[HN Gopher] Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad somethi...
___________________________________________________________________
Tell HN: Sometimes you don't realise how bad something is until you
leave
I was in two minds about writing this but in the end the thought of
preventing someone going through what I went through is enough to
tip the scales. As per title, sometimes in life you don't realise
how toxic something can be until you leave it behind, no matter
that be a bad habit, a relationship or even work. Sometimes it can
be so toxic that you'd consider ending it all (as i did) because
there is no visible way out and keeping the money flowing in at the
same time when people depend on you. I am here to say thats not the
case. Good stuff can happen. Under another name on here I wrote
about my previous job and I felt stuck because if I left I walked
away on a large chunk of stock options. That and my age made me
feel really depressed and unwanted. I was driven to actively
contemplate suicide due to my boss and his shitty attitudes and
issues but no one actually seemed to care. Even then I convinced
myself with "aww, it's not so bad" when in reality it was
absolutely horrific. Getting out of bed became a real battle.
People bitch about people being too lazy to get out of bed but some
of those people will not be able to get out of bed because they are
so depressed they see no point in it because "it's still gonna
suck". I was so sidelined that I could literally disappear for an
entire day/days and no-one would notice. I had a "top 10 dick of
the year" award boss who didn't like me at all and proactively
sidelined me so much it left me nothing to do on a daily basis.
That said, in a large company you can cruise for years and that's
what I did. The previous boss was a good guy but he left to pursue
better options. Things where quite good back then actually. Just
doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap. Imagine having
to sit at a workstation for months and years, having to be
"present" with nothing to actually do but make some some BS stuff
to appear busy. Even doing training courses and such becomes boring
after a while. It was a kind of mental prison and my boss truly
didn't give a flying you-know-what. Imagine having nothing in your
week to justify the normal desire to do something useful. I even
wrote scripts to make life better but my boss wouldn't consider
them because I wrote them. Anyhow, it all came to a head and I
ended up moving on... (cant go into that too much) and my new job
pays much better money and is 500% more interesting and I get to
play with cool new technologies. It makes you realise what crap you
will really put up with and how from an impartial viewpoint you
should have just "nope'd" out of it years ago but the status-quo is
just easier to maintain. Looking back at it I knew my time was up
a long time ago but I didn't have the courage to jump. It caused me
so much misery and anguish. Looking back on the experience, I
wasted several years of my life working for someone who didn't
nurture or appreciate talent with his sociopathic tendencies. It's
only after all these things have happened that you realise the
effects it had. As an example, my faith in myself is utterly
crushed. My new boss has recognised a lot of the mental snot has
been virtually beat out of me and is understanding and I am
grateful for that and is very helpful. Recovery will take time but
at least I know I wont get verbally berated every time something
isn't perfect. For those that this resonates with, I am not saying
jump out right now but plan to just get out, even if a new job pays
less or means going into a less demanding job. You can always make
more money later but you can't get your time back. I suspect it
will take years to get my confidence back but I am so glad to be
out of a terrible situation. It's only when you leave you realise
how truly terrible it was. I am however still resentful over the
lost years.
Author : Goleniewski
Score : 636 points
Date : 2023-01-20 16:54 UTC (6 hours ago)
| gaoshan wrote:
| I get what OP is saying with something like "... having to be
| "present" with nothing to actually do but make some some BS stuff
| to appear busy." and once was in a similar situation for a brief
| period. What I ended up doing was completely focusing on my own
| development. Using my time to explore technologies, tools and
| ideas that I was interested in. It really boosted my skillset and
| I was able to leverage that to improve my career. Once I was in
| the correct mindset it was liberating... I was being reasonably
| well paid to explore and teach myself whatever I liked.
| aspergsadd wrote:
| [dead]
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| Recently I've been experiencing the flip side of this. You don't
| know how bad someone was until you get rid of them.
|
| There are people who I feel are annoying and toxic, but I don't
| get rid of them because I am afraid of the reactions of those who
| are left. They are talking shit about the company to others and
| spreading discontent and it's easy to feel like firing the person
| will somehow prove them right to everyone else.
|
| Then after actually getting rid of them, suddenly a bunch of
| people come out the woodwork and talk to me about how the person
| has been terrible for years and the how they are so relived that
| they are gone. I get told so many stories which make me
| understand that things were much worse than I even realised.
|
| Why was nobody saying anything before! That would have given me
| so much confidence to get rid of them sooner!
|
| In reality, I do understand why. Talking shit about others is
| exactly the behaviour that the toxic people who need to be
| removed are doing. Well adjusted people don't want to do it.
|
| But still, it proves the point. Trust your gut. Don't let a bad
| situation persist based on what others will think.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > There are people who I feel are annoying and toxic, but I
| don't get rid of them because I am afraid of the reactions of
| those who are left. They are talking shit about the company to
| others and spreading discontent and it's easy to feel like
| firing the person will somehow prove them right to everyone
| else.
|
| Is this a manager issue? Non-believers have never interfered
| with my work, and are much preferred to the more common species
| "the manipulator", also known as social climbers. Interfering
| is their MO, and toxic positivity their hallmark.
| Dr_ReD wrote:
| I discovered that, in real life, it doesn't pay to be too
| agreeable. Sometimes enough is enough and dwelling too much on it
| will just hurt you. So you're right: though you admittedly ended
| up in a good place, you've lost opportunities by biding too long.
|
| Congrats for the new career. Enjoy, and the take hard the lesson
| with you. :) You paid for it, after all.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> That and my age made me feel really depressed and unwanted._
|
| In my case, my age was _the_ "elephant in the room," at my
| interviews.
|
| I feel as if the original in-house recruiters (different beast
| from the "outhouse" recruiters, though), and even a couple of
| managers, had no issue with my age. As soon as even one tech
| person became involved, however, the temperature dropped twenty
| degrees. They were usually quite brusque, and I knew that I was
| screwed. After that, the company usually "ghosted" me. I stopped
| following up, because even the enthusiastic and supportive
| recruiters and managers wouldn't talk to me.
|
| It was _very_ depressing. It was not my imagination. They really
| didn 't want me, and they didn't care whether or not I knew it.
| No blowing sunshine up my butt, or stringing me along. They
| wanted me gone, ASAP.
|
| The few companies that seemed interested, did so, on a pretty
| nasty footing. They made it clear that they would be doing me a
| _huge_ favor, by offering me a job, and that I 'd be treated like
| garbage, if I took it.
|
| That was why I threw in the towel, and just decided to retire. I
| was more than willing to do a pretty awesome job, and take
| chances with risky companies, for a fairly low wage, but this did
| not seem to matter (indeed, it seldom even got to that point).
|
| But it's all actually been for the best. Nowadays, I can't even
| _imagine_ going back to the rat race (I liked that "Happiness"
| cartoon, that a previous post linked[0]).
|
| It was _very_ sick, and I never want to go back to that, ever
| again.
|
| I want to work, and I do -harder than I ever have in my life, but
| I _will not_ be treated like garbage, anymore. I know that it 's
| a rare luxury, to have the means to quit, and I'm grateful.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9dZQelULDk
| tfrutuoso wrote:
| I'm there now. The endless cycle of staring at the bedroom
| ceiling trying to muster the will to get out of bed, the anger at
| the existencial inertia, the tiny voice inside my head that says
| "jump" while staring at the abyss. Glad to see you made it out,
| guess there's still hope out there.
| didip wrote:
| Why not move on? I know that right now the economy is not
| exactly in a good shape, but what you are going through right
| now is worse.
| wnolens wrote:
| Obviously overcoming the inertia to leetcode a while and go
| through the interview ringer on top of everything else that's
| going on in their life is WAY harder than just.. rolling out
| of bed whenever and logging on until the end of the day.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Time to see a therapist, bud.
| wnolens wrote:
| If it were only so simple
| bovermyer wrote:
| This comment comes off a little flippant, but it's also
| correct.
|
| A therapist can really help get you to a place where you feel
| more in control of your destiny. From there, you can take
| real action to get out of a bad situation.
|
| Source: personal experience.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Time to stop shitposting, bud.
| cpsns wrote:
| .
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Dawg,
|
| Your brain is in a way like any other organ in your body.
| When the other organs don't work you go see a doctor.
|
| We need to normalize talking about mental health. Instead
| of making it a big deal and stigmatizing it.
|
| We should be able to casually say "I went to the therapist
| yesterday and it was great, and then I got some eggs from
| the supermarket and then I made myself a sandwich".
|
| We spend too much time worrying about what other people
| think.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Everyone knows therapists exist, but there can be serious
| hurdles to "getting help"
|
| True.
|
| But also consider there are a class of people who suffer
| through things thinking "This is not that bad, right? Is
| this a normal experience"?. And especially an issue if
| they're isolated (which commonly causes depression), they
| lack normalcy around them reinforcing "Yes its that bad!
| That is not normal and you need help!"
| hparadiz wrote:
| This entire thread is a cry for help and yet the thing that
| would probably actually treat the problem is being
| dismissed. Just say you don't wanna do the work and stop
| making excuses. It's like complaining that going running
| could cause you to sprain your ankle when a doctor tells
| you to run for the health of your heart. Until you try it
| you have no idea what's gonna happen. Instead you do
| nothing paralyzed by inaction making excuses. Sounds like
| my hoarder father.
| cpsns wrote:
| .
| hparadiz wrote:
| I just went through a a devastating break up and the pain
| was so intense I finally had the motivation to find a
| therapist and actually show up to an appointment. I've
| never done therapy before. No one's gonna help you until
| you help yourself. If you desperately want help you'd
| actually find some. Otherwise all I'm seeing is excuses.
| cpsns wrote:
| .
| hparadiz wrote:
| Honestly based on this comment you clearly need therapy.
| You're making a toooon of assumptions about me without
| knowing anything about me. Literally talking like my
| actually mentally ill ex. Dismissing my trauma while
| playing up your own. You're probably not even self aware
| of your own issues.
| [deleted]
| VLM wrote:
| Treat the symptom, technically.
|
| The problem is a toxic working environment.
|
| The meta problem is handwaving away too many toxic
| working environments with "the root cause of the problem
| is solved because the victims can get therapy"
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If something in your house is unsafe (root problem) and
| caused you an injury, you still have to treat the injury.
| hparadiz wrote:
| The actual root of the problem is the employee's own
| thinking. They don't have the self respect to exit a bad
| situation. They are paralyzed by low self esteem, fear of
| the unknown, and seem to be content being in a bad
| situation. The reasons are readily unclear to the person
| experiencing this and so they continue to go through
| this. A therapist will simply ask pointed questions like
| "how do you feel about [topic]?" And "why do you think
| think you deserve [topic]?" The point is to get you to
| take action by making you gain perspective and depth of
| self emotional understanding. Sometimes firing someone is
| the best thing you can do for someone. Op is so used to
| authority that the prospect of quiting paralyzes them
| with fear. Meanwhile the person that job hopped for the
| past 10 years shrugs and moves on with life. I've quit
| toxic jobs with nothing new lined up and my ability to do
| so was entirely from my own self respect and confidence.
| Without that you may never even find your potential.
