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Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

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11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#11

[flagged]

You're advocating for self-medicating with an over the counter drug over doctor-prescribed (and presumably monitored) drugs? I agree with your stance on SSRIs and don't think they should be used to address situational anxiety, but your suggestion is not an improvement.

To the OP: if you're at a point where you're taking medication to cope with your job, maybe you would be better off taking long term sick leave.

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#13

As somebody else said already, you care too much. It's not your fault things are progressing slowly. As the stoic quote says, you have only power over your mind, not outside events, like how qualified the dev team or management is. I guess you could suggest some more training for the team, though the impact of that would mostly depend on their attitude towards learning new things, which again is outside your control.…

I agree that I care too much. I've always had a very challenging time decoupling my life from my job. It works the other way around too though, where when things are going well at work and I enjoy the work I do, I feel excellent even outside of the office. But when it doesn't, I don't feel well at all. I really need to learn how to leave work at the office because to be honest this will probably not be my last job that sucks.

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#15
> My main concern is that this job is slowly making me sick. I have started to have really concerning mental health symptoms, specifically severe anxiety, due to this job. I've also had some really dark thoughts which has scared me a lot.

Leave before burning out. In the meantime, maybe take sick leaves if you can.

Consider many people don't notice they are burning out as well.

Leaving even if you don't yet have another plan could lead to a better outcome even considering that leaving your job creates financial difficulties right now because burnouts can take years to heal, some never manage to fully heal as well.

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#16
This sort of thing is why I'm not in that kind of job at the moment. One can have the best product knowledge and perfect instincts about roadmaps and features, and still struggle massively to be a PM in a large enterprise - because most of the job is actually people-related:

* getting buy-in from stakeholders, developers, and testers

* dealing with low performers

* protecting yourself from backstabbing attempts

* deflecting the barrage of scattered requests coming from the top brass

* appeasing customers angered by actions that someone else took

* reacting to big shifts from other parts of the organization

etc etc.

That sort of thing worn me down so much, I had to move sideways to regain some self-respect. Even though I was eventually vindicated by most of the calls I made (which someone else shipped and got credit for, another frustration of the job), I just accepted I am currently not in the right headspace to be a PM/PO in a big company.

So my only suggestion is to keep looking for another job, or even better create your own: with AI getting incredibly good, there has never been a better time for PMs to build their own prototypes, which can then be used to hunt for the job you really want. Otherwise, take the Serenity Prayer to heart and find more meaning away from the job.

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#17
Take a sabbatical without going into details, if at all possible. It's unfair to expect someone to perform at a high level while suffering. When not depressed, work becomes a whole lot easier and many things aren't as seemingly insurmountable.

It can also take steadfastly trying dozens+ of antidepressants to find one that works best with least side-effects. Don't have anything important to do when changing medications because some side-effects are difficult. It can take around days to a week to stabilize to titrate on and about the same off, depending on the medication.

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#19

After I read the first paragraph, I could guess the rest. It is typical for the legacy enterprise system space. My diagnosis is that you care too much . The enterprise IT space is kabuki theatre. So what if it takes 6 months to accomplish what should take 2 weeks? Explain to the customers that their needs are so special and particular that it takes your highly trained and experienced staff 8 months to accomplish the…

> My diagnosis is that you care too much. The enterprise IT space is kabuki theatre.

This was my first reaction as well. But it's relatable. I've held myself to similar expectations and caused a lot of stress in the past.

You think the customer is thinking you'll be done in six months? Only if they've never bought enterprise software before. Their expectations are dramatically lower than what you might be holding yourself to. In fact, the expectations may even be lower than what is in the contract.

Even if you moved heaven and earth and shipped an API tomorrow, they likely aren't going to be able to start integrating it right away. That requires work on their end that needs to be planned into a quarter etc...

Re: Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

#20
post #16

This sort of thing is why I'm not in that kind of job at the moment. One can have the best product knowledge and perfect instincts about roadmaps and features, and still struggle massively to be a PM in a large enterprise - because most of the job is actually people-related: * getting buy-in from stakeholders, developers, and testers * dealing with low performers * protecting yourself from backstabbing attempts * def…

And when growing from the bottom, compensation never seems to scale in line with responsibility. We need to be asking for way more.
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