
Ask HN: What's your spectacular burnout story? - coackroachhead
What&#x27;s a spectacular burnout story of yours that happened to you or someone you know? How did you crawl back to reality, did it change your outlook on life? was it a meh experience? what would you advice others to not do or do?
======
bonniemuffin
About a month before my dissertation defense, I had already accepted a postdoc
offer across the country, put in notice on my apartment, signed a new lease
and arranged my cross-country move, but I had an absolutely impossible amount
of work left on the list of things my dissertation committee claimed I needed
to do before I could graduate, and my experiments just weren't working.

It was clear that the work was impossible, but the committee wouldn't budge on
the fact that I had to finish it. I was working around the clock and then
laying in bed for a few hours worrying before working some more, and I
absolutely couldn't take it anymore.

I decided the only solution was to drop out, which meant the postdoc would
rescind my offer, and I'd have to break the new lease, cancel the move, etc. I
went into the admin office to let them know I was simply not coming into the
lab anymore and they could do whatever they wanted to do about it.

Suddenly the "must do" list evaporated and they said I could just write up my
work and graduate. So I did, and I got the phd and went off to the postdoc and
it all turned out fine-- it turns out all I needed to do was decide to throw
my life away and really mean it, in order to call their bluff.

I think the experience gave me a better sense of when I'm approaching the
burnout zone, so that I can better avoid it. I've also never experienced
anything even close to this in a work environment -- if my job was like that,
I'd quit in a hot second and go work somewhere not-awful. It was only the fact
that they were holding the degree hostage that caused me to feel forced to
overwork myself into an unhealthy state.

~~~
amelius
Whenever I feel a burnout coming, I'm going into max-sleeping mode: I then
sleep 10 hours or more each day. It seems to help.

~~~
charlesdm
This might sound weird, but I seriously love my sleep. Self employed
independent developer now so I can structure my life in whatever way I want it
to.

I just feel way better and am more productive whenever I get between 8 to 10
hours of sleep every day + don't have to wake up from an alarm.

------
middle334
Drank for the first 25 years of my career. High-functioning alcoholic, I
guess. You've definitely heard of the products I have a bunch of code in, and
the companies I worked for. I don't know how I managed getting blasted every
night and still write all that code. As things got worse I started working for
smaller and smaller companies, and wound up essentially jobless and alone and
drinking off of my savings in a Silly Valley townhouse full of liquor bottles.

The CEO of the startup I'd just blown-off a job at (showed up the first week,
"worked at home" for another couple of weeks, then stopped showing up
entirely) drove over and knocked on my door to find out what was going on.
Drunk off my ass, I told him, and that I'd get some help. So I made That Call
and got some help. Did about three weeks of inpatient care (Stanford recovery
unit, and then a place in the Santa Cruz mountains), then moved into a halfway
house and spent a lot of time in AA meetings [AA is controversial, I know].
Never spent another night in that townhouse, wound up selling it. That CEO
hired me back as a consultant a few months after I got out of inpatient.

I've got 18 years sober now, much of which I've spent working on software at
great companies on products you've almost certainly heard of and probably
used. Married, with a teen-age son, and doing better financially than I ever
would have imagined. Still going to AA meetings, though nowhere near as often
as I probably should.

~~~
kirse
_[AA is controversial, I know]_

AA is controversial among a tiny minority of anti-religion internet blowhards.
For the vast majority of reasonable folks, it really isn't. Glad to hear it
has worked for you.

~~~
dragonwriter
AA is controversial not only for it's religious content, but also because it's
empirically both far less effective than it claims and less effective than
alternatives. See, e.g,
[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irr...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-
irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/)

~~~
gotthemwmds
How can anyone make an empirical statement about AA -- an organization that
does not collect any sort of statistics about itself what so ever?

~~~
dragonwriter
AA not collecting statistics doesn't prevent other people from conducting
studies of recovery in addicts that include people in AA.

------
atdt
I am in the midst of one. It has been about a year and a half, plus or minus,
and it has taken a tremendous toll on my well-being.

I find it especially difficult to deal with the mismatch between my sense of
what I can do, which is calibrated to my former self, and what I can actually
deliver. I desperately need to believe that what I am going through is a
temporary perturbation, so I keep trying to "shake it off", and I make plans
and commitments from a sense of self that is still stubbornly calibrated to
who I was then and not what I am today. As the months turn into years, that
sense of competence seems increasingly fantastical and dubious. Was I ever
good at my job? Did I suck then, too, and just fail to realize it?

These doubts are compounded by the fact that I have changed employers and
change teams multiple times so no one I work with now is acquainted with that
former self. But he really did exist, at one point. I swear he did. At least I
think he did.

> When you are playing really well ... you can’t even imagine playing badly.
> And when you are playing badly, you can’t even remember what it felt like to
> play well.

(Tiger Woods: How Low Can He Go [http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-
cassidy/tiger-woods-how-l...](http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-
cassidy/tiger-woods-how-low-can-he-go))

~~~
dnautics
my sense of burnout (having been through it myself and watched closely about
10-12 people go through it) is that it's caused when there's a huge mismatch
between an expected reward and a large amount of effort expended prior to the
reward.

What was the event that caused you to burn out in the first place? It looks
like you expected at least social (if not material) recognition for some
herculean effort that you went through - it failed to arrive when you cliffed
out, and you're not obtaining that due to the circumstances in the meantime?

If I'm right (I may not be). My suggestion would be to make sure you're on
teams or a project where there is a direct relationship between effort and
reward, or where you can work on small projects that don't come with a 'big
payoff' but can rebuild your confidence that you can provide value to your
org. You should also try to be under a manager that is good at recognizing
(verbally if not anything else) your achievements.

If you don't think you can find that easily, take some time off and go drive
for lyft. (Don't expect to make too much money off if it, so only plan to do
it for a short bit). There's a direct relationship between effort and reward
in that industry.

~~~
atdt
That's not how it happened in my case. I was promoted to a manager role that I
wasn't suited for, and pretended I could just go on being an individual
contributor while still handling the managerial role. I went from doing good
work as a developer to mediocre work as a manager, and I started seeing
personal failure in everything I touched.

I left the organization after that and moved across the country to take
another job. That was the summer / spring of 2016. My five-year-old, who was
otherwise healthy, started having tonic-clonic ("grand mal") seizures around
that time. Neither my wife or I have a history of epilepsy in our families and
neither of us had seen a grand mal seizure before, so we thought he was dying.
My wife called 911 while I ran downstairs with him in my arms and I basically
screamed until the ambulance arrived. He had another seizure about a month
after that, and a month after that, and so on. The peak came in August 25 of
2016, when he had a series of seizures in rapid succession (status
epilepticus), landing him (and us) in the ICU. I will spare you the details.