| Imagine the work experience this person never attained
| because they are stuck in a toxic environment. There are
| life time friends I never would have met if I stuck
| around that shitty job all those years ago.
|
| It's no different than staying with an abuser.
| mansoon wrote:
| I would just like to die now.
|
| I wish I'd left.
|
| It can get bad if you stay. Take everything.
| gallerdude wrote:
| I hate that this became an insult. Therapy can be a really
| useful thing for a lot of people. I don't know why some
| people need to punch down at people who are already hurt.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Can't the inverse be said (probably just as often): you don't
| know how good you have it until you lose it?
|
| I remember a job I thought was bad/toxic as you described.
| Months/years later, it turns out I was wrong.
| kdmccormick wrote:
| It can be said, but does it happen as often?
|
| This sounda pretty easy to be empircal about. What % of people
| who quit jobs regret it vs. regret not leaving sooner vs. have
| no regrets? Is it higher/lower in tech?
| mansoon wrote:
| Went through something similar. Just want to die most of the time
| now.
| TheAtomic wrote:
| You deserve better.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Thank you for sharing.
|
| I can relate. This is my first "real" full time job, and I've now
| been there 10 years with little to show for it, and not for lack
| of trying.
|
| Software engineer for a small company, report directly to the
| owners.
|
| Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I
| believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for
| superficial reasons.
|
| I'll do small things and get overly patronizing praise, and then
| when I try to initiate or lead something bigger, they crush it
| with passive aggressive, belittling remarks. They mostly just
| want me doing grunt work, despite my desire to do larger, "force
| multiplier" type work. Work that my coworkers and customers are
| asking for.
|
| My self esteem is terrible and I haven't left for fear that I
| won't be able to "make it" anywhere else, paralyzed by the fear
| of ending up unemployed.
|
| I'm angry that I have a 10 year career full of ambition that went
| absolutely nowhere, I want to leave, but it's scary.
|
| Your story gave me a great boost of encouragement to start
| seriously planning my exit.
| d4mi3n wrote:
| Thank you for sharing, I've gone through similar and can
| absolutely relate.
|
| I'm curious--do these business owners you work for have any
| software or management experience in tech? I've sometimes seen
| managers do this when they don't know what to do with an
| employee or don't know what career progression for an employee
| looks like.
|
| This doesn't at all justify shitty behavior, but I've found it
| useful to identify motivations behind bad interactions as a way
| to avoid things that could lead to them in the future.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| The owners are both engineers, primarily back end, while I do
| both front and back end.
|
| I suspect they are partially motivated (as other commenters
| suggested) by not changing too much of what they themselves
| built personally.
|
| Partially out of a fear of change, but also partially out of
| a "if we find ourselves without employees and need to run the
| whole show on our own again, we can't have a bunch of code we
| don't understand" fear.
|
| Which I understand. But fact is, we have customers and
| internal users who are overworked and have needs. Needs that
| we aren't meeting because we never deliver the "right"
| solution in full, in part because so many parts of the system
| just seem unofficially "off limits".
|
| I've offered many times to start a regular engineering
| training and sharing session where I can help make others
| aware of how I've been building things and how they can help
| maintain them, to try to make everyone more comfortable with
| the front end, but that also has met the same friction as my
| projects.
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > My self esteem is terrible and I haven't left for fear that I
| won't be able to "make it" anywhere else, paralyzed by the fear
| of ending up unemployed.
|
| > I'm angry that I have a 10 year career full of ambition that
| went absolutely nowhere, I want to leave, but it's scary.
|
| > Your story gave me a great boost of encouragement to start
| seriously planning my exit.
|
| I worked for a shit software company in the midwest for a few
| years after graduating. I also felt scared I wouldn't be able
| to make it. I eventually landed a job in SF and learned my
| value as an engineer.
|
| But I suspect a lot of people have similar stories to this.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Very encouraging to hear!
| jeppine wrote:
| Unfortunately, I feel that this is quite common in small
| businesses. I put in the same 10 years that you did, and would
| constantly propose large improvements to the owners. They were
| almost always shot down, and just result in me having to deal
| with the same problems.
|
| Most of the time, I feel that it is just the owner's fear of
| losing control of some part of their business. Sometimes it's
| just fear of change.
|
| I decided to go into a different career path entirely and am
| working for myself now. It has helped my mental state
| incredibly.
|
| I know it is scary, but sometimes you just have to take the
| leap.
|
| Best of luck with your plans.
| adra wrote:
| I mean, I don't blame the owner entirely. Maybe they're
| perfectly happy with what they have. If someone really knows
| their business well, maybe it isn't worth putting effort
| behind a brand new thing that customers couldn't give two
| flips for. If you aren't seeking new customers, there isn't a
| strong business appetite to innovate unless customers are
| complaining. If you're too eager for customers, you're
| probably putting too much emphasis on thin product feature
| checklists to sell sell sell! Somewhere in the middle is
| where I think the sweet spot is, and org that isn't
| comfortable with its market share but unwilling to throw
| caution to the wind in order to make every sale. That isn't
| exciting? Great, then find a company that better fits what
| you want in your career. Job/employment isn't always a good
| fit for what you're looking to fulfill in your career, and
| those are perfect opportunities to leave.
| programmarchy wrote:
| > when I try to initiate or lead something bigger, they crush
| it with passive aggressive, belittling remarks
|
| If you don't mind me asking, how do you typically respond to
| those remarks?
|
| Not trying to excuse their rude behavior or saying you
| shouldn't move on to greener pastures, but if you let people
| "get away with" passive aggressive behavior, then it's bound to
| happen again elsewhere. Leadership is always tested in ways
| like this and it'd be wise to learn how to respond in a
| constructive way, rather than letting it crush you.
|
| To play devil's advocate, if you can't handle some glancing
| criticism, how can people trust you to carry a large initiative
| to fruition?
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| That's a fair question. I honestly haven't "fought" for my
| projects probably as much as I should.
|
| Some of this is a result to how their criticisms are shared.
| Often, they will initially softly praise my efforts ("that's
| a good idea, but we need to discuss it more before going live
| with it").
|
| Then, time passes, we put out other fires, other ideas for
| unrelated projects get discussed.
|
| Often throughout, the problem that my (now on hold) project
| attempts to solve will come up multiple times. At some point,
| I remind them that I have a potential solution ready to go,
| but we still need to discuss it before going live, as they
| requested.
|
| I get a "yes we will, soon" response once or twice, until
| finally they mention something superficially wrong and easily
| fixed about it ("the order of the form items need to be
| switched around" or "we should add a summary screen" type
| trivialities) and is then used as a reason why, instead of
| spending a day finishing the project up, we should instead
| focus our time on x, y, or z (none of which are even
| actionable projects yet).
|
| At which point I cave. Every once in a while I get irritated
| to the point of blurting out something snarky when the
| problem presents itself ("you know, we could be done with
| problems like these if we had implemented my idea") only for
| me to follow it up with some joke to smooth it over and not
| sound so bitter.
|
| I'm sure there's a better way for me to fight for these
| projects, and I hope as I become more inclined to leave, I'll
| have more backbone to try them out and commit to it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I
| believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for
| superficial reasons.
|
| This has happened to me over and over and I've seen it happen
| to others. It's not always obvious but sometimes business
| changes. Markets change, customer demands change, regulations
| change, competitors change. Strategies that made sense suddenly
| don't anymore. All the work that has been done is a sunk cost.
| You can't get it back, and if nobody wants the product anymore
| or it's not going to provide value, you just cut it off.
|
| It sucks, but think about it, if you've been with the company
| 10 years and presumably they have been in business longer than
| that, they can't be complete idiots. Most small tech companies
| don't make it 10 years, or even close. Maybe the owners are
| assholes, but they are doing something right.
|
| One thing that has helped is that I don't put my "heart and
| soul" into work projects anymore. I come in, work on the
| project in a professional, high-quality fashion, and go home at
| the end of the day. I get paid, and we're even. I've tried to
| make my relationship with work emotionless. It's a job. If you
| treat it like something deeply personal it's much more likely
| that you're going to end up angry or offended or taking
| business decisions by the owners as personal attacks.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Before you exit, have you actually told your bosses in no
| uncertain words what the hell is going on? It sounds like this
| is a breakdown of effective communication and assumptions about
| what people want in their career and what they need. If you
| haven't explicitly aired these specific complaints I think you
| should at least give them a chance, which for you, could also
| give yourself the fastest path to build something you could
| show off, instead of having to start over at a new company
| where there will be a lot of unknowns. If you have already done
| that, I'll show myself out.
| switchbak wrote:
| I was in a similar position once. I was working at a green
| tech startup, took about a 5x pay cut to work there, but it
| was something I was passionate about.
|
| They had me working on low value BS, internationalization of
| an old product, etc. Just wasting my time. I don't think they
| had any idea of my capabilities (despite lots of proof of
| that).
|
| When I finally said "I really want to be challenged here, I'm
| super capable, and I want to drive forward on meaningful
| work", I got no response, and shortly thereafter was laid
| off. Funny place. I then took another high paying job that
| assumed I was capable and pushed me hard - much better!
|
| Sometimes you're just wading into interpersonal dynamics and
| low trust environments. If it's consistently weird, there
| really is just one choice: find a place that's doing hard
| work and will value your contributions. Life is too short to
| waste it with contributions to those who don't value them.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| Yeah (in the US, depending on state) plus when you get paid
| off you get severance, maybe even unemployment. At least
| you know where you stand. If the bosses are truly assholes,
| you know where they are. I think it's entirely possible in
| many cases they just don't realize what they are doing. In
| another situation they might be truly wanting
| interchangeable low value programmer, so tell them it's not
| a good fit anymore, I'll help you hire my replacement,
| please leave me a good letter of recommendation on the way
| out, and you get that.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > They mostly just want me doing grunt work, despite my desire
| to do larger, "force multiplier" type work. Work that my
| coworkers and customers are asking for.
|
| Is it possible for you to only share "grunt" work with owners
| and talk about "force multiplier" only with who "gets it" ?
