Ask HN: What's your spectacular burnout story?

Though I didn't have as extreme of a situation, I did have to do another year before I could get the PhD. I gained 50+ pounds, stopped shaving, became nocturnal, and averaged ~5 hours/day of sleep. Really don't understand how my SO stayed with me through that.

And I only took ~4.5 years to finish. Can't imagine what sort of shape I would've been in if it was strung out to 6 or 7 years.

It really made me appreciate being healthy, getting 8 hours of sleep, and time. While I don't necessarily recommend going through that, I do think everyone should experience what it's like to work 80+ hour weeks (at least for a short period of time), because it's difficult to convey how awful it is.

A few months.

> What did you mom think?

I had her support.

> Would staying with your other girlfriend have helped?

I think, I wouldn't have collapsed and would not have hit the floor so hard. But it wouldn't have helped me getting priorities right.

> You were bored of it then, and your new slogan "Love it, leave it, or change it" seems to be not new at all, it is exactly what you did before.

I a way, yes. But "leave it" is now my ultima ratio. Before "change it" felt almost always like a waste of time, now I see "change it" more like a passion to work on things rather than just always look for better alternatives.

The CEO of the startup I'd just blown-off a job at (showed up the first week, "worked at home" for another couple of weeks, then stopped showing up entirely) drove over and knocked on my door to find out what was going on. Drunk off my ass, I told him, and that I'd get some help. So I made That Call and got some help. Did about three weeks of inpatient care (Stanford recovery unit, and then a place in the Santa Cruz mountains), then moved into a halfway house and spent a lot of time in AA meetings [AA is controversial, I know]. Never spent another night in that townhouse, wound up selling it. That CEO hired me back as a consultant a few months after I got out of inpatient.

I've got 18 years sober now, much of which I've spent working on software at great companies on products you've almost certainly heard of and probably used. Married, with a teen-age son, and doing better financially than I ever would have imagined. Still going to AA meetings, though nowhere near as often as I probably should.

Last job. Unremarkable but comfortable corporate job in web/backend development. Longest stint I had done in my life, at least going back to elementary school. Been there over 5 years. Got promoted to senior. My boss got bumped up a step and another developer on the team got promoted to his role as my new boss. Long story short, my new boss had it out for me. I started to get reports from fellow team members that my boss was dumping on me to others.

I ignored it until the annual review came up. After years of positive reviews, I got a minimally acceptable review. I challenged it and a couple weeks later I was slapped with a PIP. The allegations in the PIP were complete nonsense. (In one instance, they actually cited a bug I had fixed at the documented request of the project manager on one of our major applications as evidence I had been working on unassigned tasks.) This is when the burnout started.

I talked to a few people whose knowledge and advice I trusted on the subject and they said basically the same thing, "This is a battle you can't win. Get out as soon as you can." I heeded their advice. I put my head down and continued to do my job (more carefully and scrupulously than I ever had) and started looking for a new job. I don't regret this. Actually, I had already been actively looking by this time. But I started broadening my standard. There is one other thing I wish I had done at this point. (Spoiler: this is when I should have talked to a lawyer.)

As I had come to expect being a regular HN reader: finding a new job as a senior developer of a certain age nowadays can be tough. Especially when you're outside a major tech hub and not able to easily relocate. After six month and a couple frustratingly close calls, I still didn't have a new job. Six month review comes around. New PIP. New bogus allegations. I was fuming. This is when my burnout peaked. It was affecting my sleep and I developed a weird hives-like rash on my the back of my legs.

I was ready to quit but a friend recommended talking to an employment lawyer she knew. So I scheduled a consultation. I wanted to know if I could sue for defamation or something like that since the claims management was making about my performance were completely unfounded and I could cite documentation, code, and project management records to demonstrate it. He told me to get real. If I couldn't demonstrate flagrant discriminate on the basis of a protected class (race, sex, or age), I was wasting his time and my money. My company could fire me at will and the only reason they were keeping me around was to "paper my file" so they could quash anything as silly as I what I was dreaming up.

However, he also advised me not to quit my job. That's just what my boss and HR were hoping I would do. He said unless they fired me "with cause", for which poor performance does not qualify, I should stick it out. That way I wouldn't give up my claims for unemployment or COBRA. He said they might even offer my a minimal severance when they let me go. So I resolved to stick around until they fired me. I also started to push back against my manager's harassment. I tried to be polite but firm. But I started openly using the term harassment in talking with him.

Once HR got wind that I had used that term, they were involved. There were meetings with our HR reps and mediated sitdowns with my boss. They even initiated something called a 360-degree review for my boss.

This lasted for another 2 or 3 months. The whole time I knew I was doomed but at least I now had the satisfaction of feeling like I was sticking up for myself and enjoying the chaos that was swirling around the team instead of feeling like I was suffering the brunt of it. Finally, one Friday afternoon, my boss and I got into a voluble debate about some trivial technical matter, some tests I was working on IIRC, that he had called me into his office to needle me about. Monday morning I was called into a conference room, where I found my boss and our HR rep waiting. My boss read a statement notifying me I was terminated immediately. I was walked back to my desk by the HR rep to collect my personal belonging and walked out of the building. I wasn't offered a severance. But I felt liberated. I signed up for Obamacare, kept my dental benefits under COBRA, and HR didn't challenge my unemployment claim. Rash disappeared after a couple months. It took me about 6 months to find a new job. And no joke that 6 months was tough. I had to work much harder at finding my new job than I ever did at my old job.

The one lesson I can offer from this experience, the one thing I wished I had done sooner: as soon as you think your boss is out for you, consult with an employment lawyer. It will be worth the $200-$300 it costs.