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Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

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131–140 of 521 posts

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#131
It's not hard to explain why you feel terrible working those hours considering what you get out of it.

What is more interesting/worrying is how you describe yourself as a loser, despite doing very, very demanding work and actually still succeeding at it. (At least by the standards of your company, else they would've let you go 3 years back)

Your own standards, however, seem to be so high that it's clearly harming you psychologically. I know some people will scoff at the suggestion, but in my experience that almost always comes from childhood.

Grab yourself the book "The Tao of Feeling Fully" by Pete Walker and see if you resonate with it. Even if your first instinct is "No way, my childhood was great", I would still (maybe especially) suggest you give it a read. If it's not for you that's 15 bucks gone, if it hits the nail it might literally save your life.

I wish you all the best.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#132
Internalize that human worth has no connection to ability. Easier said than done. As a thought exercise, think about individuals you care about. How strongly does their productivity correlate with how glad you are they are alive and part of your life? Why do you apply different standards to yourself?

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#133
It doesn't sound like you're a loser at all. Granted, it isn't the purpose of your post, but I was wondering if outside of the work situation you have enough interests and are seeing anyone. For me at least, getting my love life in order when I was your age provided me a lot more purpose.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#138
There’s 112 waking hours in a week, give or take, if you’re getting reasonable sleep at all. So, working 70-90 hours per week leaves literally no time for anything else. If you commute and eat and so much as watch a tiny amount of YouTube or Netflix, that uses all the remaining time. It’s very important to realize that working 80 hours per week is trading your entire life for your salary. Not just some of your time, but all of it. It’s not possible to do any self growth or change things when working that many hours, so turning it around requires working fewer hours.

I’ve done stretches of 80 or even 90 hrs/week for months, and can verify that does induce brain fog and self doubt and a lot of things you’re describing. I have a strange and maybe contradictory take on this - I don’t regret it but feel like I shouldn’t have done it, and I wouldn’t do it again, if that makes sense. I take responsibility for choosing to work that hard because I’m sometimes perfectionist and sometimes people pleaser. Maybe you are too. In my case, there were usually other people around me also working hard, and I eventually saw some financial benefit, and I did get a good reputation. If you don’t have any upsides like that, it’s time to shake it up and defend yourself and your time. At some point I realized that salary is not linear, that overtime can’t pay enough to make 80 hours/week worth it for me. Also I saw more benefits by changing jobs.

Solving code problems from scratch and learning data structures and algorithms and writing libraries are things that generally happen as a byproduct of other goals, people almost never do these things purely for the sake of coding. If one of your goals is to go deeper into code, consider doing a graduate degree perhaps. You can get paid to learn and think about algorithms. LeetCode is not designed to help people be better at algorithms nor coding from scratch, nor is it designed for educating people how to architect solutions. Do not measure yourself by LeetCode.

Last but not least, it takes time and effort to be social, and can even be scary or painful, but it’s maybe worth leaning into that discomfort a little and making it a goal to develop some social muscles. It may take going out on a limb and inviting other people to do things, and when others are scared or busy it might feel like rejection. But this is how networking happens, people spending time with each other. One of the potential benefits of going back to school is a certain amount of built-in social environment, but if more school isn’t your thing, try meetups or a job in a bigger company.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around

#139
post #30

1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc. No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume. 2. You are worth more than you currently think you are. Internalize this, know this, that is key. "I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team" --> is a desirable skill in and of itself. 3. Stop…

But what if they aren't worth more (as a dev, financially) than they think they are? They could be awful, but naively put in a ton of hours. Why do we assume people are worth more? Are we trying to make them feel better by making assumptions and potentially leading them horribly astray? Most people are supremely mediocre and there are just and many horrible devs as their are great ones.

> But what if they aren't worth more (as a dev, financially) than they think they are?

Honestly i think most devs err on the side of underestimating their value not overestimating it, particularly in the current market.

Of course, ymmv, but last time i switched jobs i ended up being pretty shocked how much more employers thought i was worth compared to what my (at the time) current job was paying me.

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