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| The act of planning will make you feel better. Once you start
| believing that you have options, the stress reduces
| tremendously.
|
| There's a site called interviewing.io or something like that (I
| have no articulation, I stumbled on it a couple weeks ago), and
| you can pay $100 or something to have an hour and a half
| interview with some FAANG engineer on whatever topics you want.
|
| The point is that there are resources all over the place to
| help get you out of your rut, even if you don't have a good
| support system. And if a site like interviewing exists, there
| have got to be other resources that help with your specific
| issues. But at some point, you must take action.
|
| It's hard as hell, I know. I've tried to kill myself five times
| (turns out I'm horrible at suicide!), and a lot of my issues
| stemmed from a fucked up relationship with work and money, and
| that had a massive impact on my view of self. I grew up in a
| household where I felt I had to perform exceptionally well to
| be lovable (I was worthless beyond my output; if this resonates
| with anyone, look into "performance based love"), and I took
| that into work with me, and tech is awfully hard to be perfect
| in, and it's impossible to be the "best" at it, so now I'm
| never good enough.
|
| Eventually the walls start closing in on me, and I feel like I
| need to escape, but I'm terrible, so there's no way out. I have
| to live in this confined and uncomfortable space because that's
| what worthless people like me do. Every time I get to this
| point, I find the same solution: look for doors instead of
| focusing on the walls. Very hard to do, and even harder to keep
| on doing when you've been rejected a dozen times, but
| eventually a door will open, and you'll be better off.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| Thanks for the advice! I looked it up, and
| https://interviewing.io/ is indeed the place.
|
| That sounds like exactly the kind of thing I need to gain
| some confidence.
|
| I'm sorry for what you've been through as well. I can relate
| to much of it. The feelings of being trapped are a real
| thing.
|
| I really appreciate the advice, hopefully you're doing
| better. FWIW, what you've shared has already been a big help
| in my attitude.
| phkahler wrote:
| >?> The act of planning will make you feel better.
|
| Just keep in mind that once you start planning you may be
| tempted to start burning the bridge before you actually get
| out. Resist that. Plan A is still your paycheck until you
| _actually_ secure plan B.
| lukan wrote:
| "turns out I'm horrible at suicide!"
|
| Ouch, I am not sure if you meant it like this, but please
| don't take it as more proof of how you failed.
|
| You did not. Your remaining desire to live was just stronger,
| otherwise you surely would be dead. So please live this life,
| because you want to, not because you have to. All the best!
|
| Edit: And screw those performance based love idiots, they
| didn't know better and you had no alternative, but now you
| can find people who know better.
| bityard wrote:
| I do believe it was meant to be taken as a joke.
| whstl wrote:
| Wow. I can sympathize, as I had the exact same thing happen
| with me. From _"doing grunt work"_ down to having them _"crush
| it with passive aggressive, belittling remarks"_
|
| I actually laid out a plan to fix the automatic builds that
| were broken for months (and I had to them all manually), and
| the company owner completely rejected it and laughed me out of
| the room, only for me to turn around and have him do it
| himself. Virtually every great idea anyone had was co-opted by
| him, including another guy before my time who wrote us a
| complete iOS app in his free time, only to have the code
| completely scrapped and rewritten from scratch, again by the
| business owner.
|
| About your 10 years experience: it is still 10 years
| experience. Go and get another job. Go interview. It sucks and
| it's tiring but there's no risk involved if you keep your
| current job. With 10 years of experience I'm sure you'll get
| something better.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| Ten years? If you can stick it out in that environment for that
| long then you have the backbone to handle all sorts of things -
| move on! When I'm in a horrid environment I dig deep to last
| just two years. I ran from my last place after one year, and
| lasting that long took some serious effort.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yeah I mean, my longest & average tenures are in the 4-5
| years range. All of those were at least pretty good jobs the
| first 2 years. I can't imagine staying on somewhere I dislike
| so much for 3, 5.. 10 years.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm sorry you feel this way and I hope things get better for
| you.
|
| You didn't ask for advice, but I'd like to offer some. I
| recommend, at least once per year, putting your resume out on
| the market and trying to get at least one interview. Don't
| consider it as part of a plan to leave your current job,
| consider it practicing the skill of job seeking.
|
| You will get tons of useful knowledge performing this task.
| First, you don't feel need/urgency, because you're not planning
| to leave your current job, so significantly reduced interview
| anxiety. Second, you get better at the skill of interviewing.
| Third, you get a better picture of what the potential employers
| in your area are hiring for (skills, etc.). And last but not
| least, you really find out what the market is offering to
| determine if you're being compensated fairly.
|
| What's the worst that could happen? Someone convinces you to
| take a better job for more money?
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I compare finding a new job with dating. It is scary to do the
| first view interviews/dates but each one gets easier. Do one
| every week or 2 weeks and in a few months you are a pro. Don't
| care about anybody noticing that you are very busy / up to
| something. The current employer doesn't care for you anyway.
| The act of searching/taking your faith in your own hands will
| feel liberating, I promise. Jobs are different, even when they
| have a similar description. Who you work for and the company
| culture makes all the difference. If you end up in a wrong
| place, don't worry and switch again, that time with some
| interviewing mileage under the belt.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| You can find something better. 100%
| jwmoz wrote:
| Over 10 years how much have your wages increased?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Repeatedly, I pour my heart and soul into a project that I
| believe in, only for ownership to trash the project for
| superficial reasons.
|
| You deserve better!
|
| Don't let your passion for a project blind you to the fact that
| you have better options, to make better money, have better
| opportunity... and - by far - most importantly, to get treated
| the way you deserve!
| purpleblue wrote:
| This is called "learned helplessness." I read an article on this
| where a dog would encounter electric shocks and it got to the
| point where the dog wouldn't even try to jump or leave the area
| with the electric shocks because it just assumed that the
| electric shocks were going to keep happening.
|
| Whenever you think to yourself "why bother changing, it's just
| going to be as bad as it is here" that is learned helplessness,
| and you correct that the way you did, by leaving the situation.
| It's a coping mechanism for people that doesn't have the
| physical, mental or emotional energy to endure a change to get
| themselves out of a bad situation and it's a trap.
|
| Congrats on working your way out of the bad situation and
| hopefully this empowerment continues with your for the rest of
| your life!
| jgalentine007 wrote:
| Tony Robbins talks a lot about this. I'm not one for self help
| books but it really does affect your ability to affect change.
| Oddskar wrote:
| I regret many things in my life.
|
| But quitting multiple times from jobs that I did not enjoy is not
| one of them. Even though some of the times I didn't have
| something lined up immediately. The only regret is not leaving
| sooner.
| cududa wrote:
| I feel that. I had one job for years. CEO threatened to disparage
| me if I quit, and they were very well connected. I was pretty
| miserable and do not even realize how miserable I was. I figured
| I had just started losing my hair at a young age.
|
| I had a pretty large incident that lead to a broken knee, ribs,
| and hand. The team was mostly distributed and the C-suite was all
| in town. CEO insisted on holding a meeting at my house because
| everyone was in town. I remember none of it, I was catatonic in
| bed. I'm told everyone found the scenario one of the most
| uncomfortable professional experiences ever.
|
| About a year after leaving I went from 6 hours of sleep to 8-9.
| My hair regrew. Took a couple years more to get over the anxiety
| that came with NOT working on holidays.
|
| It's wild how miserable I was and bore through it. It makes me
| enormously grateful to be working at a great company that
| actually disabled your GitHub if you're working too much.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I'm sorry for your situation - but I also feel obliged to say
| that the opposite is true.
|
| The famous song/saying - "Don't know what you got 'til it's
| gone."
|
| It's important to take inventory on your life and your feelings
| regularly - so you don't end up in a situation you shouldn't have
| been in for a long time, and also so you don't leave or end
| something that's really good.
| [deleted]
| smokey_the_bear wrote:
| My son had a cartoonishly mean 4th grade teacher this year.
| Saccharine sweet to the parents, but berated my son daily. We
| pulled him out of the school over winter break, and he is so much
| happier already. He wakes up with a smile on his face again.
| TheAtomic wrote:
| Tell the principal, it might correalate with others and get the
| toxic f'r out before he really screws some kids up.
| smokey_the_bear wrote:
| We did. It's a private school and they sweep everything under
| the rug. The other parents know she's not a great teacher,
| but she was making an example of my kid in particular.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Having nothing to do at work is its own form of torture. If you
| have to be available and connected, or much worse - physically in
| the office, for the full normal work day, it is torture. Once
| you've gone through the ceremony of getting ready for work,
| commuting, and being the building.. you might as well have
| something to do.
|
| Another a second form of torture in this category is being
| treated like your app/role is being dead-ended, but also
| everything you are working on is super urgent permanent fire
| drill mode. Usually this is some flavor of an app being deemed
| "legacy" and most of the staff being moved to "the new thing"
| which is perpetually 5 years behind schedule. Someone once
| remarked that "legacy" is often better known as "production". So
| while you are told all about how your team/app is going away,
| there's nowhere for the users to go, so you are fielding the
| brunt of overnight pages, mid-day fire drills, etc.
|
| Lastly, I can relate to "Recovery will take time but at least I
| know I wont get verbally berated every time something isn't
| perfect." I had two bosses like this in my career, and the
| behavior it encourages is for everyone to keep their head down
| and have sloppy shoulders. Don't be proactive, only do the
| immediate task requested of you because it minimizes the amount
| of things that could get you screamed at.
|
| These guys are harder to screen for than you'd imagine, as both
| of them could turn it on & off, and appear as the nicest guys in
| the room, especially at the pub.
|
| For me, all three are a form of feeling helpless and having lost
| agency.. which is what drives the most anxiety for me. Changing
| jobs every 4-5 years allows one to minimize their time in these
| situations as they occur.
| CM30 wrote:
| > Having nothing to do at work is its own form of torture. If
| you have to be available and connected, or much worse -
| physically in the office, for the full normal work day, it is
| torture. Once you've gone through the ceremony of getting ready
| for work, commuting, and being the building.. you might as well
| have something to do.
|
| This is 100% true. And the main reason is probably the fact you
| can never really focus on anything here.
|
| You've got no 'official' work, so that can't use up your time.
| But you also can't go off and do something you'd want to do
| either, since there's always the nagging feeling of "what if
| something actually does come through, and I've got to be ready
| to handle it?"
|
| So you just sit there wondering what to do, and probably end up
| either pointlessly scrolling through social media, or getting
| into whatever random unhealthy habit you're otherwise prone to
| (drink, drugs, too many snacks, etc).
|
| It also likely does a lot of damage to your ability to focus on
| difficult tasks for a long period of time afterwards, since
| you're not entirely used to be able to spend hours on a single
| thing.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think its more than a nagging feeling of "what if something
| comes through". Realistically, work output in our field is
| notoriously hard to measure. Having an unproductive year or
| two or five is not really grounds for dismissal, generally.
|
| However, no-showing, visibly walking in hours late or leaving
| hours early, being unresponsive on slack/email are easily
| observed and the type of things that stick out to accelerate
| your being fired.
| throwaway7787 wrote:
| Does it happen in the industry that when a manager doesn't like
| you they prevent you from working on stuff and then proceed to
| complain that you're not performing which eventually leads you to
| a pip?
| cleandreams wrote:
| I had a horrible manager once. He actively sabotaged me. I won't
| go into details. I knew about him -- 3 people left because of him
| and they all confided in me!! But I somehow thought I was immune.
| I went through a year of depression and utter confusion. I was
| innocent in that I didn't "get it". I had good experiences prior
| to him and his level of sabotage was just not something I could
| comprehend. Eventually I worked for a good enough company that he
| was demoted to a non-managerial position. But it was too late for
| me. I just left (I was at principal level).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I had what I thought was a bad manager once. Problem was, I
| thought he was bad, everybody else thought he was great. It's
| not easy to say who is right/wrong in these situations.
| whstl wrote:
| IME, both can be right. Different people have different
| relationships.
|
| If a manager sees a report as a troublemaker, slacker, or
| someone overstepping, things can get difficult for the
| report. And likewise if a report doesn't respect a manager,
| or thinks they could do better, or acts competitively, the
| manager will have problems managing.
|
| Also IME: if a relationship between manager and report starts
| in the wrong foot, with impossible expectations, or even
| without proper recognition of each other's roles and talents,
| it's something that's _very_ difficult to fix, but there 's
| no way around fixing it. Time only makes it worse.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Excellent honesty.
