and I'm only on HN every weekday over my breakfast and morning coffee. I don't spend time building my brand or writing blog posts or shouting from the rooftops about how great my life is because I'm trying hard to stay busy actually enjoying how great my life is. In my experience, there really are a lot of folks who've made similar decisions, it's just that part of managing your life is also giving up on trying to convince strangers that you're awesome.
    - jkhdigital 5y ago
temporallobe 5y ago
> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. This struck a chord with me. I recently had a “vacation” where I still had to participate in and do work on an RFP and then be in the RFP presentation itself. I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. In addition, when I got back (officially), I was expected to simply “catch up” with the work I couldn’t do during the week I was off. It was actually one of the most stressful vacations I had ever been on because I was torn between trying to relax and spend time with my family and the duty to my job. I justified it by saying to myself that I was at least having some fun, but it actually ended up being worse than if I hadn’t taken vacation at all.
- gorbachev 5y ago
  You need to quit this job. As soon as you possibly can. Start working on it right away. This is not a job for humans.
- sciprojguy 5y ago
  You do not have a "duty to your job". Employers love it when they can get their workers to think that way because it raises the threshold amount they can overwork and over-stress you before you've had enough and quit. You have to protect your personal time and your mental and emotional health. (I have had to learn this lesson a couple of times in 40+ years as a software dev.)
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  > I recently had a “vacation” [...] I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. You got used by your employer. They owe you comp time equal to the length of your "vacation". You deserve that and should not hesitate to ask for it.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  I work with a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months. There have been days she has just broken down. She is finally on a 2 week vacation and she has had to work every day of the vacation so far. It is insane. We work at a unicorn startup.
ManBlanket 5y ago
Oh, you could take months off to recover or even quit outright. You could forego the leet code BS entirely. Take a much lower paying job. I think what you mean is you aren't willing to deal with whatever consequences you think taking time for yourself might have. I'll tell you what if I know anything it's that you do need a different job if taking vacation, "puts you farther behind". At the very least a different state of mind. Mark Twain said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.” Soak on that for a second. You aren't special or different than anyone else in most regards. Those feelings - anxiety, being trapped, burned out, disconnected... That's your brain telling you what you're doing isn't working. It feels awful. So what if you do take a lower paying job but you actually enjoy it? What if you end up taking a higher paying job and you enjoy it? What if you quit and spend your life pursuing your passions, and make it to retirement with 0 in the bank but your family loves and respects you so much they're happy to help out? Neither of us actually knows what would happen if you decided to do something for yourself, but if you truly aren't happy that's the only course of action that makes sense. Your life can only realistically get better if you try to make it better. You get one chance to live your life, then it's suddenly over. One chance. Do you really want to squander an opportunity like this because you think something worse might happen when you retire decades from now? I don't think someone with the worldview you just described will ever have enough to retire. I truly hope you do something that makes you happy tonight, even if it's something small.
distrill 5y ago
> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. I didn't realize this until somewhat recently. The reason I don't take time off isn't because I don't want time off, or because I'm saving it for something better (like many of my colleagues seem to be). I don't take time off because deadlines don't care about time off and all it does is make the time surrounding it worse.
bluedevil2k 5y ago
> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Terrible way to look at it. The saying “recharge your batteries” is pretty appropriate here, you’re making an investment that when you return you’ll be more productive in the long run. And further behind…further behind what exactly? Some artificial deadline or some arbitrary release date? That’s not your problem, if management doesn’t factor in people’s vacations that’s on them. Push back a little, get a backbone, and say “no”.
jkhdigital 5y ago
Might be time to cultivate a source of meaning in life that has nothing to do with your work. Volunteering and religion are two timeless sources for this.
axpy906 5y ago
This is where Digital Sunsets and using time techniques (Pomodro, getting things done) come in. It won’t fix burnout but does allow you to pace yourself. After that long unplugged vacations work wonders.
knikes 5y ago
> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on I hate this so much. I spent three months leetcoding and doing mock interviews to pass the interview and get hired into a FAANG company. After deciding to leave the company after a few years, I went straight into interviewing instead of doing prep first thinking it would be a breeze. I bombed. I could tell from my interviewer's faces that they were questioning the validity of my resume due to how badly I was doing. I eventually went on to get hired by another company that asked me to solve a small problem prior to the interview and discuss my approach, which went very well. I couldn't bring myself to go practice whiteboarding binary search again.
wonderwonder 5y ago
I am right there. Been burned out for years. But I just cannot see a way to get out of the rut. Sorry man.
zoomablemind 5y ago
>... Vacation doesn't help. It's true that there are always things that need to be done. But vacation does help. A lot. It works on people by the same principle as the burn-out does, as long as we allow ourselves to be drawn in, redirecting and focusing our strong attention onto the vacation context and details. Does a vacation solve the latent issues in the office? Unlikely. But it can give a stronger chance at finding courage to move on to better pastures with less of a collateral damage or personal injury in the process. Vacation helps, so does the personal/sick-time. A culture of banking (or shaming for taking) the PTO is outright traumatizing and usually a good indicator of an unhealthy team/organization.
brailsafe 5y ago
Better to take the time off before you have to take the time off, which will almost certainly happen. I burnt out at my last job in March of 2020, and that savings I was building up to hopefully one day retire is gone, and that's as a person with no true dependants, minimal bills, and a very frugal lifestyle. I haven't found work since. I took 1 step forward, and 1 step back. This was also true of the previous time I burnt out in 2016; I didn't end up finding work again before I lost my apartment and had to live out of my car for a long time. Know the warning signs. Leave/change jobs before you destroy your career like I apparently have.
fukmbas 5y ago
You could die today
sangnoir 5y ago
> No. I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. Then you won't be (thoroughly) burnt-out. One of the hallmark sign of burnout is cynicism and lack of motivation. You won't want to open leetcode, and you won't care if you never, ever wrote another line of code for the rest of your life. You will be done. You get to this stage when you're slightly burnt out and push yourself over the edge, such as by leetcoding. Giving your mind time to recover is the only way to recover from a burnout - if you're still able to put in work or leetcode, you're not burnt out.

