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Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

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Re: Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

#82

Post by luckylion »

May I ask why you're even looking for a "fix" to the job situation? More than 10 years at the highest-paying companies will likely have set you up with more money than the average person will make in two lifetimes. Why are you looking for work at a place with less office politics instead of not working and just doing whatever makes you happy?

Re: Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

#83

Post by mihaitodor »

You might want to look at computational biology. Jim Allison won the Nobel Prize back in 2018 for his work on immunotherapy for cancer and there's a lot of basic research work to be done to perfect this approach. Epigenetic clocks are really interesting too (see Steve Horvath's work). Also, there's synthetic biology, where you could, for example, explore this package that's written in Go: https://github.com/TimothyStiles/poly

Re: Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

#84

Post by silveroriole »

chii wrote: post #27
irrational wrote: post #25

Go to work for a Fortune 100 company. In my experience, the salary isn’t as good, the food and massages aren’t free, but the work life balance is much better. I never feel stress. I enjoy the work. I like my coworkers. I’m the complete opposite of burned out.

if the cause of burnout is from overwork, then instead of moving, i'd consider part-time (say, 3-4 day work week). If the cause of burnout is disillusionment - aka, you are such a small cog and your work doesn't seem to matter, despite how hard you actually worked - then moving to a different, but still big company, will not change that. Startups, imho, is where to move to, in order to feel impacts. If the cause of b…

From experience, 4 day week doesn’t really help. You end up doing just as much work as people on 5 days but getting paid less, getting overlooked because you’re less present, and consequently feeling resentful AND overworked. A 4 day week is great for other reasons though.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

#85

Post by mihaitodor »

janussunaj wrote: post #2

(OP here) I wanted to avoid a wall of text, so I'll elaborate here on where I'm coming from. My complaints with FAANG have to do with perverse incentives that reward nonsensical decisions, poorly thought-out and over-engineered projects, grandiose documents, duplication of work, selective reporting of metrics, etc. The few times I had a really good manager, a sane environment, and fulfilling work only lasted until th…

The sloppiness part is what really gets to me. I'm so fed up with it that I'll do whatever it takes to get away from the endless piles of messy code which I don't want to read any more.

Re: Ask HN: Burnt out from big tech. What's next?

#88

Post by ovi256 »

sieabahlpark wrote: post #42
shortcake27 wrote: post #18

When it comes to burnout, the general advice I received is take minimum 1 year off work. I left my job a few months ago as the burnout got so bad I wasn’t able to conjure up the motivation to tackle the simplest of tasks. First couple months I didn’t feel any better and I was getting worried. But I’m _just_ starting to feel better now. I’m finding myself more positive and less stressed. So what am I doing? I’m living…

Yeah I'm sure everyone can be unemployed for a year straight and live out of their car. That sounds completely reasonable and not absolutely, in any way, privileged or insane.

If OP worked in big tech, he got paid really well. So he should have significant savings that will allow him to take a sabbatical year as needed.
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