He is healthy now -- we were fortunate enough to find an anti-seizure drug
that is effective at controlling his seizures. But his parents (i.e., us)
haven't recovered entirely.

There are other factors that have caused turbulence over the past couple of
years, but they pale in comparison. I've had a lot on my plate. I know other
people who have dealt with / are dealing with worse, with greater poise than I
can muster, but I am who I am.

I can't quit my job and drive for Lyft. I have a family to support.

~~~
freakycangooroo
I just want to say that i've had several burnouts throughout life so far, the
majority being during key projects for my school/university. This has become a
recurrent event as it is now happening also during my work. Anxiety feeds it.
In any case, i also have history of grand mal seizures and sleep deprivation
is one of the key triggers for this. I'm actively trying to improve my
lifestyle and take control of my life. As my neurologist said: focus on
psychohygiene.

------
AnonyBrah
Quit my first job (software engineer) after 5 months.

I was burned out, not only from the work, but from spending my entire life
following orders - from school to the workplace. So I quit my job after 5
months despite the fact that that's considered sacrilege, with maybe $13k in
my bank account.

I spent the next 3 months pursuing nothing but my hobby at the time (music
production). The first month was possibly the best month of my entire life. It
was the first time I truly felt free - no homework, no stress of finding a
job, no having to be in an office from 9:30-5:30 M-F.

Then I ran out of money, so I had to start applying for jobs again. Ended up
getting a much better job (both pay-wise and quality-wise), so it worked out.

Now I'm burned out again and completely sick of working in this industry. The
day-to-day work is boring as hell, and I couldn't care less about Javascript
frameworks. I hate having to spend the bulk of my waking hours in the prison
of an office.

But I continue working because I'm saving a lot of money every month.
Currently have almost $100k in the bank. After this job, I'm going to take at
least a good year off to do what I want to do, not what the labor markets
force me to. I have a lot of passion in certain areas that I'm not able to
devote full attention to due to work. I want to have a much greater positive
impact on the world than being some menial code monkey working on proprietary
software or a corporate Kool-Aid drinking cock sucker.

I've realized that I will never be happy in a traditional job. Being
subservient and following orders is not in my nature.

~~~
emerongi
I can relate. I took a year off university for medical reasons and am not sure
whether to return. I felt miserable in uni, but I got a decent job right now
and am truly happy for probably the first time in my life. On the other hand I
would be putting my future in jeopardy by not getting a degree.

I'm not sure wtf to do to be honest. School has not been my thing since like
9th grade, I barely even attended the last grade. I think the system just
totally started grinding my gears and now uni feels similar.

~~~
dilemma
School is horrible but make sure to get your degree. It's a requirement for
various things, for example moving abroad, and not having it would limit your
future in many ways.

~~~
richev
I can attest to that - you never know what doors you might want to walk
through in the future that require a degree to open (or are a lot easier to
open if you have a degree).

Examples...

1) I moved from the UK to Australia last year. Having a degree made it a lot
easier for me to get the requisite number of 'points' on their visa system.

2) A friend (from University) who just got a government job in Canada, had to
dig out his degree certificate for job application process.

We graduated back in 1996 (21 years ago! _gulp_ ).

------
codewritinfool
This might not be a normal burnout story, so sorry ahead of time. I'm not
mentioning any names of individuals or companies, so please don't ask. They
are all well-known, though. I partnered with a proven businessman for a
project that took more than 5 years and about 8 hours per day, every day (I
was already working 8 hours per day at my daily job). The deal was 50/50\. We
had great early reviews from media but only a handful of sales, like 5. He
kept adding features because he said that's why we didn't have sales. The new
features did not bring us sales. In the end it was my fault. He was known for
being ruthless and litigious. When his attorneys came calling for full source
code I caved and gave it all away and walked away from the partnership. It
ruined a friendship or two, was tough on my marriage, and for a time I was
suicidal. He never made any money on the product itself and ended up losing
the code. I did not keep a copy. He sold a few of the patents here and there
and they're in use by companies that if I mentioned the names your eyes would
get big. They have incorporated some of the technology into products, but not
all of it. I have no idea what he made on those deals. It absolutely killed my
creativity. That's been 15 years ago and I still can't get motivated on any
side project at all. I still am not completely whole.

~~~
kolleykibber
I can relate. I'm five years into a similar situation and trying daily to
recover my attitude to risk. It's no surprise that I've discovered an interest
in academia. What do you think it would take to get you to get excited on a
side project again?

~~~
codewritinfool
I honestly don't know. I do embedded for work, and have no problem there,
maybe because it is very low-level and doesn't have a UI or run on a PC.

I have had ideas, but when I'm home and I open the IDE, I sit there a while,
stare at it, and then close it.

~~~
oulu2006
hey mate, just wanted to say sorry about how life turned out, you're at least
in a position where you can do something else if you wanted to...most people
are not. I know, it's small comfort.

My first startup, 3.5 years of blood and tears, literally walked away with
nothing (internal politics). No equity, I couldn't afford to exercise my
options.

Also, wanted to quickly add, i also had to pay out thousands in legal advice
to even keep my options! we didn't even get proper option certificates in the
years i was there...place was a mess.

------
throwaway378037
It's happening right now, for me. Burnout feels like having no purchase on
life, nothing making sense, no creativity, no joy, just fleeting comforts amid
growing and deepening discomfort.

The way I see it, this kind of tiredness can't be met by a good night's sleep.
It's a tiredness of the soul.

Sadly, what I have found is that to cope with the tiredness, boredom, stress
and loneliness of my 'successful' life, I have turned time and time again to
pornography. My use has spiralled and includes really quite violent, and in
some cases illegal, stuff. And I have hated myself for it. I don't even enjoy
it.

The problem is that the porn addiction itself exacerbated and accelerated the
burnout process, and further isolated me.

Now I have decided to take some time out, with friends and well away from any
internet connection, to break the cycle and re-sensitize myself. I need to
breathe and feel my body again and feel connected to life and other people. In
a few days I will be away from the Internet in a beautiful place in nature
with good, supportive people to be with me.

And for the first time, I intend to be open and share this struggle and let
them know really how dark it has gotten in here.

~~~
ZenoArrow
I'm glad you're opening up about what you're going through. It doesn't fix
everything overnight, but it is the first major step on the road to recovery.
Digital detox definitely sounds like a good idea, especially as it'll help you
to break your porn habits.

To be honest, the way you describe your burnout seems very close to
depression. I'd echo what simbyotic has suggested, in that it's good to reach
out for professional help. Support from family and friends is invaluable, but
a therapist you feel comfortable with may help you connect the dots in a more
complete way.

