I worked two jobs - one full time during day and part-time during evenings and weekends. Both were dev jobs. I lasted only 10 months. The last months were really ugly - I was abusive, harsh to others, really unpleasant person to be around. I quit both jobs and moved city. It took me 4 months of doing absolutely nothing to recover.
Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#82Random thoughts: It's nice to hear about a situation closer to most startup outcomes. When Matthew notes that someone sent him the acquisition terms and the founders made out well while line level / low level managers basically got nice severances, it's something everyone here should keep in mind. It's great if founders make out well as long as everyone else does too; it's when those outcomes diverge that it rankles.…
These are the kinds of things you would hope would get reported on a site like glassdoor. (I have no affiliation.) I realize they often don't, but if they did, it would generate more pressure to clean up their act.
This really resonated with me. It was almost exactly my experience after 13 years at my last "startup". Everything went to hell there and bad reviews pile up in glass door but they actively push the ratings back up with fake reviews so all reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars (that should be a sign to anyone reading the reviews). Funny how when you are going through it it feels like you are uniquely suffering, then you read someone else write down thoughts that feel pulled from your own mind.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#83I'd be curious to hear from employees who have worked for Elon Musk either at Tesla or SpaceX. I'm currently reading Ashlee Vance's book on Elon and the descriptions of the working conditions for Tesla and SpaceX employees sounds both exhilarating and completely exhausting. Does working on something as truly world-changing as space travel or electric vehicles make up for the 80+ hour work weeks? Is it easier to work…
as truly world-changing as [...] electric vehicles EVs have been around for a long long time, commercially, and conversions. I'm glad tesla is doing what they are, but world-changing seems like a stretch to me. Anecdotally, I've heard from employees that Tesla is having attrition issues, so apparently not. They've recently added a few minor perks to try and keep engineers.
The world changing part might be getting them to the mainstream. Which is a combination or funding infrastructure, lowering prices and spurring competition from the other car makers.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#84What are people's thoughts/experiences with burnout happening without overtime? Over the past few years I've grown more and more bored at work. Even switching jobs from different ends of the spectrum didn't fix this. I can get myself into flow but it seems to take more and more will power as time goes on. Different tech challenges help, but it's nothing like my halcyon days of straight out of college. Of coming into…
Would you describe your problem as a lack of fulfillment ? Personally, I find my day job technically challenging, fun, and often rewarding, but I don't really find it fulfilling in some deep meaningful sense. I feel useful but not meaningful. It took me a while to realize that this was the problem I was having -- and that just switching from software engineering job to software engineering job wasn't going to change…
There are a lot of kind of people in the world. With regard to life fulfillment (in the sense of "doing good things"), I think there are two broad categories: people who require their work to be personally fulfilling or who require life outside of work to be so.
From personal experience, if you're the kind of person who tends to be more invested at work (seeks out challenges, takes pride in your work, feels pleasure at a job well done), I'd hazard you might not be happy doing work you don't find at least somewhat fulfilling.
My thought process being that personal_investment_in_work + fulfillment_only_outside_of_work = eventually resenting time spent at work as unfulfilling.
Everyone can't work on cancer-curing, economy-stabilizing, poverty-eliminating, food-scarcity-solving, gender-equalizing, minority-protecting, free-speech-supporting things.
But we can at least move a little closer to working on something about which we can honestly say "Yeah, that does make the world a slightly better place."
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be depressed. Consider seeing a therapist, even just once or twice?
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." --William Gibson Another thing to consider is that the problem might not be you, it might be that the situation sucks.
SNORT I hadn't heard that quote from him before.
(Edit: Apparently Gibson attributes it to someone else he retweeted, but the internet is unclear on where exactly it came from)
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might be depressed. Consider seeing a therapist, even just once or twice?
"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." --William Gibson Another thing to consider is that the problem might not be you, it might be that the situation sucks.
Any good therapist would probably ask "So, what are you going to do about it?" Changing your situation and changing your self are both acceptable answers, but the therapist should at least point out that changing your situation is possible too.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#87I have never said to myself "I wish I had stuck around that company longer." I have often said "I should have left much sooner." I'm sure there are some examples of someone leaving when lightning was about to strike and make all the insiders rich. Those instances are even more rare than start-up successes making employees rich.
I know a few folks who have left jobs and then said "I wish I had stuck around that company longer". In all cases, it was never financial. Rather, it was "If I'd known what I didn't know, I would've stuck around longer so I could pick 's brain about it."
Even in my own case, where I joined a company thinking I'd leave after a year but stayed 5 years because I was still learning things (and had optimized my career for learning the whole way), there were still some times after I left where I thought, "Man, if only I still had access to ."
I see financial motivations coming up much more often when people say "Man, I'm glad I stayed." Vesting cliffs are really easy to predict, and even IPOs and acquisitions have some hints coming; if you're about to get a major windfall, you'll probably know it.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#88> Be careful with passion and those who would use it against you.
The problem is he let someone else define his passion. Nobody can use your own passion against you. Passion is just a word and anyone can say it. But you alone are the one who decides what you believe in, how much you are willing to work for, etc.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#89Passion causes burnout. Have you ever noticed that the people who just punch a clock and go home never experience burn out? Even if they end up working overtime? It's always the people who identify with their work that get burned.
YES. And to an extent, just punching the clock is a defense mechanism in work environments where low autonomy + high demands are creating an environment for burnout. But I've seen bright-eyed 23-year-old engineers suffer vicious burnout by trying to tackle the low autonomy part ("Hey boss, what if we did X? Hey boss, I put together this slidedeck for this feature that would be so cool! Hey boss, check out this mockup…
I checked out about halfway through my run at my current job. I think after the third time I suggested a tool or process change and the reply from the lead was "we've never done it that way" at a startup it dawned on me that this company will never accomplish anything technically interesting.
Incidentally, there's a bonus coming up for a major milestone and I'm seriously considering handing in my two weeks notice after the direct deposit clears. The CEO tried to sell the whole equity angle, but I honestly don't see any resume improvement potential here and that's all I really care about.
I've worked at companies that gave a shit and I just don't think this is one of them.
Re: Regretting the Golden Handcuffs: Beware the Costs of Burnout
#90> because tech is a small town and I shouldn’t burn any bridges to anyone out there listening - it's not. technology is a huge, huge, huge, huge established industry. think about it - what does "tech" even mean? it's an umbrella term for 4 or 5 classifications that all kind of bleed into each other - including finance. in addition, every non-tech company has a shitload of tech in it. gee whiz. it's almost as if techn…
I'll disagree. I've had people come up to me and mention that they remembered my posts on XYZ mailing list. Said mailing list is a huge, public list and I might have posted on it a dozen times. What you say and how you act can definitely have a positive impact on your career. I haven't looked for a job since college.
I doubt the negatives are as impacting as the positives, but I'm sure they do exist.