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago

Yeah I feel the same way. I work a stressful job that pays really well. If I leave, its unlikely I can land a job that pays the same. I just dont have the energy for leetcode. I am considering taking FMLA time off, which can be three months of unpaid time off. Just need a note from the doctor. I think three months is about enough to cure mildly bad burnout. Of course work will not be happy with me, but I have to lookout for myself. They have to honor my position upon return, the question being that my future on the team would be compromised. A more sinister idea is to take FMLA and leetcode full time for three months, then land a new role. Its kind of unethical, but life is so short.

tcoff91 5y ago
Are you sure you can't reach out to your network and get in the side-door of a company without leetcoding? If you have advocates on the inside sometimes you can skip all the rigamarole.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  Not quite, there are roles I could get. But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience. But again, I am quite burned out, so in some ways its in their favor to put me through a rigorous interview process. Leetcode often filters out burned out employees
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - eropple 5y ago
    > But I am mostly referring to FAANG/Some unicorns in terms of matching comp. None of which will give me the benefit of the doubt, despite my experience. Then do something else! There is a world beyond unicorns and FAANG companies.
    - yupper32 5y ago
      How much money is that worth to you?
      - eropple 5y ago
        I own a house with a very comfortable mortgage payment less than a twenty minute drive or a 40 minute train ride from downtown Boston. I work from home on interesting problems and I have a great dog. So not a whole lot. There are better ways to live than sucking down cash to be miserable. You can't take it with you.
    - granshaw 5y ago
      Not if you want that level of comp (Sorry if you were already aware and are saying more along the lines of "money isn't everything", but I wanted to make the point)
    - tnorthcutt 5y ago
      Agreed. If you're burned out, consider moving to a lower cost of living area (assuming SFBA or similar is your current situation) and take a lower paying job. The stress of FAANG/startupville doesn't make sense for a lot of people.
      - wonderwonder 5y ago
        This is good advice for a lot of people but a lot of us have a family and cant get passed the idea of uprooting them for ourselves. I am absolutely fried but I cant pull my kids out of school and my wife away from her family. So I just trudge on to the bitter end.
nerdponx 5y ago
You might be eligible for paid short-term disability leave with the doctor's note. Also, interviewing and quitting after leave isn't unethical. Do it, take care of yourself.
nanidin 5y ago
Have you tried talking about this with your manager? Jumping straight to FMLA is making a lot of assumptions about the company and what they might be willing to do to retain you. As an example: my SO was dealing with a lot of stress due to health reasons and tried to use FMLA. Her company let her do the paperwork, but ultimately let her take off 3 weeks of paid leave that didn’t count against her PTO. That gave her some room to breathe, but she started crashing again a few months later and tried to hand in her resignation. Welp. Her company is now giving her 6 months of paid leave with no hard obligation to return to work, just a request to be courteous and let them know if she’s not coming back so they can stop paying her. If the first time that your manager is hearing about your situation is also your request to start taking FMLA immediately or else resign, your manager isn't going to be able to do much for you (and probably won't want to either, given the tough situation you will be putting them in on short notice.) IMO our industry should really start considering sabbaticals as the next standardized perk. I think they would do a lot to prevent burnout and retain top performers.
- d0gsg0w00f 5y ago
  +1 to sabbaticals. We had to end someone's employment and rehire them because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave.
  - _carbyau_ 5y ago
    You said: "because HR wouldn't consider unpaid leave" I heard: because [support function] didn't listen to business. Whether the support function is IT support, IT Security, HR they should not be allowed to simply say "No.". If business wants to do a thing, then they should be saying "Well, this is how we can achieve that, the benefits and costs are these..."