I hope you find the digital detox gives you a fresh perspective on how your
life can move forward, and helps you start healthier habits. We may not know
each other, but I felt empathy reading your story, and I wish you the best of
luck with the next chapter.

~~~
throwaway378037
Thank you for the kind words.

I have been having professional help for a while and it took some time to
really open up about the issues, but it's a really positive thing.

------
burnout445
Agreed that this questions is asked in a stupid way but I'll throw mine out
there.

Last July I ran a migration (SaaS CRM company) that should have taken 3-4
weeks with 1 week of downtime, but the client insisted on 1 week with 4 days
of downtime. It was the first major migration moving this platform out of beta
and I loved that product (and that client) more than anything, so I said fine.

I made it super clear to my boss that this was going to fucked up and this was
a bad idea, but I was down to try. Long story short I work 20+ hours a day for
7 days (heavily helped by, in retrospect, pretty dangerous amounts of
adderall/provigil/Ritalin/caffeine/ambien for when I actually did need to
sleep) and we got it down.

During the last day of QA I clasped in my office from exhaustion and went
temporarily blind, ended up in the ER. That didn't matter though because the
migration was a resounding success - client was happy, executives were happy,
product was stable.

My boss was incredible (truly the best boss I'll ever have) and was ready to
give me anything I wanted... except a budget for more staff, which was really
the issue here. This product was my baby and I was going to ensure its success
no matter what happened.

Put in my notice three weeks later. They told me to name my price and title
bump to stay, but weren't willing to let me hire the two or three staff I knew
I needed. I offered to stay as long as they needed to help with the transition
but turned down all their bonuses because I didn't want to be beholden to
them.

I finally left 6 months later to make slightly less money with a slightly
higher title at a company that gave me the team I knew I needed. I still miss
that company more than anything, getting to see a mission criticalcproduct go
from idea to being used by massive multinational companies was incredible and
an experience I doubt I'll ever have again.

FWIW I'm still in touch with people from my old team and the company has since
hired three more staff (plus the two existing staff the team already had) and
a VP to manage the team. By not giving me to staff support I asked for and
letting me burn out the company has "lost" somewhere around $800k in new staff
costs alone.

~~~
sergiotapia
Were you paid a ridiculous amount of money to go blind and collapse being
taken to the ER? Like to the tune of $3 million dollars plus?

Why would you suffer through that if not?

~~~
burnout445
$3 million, no. Ridiculous in my mind at the time, yes.

Also - first real development project from start to finish. Not sure you can
put a monetary value on seeing your work actually being used in real life.

Definitely regret letting myself get so burned out / used by the company but
don't regret putting everything I had into that implementation. Still miss
that job - though I think (hope?) that was professional rock bottom so it's a
good force to stop working at a certain point.

~~~
sgt101
Of course, I am not an MD and I know nothing of medicine, however I think it's
not unreasonable to imagine that the sort of episode you describe could have
ended with a crippling stroke or even more awful consequences.

If you had ended up permanently blind, or in a chair, would you have had any
regrets?

~~~
burnout445
Yeah of course - that would have not been ideal. I know myself though (and
know field of the niche products I work on) and I was just going to keep
pushing myself as hard as possible until something like that happened.

I'm glad everything worked out and wish it happened a different way but if I
didn't hit that burn out then I'm sure it would have ended up much worse down
the line.

At the very least now I have a better idea how/when to tell future bosses to
go fuck themselves :)

------
dnautics
A buddy of mine was working in the lab of the scientist who "invented"
unnatural amino acid technology (rumblings about how it was taken from the
postdoc in the lab across the hall). That was the sexy project _de jour_ of
the lab; but my buddy was working on a less sexy project - catalytic
antibodies. This is where you take the concept that antibodies can be adapted
to fit any molecular shape and try to make it fit something that looks like
the transition state of a chemical reaction, resulting in acceleration of the
chemical reaction. (designer enzymes!)

The results till that day were modest at best, and that's because stabilizing
the transition state is only _part_ of what a real enzyme should do, and even
though the professors are supposed to teach you this in your biochem/chemical
biology deep-dive courses in grad school YMMV, and it's easy to sell a starry
eyed grad student, especially when the prof doesn't know any better, too.

Anyways my buddy's project was even worse - he was supposed to make a protease
(an enzyme that degrages proteins). And if you look at proteases, their clefts
wrap around the protein even more than an antibody ever could (they have
shallow clefts), because burying the reaction away from water is a critical
aspect of their function.

He spent three years working in a lab that demanded 80+ hour workweeks.
Towards the end his sleep cycle had flipped, he was playing around making
geometric designs with his pipet tips, and spending much of his workday
playing a flash website gameboy tetris, and many days going to the casino to
play poker instead of work.

finally his boss modified his project, instructing him to graft a
metalloprotease domain, onto the antibody in an attempt to get it working. A
breath of fresh air! Suddenly he was invigorated with a new approach to the
project. But not long after that, he was back to the old routine of being
burned out, and totally unproductive, spending hours on trivialities, like
trying to strip metals from his water supply to really get it right and get it
working. In the end, it never worked.

It turned out that the metalloprotease domain was designed by Homme Hellinga.
Years after this, the scientific community discovered that Homme Hellinga was
faking his enzyme design work.

~~~
codewritinfool
Sorry, I _want_ to get this story but I don't. How did the buddy end up? How
is he now?

~~~
dnautics
He got on the mainline sexy track for the famous lab he was in, suffered
through a seven year postdoc but finally got a faculty position at a mid tier
University.

------
patatino
I had a superior who quit and got treatment. After that he became a forest
ranger.

I think your choice of words "spectacular" & "crawl back to reality" shows
that our society is still not ready to fully accept mental diseases. This is
not personal but why would you think they have to crawl back to reality? I
don't think they ever left.

------
mundanevoice
It happened to me when I was in the first year of my job. I was coding for 14
hrs straight for more than a year. I had a lot of websites that I needed to
maintain and all the tech was new to me.

Then when burnout struck me hard, I realized that I just don't want to open my
laptop anymore. Also, even side project started to feel like a burden to me.

Then I decided, enough is enough and I need to do some changes to my life.

\- I did join a gym near my house.

\- I stopped coding in evenings. I would wake up early and code for 2-3 hours
in morning and be content with whatever I achieve during that time.

\- Evening hours after office would be only for gym, relaxing, having dinner
and watching TV.

Believe me, it was the best decision I did for myself. My health both mental
and physical improved drastically and I started loving coding again.

~~~
TimJYoung
Lots of great advice in these comments, including this one. I've also made a
very conscious effort to keep my work from intruding on my personal life too
much. Without that separation, one can burn out very quickly.

