Going through it 😭
Hi all - I just discovered this community and I am so happy that it exists! I’m not completely sure what I’m seeking with this post, perhaps just some solidarity. A virtual shoulder to cry on. I’d love to hear from others who have experienced similar feelings.
I’m a “tech lead manager” at a small, failing insurance startup. In practice, I’m a Senior developer, tech lead, and manager. I’m front end focused, and we don’t have a designer - so I lead product design as well.
I’ve been at this company for 3 years. I was hired as a mid level developer and sort of catapulted to the top accidentally. I have a strong work ethic, often to my own detriment, and tend to wind up in higher level roles than what I’m mentally ready for.
Lately I’ve just felt completely cooked, mentally. I spread myself too thin around year 2, giving 100% to each part of my new hybrid role. Some days it feels like I’m on a swivel, ping ponging around various Teams chats to provide assistance, often whilst sacrificing my own output velocity, which I beat myself up about. I’ve been described as “a machine” in the past, in regards to output, and I’ve certainly lost that. My output is sometimes invisible now, as it’s spent unblocking others.
I report directly to a non technical CEO, which plays out about as you’d expect. He uses our 1:1s as an opportunity to hold me as a captive audience to presentations of Claude generated POCs for features that nobody asked for, while our core application is being eaten by tech debt. He recently made the decision to lay off our entire QA department. Nobody else on the dev team cares much for quality, so I’ve absorbed much of those responsibilities as well.
Yet, we’re expected to ship at an even faster pace. The entire team is experiencing feature fatigue. New features are slotted into the road map before we’ve even had time to grasp the architecture of the prior proposals. Requirements are generated by Claude. Mockups are generated by Claude. Neither are reviewed for mistakes before being presented to dev - I’ve tacked on “reviewer of overly lengthy AI generated product documentation” to my list of responsibilities.
I could probably tune a lot of this out, but what’s bothering me the most lately is that I’m no longer interested in my work. The product is total shit, and I’m tired of looking at it. Every morning I stare into my IDE, praying that I’ll summon up the gumption to get started on my tasks. Sometimes I cry. I’m fortunately remote, so I can do that in peace. It feels like I’m lying to myself. I’ve been forcing myself to continue producing, grinding, advancing for so long - and it’s starting to crush my spirit.
I cannot quiet quit, because I carry the team. I’m simultaneously too burnt out to throw myself into a job hunt, so I feel like I’m in jail.
My misery has bled into my personal life. I have a three day weekend this week, due to the holiday, and I spent most of today in a fight or flight state. Sobbing, angry, numb. I’ve given so much of myself to work, and when I get extra time off, I no longer have the distraction of routine, and I realize just how unwell I am.
I’ve been considering not only quitting, but leaving the field altogether. Taking a sabbatical and then planning my next move. This field just does not spark joy anymore. I live below my means, and have been doing this long enough to have enough savings to float through the next 8 years, but I still fear the uncertainty that comes with losing the high salary that I’ve grown accustomed to.
It’s funny - I think back to the happiest years of my life, when I was the poorest I’ve ever been. Couch surfing, working the morning shift at a grocery store. Now here I am, financially comfortable, but yearning for the mines. I know that this is silly, with so many people struggling to find work right now. I know that the grass isn’t always greener. But there’s this part of me that’s whispering - “do it, do it and be free - even if just for a little bit”.
This feels like some combination of both burn out and bore out. Probably also some mental and behavioral health problems that I’ve been burying. Those who have experienced this - What did you do? How did you recover?