|
| The stock options/golden handcuff is a real arse to deal with.
| Slogging out at a place where you really don't belong (or want to
| belong) is as you've so clearly described, a massive shitfest.
|
| Sometimes, the money, or promise of money isn't worth it.
| hackan wrote:
| Regarding work, there's a concept called "mobbing", which
| basically is making someone miserable so they quit. So yes, it
| may happen on purpose, which is deliberately bad. Some countries
| have laws against it, but even then, it is not easy to prove. I
| just wanted to mention it, and bring it to the discussion.
| majkinetor wrote:
| In some places getting unhireing is so slow and demanding that
| mobing and/or ignoring is the only thing you can do. In my
| previous company, they were sending such people to the furtest
| possible organizational unit from home (allowed by law to be
| 50km) in hope that they will quit.
| whstl wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this this, I'm actually going through a
| similar situation and leaving a bit of an abusive C-level boss
| for much greener pastures, and it really hits home, makes me feel
| I'm not alone.
|
| I was actually terrified of moving on for the longest time, as
| there was a lot of impostor-syndrome from all the
| micromanagement, but now I'm actually moving to a higher-paying
| job, over twice as much and much more in line with Silicon Valley
| payment. And yes: the previous job paid terribly even for
| European standards: 80k/year. I'm finding that bad salaries walks
| hand in hand with bad culture.
| setgree wrote:
| Congrats on getting yourself unstuck, OP. I left a job I was bad
| at and hated in 2021 to hike the Appalachian Trail. One of the
| best decisions I ever made.
|
| > I was driven to actively contemplate suicide due to my boss and
| his shitty attitudes and issues but no one actually seemed to
| care.
|
| I'm sorry to hear you were feeling this way. I hope that you have
| people in your life who care, even if not at work.
|
| I also hope that in time, you can come around to the idea that
| your boss did not cause you to feel these things. It is a choice,
| even though it might not feel like one, to give other people
| control of our feelings. One of the things I like most about non-
| violent communication [0] is its emphasis that we feel things
| because our needs are or are not being met, and it's up to us to
| A) identify our needs, B) seek out situations and people that
| help us meet them, and C) not expect particular people to meet
| them if they can't or won't.
|
| A workshop facilitator said, about his dad's inability to meet
| his need for emotionally honest dialogue: "I don't go into a
| hardware store expecting ice cream." That stuck with me.
|
| Good luck.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21263894
| ryi wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. It always felt like I couldn't
| complain when, by all appearances, you have a reasonable job,
| strong industry name on your resume, and golden handcuffs. But
| mental imprisonment without autonomy, without ownership. Can be
| truly grating.
| elevenoh wrote:
| [dead]
| rr808 wrote:
| Lots of us have been there. I never had the thankless job but I
| was laid off then really struggled in a new role. I'm still not
| over it but when you can deliver some code again you regain
| confidence with every Jira.
| greatiscones wrote:
| That's how I feel about a very similar situation.
|
| A corollary I think for me was that for many of the same reasons
| I didn't recognize the problems -- or maybe _because_ I didn 't
| recognize the problems -- others really couldn't grasp the depths
| of them either. Sometimes I think other people are better at
| recognizing problems than you are if there's a bad situation, but
| sometimes (maybe more often than society realizes) I think people
| just tend to assume that their functional situation applies
| everywhere, and so interpret things through that lens. So if you
| complain about X, they tend to (subconsciously maybe even) think
| "oh they must have not really meant X, they must have meant less
| serious version of X".
| keraf wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this, it resonates a lot with me. I've seen
| too many friends sucked in bad relationships, jobs or places
| (apartments, cities). Despite having people around telling them
| about all the red flags, they keep going with it, only to realise
| later down the road it was bad for them. Change can feel scary
| but is sometimes necessary.
|
| I've been there as well and I'm thankful to the people who
| shared, sometimes hard to swallow, truths that helped me see
| clearer. That being said, the grass is not always greener
| elsewhere. Consult people around you and listen to their
| opinions, an outside perspective can give you great insight to
| your current situation. Sometimes the change needed is within
| yourself. Also, if you see a firend in that situation, be there
| for them and be honest, people get stuck in this and it can take
| them into really dark places.
|
| Glad you got out and found something better OP. Don't resent past
| experiences, it's a waste of the time you saved. Take it as a
| learning experience, we all do mistakes.
| scroot wrote:
| > Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap. Imagine
| having to sit at a workstation for months and years, having to be
| "present" with nothing to actually do but make some some BS stuff
| to appear busy. Even doing training courses and such becomes
| boring after a while. It was a kind of mental prison and my boss
| truly didn't give a flying you-know-what. Imagine having nothing
| in your week to justify the normal desire to do something useful.
| I even wrote scripts to make life better but my boss wouldn't
| consider them because I wrote them.
|
| Paging the soul of David Graeber. Graeber: we've got another data
| point.
| alex3305 wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. I am broken by my current employer and
| I've just hit rock bottom (hopefully). Little backstory:
|
| In 2019 I've had burnout because of team members that didn't care
| about being in a team. They just messed up the team dynamic
| completely and I just couldn't handle it. I asked my supervisor
| to act upon this, but he didn't, so I went on sick leave
| (Netherlands). Nothing happened for about half a year when I was
| sidelined in another team.
|
| In 2020 and 2021 I just had nothing to do. Or just stupid chores
| doing rework or refactoring, but it just didn't do it for me. I
| asked constantly for work, but there wasn't any. I had to,
| however, justify my hours, which was becoming impossible.
|
| Whatever I did finish, often didn't make it in the final product.
| Or I got berated for spending too much time, without getting any
| time allotted prior. It destroyed my motivation for working.
|
| In the mean time I was looking out for other jobs, but not
| finding anything that suited me. You see I'm visually impaired,
| so I hate commuting as it costs me quite a bit of energy, which
| I'd rather spent on something else.
|
| In the end of 2021 I urged my supervisor to find a solution as it
| was becoming dire to me. He promised that he would, but as you
| can guess, he didn't. Going into 2022 I wrote him a letter saying
| the situation was unsustainable for me. I had quite a lot of
| panic attacks, especially before starting a new week. That didn't
| change anything. So in march of 2022 I went on sick leave.
|
| During 2022 the situation only deteriorated. Everyone 'tried
| their best', but without any results. I got assigned a budget for
| 2500EUR for external help. Which wouldn't be sufficient for any
| meaningful help. But inquiring on how I could use that budget
| left me with no answers. This finally resulted in conflicts with
| my supervisor, HR supervisor and the CEO. And still no help. No
| psychologist, nothing.
|
| I also went to my GP in May of 2022, but the waiting list for
| mental help are extremely long. I just got my first appointment
| last week. In the mean time my mental complaints only increased.
| I'm now suffering from depression, anxiety, anger, suicidal
| thoughts and being unable to stay asleep. Because of inflation
| financially things are getting harder too. It's just stress upon
| stress upon stress.
|
| I just want to leave. I want to get out of this situation. I
| don't want anything to do with these folks ever again. They
| fucked me up by sidelining and ignoring me. And finally they
| don't take any responsibility. I don't even enjoy my computing
| hobby anymore.
|
| I just wanted to ventilate my story to a bunch of strangers on
| the internet, like you. Thanks again for posting this and I hope
| I can start over soon. Good luck!
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| In my 20s I had a boss who strung me along for 4 years.
|
| It was a shitty little services agency building custom software.
|
| He would say things like, "Oh, I know I need to get your pay
| up... just give me until next quarter, budgets are already set."
| And every time he had a little somewhat plausible excuse. "Oh, we
| didn't get all the new clients we had hoped..." (even though we
| got every client where I had been on the pitch) or, "Oh our
| revenues aren't up because projects you aren't on have taken a
| loss, can you cover more projects? I can't afford to have anyone
| else do them... if you save the day, I'll make sure we get your
| pay and bonus up to compensate."
|
| And after 4 long years, where the last year was just him avoiding
| me, and where my Christmas bonus was literally a $25 iTunes gift
| card, when I was running projects worth like like 90% of the
| company revenue, I was like, "Y'know... I love my co-workers, I
| got to hire a lot of them, and that team meant a lot to me... but
| fuck my boss, he's a real twat." And I got an job that paid
| nearly 2x what I was making. And I helped the people I cared
| about find new jobs too.
|
| And never looked back.
|
| Lesson learned... Any time you have a boss who gives you a "slow
| no" you need to run. Don't walk, run away. That person is just
| using you.
| marknutter wrote:
| Good for you for moving on. Good luck in your new endeavor, and
| take the time you need to heal from your past trauma.
| MountainMan1312 wrote:
| Damn I really needed this today. I've been stuck in such a rut
| lately. I don't have a situation quite the same as yours, but
| it's the same in the ways that matter: I feel stuck and I just
| want to leave the prison.
|
| I don't really know what to do. I have tons of skills, across
| multiple domains/industries, yet I can't seem to get a job. I'm
| in that weird middle ground of having too much experience for
| entry-level positions but not enough for anything more. Employers
| literally won't give me the time of day, and I'm decently certain
| it's not my appearance or attitude in the interview (could be
| wrong, but it doesn't seem that way). I've had several potential
| employers comment that they'd hire me but they don't see why
| someone with my experience would be after such a mindless
| position. I need money to live is why. Then I apply for the
| higher positions, and they don't like the fact that I don't have
| a degree or employment history in that field.
|
| I do work, I'm a carpenter aside from being a hobbyist
| sysadmin/programmer, but it's drying up. People don't have
| dispensable income anymore and aren't having work done. When they
| do have work done they want the absolute minimum to save on time
| and money (my paycheck).
|
| Two years ago I had to tell people they'd have to wait a month or
| two before I could start on their job, now they have to tell me
| we can't start today. We used to talk about "where are we meeting
| tomorrow", now we ask "are we working tomorrow".
|
| On the other hand, I'm making progress learning how to do
| sysadmin and programming stuff. It's kind of it's own little
| prison. Why am I even doing it? Should I just focus on my current
| "career" and be a better carpenter, or should I realize the loss
| and focus on becoming a tech wizard instead. I'm at the point
| where I want to start setting up servers and whatnot, but is that
| a wise investment in my current situation? A homelab is basically
| a resume, so it could help me land a good job, but it could also
| just financially ruin me even further.
|
| Sorry to make this about myself, just felt very relatable.
| lioeters wrote:
| That's a tough one. I know some sysadmins would love to quit
| their jobs to do something concrete and tangible like wood
| working or carpentry. On the other hand, I imagine carpentry
| can be hard work, physically stressful, financially uncertain.
|
| From how you described, I think you're naturally interested in
| computers and servers, and will likely continue studying and
| experimenting anyway, even if it hasn't yet led to paying work.
| You can gain knowledge and experience through these side
| projects, and that can prepare a way for you to make a full
| career transition. I don't have any answers or advice, as I'm
| still trying to figure it out myself (currently in a fairly
| demotivated phase, looking for the next step up) - but I wish
| us all good luck in our endeavors. Personally, I believe you're
| on your way to becoming a tech wizard. The question is finding
| someone, maybe a smaller company/startup, who can recognize
| your value, talent, and potential.