Also, I'm in agreement about the 2-3 hours of "golden" development, with the
rest of the day for thinking, planning, or just doing something else.
Sometimes I'm inclined to do 2 such sessions in one day, but a) I always make
sure that the second session does not interrupt my sleep schedule, b) that I
allow for plenty of down-time in-between, and c) that I don't do it for too
many consecutive days.

~~~
mundanevoice
Glad that you liked my advice. I am going to start doing it once more. I am a
vacation at the moment.

------
rrggrr
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness)

Lost major supplier responsible for about 1/2 our gross profit at about the
same time our broad market entered recession, two key employees were mired in
divorce proceedings, and another key employee left to fight CNS lymphoma.
Three years and about three soul crushing false recoveries later we emerged
with a lot of work ahead to rebuild and reduce debt.

The advice... expect nothing. Don't let the highs carry you or the lows crush
you. Recognize circumstances outside your control and shut the door on them
when it comes to your opinion of yourself. Earthquakes rock the brilliant and
dullards al the same and sometimes having survived the experience is
accomplishment enough.

------
dlet
I had just finished the writing exams after my two years of preparatory class
(a specific program we have in France to join the best business and
engineering schools). During the 2 weeks of exams, I was sleeping 3 hours a
night on average.

When I woke up one morning, everything seemed really blurred. I could not
precisely get where I was in the room and, when I tried to talk to my parents,
they seemed really far away. I was also deeply tired and just wanted to sleep.

After 2 scary days like this, we went to a neurologist. He looked at me and
asked my parents to leave the room. Looking at me, he told me: "I know you
take hard drugs. Tell me anything about it so I can help you". I have never
taken any drug. When he realized this, he did a lot of tests but found
nothing. He just asked me to rest.

After 2 long weeks, I slowly got better and finally fully recovered. The
neurologist told us it was probably some kind of burnout. It happened 2 other
times few years after but it was less intense and I am now able to feel more
precisely when I work too hard or sleep too little and that there are some
risks.

~~~
rikkus
> When I woke up one morning, everything seemed really blurred. I could not
> precisely get where I was in the room and, when I tried to talk to my
> parents, they seemed really far away. I was also deeply tired and just
> wanted to sleep.

Things seeming too far away is called Teleopsia.

I experience Alice In Wonderland Syndrome[1]. Last time I managed to get an
audience with a neurologist - the top one in this hospital, because the others
didn't have a clue what I was describing - he did the same to me: told me I
must be taking lots of drugs. and that I was lying to him when I said I
wasn't. Not useful.

~~~
dlet
Whaou, really interesting. Sounds really like what I experienced. So maybe it
was not a burnout. Thanks, you are better than my neurologist :p

~~~
Xoros
That's it. Talk of what happens to you wherever you can. You might be lucky to
have someone heard about something similar.

Of course it's the Internet and every advice must be taken with a grain of
salt. But you never know.

A close friend to my sister was getting more and more tired. She had multiples
examination but her doctor could not find what she had.

First luck she had, her father is a doctor, so she could talk to hers more
easily that you or I could.

Second luck she had, while one of those talks, another doctor passed by and
heard them talking. It appears that she knew the symptoms from another patient
she had in her own country and they finally could put a name on her illness (I
can't recall what it was, and it's a very rare disease that explained no one
knew about it)

Third luck she had is that it was about time. 2 weeks later she would have
die.

So my point is, doctors are not as smart as they believe they are. And telling
your story every time it's related to the conversation might result in a
discovery like that.

Hope your health stays ok !

~~~
dlet
Great advice, thanks :)

------
iforgotmypass
Wanted to achieve lot in my life. And saw money as means to do that. Was
ambitious, working hard. Left the job, founded company. Worked my ass off for
5 years. Failed. But earned enough so that for the last 2 years haven't been
really working while trying to get my shit together (although soon the savings
will run dry). Ruined my marriage with the only person I really cared about.
Can't get any motivation to do anything and feel "out of loop" and outdated to
get back into the job market. Thinking about the suicide.

Lessons learned: 1) money does not make you happy. If you don't know how to be
happy with little, you won't be happier when you have a lot. 2) job and career
is not everything. Healthy work-life balance means a lot.

.. Actually kinda hard to put all the thoughts, feelings and experiences of
turbulent 7 years in only some sentences.

~~~
astockwell
You don't have to bear the burden alone. There are people available to listen
and talk with you a 24x7 at 1-800-273-8255 (U.S.). Please consider talking to
someone.

------
yeukhon
I started working long hours since undergraduate, plus my then-gf lived in SF
and I was in NY, so I would work and talk to her until she went to bed (3
hours difference so if 11PM there would be 2AM here). Every other week I would
work overnight in my lab. When I was an intern, I would also work on the
weekend in the office until midnight. I remember sleeping overnight several
times in the old Mozilla MV office. Oh not to mention attending several
overnight hackathons (which I hate right now)

I continued this habit working long hours once I started my full time job
espeixally because I was depressed after breaking up with my then-gf. I would
committ 80-100 hours per week. I am talking about 9-9 or longer and on the
weekend 9-5 or whenever I get tired. If major outage, I would be up all night.
I would drop my dinner and solve whatever issues came up. I would skip lunch
to get my code deployed or whatever. I would have 9-5 meetings and then
continued my work afterward. I pretty much did everything I can before my
offshore team takes over. I would just write an email and tell them I got most
of the problems taken care of, just monitor the issues.

Relationship with coworkers and managment, and with my gf all added up.

This went on for about 6-7 years since college.

I am 26 now.

Then I attempted suicide, twice, this year. The second time, a number of HNer
might remember, I posted here my goodbye. I still haven't had the chance to
thank the dozens of people who sent me emails.

I am doing much better, although I can never work that many hours now , and I
also will never do much coding after work unless I really feel like doing so.
If I go back to work, I expect myself work 9-5 and only overtime if I have to.

------
pier25
I've had a few burnouts in my life.

The worst one... I was producing music and sound with a friend for a prime
time TV show. We were supposed to start working on the music in February to
air the show in October.

The project suffered from many production problems. The executive producer was
the son of a billionaire who owns one of the biggest TV networks in Latin
America and had never done this before. One of the directors was a junkie and
a drunk. Money ran out. Actors were not showing up to the stage. It got ugly.

Eventually we started working on the music and FX in September, weeks before
airing. We were 2 guys in charge of producing episodes of 45 minutes. Music,
FX, dialog cutting, etc, at the rate of 2 episodes per week. I slept less than
20 hours per week and drank 5+ red bulls every day. I don't know how I didn't
end up in a hospital.

Even worse, the mastering engineer destroyed our already bad job. We didn't
know about that because we never had time to watch the show on TV and listen
to the final audio that was being aired.

This went on for about 2 months until someone figured out the show was crap
and they started cutting heads. We were fired, and they never payed us about
50% of the work.