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  IMO sabbaticals should totally not be introduced. I know they sound awesome. But why do some companies introduce them? What are you suggesting introducing them for? To combat burnout. I.e. hopefully shortly before someone really burns out or most probably after they burned out already and need recovery they can go on a sabbatical. How about not doing 80 hour weeks in the first place? How about not using arbitrary deadlines and throwing a fit over minor delays or changes to the plan? How about not doing all the crazy preventable things and pawing it off on other people. I know, might be too much to ask so to speak but I really wish that more people would just not take this abuse instead of asking for a sabbatical to recover from the abuse. Anyway, my $0.02.
Hippocrates 5y ago
Tell your manager you’re burned out and concerned for your mental health and you might just be allowed to take a paid leave, on which you can leetcode or catch up on TV. I know several people who did this and even one who quit immediately on return.

pjc50 5y ago

> don't see an option where the work ever actually truly ends. There's always more. Always things I need to be doing. And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding. There's always another possibility: you might die. And then what would happen to the poor work?

yupper32 5y ago
I'm not worried about the work. But my family, who needs my financial support, would be in a much much worse position.
- tnorthcutt 5y ago
  In that case I highly suggest you stop what you're doing and buy $1-3M of term life insurance, depending on various factors. I'm completely serious.
  - yupper32 5y ago
    I do have that, actually. I'd very much like to not rely on that, though :) My post you're responding to was a little dramatic and really just a response to the idea that I cared about whether the actual work gets done. I just care about my family.
    - rhacker 5y ago
      What ins. company are you with, also interested...

irrational 5y ago

This note about vacation is something I can relate too. Vacation never refreshes me. Going back to work after vacation feels so good.

bluedevil2k 5y ago
That’s kind of a sad statement. Your company doesn’t really care about you personally…if they could replace you with someone better and cheaper, they would. Why should you care so much about them? Why care more about a job than your own life?
- irrational 5y ago
  I don’t care about the company. I’m just saying that I find vacations to be very stressful and work (regardless of where I am working) to be relaxing in comparison.

cdrini 5y ago

I'm sorry to hear that you're close to burning out. Having a family definitely complicates the situation. I imagine it's much harder to fly with the wind when you're helping carry others. If your work is remote, perhaps a change of scenery might suffice? I've been working from Albania, and with timezones, that basically means I get to go to the beach in the morning, then start work at 2PM-10:30PM.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Much of the battle is learning how to assert some control over your life. Burnout comes with significant learned helplessness - A feeling that you don't have any control over your life because previous attempts to take control have failed. The trick is to un-learn that helplessness by retraining yourself with small steps in the right direction. Jumping straight into hours of Leetcode grinding isn't a good small step. Setting a goal to solve 2 Leetcode problems per week is a good first step. Or even better, maybe skip the Leetcode and start pinging your network for any job openings. Not every job requires Leetcode practice. > Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Time to force some control over your workload. Does your manager try to shame you into not taking vacation? Or do they expect you to accomplish the same work whether your on vacation or not? Time to push back. If you're burned out and thinking of quitting anyway, what's the worst that can happen? As it turns out, you're not actually going to get fired quickly at most any company for simply limiting your workload to something reasonable. There's a hiring crunch right now and they'd have to replace you with someone else. Then you'd just get another job, which is what you wanted anyway. Time to start setting some boundaries, leading with expectations instead of waiting for them to be applied to you, and forcing some vacation time into your schedule. No one is going to make vacation happen for you, so get it done. Meanwhile, it's time to find another company. I agree that quitting isn't a great idea if it can be avoided. I've seen enough people quit due to burnout and/or depression, only to spiral further into burnout/depression in the ensuing loneliness and financial stresses. Better to switch to a new job where people actually enjoy working together.