| smcin wrote:
| > I was driven to actively contemplate suicide due to my boss and
| his shitty attitudes and issues but no one actually seemed to
| care. Even then I convinced myself with "aww, it's not so bad"
| when in reality it was absolutely horrific.
|
| But what specifically was bad (project? the company's
| product/service? customers? market? internal stuff? development
| process? middle managers? team?), and was it only like this for
| you, or your coworkers? It's impossible to get an inkling from
| reading this. (Equivalently, if you could have changed three
| things about the company/dept, what would they have been?)
|
| > I am however still resentful over the lost years.
|
| I really don't see framing things like that is helpful. You chose
| to stay out of (extreme) fear; you could have left. Again, what
| did you learn about what you most wanted as changes in the
| company, or about yourself or your psychology? Unless you can
| articulate (/reframe) something positive, I don't see there's
| much other people or you yourself can extract from this account.
| (For example: when you see management hierarchies of bullies,
| incompetent, cronies and no accountability, you learn the signs
| to look for so you can detect them the next time, at interview or
| even before. What are those signs?)
|
| A superb book is Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning"
| (1946/1959). TLDR: no experience is inherently negative or
| positive, you can always reframe it to extract something
| positive. This determines your outlook. People here cite it
| often:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=+%22Man%27s+Search+for+Meaning%22
| logicalmonster wrote:
| If you genuinely had a happy ending from this, good for you. But
| I suspect that some companies intentionally act like this to get
| rid of people who are due stock options soon.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I've noticed this dynamic too... I have had relationships and
| jobs that had incredible levels of psychological abuse, and yet I
| stayed for way too long, and continued to rationalize the abuse.
| I think at some level I would start to get depressed and suffer
| low self esteem, and believe that any level of abuse or
| mistreatment was justified. After leaving, I can barely
| understand why I didn't see what was happening or admit it to
| myself.
|
| I was the perfect target for narcissists- any abuse or negativity
| would cause me to feel guilty and responsible, and try even
| harder to give them what they want.
| kerblang wrote:
| Yes: It is that easy to end up frog-in-a-pot. I've seen it, and
| I've done it. I've seen it nearly kill people and cause them to
| give up on careers.
|
| And this underlines what _stress_ is all about: Not working hard,
| but spinning your wheels and going nowhere. It will make a mess
| out of you.
|
| And yeah, for whatever reasons the tech startup world can be
| ultra-nasty compared to everywhere else. The level of vindictive,
| nasty, hateful behavior can get completely out of control, often
| happening right out in the open. Not sure why, but when startups
| go bad, they can go ultra-bad.
| pontifier wrote:
| I resonate with this so much! I've been bashing my head against
| red tape for the last 3 years. It's totally demoralizing, and
| has messed me up pretty good.
|
| I know what I'm capable of, and when I compare it to what I've
| done lately, it just crushes my spirit.
| elptacek wrote:
| You're gaining a skill, though. For example, in future
| interviews, you will see obvious red flags that indicate a
| similar environment. Being able to gracefully navigate
| bureaucracy and not get burnt out by it is a very underrated
| skill.
| mansoon wrote:
| Up to a point.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > Recovery will take time but at least I know I wont get verbally
| berated every time something isn't perfect.
|
| You have already recovered in the sense of being a normal human
| being. Sure, it make take some extra "time off" for you
| personally to feel better, but make please understand that you
| are already a better person by doing the right thing.
|
| Thanks for sharing, and keep up the good work!
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > having to be "present" with nothing to actually do but make
| some some BS stuff to appear busy.
|
| In the past I've used these kinds of situations for personal
| development. Linkedin learning, oreily, certifications, youtube
| tech talks etc.
|
| No one has complained about it yet. /shrug
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I would like to use the time for open source development. I get
| to learn and make things that would actually help people.
|
| That said, I don't think I'd do it because of the risk of
| producing software that may be company property since it was
| done on company time and on company hardware.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I agree that's a risk. However you likely can do soft forms
| of development on company time such as reading documentation
| and code, pruning / responding to issues...
|
| Additionally it's going to be hard to argue against(or sue)
| if you're improving a FOSS that your company depends on and
| benefits from a feature you add.
| Oras wrote:
| Good luck with your new job. I would say develop mentality of
| jumping jobs every 2 years. Always keep an eye in the market.
|
| This happy time of starting a new chapter is a honeymoon that can
| last between 6 to 12 months before it fades away.
|
| Remember, any business would only care about profit, and wouldn't
| blink before deciding to let anyone go. Everyone should act the
| same, do whatever is good for your personally.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Like San Francisco
| strangattractor wrote:
| > "That and my age....."
|
| I think this is a common problem. At some point you gain enough
| experience you are not really a candidate anymore for most jobs
| listed on Linked, Indeed etc. You also become expensive for your
| employer given that they could get someone much cheaper to do the
| same job by hiring remote or younger. You likely should have been
| your bosses boss which is a real problem.
|
| I would be curious as to how you found your new job?
| Yoric wrote:
| Ouch. You describe my life ~13 years ago. And then I moved to
| Mozilla, which was insanely better in every possible way. Best
| career choice/opportunity I could hope for.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| Thanks for telling us. One thing I'd like to add is that it's
| pretty much the same with relationships. If you ever feel like
| you aren't really happy with your partner, but being without them
| sounds kinda even worse, and maybe it's your fault and maybe
| they're your only real chance... GET OUT. RUN. Don't look back.
| rasengan wrote:
| If anyone including OP is having these kinds of thoughts I would
| strongly encourage talking things thru with a licensed therapist.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Thanks for sharing.
|
| > _Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It 's not. It's crap._
|
| Yeah, this is something people don't realize until they're it in.
| It's not fun. Humans long to be needed.
|
| > _but I didn 't have the courage to jump_
|
| This is one of those things I personally have trouble wrapping my
| head around, but I know it happens. Kudos for getting it done.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Sorry for sidetracking, but is "... until they're it in"
| idiomatic?
|
| Because I love the phrase, but I'm not a native speaker, and
| unable to coax google into clearing this up.
|
| Would you use this in written form only or when speaking too?
|
| (third opinions are also very welcome!)
| halkony wrote:
| I think a more appropriate idiom would be "in the thick of
| it", adapted here to be "until they're in the thick of it."
|
| It communicates that you're in the middle of something
| chaotic/stressful like a jungle. The phrase is very natural
| for native speakers.
| everydayentropy wrote:
| This phrase doesn't make sense at all stand alone. I couldn't
| find the context either.
|
| Safe to say that no, not idiomatic. And if you use this
| phrase as quoted people will be very confused and have no
| idea what you're trying to communicate.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I think this is a typo. "Until they're in it" is the correct
| phrasing.
| everydayentropy wrote:
| "Until they're in it" totally is a phrase that makes sense
| and I would say can be idiomatic.
|
| OP if you read my previous comment, then that does not
| apply to the phrase that ethanbond corrected.
| majkinetor wrote:
| I do not have that problem. Last time it happened to me, I
| started learning medicine seriously, entire day on the job. Now
| I am pretty good, I can handle myself and my family, and I
| managed to fix several chronic problems of myown and several
| nasty things in others. Before that, when it happened again, I
| was developing big framework in arcane programming language.
| All the things I did due to the 'not having anything to do on
| the job' are very valuable to me now.
|
| However, nobody was grumpy at me at any time.
| halkony wrote:
| I'm interested in medicine for basically the reason you
| mentioned, understanding some of my chronic problems.
|
| What are good sources for learning more about how my body
| works and how to fine tune it?
| didgetmaster wrote:
| I am at the end of my career (already stopped working for
| someone else, just working on my own projects now) and as I
| look back at the various jobs I had; the ones that were
| engaging were also the most rewarding.
|
| I had two short stints with government jobs (one working part-
| time while in college and once for a major defense contractor)
| and they were terrible. Strict rules prevented anyone from
| doing things that were fun and productive. At the end of the
| year, we once ran out of 'funded projects' and we were forced
| to work on trivial matters while tracking our time in 30 minute
| increments. It was painful to find a way to clean your desk for
| 2 hours. We would have a long meeting where nothing was really
| discussed just to have a few hours to charge to some check box
| item. This went on for several weeks.
|
| The best jobs were the ones I had freedom to build what I
| though the customer wanted. I would sometimes work until 10pm
| not realizing that quitting time occurred hours earlier (I was
| still single at the time otherwise my wife would have
| interrupted).
|
| Startups can be some of the best places to let your creative
| juices flow. They are not the most stable for guaranteed
| income, but they can be very rewarding in other ways.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > Humans long to be needed.
|
| Between personal survival and tribal survival (a sort of
| partial gene survival pattern) It makes a lot of sense.
|
| until recently (and even currently in some places). If you do
| nothing you freeze, starve, and fail to attract a mate for
| procreation.
|
| Until recently if you were not a net contributor to the tribe,
| you risked being ejected.
|
| We likely have hardwired circuits that ensure we are actively
| contributing (ie needed).
| hbn wrote:
| My days at work where I'm actively engaged in a task and feel
| like I got something done fly by, whereas the days where I have
| nothing to do and I'm refreshing HN all day are not only boring
| but draining. Ironic that doing nothing makes you feel like you
| have no energy at the end of the day.
| smaudet wrote:
| If you have something to do the job is worthwhile. If its
| busywork, at least you get paid. If you don't have either of
| those things, the boss/work is not worth anyone's time,
| you're better of taking training and quitting.
|
| Meanwhile hopefully the market/regulation sorts itself, and
| your boss loses _his_ job, because someone does something
| worthwhile elsewhere.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| When I was a kid I went to work with my dad sometimes. He
| owned his own painting/handyman company. One of these work
| trips had a lot of work but very little an 11 year old could
| really do. I spent most of my day doing nothing, and it felt
| like the longest day of work in the world. I was tired,
| bored, and felt like I had actually worked all day. My dad
| said "sometimes having no work feels like more work doesn't
| it?" and honestly, yeah. Sometimes that really is the case.
|
| A few years ago I had a tech job where they straight up
| didn't have work for me to do. For the first month it was
| amazing. But after a few months a day of doing nothing was
| completely draining. And my dads words rang in my head again,
| and I was like damn that as true now as it was when I was 11.
|
| Doing nothing is shockingly hard mentally. We need to be
| engaged in stuff day to day, and without that engagement it
| seems like we spend a lot of energy trying to find something
| to do.
| cowvin wrote:
| I was a summer intern at a big defense company for one of
| my first summer jobs. They gave me some fairly simple work
| but not enough to fill my day. I ended up reading a lot of
| books for a large chunk of my day. =/
| rgifford wrote:
| I guess it's all relative. To be honest, I would be over the
| moon to never "work" again. Don't wanna be needed, don't
| wanna have to report to anyone, don't wanna be part of a
| pyramid scheme earning some CEO or founder 50% of company
| payroll.
|
| I could very happily set and achieve little goals for the
| rest of my life -- in video games, education, little creative
| pursuits, and hobbies -- and never once look back. Really
| don't care for externally set goals or validation.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I agree with you, but I also feel there is a huge
| difference between not working and doing nothing at work.