I thought making music for an important TV show would be the best thing in my
life, but it killed my musical soul.

------
throwaway26960
Got sued by my previous company for a line of code that they asked me to
change. Luckily I had proof that they asked me to modify that line of code. If
I didn't, well, I'd owe them millions of dollars and have my wages garnished
for the rest of my life. Writing software is a bit ridiculous, your employer
can blame you for anything and you'll have to waste years of your life and
tens of thousands of dollars in the legal system.

~~~
tootie
Wha? Can you elaborate? Did they say you introduced a critical bug or
something? Is there such thing a programmer malpractice?

~~~
throwaway26960
They claimed it was an attempt to sabotage their company, yet they were the
ones that asked me to make the change, jesus, FML.

Definitely learned my lesson on how important it is to get the initial
contract correct, clarifying legal liabilities, responsibilities, etc. All
your hard work and savings can go down the drain in a second if your employer
wants to screw you over.

~~~
nugget
Can you elaborate on their claim for specific damages? How could a temporary
change to robots.txt cause millions of dollars in damage? (Assuming you
weren't telling Google to de-index TripAdvisor or some other huge SEO-
dependant site.)

~~~
throwaway26960
The code change was requested by an employee and it wouldn't have caused any
damage. Feature, not a bug. Imagine trying to explain this to someone who
doesn't know what "code" is. It's just people making up a story to blame you.
The point is that you can be blamed for anything you do and become involved in
a frivolous lawsuit.

~~~
nugget
Usually in the US you can only be sued for actual, provable economic damages
that are suffered as a result of your actions. It sounds like there may have
been more to the story here.

~~~
throwaway26960
They claimed to be damaged all throughout the complaint, yet didn't provide
any evidence. Imagine explaining this to someone non-technical like your
grandmother. You can make up a story and that non-technical person is going to
have no idea if you are telling the truth or not.

------
user68858788
Grew up poor and depressed, decided to take risks because suicide is always an
option. Took on $150k of loans to move out of the Midwest to an art college.
Instructors couldn't help, I dropped out and taught myself programming. Flash
games, then websites, then an internship. I lied about still being in college.
Five years of frugality, study, and weekly depressive episodes before I got my
first real job. I burned out quick, the smallest pressure would have me stuck
in a depression so deep that I couldn't form thoughts.

My burnout is continuing into year four. Working at a big name company for a
year now and haven't written a single line of code. I feel so apart from the
team I'm on. Still have periods where I can't think, but now nobody notices
when I don't come in, sometimes for weeks at a time. The big salary doesn't
count for much when loan payments and city rent take the majority. Haven't
seen my family in three years, missed both my grandparents' funerals.

I still think it was the right decision to leave the Midwest, but I wish it
didn't take so much sacrifice.

------
Scirra_Tom
Mine was recently - worked on our new website for about a year. Then we took
the decision to make it scalable. Tried to retro fit scalability in 4-6 weeks
before giving up (ouch).

Took the decision to start from a blank canvas around last September, and up
until February I only recall having several days off (Christmas, NYE etc).
Worked in the day, the evenings and weekends. Impending sense of doom only
seemed to subside when I made progress - this feedback loop kept me hooked and
driving forwards.

Launched the site ([https://www.construct.net](https://www.construct.net)) a
couple of months later, but it burnt me out. Had to take a fairly significant
amount of time off to switch off. I was waking up in the night with a horrible
twisting in my chest and random bursts of adrenaline. Not healthy!

The site has been up and running and selling now for months really well, so I
am proud and relieved.

Benefits:

* Learnt how to make a scalable site

* Re-writes are always significantly better written

* Learnt a LOT

Downsides:

* My health!

Also, you can't retrofit scalability which is a lesson I learnt the hard way.
Seems obvious but I had a years work at stake so had to give it a try and
having the guts to scrap everything and start again was incredibly painful but
has worked out well long term. Feels very comparable to learning to backup.

When I look back at those several months - I honestly remember very little of
it. As our startup has grown we've also learnt than I'm now becoming a
significant bottleneck as my bandwidth isn't unlimited and it's a huge relief
that we're now taking steps to address this.

I'm also not someone who can easily ask for help and leave it until it's too
much to handle. This was a big contributing factor.

Not a "spectacular" burn out story but I teetered very close on the edge of
something quite negative - I'm not exactly sure what but I'm glad I avoided
it.

~~~
thesagan
That is an incredible website. Wow. Hope you're doing better health-wise.

~~~
Scirra_Tom
Thanks, yes am now!

------
jacquesm
Ran a start-up for 7 years, burned out because of the toxic business
environment for a start-up and ended up on an island in Canada. The next
couple of years I spent building an off-the-grid house, a solar array, a metal
working workshop and a windmill. In retrospect I wasn't doing less to recover,
just different stuff and stuff that I did not need to interact with the world
of business for. Since 2007 back in 'cilvilization', completely rebooted my
career in a different direction which feels much better.

------
mindwork
Started startup with extremely high expectations of me and bad partner. Had
9-5 work as software engineer I threw myself on the startup working after
hours till exhaust. I decided to do something to relax - started crossfit.
Once I just collapsed on the street and after that I had extremely bad panic
attacks and near death feels. Didn't know that it was panic attacks and
clinical depression at the moment, thought maybe some internal organ damage.
Took me 3 separate 1-month admissions to hospital and 3.5 years of taking
anti-depressants to recover. It did change my outlook on life, first of all I
shifted my priorities to health first and work - second, I'm trying to stay
out of the stress and taking care of my body(running, gym, meditation, yoga)
everything that helps. Ever since then I don't things too serious, and I don't
wanna ever work till exhaust. I know it's sounds cheesy but listen to your
body and be healthy. Also it takes a lot to admit that you are in depression,
and seek medical attention to that. If you wake up every morning and the only
thing that you want is to go to sleep because you can't embrace new day - you
are in depression. If your personality changed out of the sudden - you are in
depression. If you don't have any thoughts in your head only feeling of
worries - you are in depression.

------
throwawway32018
After a decade of depression and trying to drown it with alcohol, weed, and
the occasional psychedelic, something finally snapped. I'd tried therapy, AA,
switching industries, none of it seemed to make anything better. Asked for a
sabbatical from work but they wouldn't grant it, so I quit. Packed my things,
moved in with the parents, and went cold turkey. I guess you could call it a
self-inflicted rehab; they live in the middle of nowhere and not knowing
anybody or having a car I couldn't really get myself in trouble.

The first few months were hell, but I read up on CBT, stoicism, meditation,
habits and personal health and slowly, with a lot of work my mental state
started to improve. There were a lot of weeks were it felt like I was
regressing but I kept practicing healthy self-talk and eventually got through
the rough spots. Being out of work, I worked on side projects to keep my
skills sharp and learn new things whenever I was feeling good enough.