mettamage 5y ago
> Not every job requires Leetcode practice. In The Netherlands, most jobs don't.
- loftyal 5y ago
  Isn't it pretty much everywhere doesn't require leetcode, except the US? UK, Aus, and NZ definitely don't unless its with some American company.
  - 5y ago

unclebucknasty 5y ago

>But quitting doesn't really seem like a helpful option. Once you hit full burnout, you'll realize that you don't really have a choice, unfortunately. You will have to stop. Whether that means quitting depends on your situation but, in any case, you won't be able to continue on your current path. >And until I have enough to retire, I have to keep grinding. This is the trap that pushes us into burnout. By definition, it happens when we get to a place where we're making enough that retirement (or other financial goal) becomes an option on some timeline we think we can stomach. Then, we worry that the cost of improving upon our current situation (or even replicating it) is too high. So, we settle into a game of essentially trying to outlast the misery. In reality, our quality of life is so miserable that it's simply not worth it. We recognize the problem, but we convince ourselves that we don't have a choice. But, the premise itself is an illusion. There are always other options, some of which are far less costly than we imagine (and certainly less costly than destroying ourselves). It sometimes takes walking away from the burnout situation to recognize our full option-set, so we get stuck in a loop, the confinement and stress of which adds to our burnout. One way out is to simply say to yourself, "I can no longer live this way" and intenralize that it's really not an option to continue. You will then be able to see new opportunities for change, as well as assign the proper cost to making those changes. In other words, you'll start to gain the perspective you need to move forward.

Applejinx 5y ago
To underscore this, there's a specific meaning to 'you will have to stop', and it isn't 'you will choose to not work as hard, you will lose motivation'. You will BREAK. You will be unable to think. The think no work. You no work. Not be fix thing today. Or tormorwo. blah. Plenty of people in this HN post who are flirting with this. It's a natural outcome of motivation so strong that you'll push yourself to the limit, without flinching or weakening. I don't know where everyone else gets that. Childhood stuff? Social conditioning? Most people don't have it that bad. Most companies aren't SV unicorns. Success on the grand scale, rides on the back of people like this. Some of them don't break, and some do. If you do, you will break. Not your will, not your motivation… your MIND breaks and you can't think. And then it's the months or years of down-time. You burned out.

blahblahblogger 5y ago

Same here. I joined a company pre-IPO several years ago and even though though Wall-street just punished us (hint hint) I'm still making close to 1m per year due to stock appreciation vs when I joined. Unfortunately I'm not worth getting paid that much, so my statement isn't a humble brag or anything, it's a realistic observation that my role + work isn't special and I shouldn't be making this amount. With rest/vest I will likely never get this high of a salary + equity package again. In that sense I feel like I'm currently at my maximum earning potential even though I'm a mid-level engineer. Plus going back to leetcoding? Pfft.

