Ask HN: What is your failure story?

`Work for people who can put trust in you, and can fight for you. ` a lesson I learn the hard way as well

Burned out six months into my first post college job. Not as dramatic as some of the other failures here. Just stopped showing up, and refused to leave my room for a week. Eventually got up the nerve to call them and explain what happened. They were willing to take me back but I realized it'd likely happen again if I continued.

So I changed fields inside tech, from IT support/sysadmin to web development. On the job hunt right now so still not sure if it was the right choice. I have been enjoying learning it significantly more than the sysadmin stuff.

Failure #1: Joined a mobile app startup as employee #3 for a lot less money than I should have, run by a guy who really didn't know how to run a startup, he had just convinced the parent company to give him some money to make mobile apps. He couldn't raise money, only get handouts from the board. I falsely assumed because those people were rich as hell and the other companies they owned were successful that we'd be okay also. But they didn't want to spend hardly any money, especially on marketing, and when our apps failed to make money, it just convinced the board to pull the plug on us.

Which lead to Failure #2: The startup guy decided to make a couple apps as 'warmups' before his main app idea. When those apps were released and didn't make money, the board became more wary about letting us do the 'main' app. If we had just started with the main app to begin with, they wouldn't have seen those app failures and we could have probably convinced them to keep funding it until release and that app might have actually seen success. Having low-investment but visible failures made the company look like a failure, and insured its death.

But not a failure: I had a lot of autonomy, I had my first experience managing other employees, and the apps we worked on helped me learn a ton in a short amount of time, and I'm still proud of them years later, even if they didn't reach much of an audience. That experience also helped me land my next job.

I could probably do that about every job in my career, honestly. Pretty much every job I've had was a mistake and a valuable learning experience at the same time, at least up to a certain point. Before this job I had joined another startup as employee #3 that failed for different reasons, and after this job I joined a small company that ended up having its worse year ever and lost all of their clients, and then I took a contract job I despised just to keep afloat for awhile where the entire department fell apart when the lead dev left and they terminated my contract, but that gave me the skills that helped me get my current job I've been at for 3 and a half years which started so successful it was bought by a larger company, and has been very slowly eviscerated by that larger company as it has been forcibly integrated into the rest of its corporation (our company, now division, has about 15% of the workforce it had when it was purchased, and it had over 500 employees a the time), and yet I've learned a lot while I've been here and worked on projects for the most highest profile clients in my life (you can't get higher profile than them, really) and for the first time I've actually had to really, really care about optimization since our traffic is massive and constant, although the stress has gotten beyond ridiculous now and I need to leave soon.

Back in uni, I wanted to be a motorcycle designer. I managed to get into Honda Japan's internship program, which was essentially a 3 day long interview process. They give you some design specs on the first day and then lock you in a room with 10 other kids to draw motorcycles non stop for three days. 4 years of effort all came down to these three days, and I couldn't draw anything on the first day. My mind went blank. I stayed up all night to catch up on the drawing. That was my first failure.

The lack of sleep meant I couldn't focus much during the second day. I pushed through and kept drawing. My next failure that night was to again forgo any sleep just to keep pushing out designs. On the third day, I was so exhausted by the lack of sleep, all the stress I piled on myself after all those years of expectations, My mind went numb during the morning's final prep. I was so tired, I didn't even know what the hell I was talking about during the final presentation, I interrupted the judges, I talked back, I argued. Naturally, I failed to progress to the next stage.

That failure was the beginning of a series of failures over the next several years.

I broke up with my fiancee to 'focus on my studies/career'.

I couldn't get a product/industrial design job because I was so focused on motorcycles during my studies that I was fairly terrible at most other products. Desperate for any job, I become a web designer for a company on the other side of the country. The job lasted six months.

I wasted money moving again to another city to search for better opportunities but found little. After another six months, I was out of savings and my family wouldn't lend me anymore money. I gave up, I contemplated suicide for a while, but finally moved back home to work for a relative.

About a year in, I got together with a couple of friends to set up our own design agency. One of them, talked the big talk but spent all his time playing games. Tried to rush work out the day before the deadline. The other worked really hard but wasn't particularly talented and decided to go back to his old job. I went back to work for my relative again.

After several years, found a small dev shop willing to take me in for not very much money. Spent two years there.

I'm in a better place now but those six years were terrible and whenever I look back at it, I've always felt that first failure at Honda just set a lot of things in motion. I was burnt out and depressed but I wouldn't admit it, so it just kept getting worst.

I have much gratitude for that relative who put up with me the whole time and gave me the opportunity, namely time to heal and a place to rest, to turn things around.

Not a complete failure story, but I joined a FANG company as an entry level engineer. In about three and a half years, I’ve gone through two promotions. My most recent team where I got promoted to senior engineer is demoralizing to me and gives me anxiety even thinking about work.

I’m feeling a mixture of burnout and just a general disinterest in my teams domain area. My current team has also grown in ways I didn’t expect when I joined.

My coworkers don’t seem the most motivated. I spend less time coding or building anything and more time sending status reports and pointless meetings. I worked on very impactful things early in my roles at this company. I question the value of things my team is doing now.

My direct manager is very passive. There’s literally no feedback or much engagement from him. His job is to make sure sally doesn’t stab sue kind of thing.

Ironically, the culture is very cut throat. Longer term, I’m realizing I will have to quit and find a job elsewhere. It’s a bit demoralizing after earning two promotions and putting in as much as I have. My husband and I were planning on getting pregnant by next year and purchasing our first home. If I leave my job, we have a sizeable nest egg but both plans will be up in the air. I haven’t said anything to my husband yet.

I still have a job, but I’m questioning what was all this for.