It's been a year now, and I've never been happier. After maybe 9 months I was
feeling strong enough to "re-enter society," so I started applying for jobs.
Nothing's materialized yet but I'm confident I'll get back on own feet sooner
or later. Regardless of the current job-hunt stress, I think it was
unequivocally worth it to straighten out.

The books that helped me most:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46674.Feeling_Good](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/46674.Feeling_Good)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7015403-the-gifts-of-
imp...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7015403-the-gifts-of-imperfection)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13721709-the-
antidote](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13721709-the-antidote)

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/865.The_Alchemist](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/865.The_Alchemist)

~~~
thesagan
This is pretty much what I did, and although difficult I think the alternative
would've been worse. Rehab for me, too. Can't help other people with a overly-
broke mind/body.

Didn't think it'd be so hard to break back in after a successful run prior to
burning out, but I'm very optimistic something will turn up. (Please don't
turn on me now, economy!)

------
sandworm101
Lawyer. 8 years in IT/privacy/compliance consulting, mostly startups. Tired of
ratrace. Applied to armed forces to become JAG officer. Took all thier
apptitude tests. "Want to be a pilot?"... hell yes. Now a 2lt finished basic
and waiting for flight school. Of i fail as pilot ill become jag. Never felt
more relaxed.

------
HillaryBriss
i know the request here is for the spectacular, but sometimes burnout is a
low-grade smoldering, a background process that lasts for years and ends with
a dull retreat from the furious confusion. without some creative (and
fictitious) adornments the story is a bore.

but maybe that's ok. sometimes life is more exciting than it needs to be.

------
luckydude
I pushed the idea of clusters at Sun. I was the guy that designed Sunbox,
which was a bunch of small cheap servers in a rack with an Kalpana ethernet
switch in front of them and some vlan like stuff that made it appear like all
the servers were on all the subnets (no router overhead, this back in the days
of 20MHZ sparc chips, you actually noticed the router in the mix.)

Here's a picture of it, written GNU pic (I say GNU because I got James to put
in a construct called the `i'th so you could do for loops. So the picture is
adjustable, I can change the cpus variable and it will draw the picture with
the new number of cpus. That's GNU pic unique.)

[http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/sunbox.pdf](http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/sunbox.pdf)

It was a big failure. For lots of reasons. Scott (ceo) insisted that it ship
with Solaris rather than SunOS, nobody wanted Solaris (somewhere I have a tape
of me presenting it at the Moscone center and someone was beating me up about
the Solaris issue, I finally lost it and said "I know, I hate Solaris too, I
was forced into it". My boss said "find all copies of that tape and destroy
them". Yeah Solaris).

Sun was focussed on SMP machines, they thought that would solve all the
world's problems, clusters just couldn't do it. Which completely missed the
point. Sunbox shipped with SMP machines in the rack, I think 4 processors
sparcstation 10's.

I pushed it along through sheer will power. It was like a little dude pushing
on an oil tanker, I actually pushed Sun a degree or two off their stated path.
But there was a ton of "Larry is trying to kill SMP" fud.

But it was too much. I burned out and my boss, Ken Okin (fantastic dude for
many reasons), said "Go home, I'll call you when I need you". When I say "too
much" I mean it. I was either in, or about to be in, a nervous breakdown and
Ken saw that. I came back in after about 3 months and Ken took one look at me
and said "I said I'd call you, go home!". Just to be clear, Sun was paying me
to stay home.

So I did, for almost a year. My job became playing pool, but that's a story
for another day (and probably boring to this crowd).

I did see my product manager years later, up in Tahoe skiing. He came over,
bought a beer, and said "I guess you were right about that cluster thing".
This was after google did 10,000 machine clusters that worked really really
well, way better than any single SMP machine hope to do. Kudos to him for
admitting it even if it was obvious.

~~~
pizza
> My job became playing pool, but that's a story for another day (and probably
> boring to this crowd).