| The latter is way more draining to me.
| rgifford wrote:
| Yeah, bullshitting is draining.
|
| I wonder, why? Sisyphus was condemned to aimlessly push a
| rock forever, but isn't that basically just the human
| condition? Most of us convince ourselves we're doing
| something, but it's narrative. Very little materializes,
| very rarely as intended. We like feedback and certainty
| in the face of randomness -- it's the attraction to slot
| machines. But musicians rarely predict their most popular
| songs (and sometimes come to hate 'em), founders toil
| away pivoting for years before they stumble on something
| that works (but most give up first), artists often only
| have their work recognized posthumously.
|
| I'm drawn to characters like Jerry in Parks and Rec or
| Stanley in the Office because they embrace the rock. They
| aren't revolutionizing or disrupting. In a certain way
| they're really very heroic. They meet the soul-crushing
| apathy and uncertainty of their place in the universe
| head on without complaints, excuses or lies. Though
| mocked and derided as lazy, incompetent fools they
| steadily carry on. They're stoics in a modern
| bureaucratic context. And really there's a certain
| beautiful zen to that. It's very unrelatable for me and,
| I assume, most of the tech world.
| theonething wrote:
| Yes, the latter has a big guilt factor involved which for
| me, weighs me down heavily.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Yeah it's the middle area that's a killer.
| imtringued wrote:
| It's still company time. You don't get to play video games.
| The draining part is pretending to work. It's not like you
| get a private office and nobody ever sees you. You have to
| go the weekly meetings and tell them about how much you
| worked on X which you didn't.
|
| If you could convince the company to make you a part of a
| mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as
| long as it benefits the company then I don't think anyone
| would object to it from a mental health perspective.
| Fredej wrote:
| > mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as
| long as it benefits the company
|
| This is my lived reality right now. It's not necessarily
| super fun in the long run. It can get draining to work on
| new thing after new thing, only for it to get shut down
| because it doesn't _quite_ fit the company strategy or
| they can't find anywhere internally to anchor it.
|
| Plenty of good ideas have died that way.
|
| That said, I think it also heavily depends on the
| company. If the work you're doing is directly feeding
| into the development pipeline, it sounds like fucking
| heaven. Mine, however, is not.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I hope that you reach this point (not having to work)
| sooner rather than later.
|
| It is funny though, the number of people I know who got
| there and then went back to work for "the man" again. Not
| for the money, but for having people they could hang out
| with and talk about things with. They sometimes find
| happiness working for a company where they have the freedom
| to be completely honest because "losing your job" isn't a
| threat that bothers them.
|
| In the US managing health care is annoying, of course if
| you can live without working in the US then you can likely
| live as an ex-pat in a country that has decent health care
| included. It has its own set of tradeoffs (languages,
| community, Etc.)
|
| And for some the "little goals" start to feel dishonest,
| kind of like knowing that you could do "anything" with your
| remaining life and you are doing little goals you made up
| for "fun." I know it doesn't sit well with people who were
| raised to "make a difference" and "be the change."
|
| Giving back can be rewarding, mentoring younger people,
| people who are coming up the ladder. Working with
| organizations staffed with volunteers brings its own set of
| quirks. Sometimes "prima donna" doesn't quite capture it
| :-).
|
| At some point you really internalize "hmm, I'm going to be
| dead and do I care what others think of how I spent these
| years?" Facing mortality sometimes re-arranges what is, and
| what is not, important to you. Depending on how close one
| sees the "finish line" that can be either empowering or
| depressing. Often a little of both.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| This makes me think of the Silicon Valley scene where the guys
| are just sitting on the roof "resting and vesting". "Lunch?
| Arby's on El Camino I'll drive. Nah let's walk it'll take
| longer."
| sopooneo wrote:
| My question for that situation is: why even show up? Is there
| some token importance to you coming through the front door
| every morning where failing to do so will get you fired thus
| eliminating your stock options?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I expect it's a case of needing to be there in case the
| wrong person starts asking questions or snooping around.
| Like checking badge-swipe logs.
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| At least in the case of the scene from the show, it's
| likely just for the sake of having people to spend this
| "dead" time with rather than being alone. Possibly also the
| latter as well, though.
| VLM wrote:
| A remarkable number of jobs are about putting fires out.
|
| Is someone responsible available for that revenue
| generating, or loss preventing, "thing", that has a high
| enough uptime to not attract anyone's wrath? OK then.
| JackFr wrote:
| I knew the head of a trading desk at a Wall St. bank. The
| bank wanted to fire him but didn't want to pay his deferred
| compensation. He was not interested in "negotiating" - the
| money was his and they had no cause for termination. (The
| ultimate reason was that a new divisional head had come in
| and the two of them hated each other.) He had no trading
| authority, had his direct reports taken away from him and
| he was forbidden to speak to customers. He was the most
| cheerful guy in the world. He'd read the newspaper and then
| play video golf on his computer. My boss asked him why he
| bothered still coming in. He said his lawyer advised him to
| continue to come in, do everything asked (within reasonable
| constraints of his job title) and not to be disruptive.
| After about six weeks, they caved and paid him out.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| I recently got out of a job where I had nothing to do, and it was
| soul crushing. I actually had a boss I really liked, but the
| company had so much red tape and bureaucracy that our team didn't
| have any real work to do. I didn't write a single line of work
| related code the entire time I was there, and it felt like I was
| losing momentum, like all my skills were getting duller. You
| wouldn't think doing nothing would exhaust you, but not doing
| anything _real_ all day stressed me out a lot and I was weirdly
| tired at the end of the day. This meant I didn't have very much
| energy for job hunting or personal projects that would help me
| find another job. I wanted to reply to this post in particular
| because it hits a point that a lot of job advice posts I see
| miss: a shitty enough job can make it hard to do the stuff you
| need to do to get another job. I don't know what advice I can
| give though, it's a hard problem and a lot of the stuff that
| makes it hard is in your head which makes it difficult to
| generalize.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| That is textbook constructive discharge, a type of wrongful
| termination.
|
| It consists in creating a hostile environment so that you are
| forced to quit.
|
| It is illegal. You have to document everything, create a solid
| case, then sue the company.
| xsmasher wrote:
| > That said, in a large company you can cruise for years and
| that's what I did.
|
| It sounds like the poster stayed a long time and got paid for
| doing nothing. The details of the actual "came to a head /
| moved on" are missing.
|
| I don't think going after the company is a good idea based on
| the facts presented.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| Just to put some details around this. You hire a lawyer, which
| will cost $2K-$3K. The lawyer helps you document everything.
| Then when you're ready to leave, the lawyer sends a demand
| letter to the company - demanding severance pay. The severance
| is something like 3-6 months of pay to bridge you to find
| another job. If you're making $100K and get 3 months severance,
| that's $25K - well worth it financially and for your mental
| health to find a new job.
|
| EDIT: 1) Don't even need to go to court. 2) It's a nice F-off
| to the boss because their boss and above will now know what's
| happening.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You get legal insurance for $30 a month. You go to the
| arbitration kangaroo court, bring your evidence, the company
| offers you to settle for some money to cut their potential
| losses.
|
| You use it as fuck you money for your next job.
| tmnstr85 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing. I think plenty of people get into these
| situations. They are tough to recognize, and even harder to act
| upon. I respect your thought about recovery, its been almost a
| year since I left my scenario, I've had to learn slowly how to
| forgive myself for not being able to get back up to 110%. You'll
| get there at some point but all those years in a bad situation do
| take a toll, be patient with yourself and celebrate every step of
| progress. (like the .5 lbs I lost this week!)
| mihaaly wrote:
| Sometimes it happens that you do not realise how bad something is
| until you join ...
| Fredej wrote:
| Man, to stumble upon this, at this time in my life, of all times.
|
| I literally just sent an email to HR, talking about how my new
| boss is horrible - I've only had him for 2 months and now I'm
| home on sick leave from stress.
|
| I'm hoping he gets the boot - still in his trial period, even!
| But truth be told, the experience burned me so much that I think
| I'll just leave for something different.
|
| I can definitely relate to having the mental snot beat out of
| you. I began to doubt my own skills, because I basically haven't
| been allowed to do anything technical since late November.
|
| Yesterday, I had an interview with the CTO of a super exciting,
| fast growing company with an awesome product. The interview was
| scheduled for 1 hour, but we went 2.5 hours because there was
| just so much interesting stuff to talk about. I felt like I was
| myself again. I still got it baby!
|
| What I guess I'm saying is, I can relate, it's fucking tough, and
| it's fucking awesome that you've moved on! Congratulations. Now
| make sure you heal.
| itake wrote:
| I've had the opposite experience: you don't know what you got
| until is gone.
| sparrish wrote:
| The opposite is also sometimes true.
|
| Sometimes you don't realise how GOOD something is until you
| leave.
|
| Regret follows both.
| linsomniac wrote:
| "Well son, the funny thing about regret is that it's better to
| regret something you have done than to regret something that
| you haven't done" -- Butthole Surfers
| a2dam wrote:
| That's Orbital (from Satan), not Butthole Surfers
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Orbital sampled it from the Butthole Surfers track.
| adamdusty wrote:
| This for sure. I've learned to love where I'm at, but if I knew
| what I know now I doubt I would ever left my first job. At
| least not as soon as I did.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| I've been in that situation a few times, and was always proactive
| about moving on before losing a job.
|
| After I quit my second job (41 years ago) I felt a tremendous
| relief that I did not immediately understand. Things had gotten
| worse there over time, and like a frog being slowly brought to
| boil, I did not realize how bad it had become until after I left.
|
| It's usually pretty easy to see the signs that your future is
| limited, and that is the time to start looking for a new
| position.
|
| In the end, it's only a job, and your life is far more important.
| otikik wrote:
| I'm glad you are in a better situation now. Hopefully you will be
| able to eventually heal. I hope you have someone to talk about
| this - a spouse, friend, priest or therapist, whatever works for
| you. Good luck!
| jtwigg wrote:
| > It makes you realise what crap you will really put up with and
| how from an impartial viewpoint you should have just "nope'd" out
| of it years ago but the status-quo is just easier to maintain.
|
| This is so true. In my experience, it can sneak up on you over
| the course of months and years so you don't realize how depressed
| and burnt out you are. You don't realize that working late so
| that you can catch up is something that shouldn't be the norm.
| When I finally quit and joined a functional software company with
| clear work/life balance it was an absolute shock. It felt like
| someone had suddenly turned a light on and I could see everything
| clear as day.
| neilv wrote:
| > _My new boss has recognised a lot of the mental snot has been
| virtually beat out of me and is understanding_
|
| We should aspire to be like that boss.
| diamondap wrote:
| I once had a job like that, though my situation wasn't quite as
| bad as yours. The job started out well and then went sour when
| they hired a new manager. After years of 70-hour weeks, I
| couldn't remember what a decent job was like, nor could I imagine
| a job being better elsewhere.
|
| When I finally did make the jump to a new position, I landed in a
| great company, with a great manager, and everything turned
| around.