anon9001 5y ago
Similar situation here. With full honesty, if they worked me 18hr/day, I'd just have to put up with it until vesting is complete. Thankfully, most public companies don't seem to have management that will look at your vesting schedule and try to abuse you maximally. I'm really not sure why, they probably should be doing that.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  I know a capitalist when I see one!
  - anon9001 5y ago
    I suppose so, but reluctantly. My actual choices are to labor aggressively in the hopes of some day entering the investor class that doesn't need to labor for survival, or to do less labor and hope socialism builds me a safety net before I run out of funds. If there's another option, I'd like to hear it, but I'm already pretty far down the capitalist route. Also, the pandemic has really shattered any illusion that we could all work together to achieve any sort of universal good, which probably makes capitalism a better bet.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      If you are on the same boat as described in your parent posts and making a million per year and are just waiting for the vesting then I would say if you can endure this, do it till vested and then quit and sell. Then invest this in a diversified portfolio (I'm assuming you have a few million by that time) that pays dividends. Take a regular job. Try the best you can to find a nice position so you don't need to hop too much but basically the point is to find a good company that you can have fun at and still feel valuable. And if they try bullshit you don't care because you have all those dividends and you probably don't even need most of the salary. To me at that point the salary and steady CV would be reassurance against bad stock performance. The dividends are reassurance that I have to take absolutely zero abuse at work and can even use that to make life better for the rest of the employees by being able to speak the truth from a position of financial security. The position fills the hole in life that would otherwise show up soon (sure, take a year for traveling the world or whatever but chances are you won't make it through a full year at a time anyway. Maybe contracting is best, schedule wise.

nicoburns 5y ago

> And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before. Would that really be so bad? If software dev is burning you out then why try a different career and a cheaper lifestyle. Or simply a lower-pressure job and a cheaper lifestyle (there are plenty of companies that don't do leetcode interviews).

eropple 5y ago

> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. And risk having to take a job that pays way less than before. The former is untrue, in my experience. The latter is worth it. > Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Work somewhere humane and this really, truly isn't an issue. It isn't. There is sustainable work out there, and you do take a haircut to do it, but it's far from unlivable. Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year. I could have made several. But--would I be happier? No.

yupper32 5y ago
> Like--oh, woe is me, I only made a few multiples of the median personal income in the USA last year. This isn't helpful. I thought HN would understand more than most, but a lot don't seem to. It's more like--great I make a ton of money. now that you're here, try to keep it going. Taking a pay cut (which would be significant my comp is ~FAANG level), feels like gambling. Is it worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to gamble that my new lower paying job is less stressful? There are some success stories, but do we hear of people who left their high paying jobs only to be just as stressed in their new positions?
- davidwf 5y ago
  I personally left my FAANG role behind for a role that had way more of what I wanted to do (coding) and way less of what I hated (paperwork), and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. I think it's important to keep in mind "signal bias" -- I'm never on other social media, and I'm only on HN every weekday over my breakfast and morning coffee. I don't spend time building my brand or writing blog posts or shouting from the rooftops about how great my life is because I'm trying hard to stay busy actually enjoying how great my life is. In my experience, there really are a lot of folks who've made similar decisions, it's just that part of managing your life is also giving up on trying to convince strangers that you're awesome.
  - jkhdigital 5y ago

temporallobe 5y ago

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. This struck a chord with me. I recently had a “vacation” where I still had to participate in and do work on an RFP and then be in the RFP presentation itself. I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. In addition, when I got back (officially), I was expected to simply “catch up” with the work I couldn’t do during the week I was off. It was actually one of the most stressful vacations I had ever been on because I was torn between trying to relax and spend time with my family and the duty to my job. I justified it by saying to myself that I was at least having some fun, but it actually ended up being worse than if I hadn’t taken vacation at all.

gorbachev 5y ago
You need to quit this job. As soon as you possibly can. Start working on it right away. This is not a job for humans.
sciprojguy 5y ago
You do not have a "duty to your job". Employers love it when they can get their workers to think that way because it raises the threshold amount they can overwork and over-stress you before you've had enough and quit. You have to protect your personal time and your mental and emotional health. (I have had to learn this lesson a couple of times in 40+ years as a software dev.)
crispyambulance 5y ago
> I recently had a “vacation” [...] I ended up working 3-4 hours every day. You got used by your employer. They owe you comp time equal to the length of your "vacation". You deserve that and should not hesitate to ask for it.
wonderwonder 5y ago
I work with a great manager, she has worked no joke 100 hour weeks for the last 7? months. There have been days she has just broken down. She is finally on a 2 week vacation and she has had to work every day of the vacation so far. It is insane. We work at a unicorn startup.