You were being paid to do whatever you wanted to do. Doesn't sound boring to
me! Would you share that story?

~~~
luckydude
Well it sort of was boring. I was young and single and trying to chase girls.
Trying but not succeeding.

I eventually got bored and wanted something else to do and since I was hanging
out in bars, pool popped up as an option. Other than some screwing around as a
kid, I'd never played pool. So I started learning. Turns out that pool is this
neat combination of physics, chess, and a dash of human psychology. The
physics part is obvious, the chess part is thinking multiple moves ahead (when
you get good you know all the shots you are going to take after you break),
the psychology part is messing with the other person (even if they are better
and they leave you no shot you can do the same to them).

So my routine became sleep in until about 10:30 or 11am, hop on my motorcycle
and go over to a taco place at 11th & Folsom in San Francisco (which is where
I was living at the time), get some food, wander over to the Paradise Lounge
and practice.

The Paradise Lounge was a bar that opened around noon, and during the daytime
was frequented by drunk taxi drivers, hookers, and various low lifes. I hung
out there because they opened up the pool tables and let you play for free
during the day. And for Ron.

Ron was one of the low life types. He was from Minnesota but he had been
pushed out. He got in a fight with his brother and punched him in the chest
and the brother died (this is not widely enough known: in young males, in a
one second time period, there are about 3 milliseconds in which, if enough of
a shock is caused, they will have a heart attack and usually die). So his
family threw him out.

He ended getting a job at a pool hall and they let him sleep there. He learned
pool there and practiced in a way that he got very good. In pool, when playing
8 ball, there is this thing called "8 ball choke". The 8 ball is the one you
shoot last and lots of people freeze up on that shot and mess up easy shots.
So Ron took all the 8 balls from all the regular tables and practiced on a
snooker table (snooker tables are much larger and have smaller pockets for
smaller balls. If you can make shots on a snooker table with regular balls you
are extremely accurate). So he got good and no 8 ball choke for him.

By the time I met him he was something of a legend in that bar. As I came to
be part of the regular crew everyone watched me play Ron. Well, watched Ron
beat me. He could beat me left handed, he could beat me one handed, he could
beat me one handed with his left hand, he could beat me in napkin pool (before
each shot he would put a cocktail napkin on the table and if the cue ball
wasn't on the napkin after his shot then it was his turn).

I kept coming back for more and I was getting better. I'd play Ron from about
noon until they closed the tables and I started playing the "bridge and
tunnel" people who came in to party in the evening. I dunno if this is a
universal thing but in America it's tradition that if you win the game the
next opponent pays for the next game. It's called "holding the table" and if
you are good then you can play all night for free. I was slowly becoming that
good. So long as Ron wasn't there.

Me being the nerd that I am, it's 6 months in, and I own my own cue. Which is
a stupid and sort of a douche move, if you are holding anything other than a
bar cue it screams "I think I'm better than you" so every pool hall hustler
wants to beat you; many did. But less and less as time went on.

Somewhere around 6-7 months into this the unthinkable happened. I beat Ron
fair and square. The bar full of taxi drivers and hookers and other random
folk, all of whom had watched me go from completely crappy to beating Ron,
burst into applause. To give you some idea of how much of a mess I was at the
time, I felt like a million bucks. This bar full of people had accepted me and
were rooting for me. At the time, it felt fantastic. Later I was like "WTF?
You care what a bunch of losers think?" Yep, at the time I did. At the time,
they were my crowd. Weird in retrospect.

Remember that I was originally chasing girls? I'd long since given up, I was
never good at that until just before I met my wife. And I was becoming
frustrated with playing at the Paradise Lounge in the evening because each
time a new set of girls walked in you could feel them scanning the bar,
checking out the guys, you could almost hear them going "nope, nope, maybe,
nope ...". I always got the nopes and it would throw me off my game from time
to time.

So I started branching out. Played in lots of different pool halls, joined a
league, etc. One night the nope got to me so I packed up and left. It was
early and the way I went home was down Market street, through the Castro, over
to Noe Valley. There was a place on Market I liked to eat, that's why the
weird route. As I was going down Castro street there was a bar open with a
pool table. I knew this was the gay district but I thought why the hell not?
No girls to throw me off my game.

Into the bar I go. Put my quarters on the table, get a beer, wait my turn.
Turned out to be one of the coolest experiences of my life. The gay guys have
pretty refined gaydar, or I'm just too damn ugly, because they were completely
uninterested in me. It was like I was a fly on the wall watching.

The atmosphere in there was really cool, it was kind of like that playfulness
you had as a little kid in a sandbox, playing with trucks and other little
kids that were playing with trucks. It felt almost innocent. Except with a
heavy dose of sexuality. It's hard to explain, but I was jealous of the gay
guys. They get to do stuff that if I did that to a girl in a bar I'd get
slapped and/or get sent to jail for assault. I could be in the middle of game,
my opponent would be leaning over to make a shot, some other dude walks up,
reaches between his legs, and cups his junk. The player would look back at the
dude and it would be one of two reactions: "Uh, no thanks dude, I want to
finish this game" or "Larry, nice to meet ya, but I gotta go, can you find
someone to finish the game?" No drama, it was yes or no, the guy who came onto
the dude would be cool and walk away if that was the message. You could never
do that to a girl and get away with it, at least I couldn't.

So even though the gay guys have a tough life, what with the stigma, AIDS,
etc, they get to play with each other in a way straight dudes could only dream
about. Like I said, I was jealous.

I played at that gay bar for a few weeks or a month, it was fun, but
eventually I missed the girls even if I was Mr Nope. So back to the Paradise I
go and guess what? This smoking hot mexican girl plays pool with me, she
wasn't very good but she was a lot better than average, so it was fun, and I
drew out that game until we were both on the 8 ball. Went out with a length of
the table bank shot (I had a habit of doing those when I was a lot better than
the other person. A little douchey but it gave them a chance because I missed
those about maybe 30% of the time). She whistled and gave me her phone number
and told me to call her. I think that's maybe the only time a girl did that.

I didn't call her, I was too chicken. A couple of weeks later she's there
again, walks right up to me, looks up at me and says "How come you didn't
call?". "Oh, I didn't think you really wanted me to call you". "You call me,
you hear?" So I did, we ended up dating for a couple of years. She was pretty
crazy but man, so hot, as in the bar gets quiet and every dude is looking at
her when she walks in, like that hot. So fun but it eventually ended, she had
no drive and I needed to be with someone with some drive.

I eventually went back to work, Sun let me do whatever I wanted, I ended up
working for Paul Borrill. Did lmbench and some networking stuff. Paul asked me
if I wanted to go give a talk at Hot Interconnects on ethernet vs ATM. Hell
yes I did! I hated ATM, thought it was stupid, I was pushing for 100Mbit
ethernet, Paul knew all that and he knew I'd badmouth ATM, which I think he
wanted but he was far too politically astute to say that out loud. So off I
went to the conference, gave my rant (because that's what it was) about how
Sun's $4000 (their cost at the time I believe) ATM card was never going to be
as cheap as the $50 ethernet card I had bought at Fry's on my way to the talk.
The room went dead silent, I think because everyone was going "but my boss
says I have to work on ATM". Finally, some Indian guy in the back started
clapping and then the room exploded. So I think they agreed and history has
shown all us to be right on that one. And it helped get me out of my burnout
funk.

Fun times, sort of, but I don't recommend getting so burned out that it takes
a year of pool to pull you back. But a huge thank you to Ken Okin for letting
me take that time and to Paul Borrill for nudging me back into work.

Sorry for the wall of text :)

Edit: typos mostly, and a thank you to Paul.

~~~
pizza
Hey this is a cool vignette - thanks for sharing.

~~~
luckydude
No problem. It was a slice of my life, sort of an interesting slice, I always
wanted to write it up so thank you for asking. Maybe some day my kids will
google me as luckydude and find this story. That would be cool.

------
strangecyan
I think these are really important stories to share and openly discuss but the
way this question is asked is just ridiculously insensitive.

~~~
aeleos
I agree completely. The stories that people are telling aren't just yea I did
a lot of work for x amount of time and then I needed a break. These are real
stories of people having mental health issues due to the pressures that we and
society put on ourselves. These kinds of stories should be taken as warnings
of what can happen to us if we don't recognize the warnings that our bodies
and minds tell us. Especially considering how society teaches us to ignore
them.

------
pengo
I have my own software development company. My clients use a purpose-built
framework for managing funding applications and grants online. As a sole
operator my workload varies: when I add a new client, customisations can keep
me at full capacity for several weeks, at other times maintenance can total
less than twenty hours a week unless there are requested enhancements or I'm
adding new features.

Late last year while my business hours were at a low ebb, I was asked if I
could pitch in for six months as lead developer on a government web portal.
I'd taken a similar contract two years before when my own business was ramping
up, and not found it too taxing to meet the needs of my own clients on
evenings and weekends. I didn't factor in two things: I now had twice as many
clients, and a cynical dynamic called "Murphy's Law".

Almost as soon as I signed the government contract, clients began requesting
(different) extensions to the framework. Without the contract I would have
been at full capacity. I found myself starting work for my own clients at
4.00am every morning, then heading off to lead the web portal development
team, then putting in more hours for my own clients at the end of the day ...
plus weekends. This state of affairs continued with very little respite for
the entire six months.