|
| One thing I'd advise, now that you're in a better place, is to
| try to work past the resentment. As long as you carry that in
| your heart, the old boss still has a hold on you. It'll take time
| to get it out of your system, but do try to get it out. You'll
| find that a more positive and productive attitude creeps in to
| the space that resentment once occupied, and your level of
| happiness goes up another notch.
|
| In case you're interested, I posted about that job gone sour at
| https://sheprador.com/2022/04/worst-manager-ever/. The guy wasn't
| mean. He just didn't care. And writing the post made me laugh.
| matanshavit wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. This is something I need to remind myself
| from time to time. I'm not sure if this helps, but I suggest
| getting into a sport if you can.
|
| A while ago my self-confidence was really low. I tried jiu jitsu,
| and I had a lot of fun. I was also impressed with the positivity
| and camaraderie. I started going regularly, and even though I
| started off much worse at it than everyone else, I was constantly
| improving a little bit at a time and getting reassurance that the
| struggle to go from beginner to intermediate and beyond is
| something everyone experiences.
|
| The act of exercising regularly, combined with improving at
| something I enjoy and making new friends along the way, was a
| huge boost to my confidence. Playing a sport has improved my
| mental health immensely. It is also something in my life I can
| lean on when my career is rocky or challenging.
|
| I know it can be a lot of commitment for someone with a family,
| or daunting for someone who is a bit older. With that recognized,
| I still suggest you try a sport. I have been doing jiu jitsu for
| five years, and I have also started wrestling and judo. I've
| trained with people of all ages, from Division 1 college
| wrestlers, to active hobbyists like me, to parents and
| grandparents who just want to try something new.
|
| It sounds intense, but it can be adjusted to any age, body type,
| etc. I've even had the pleasure to practice with a retired, blind
| champion grappler. She knocked me over again and again, just by
| feeling. All this to say, if you accept your limitations, there
| is a way for you to participate safely and have fun.
|
| Regardless if my advice helps, I wish you a lot of luck, and
| thank you again for sharing.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I also was in a bad job that I stayed at for the money, and it's
| interesting how you can fool yourself about it. My job was
| incredibly stressful, perhaps literally taking years off my life,
| but I told myself it was "exciting" and "challenging". When
| circumstances finally intervened and I moved on, I was a wreck
| because I had forgotten what I had gone into this industry for.
| It took me a couple of years to rediscover that I really like
| tech, I like problem solving, I like programming, I just don't
| like no win situations and unpleasant social dynamics. I had to
| relearn to see my work as play, but now that I have, everything
| is much better (except the money).
| etempleton wrote:
| Early in my career I worked in an absolutely toxic work
| environment. I was young and inexperienced and didn't really know
| how bad it was. Or if this was normal or not. Additionally, the
| culture included a lot of fake positivity, so I felt like it was
| just me even though all my coworkers seemed miserable too. Years
| later in a world with Glassdoor I can read countless reviews that
| describe my exact experience and can see the company has terrible
| rating despite what appears to be leadership writing a bunch of
| fake 5/5 reviews to try and offset the bad real reviews.
|
| The lesson I learned is that if work feels really bad you should
| leave asap. No one is going to care for you. The company is only
| going to even consider fixing it after everyone leaves and work
| stops getting done. Work isn't worth your mental or physical
| health. Sometimes it is just a bad fit, but often it is just a
| badly run company, division, department, team or whatever.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is 100% why we need a strong social safety net and/or UBI in
| the USA. Imagine if you could just quit a job like this, take a
| few months off, and start looking for a new job, without worrying
| about becoming bankrupt or homeless? The economy would _thrive_
| as individuals were free to move about the labor market, take
| time off to re-skill periodically, etc.
|
| I was in a bad situation in a job, completely burned out. It was
| only when I had the opportunity to move in with family that I
| could quit and get my life back together. If I had the ability to
| just quit and spend some time collecting myself a year earlier,
| who knows how much happier and healthier I'd be, and how much
| sooner I'd have been able to return to productivity?
| i_dont_know_ wrote:
| Totally this. I moved away from the US many years ago, and
| having the luxury to go a few months without work and not have
| to worry about things like health insurance is phenomenal. You
| can find a new job at your own pace, when you're actually
| genuinely excited about it.
|
| Also, there are enough other people around you who are taking
| their time that you don't feel like garbage for not having a
| job (somehow in the US, even when I was more than financially
| secure, I felt like it was 'not ok' to not be working)
| Laaas wrote:
| The issue with UBI is that some people start doing "jobs" that
| aren't productive, like Factorio.
| endymi0n wrote:
| ,,If you're unsure whether to quit your job or break up, you
| probably should"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17840275
| romwell wrote:
| First, thank you for sharing.
|
| Second, please don't play your life on hard mode, utilize the
| resources the humanity has for getting out of this hole:
|
| * _Therapists_ are walking knowledge bases which have studied all
| the ways people are driven into awful states, and can help you
| understand both _why_ you got there, _how_ you got there, and
| _where you need to go_ to get out of there faster.
|
| Not using therapy = wasting time on reinventing the wheel to
| arrive at the same answers by trial and error years later.
|
| * _Coaching_ augments therapy by helping you set specific goals,
| and helping you get there. Therapy helps you understand _what_ to
| do, coaching is about _doing it_.
|
| * _Psychiatry_ augments therapy by giving you access to tools
| beyond what you _already use_ go get you into a state where you
| are able to actually _do_ the changes in your life that are
| necessary to get out of the hole.
|
| People use and abuse caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, sugar drinks,
| weed, etc. to cope with unbearable situations and/or get the kick
| to get going, often with detrimental health effects.
|
| We can do better than that. Modern psychiatrist is 99% a potion
| expert, who can guide you to finding the right potion tailor-made
| for your specific type and state of mind.
|
| Psychiatry alone _won 't solve your problems_, just like getting
| a rifle isn't going to win the battle. You've got to actually
| _use_ it. But having one helps a ton.
|
| As humans, we are similar in many ways. The problems you just
| wrote about are shared and experienced by many among us, as are
| the solutions.
|
| Going at it alone is like going into a battlefield before
| stopping by the armory and getting your mission briefing.
|
| You may get out, but the statistical casualty rate indicates that
| it isn't a solid idea.
|
| To that end, analogies:
|
| * Therapy = strategic command
|
| * Coaching = tactical planning
|
| * Psychiatry = getting your kit
|
| Or, if you are more fantasy inclined:
|
| * Therapist = spell master
|
| * Coach = swords master
|
| * Physiatrist = potion master
|
| Your job is one of your mental health battlefields. Going unarmed
| and unprepared when you're losing hit points is not going to help
| you beat the odds.
|
| Personally, I can attest that I couldn't make the jump the OP did
| without all three backing me up.
|
| The silver lining was that all three were provided as a part of
| the benefits package. For anyone in the same boat:
|
| * Therapy was listed as "free counseling sessions"
|
| * Taking time off to take SSRIs and let them kick into gear was
| under "short term disability"
|
| These words are deliberately off-putting _so that people are
| discouraged from getting what they pay for_. In particular,
| short-term disability package is an _insurance_ , and if you're
| at a point where your productivity _drops_ , it applies.
|
| It doesn't mean you _are_ disabled. What it means is that
| whenever a doctor can vouch that your performance is negatively
| affected by health reasons, whether it 's a broken leg or severe
| anxiety, to the point where you're struggling to meet
| expectations, _the time off you take to get treatment is going to
| be reimbursed by the insurance you already paid for_ , up to
| three months in CA, and _this can 't be held against you_.
|
| That's to say, they can't use that as a reason to fire you.
|
| Unlike whatever assignments you half-ass while being miserable
| and not getting help.
|
| Reminder: for software engineering, most common mental health
| issues will generally fulfil the requirements necessary to get a
| short-term disability leave approved, as our work is _mental
| work_.
|
| _Note:_ looking for a different job during your leave is
| explicitly OK, so if you find yourself in OP 's shoes, find a
| psychiatrist who will do the short-term disability paperwork.
| It's a simple, short form.
|
| _Note 2:_ y 'all be thinking "it's not _that_ bad " -- it _is_
| that bad. I 've been there, and I lied to myself too.
|
| _Do NOT_ let yourself get to the point where you 're
| contemplating suicide, like OP, or having suicidal/self-harm
| _ideation_ , like me (i.e. you don't have _plans_ , but the idea
| starts to seem _appealing_ ). If you don't feel _revulsion_ at
| the thought of suicide or self-harm, WAKE UP CALL: seek out ye
| potion master.
|
| Here's another reframing that can help you get over the
| internalized stigma:
|
| * Short-term disability leave = prepaid sabbatical
|
| Remember, STD leave -- if available -- is an _insurance_ that
| comes as a part of your _benefits package_ , i.e. out of your
| _compensation_.
|
| You not only _deserve it_ , it _benefits your employer_ for you
| to make use of it _before it gets real bad_. To them, it 's
| _fleet maintenance_. Y 'all are money-making vehicles, your
| brains are engines, so take time off to change that timing belt
| _before_ it snaps and renders the entire machine unusable (and
| _unprofitable_ ).
|
| Taking advantage of these resources is conspicuously missing from
| OP's account, so I hope this will be of use to others.
|
| To the OP: you are out of the toxic quagmire, but the very same
| resources can _significantly_ speed up recovery, increase your
| productivity and boost both your career and your utility to your
| employer.
|
| If you aren't using these resources already, do that. If benefits
| don't offer them, online counseling like BetterHelp / Cerebral /
| etc. is an affordable out-of-pocket option.
|
| And all those who aren't in the hole now: find out what resources
| are available now, before you need them. Burnout is very common
| in our field, so it's best to be prepared.
|
| ----
|
| It's dangerous to go alone, take these:
|
| * Therapy/counseling = strategy
|
| * Coaching = tactics
|
| * Psychiatry = ammo
|
| * STD leave = ceasefire
|
| More so if you already _paid for all of those_ as a part of comp.
| jaxomlotus wrote:
| Completely relatable. I watched my dog eating a bone in the
| sunlit grass of my backyard happy and content, and realized how
| much smarter it is than me.
|
| I was working my ass off pulling 18 hour days climbing the
| corporate ladder, trying to get wealthy and I was absolutely
| miserable. Happiness doesn't come from money, it comes from
| having everything you need in front of you. It took watching my
| dog gnaw a bone to make me realize that.
|
| I punched out, went back to the startup world for way less pay
| working on problems I actually enjoy solving, at a pace that
| isn't detrimental to my health, and I have been much happier.
|
| I also gave up a lot to do so - in time and money - but I have
| zero regrets. At least I learned a really valuable lesson about
| myself.
| namuol wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. Very happy that you got out of that toxic
| environment. Please consider seeking help (professional help)
| outside of work though, if you haven't already. You've stopped
| the bleeding so to speak, but recovery is not something you
| should do all on your own. Those bad feelings can come rushing
| back very easily even if you never look back. Seriously, please
| take care.
| hbogert wrote:
| This resonates. In April I'll be starting a new job and the
| amount of clarity that gives with my current job is eye-opening.
|
| I'll be earning less, yet I'll gladly leave a situation where not
| a lot of persons have a clue what our industry means let alone
| our specific domain.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Good luck to you!
| jwmoz wrote:
| > Looking back at it I knew my time was up a long time ago but I
| didn't have the courage to jump.
|
| This is the crux of the problem. A job is a job, just move on.
| [deleted]
| bitsofawesome wrote:
| Glad you got out of that situation.
|
| Burnout & depression suck. They're cycles that area easy to get
| stuck in and hard to get out of. When it comes to avoiding such
| situations in the future, therapy and personal boundaries are the
| tools I personally reach for, but recovery is a long journey.
| Don't let them drain you of the energy you need to make life
| worth living.
|
| As a mentor told me, "Illegitimi non carborundum".
