Ask HN: 30, burnt out, with 6-10 months of runway. What would you do?

Consider what you may have neglected in your personal life. Otherwise sleep and clean, grab a new skill, feel out positions that stretch you a little and then leave room to get pulled from something steadier into something inspired.

Move away for a while, do nothing, actively. Consider a week of dwelling in front of the TV as success. Break your pattern. It might doesn't get better, but you might learn to live with it.

Source: been there at 25. Still am there 11 years later, but life is good now.

> I chose this career mostly due to monetary reasons

I saw similar cases during the dot com boom and then bust. My opinion is that people that don't have an intrinsic interest in their work won't last a career length in it. Do you think some of the burnout is that you aren't really pulled into the work by interest and its just a slog/grind?

> I dread just getting the next job and continuing the corporate grind

Find something that interests you. I don't mean find your "passion" because if your passion is watching snails climb on logs its probably not going to pay well. Given what you read online about the job market, if you start looking now you might find something in 6 months so if you wait 6 months then expect to be out of work for a year.

I think the advice here is the reverse of someone trying to break into tech: find an industry that interests you, get a tech/software job there and then learn that industry and break out of the tech role into more industry specific roles at that place.

First: breathe. Give yourself permission to serve yourself. That's hard.

Then repeat. Day 2.

Longer term: Focus on sleep and personal life for 3 months! Enterprise is soul-draining. Pursue your curiosity.

Get lot of sleep first, exercise regularly, eat healthy. it helps balancing with your internal hormones so you have a clear mind to think what’s next.

Then 1. Find a mentor 2. Talk to other fellow engineers hear their opinion

make a plan;

1. maybe Grind into big tech 2. maybe move to u.s. to be around with many like minded people 3. More

But first thing have clear calm mind to make decision