ManBlanket 5y ago

Oh, you could take months off to recover or even quit outright. You could forego the leet code BS entirely. Take a much lower paying job. I think what you mean is you aren't willing to deal with whatever consequences you think taking time for yourself might have. I'll tell you what if I know anything it's that you do need a different job if taking vacation, "puts you farther behind". At the very least a different state of mind. Mark Twain said, “Some of the worst things in my life never even happened.” Soak on that for a second. You aren't special or different than anyone else in most regards. Those feelings - anxiety, being trapped, burned out, disconnected... That's your brain telling you what you're doing isn't working. It feels awful. So what if you do take a lower paying job but you actually enjoy it? What if you end up taking a higher paying job and you enjoy it? What if you quit and spend your life pursuing your passions, and make it to retirement with 0 in the bank but your family loves and respects you so much they're happy to help out? Neither of us actually knows what would happen if you decided to do something for yourself, but if you truly aren't happy that's the only course of action that makes sense. Your life can only realistically get better if you try to make it better. You get one chance to live your life, then it's suddenly over. One chance. Do you really want to squander an opportunity like this because you think something worse might happen when you retire decades from now? I don't think someone with the worldview you just described will ever have enough to retire. I truly hope you do something that makes you happy tonight, even if it's something small.

distrill 5y ago

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. I didn't realize this until somewhat recently. The reason I don't take time off isn't because I don't want time off, or because I'm saving it for something better (like many of my colleagues seem to be). I don't take time off because deadlines don't care about time off and all it does is make the time surrounding it worse.

bluedevil2k 5y ago

> Vacation doesn't help. It just puts me farther behind. Terrible way to look at it. The saying “recharge your batteries” is pretty appropriate here, you’re making an investment that when you return you’ll be more productive in the long run. And further behind…further behind what exactly? Some artificial deadline or some arbitrary release date? That’s not your problem, if management doesn’t factor in people’s vacations that’s on them. Push back a little, get a backbone, and say “no”.

jkhdigital 5y ago

Might be time to cultivate a source of meaning in life that has nothing to do with your work. Volunteering and religion are two timeless sources for this.

axpy906 5y ago

This is where Digital Sunsets and using time techniques (Pomodro, getting things done) come in. It won’t fix burnout but does allow you to pace yourself. After that long unplugged vacations work wonders.

knikes 5y ago

> I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on I hate this so much. I spent three months leetcoding and doing mock interviews to pass the interview and get hired into a FAANG company. After deciding to leave the company after a few years, I went straight into interviewing instead of doing prep first thinking it would be a breeze. I bombed. I could tell from my interviewer's faces that they were questioning the validity of my resume due to how badly I was doing. I eventually went on to get hired by another company that asked me to solve a small problem prior to the interview and discuss my approach, which went very well. I couldn't bring myself to go practice whiteboarding binary search again.

wonderwonder 5y ago

I am right there. Been burned out for years. But I just cannot see a way to get out of the rut. Sorry man.

zoomablemind 5y ago

>... Vacation doesn't help. It's true that there are always things that need to be done. But vacation does help. A lot. It works on people by the same principle as the burn-out does, as long as we allow ourselves to be drawn in, redirecting and focusing our strong attention onto the vacation context and details. Does a vacation solve the latent issues in the office? Unlikely. But it can give a stronger chance at finding courage to move on to better pastures with less of a collateral damage or personal injury in the process. Vacation helps, so does the personal/sick-time. A culture of banking (or shaming for taking) the PTO is outright traumatizing and usually a good indicator of an unhealthy team/organization.

brailsafe 5y ago

Better to take the time off before you have to take the time off, which will almost certainly happen. I burnt out at my last job in March of 2020, and that savings I was building up to hopefully one day retire is gone, and that's as a person with no true dependants, minimal bills, and a very frugal lifestyle. I haven't found work since. I took 1 step forward, and 1 step back. This was also true of the previous time I burnt out in 2016; I didn't end up finding work again before I lost my apartment and had to live out of my car for a long time. Know the warning signs. Leave/change jobs before you destroy your career like I apparently have.

fukmbas 5y ago

You could die today

sangnoir 5y ago

> No. I'd have to immediately start leetcoding and remembering what all those trees are for so that I could become employed again later on. Then you won't be (thoroughly) burnt-out. One of the hallmark sign of burnout is cynicism and lack of motivation. You won't want to open leetcode, and you won't care if you never, ever wrote another line of code for the rest of your life. You will be done. You get to this stage when you're slightly burnt out and push yourself over the edge, such as by leetcoding. Giving your mind time to recover is the only way to recover from a burnout - if you're still able to put in work or leetcode, you're not burnt out.