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Echo company motto in the VTCC.
| maCDzP wrote:
| "Illegitimi non carborundum" means roughly "Don't let the
| bastards grind you down".
| retzkek wrote:
| Also "Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum" as seen in _The
| Handmaid 's Tale_.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Sounds more cognate with English
| lowlander wrote:
| Thanks for your vulnerability and sharing your story. Good for
| you for moving forward and moving on, glad it's working out for
| you. I've been in several bad situations, maybe not quite as bad
| as yours, and every time I get out I have nearly the same
| realization as you did - it just wasn't worth it. Whatever valid
| reasons I thought I had for staying were almost never worth the
| anguish and pain of sticking it out. I resent those people and
| situations too, and I try to fight it by remembering that
| resentment is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person
| dies.
| [deleted]
| tombert wrote:
| I had a job at Apple for two years, which paid very well and had
| very good stock grants, but I absolutely hated. I hated most (not
| all) of my managers, I didn't really enjoy the work, and my team
| in particular would routinely have meetings until 9pm, multiple
| times a week. I would sign off from my computer, and lie down on
| my bed nearly catatonic because I was so unhappy, to a point
| where my wife was getting a bit worried.
|
| Eventually I got in yet another argument with my manager's
| manager, and decided enough was enough, and put in my notice, and
| two weeks later I was gone. The first day after I woke up and
| realized that I didn't have to work for Apple anymore, this wave
| of relief swept over me. I was so happy that I didn't even care
| that I had to give up several hundred thousand dollars of stock.
|
| You only have one life, and you get maybe 100 years to live it.
| Don't waste it in a job that makes you miserable.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> You only have one life, and you get maybe 100 years to live
| it. Don't waste it in a job that makes you miserable.
|
| THIS.
|
| I've been watching a lot of the Shawn Ryan interviews lately.
| The first one I watched was Cody Alford. Dude was a marine
| scout sniper, then joined force recon. His first two
| deployments were in Fallujah - one was during the Operation
| Phantom Fury. He also survived being shot in the head (he had
| his helmet on) and retells that story.
|
| In short, dude went through a ton of stuff mentally and
| physically which caused him to retire from the military early.
| A lot of what OP talks about, he experienced in the military as
| he rose in the ranks (he was the fastest marine to E8) and the
| last part of the interview is where he lays out how he got his
| sanity back, the role of psychedelics in his recovery and what
| he's doing now.
|
| The interview is over 6 hours long, but it's an absolute
| whirlwind and it's really inspiring to me to see someone who's
| already lived multiple lives over the span of his short life,
| telling people to "die living" not the other way around. I know
| his perspective has made me change a lot of what I've been
| doing.
|
| Cody Alford - Marine Raider/MARSOC Sniper Who Became a Nomad
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbdKhNiPWY
| hn_20591249 wrote:
| Sounds very similar to my early 2020 - mid 2022. Got a "dream
| role" at Apple that utilized my niche expertise, was assigned
| to a high-value component of a high-impact project that sounded
| like a perfect fit.
|
| 2022 comes around and we have a barely functional prototype
| that was initially due to be shipped in mid 2021, constant
| turn-over in software engineering and product management, the
| front-end that had been build didn't align with the back-end
| due to a complete lack of project coordination, but felt tied
| to the role due to stock grants.
|
| Left to join a 4-person start-up founded by one of my good
| friends from college and haven't looked back since :)
| tombert wrote:
| Ha! Glad to see I'm not the only one.
| BGizzle wrote:
| Between stimulus and response, we have a choice in how we react.
| If you think the problem is out there, stop yourself. If we use
| our own conscience, self-awareness, imagination and free will we
| can choose a response every time that we won't regret. It's nice
| to be nice and it's cool to be cool. No one wants problems and we
| all have them. But in every problem exists an opportunity - to
| solve that problem. The only way to fail is to not try. Otherwise
| you just die trying. And baby steps are still steps - it's about
| consistency, not intensity. We are constantly generating and
| reflecting energy and positivity prevails. You can choose to be
| irrevocably damaged and impaired by your ex-boss's negativity,
| but you can also use your own self-awareness, conscience and free
| will to choose how you react. Your boss's words or actions don't
| decide you. You can change your state if you choose to.
| ilc wrote:
| No, not every problem is solvable. If my boss asks me if 1+1=3,
| I will never tell him it does. There are managers who want to
| hear 1+1=3. And won't accept anything less.
|
| There are managers who actively look to destroy people. It
| happens, for various reasons, including favoritism, nepotism or
| whatever. It isn't mine to know why. It is mine to know that it
| happens. And I've seen it plenty.
|
| When negativity is in charge.... negativity wins. When zero and
| negative sum is the only game to be played... those of us who
| play a positive game suffer.
|
| I'm glad you've never seen these dynamics, and been able to
| dodge them. But trust me. I've seen it, and I've seen it
| destroy great teams.
|
| The way he can change his state is exactly how he did: Leave.
| Sometimes it really is that bad. May it never get there for
| you.
| luckydata wrote:
| I used to work at FB, without going into too much detail I
| crossed path with a super toxic colleague that started harassing
| me from day one as I realize they were forging user feedback on a
| feature we were working on and left me with a bomb to defuse.
| This person realized I noticed and immediately started
| undermining me and reporting me to HR.
|
| After months of battle I finally was able to prove my case, the
| person got fired but at that point I had no motivation or energy
| to stay. I left for a different company and I don't miss that
| hellhole AT ALL.
|
| I was really worried about compensation, optics etc... but life
| is too short to go through stuff like that for a job.
| ravenstine wrote:
| I've discovered this with many things. I left my previous job
| before a year was up in large part because I wasn't happy with
| it, and later discovered that other people jumped ship for
| similar reasons. At the time, all the corporate positivity-speak
| made it feel as if I was being a rogue, but others were actually
| dissatisfied as well.
|
| As far as being paid to "do nothing", I think the core issue with
| that is it's never actually doing nothing. When you're doing
| nothing at work, your job is actually to _appear_ busy and to
| seem relevant. Not only is it difficult, but it's unpleasant,
| dissatisfying, and demoralizing. There are times when I've been
| effectively paid to do nothing, and it sucked because I could
| almost never work on anything that was interesting or mattered.
|
| On the other hand, if I were paid to truly just "do whatever",
| that might be a different story. I can always identify
| interesting and even important problems to work on. In the "do
| nothing" paradigm, usually I'm told _not_ to do such things but
| instead work only on anything that comes across my desk, and
| those things may not arrive regularly. That 's what sucks.
|
| Just a thought.
| proee wrote:
| If you are in a large company and don't have a good relationship
| with your boss or department, one good option is to network with
| other people/departments in the company and find a cool project
| to work on. It's super easy for HR to approve internal transfers
| since you are already past all the new hire paperwork.
|
| When I was an intern at a large company, I rotated through a TON
| of departments until I found what I liked.
| siliconsorcerer wrote:
| +1 for rotating within large companies. finding the right team
| at a large company can make all the difference, at least it did
| for me.
| ilyt wrote:
| Yup, that's how we stole few good people off other departments.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| I have a friend that just finally made this happen for himself
| with Big Blue. A zillion awesome things going on there, and he
| got stuck in a hole due to crappy mgmt. Onwards and upwards,
| without leaving the office he already worked in!
| coding-saints wrote:
| Thank you for sharing.
| rcarr wrote:
| Try and reframe the experience as the price paid for learning
| this valuable lesson. Sharing this as you have done may help
| others avoid making the same mistake which is another positive
| you can take. It will take time, but if you can reframe in this
| way, you'll be able to deaden or eliminate the resentment and you
| will grow back wiser and with a stronger sense of self-confidence
| than you had prior.
|
| There is a story about two buddhist monks who were captured and
| imprisoned by an invading army. Eventually, after ten years, they
| were released and went their separate ways. Ten years later they
| bumped into each other again. "How are you finding freedom?" said
| the first monk. "Wonderful" said the other, "But I'll never
| forgive those bastards who took us". The first monk replied, "I
| am sorry to hear you are still imprisoned."
| davidw wrote:
| Glad it is working out better.
|
| Minor point, but it seems like another one for the "receiving
| actual money is better than stock options" column.
| rhaley wrote:
| Quote: Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge. -
| Don Henley and Country Song: George Strait "By The Light Of A
| Burning Bridge"
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The big life lesson I got is: there's no correlation between
| Fortune 500 companies and good management practice.
|
| As a software engineer, I was never happier than the job I took
| with a smaller local firm after quitting a 500. The firm paid
| competitively (no longer getting those sweet Fortune 500 stock
| options, but who cares the stock market's a crap-shoot anyway and
| the stock I got from the old company is already past its peak
| value right now as it is) and my manager was the best I've ever
| had.
|
| Being in a bad management chain at a major corp can make you
| miserable. I've found it to be worth it to switch to a smaller
| corp with a better management chain.
|
| (All of that having been said: smaller companies can be more
| vulnerable to market disruption so of course sometimes one trades
| out the stress of bad management with the stress of maybe not
| having a job in six months. But as Google just demonstrated,
| working at the big firms isn't really a guarantee there either).
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| [dead]
| SillyUsername wrote:
| There is an apt metaphor for this
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
|
| I learnt it long ago and watch for it now, after I had a similar
| experience but not conditions, just low salary.
|
| After years of low pay, my last job gave me a 20% increase (which
| was substantially better than previous positions), and my current
| job gave me a 60% increase on top of that, because according to
| the technical test I did, I was actually one of the most capable
| developers they'd interviewed and gave me the maximum salary for
| the position, not the value I'd requested (which was about $15K
| less).
| FatActor wrote:
| Reading this caused me to do a 180 in my life, both job and
| marriage. I changed both within 1 year of reading it.
|
| https://www.issendai.com/psychology/sick-systems.html
| sherilm wrote:
| My experience wasn't anything as bad as yours, but had a similar
| sense of "rot" that kept gnawing at me. No amount of money can
| compensate for the "thousand little deaths" you die over time.
| Finally quit at the ripe age of 41 and reinvented myself...
|
| There are a lot of notions in common culture that's outright
| misleading.
|
| For eg. Time is NOT money. It's way more than that.There are
| higher order exchanges than money: time, energy, identity.
|
| The best criteria for the next move is not necessarily the
| absence of anxiety but rather more aliveness. We keep chasing
| happiness not realizing, it can only ensue, not pursued.
|
| Sorry if it sounded cliched...looking back there were a bunch of
| frameworks that became obvious in hindsight...I wrote about
| them...you might resonate with some of them:
|
| https://www.leadingsapiens.com/essential-career-change-frame...
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