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

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

#61

Post by haute_cuisine »

_override wrote: post #53
Muromec wrote: post #24

>when we have to meet with customers and mention that modernization and system integrations are our top priority according to the management team, yet we can't even ship a few GET endpoints after six months of work... If the company pays to do a project where nothing happens for six months and it keeps paying, they are probably okay with a result, otherwise they would listen to your constructive proposals on how to i…

> Do they say they like what you do there or not? That is the strange part. My boss who is head of product for my organization has given me good feedback so far. It's mainly just me who is beating myself up. But it's mainly because I have a strong feeling I know what is to come. If we can't even ship a few trivial GET endpoints in six months, how the hell are we going to implement more complex API endpoints in any me…

Lookup "moe kapil" series on YT. It might help to re-examine the perspective.

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

#62

Post by orwin »

If you don't want to quit, another way is trying to hire at least a developer who have the same PoV as you do, and is eager to improve. Tbh reading the second paragraph I thought 'thats such an interesting mission, I wish I could help him' (I'm _very_ happy with my current mission though, I'm not asking for a job to be clear). Find someone who thinks the same. Maybe your school alumnis? That's where I would check.

Being alone is what is truly demotivating imho, and even my job where I like the mission, the company culture and I like the juniors at a personal level, I would have quit or at least started to check out and stop caring if not for the other senior in the team.

Also, you can care about the mission w/o caring about the company and the management, and refuse the additional pression (easier to say than to do, It took me half a decade, a nasty manager and a psychologist to learn to say no).

Good luck, take care of yourself, I like the part of your personality that leaks through your writing, you seems like a good person, keep it that way.

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

#63

Post by nhod »

"If you have a problem, that means it can be solved. If it cannot be solved, then it is not a problem. It is a reality to be accepted.” — Gus Fring, Breaking Bad

I don’t mean this callously. People confuse not having a choice with not liking the consequences of their choices.

You always have a choice. At minimum you can always choose to accept your circumstances. If you choose to not accept them, then your options are to choose to change them and accept the consequences of that choice, or to not change them and in the process choose to be a victim of circumstance and live in a state of complaint or dis-ease or anger or whatever other ill you create for yourself.

Those are literally your only options. The circumstances are seemingly not going to change. That means you have to. Whatever choice you are making now is seemingly not serving you, ergo a post on HN. What new choices can you make that will lead to a different result?

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

#64

Post by Muromec »

_override wrote: post #53
Muromec wrote: post #24

>when we have to meet with customers and mention that modernization and system integrations are our top priority according to the management team, yet we can't even ship a few GET endpoints after six months of work... If the company pays to do a project where nothing happens for six months and it keeps paying, they are probably okay with a result, otherwise they would listen to your constructive proposals on how to i…

> Do they say they like what you do there or not? That is the strange part. My boss who is head of product for my organization has given me good feedback so far. It's mainly just me who is beating myself up. But it's mainly because I have a strong feeling I know what is to come. If we can't even ship a few trivial GET endpoints in six months, how the hell are we going to implement more complex API endpoints in any me…

>Is the whole project just going to get scrapped when they finally realize I wasn't exaggerating about how long things will take if a few simple endpoints take this long to ship?

That sounds like Tuesday. If you communicate how slow it goes and why it's so and do reasonable things and your boss doesn't have a problem, maybe the company is fine with this either failing or taking forever and they will learn something from it, but it needs to fail first before the learning happens. Some projects are like that.

If the project is scrapped, do you see yourself blamed for it, fired or get another project to deal with?

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

#65

Post by Tade0 »

_override wrote: post #37
Tade0 wrote: post #28

If the job market is so competitive, then surely there's someone out there with experience building APIs?

There definitely are people out there. A lot of skilled individuals in Sweden are currently unemployed. But whether or not companies have the budget to hire them is a different story.

I assume laying off someone beforehand is not an option?

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

#67

Post by slipwalker »

you should take this job as what every job is: means to a comfortable living. Take the paychecks, if the backlog of weeks take months and the c-levels are used to it, it only means more paychecks for you.... save/invest as much as you can, and spend the rest with whatever gives you pleasure, this alone should prevent your health deteriorating.... maybe even "stop worrying and love the bomb".

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

#69

Post by mrdependable »

If it were me, I would make an exit plan. Run all the numbers, how much you would need to survive a certain length of time, what the numbers would look like depending on how much risk you're willing to take, what you would do if things didn't work out. Plan it meticulously, and work toward it. This will give you something to look forward to and having options would become a reality. Then when the moment is right, pull the trigger if you'd like.

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

#70

Post by Henchman21 »

Listen I am probably not the person to take advice from on this topic but … I have been in nearly this exact spot.

My succinct advice: quit the job. Your health is not something you should sacrifice for work. None of the work matters at all in the face of health issues. Take care of yourself. Walk away.

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