Knowing normal life will resume at a fixed future point is often enough to get
through something like this. But my health suffered increasingly as time
passed. In the last few weeks I was very sick indeed. I was asked to renew the
government contract for a further six months but had the sense to turn that
offer down. Two days after the contract finished I had to be admitted to
hospital. I was seriously ill, and it has taken two months to get back to the
level of health I usually enjoy.

Yes, I was foolish to accept that contract. I have learnt a lesson I won't
forget.

~~~
kespindler
Could I get your contact information to chat with you more about government
contracting? It's a space I'm doing a lot of research in, and very curious to
learn more about!

~~~
pengo
Bear in mind this is government contracting in New Zealand. You're welcome to
contact me if that's still relevant: leigh at else dot co dot nz will do the
trick.

------
acct37284632
I created an account extra for this, cause this is super personal.

So, it all started last year. My mother who has been suffering from lung
cancer for three years was doing pretty well - given the condition she has to
deal with.

Then, all of the sudden, my brother has died in an accident. My mom took that
with the pain I guess only a mother can feel, but to my surprise she was
braver than I thought.

I, however, pushed all the pain away and started to work as hell. Within weeks
I took new responsibilities at work place, travelled a lot and to make things
even worse, fell in love with a co-worker of mine. This ruined my years
lasting relationship, but at that moment, I thought, it was worth it.

Turned out, it was not. My new relationship became a nightmare. Passive
aggression all over, paired with depression, illegit accusations and stark
disputes all over. Of course, all of this happened only when we were alone.

I have always been a very "stable" person, but at this time, I began asking
myself what am I doing here. My mother is about to die, my brother had passed
away, I left my girlfriend, who was my partner and my best friend for years
for a girl who is so full of negativity. And the few moments I have for
myself, I am doing hard work.

It was too much for me. I collapsed and could not do anything. Thanks to a
good friend of mine, who brought me to the hospital. I went to a private
clinic specialised on trauma and depression in a very nice area.

I had sports, psychological sessions, creativity and relaxation all over the
day for a while.

I came back stronger than ever before. For me, key was to really enjoy every
single moment. "Love it, leave it or change it", has become my slogan more
than ever. Contrary to my situation before, I just applied it also to the very
small parts of life. And, my focus changed from "leave it" to "change it". I
am thankful for what I have, even if this is something I currently struggle
with. But when I am really thankful from the deepest of my heart, I find the
strength to change it. I started giving a fuck what people I don't care about
think about me and instead started to reveal true feelings to the people I
really want to have in my life. I learnt to say "no". I have never been
overloaded with work from mean co-workers or managers who just piled their
shit on my table. It was more I actively searched for work that somehow
sounded "interesting" or a meaningful CV bullet point. I have been the mean
manager of myself. I stopped that. Saying no to a thing that just sounds
"pretty cool", but is actually not meaningful in my life, is the best lesson I
ever got taught.

And, best of all: I quitted my job and just agreed to to stuff for the company
as contractor until they find another person to work on it. I joined the
company of a good friend of mine, which is outside the tech world, doing half
of the hours I used to do and get the same amount of money. And the best
thing, I can now learn and play with technology with no pressure which makes
me more productive. And with that knowledge I feel I can help my friend
surviving with his non-tech company in the storm of digitalization.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
I'm curious because there are still consequences here which weren't resolved
while you fixed yourself.

How long were you seeing or in the private clinic?

What did you mom think?

How is your mom?

> I joined the company of a good friend of mine, which is outside the tech
> world, doing half of the hours I used to do and get the same amount of
> money.

That sounds like an impractical luxury, I'm glad that is working for you.

Would staying with your other girlfriend have helped? You were bored of it
then, and your new slogan "Love it, leave it, or change it" seems to be not
new at all, it is exactly what you did before.

~~~
acct37284632
> How long were you seeing or in the private clinic?

A few months.

> What did you mom think?

I had her support.

> Would staying with your other girlfriend have helped?

I think, I wouldn't have collapsed and would not have hit the floor so hard.
But it wouldn't have helped me getting priorities right.

> You were bored of it then, and your new slogan "Love it, leave it, or change
> it" seems to be not new at all, it is exactly what you did before.

I a way, yes. But "leave it" is now my ultima ratio. Before "change it" felt
almost always like a waste of time, now I see "change it" more like a passion
to work on things rather than just always look for better alternatives.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
thank you for the responses, it is very insightful

------
burnout2017
Throwaway account, no names, vague time and place details, for reasons.

I loved my job, programming and developing software was what I always wanted
to do, and had been very successful doing it for years. My company was
shooting for new areas, with underwhelming results so far, but trying
nevertheless.

Then, at one point, my personal life took a serious blow, one that relatively
quickly destroyed my relationship with my spouse, but without the ability to
separate or divorce. Social and family-at-large life, which had never been
intense but was always satisfying, vanished. During that time, my company's
situation simultaneously degraded in quality of projects, budgets and general
outlook, and my job increased in scope with a lot less hands on programming,
less resources, more management, more teams and more firefighting (human and
technical). Like in the personal side, I was professionally stuck without the
ability to make drastic changes.

After a few months of this, with increasingly frequent episodes of stress and
anxiety, I ran out of steam and blew up completely. I took a leave under
medical supervision, doing therapy and working on coming to terms with all the
various aspects of what I was dealing with. Despite the newly available time
to do whatever I wanted (within reason), I couldn't do anything at all. My
mind ached to do some coding for its own sake, but it took a long time before
my body could again be able to keep focus on anything for more than a few
minutes.

Time has passed. Therapy helped, coming to terms has continued to advance at a
very slow pace but is still very far from complete. My focus came back, and I
went back to work in pretty much the same circumstances, professional and
personal, that I was before the blowup. Part of the anxiety turned into desire
to overcome challenges, another part remained (and still does) as energy-
draining anxiety.

I wake up every day knowing that I'm not over it. I remind myself that me and
everyone around me wants, and to various degrees needs, me to go on. I hope
that things work out, and it is quite possible that they will, although it is
impossible to predict how, when or to what extent. I have learned to allow
myself some room to, in the bad days, not be the nice and strong person I want
to be, and instead let weakness take over while I try to rest. One weak day
something bad may happen. Many days trying to stay strong may lead me down the
hole again, hard. I just try not to think of, or control, the future much
anymore.

------
throwawayzzzz
PhD dropout. There was a rotating door of students joining for a year and then
quitting, but I stuck it out for 3. By the end I was nocturnal, experienced my
first panic attack, broke up with a long relationship, and my file
organization went to shit. A few professors were betting behind my back
whether I'd quit. We met 7 days a week, and I was expected to have progress
everyday. Depression and stress evolved to new levels. Considered ways to
relieve stress, like smoking, self harm, therapy, drinking. Tried some.
Finally, decided if I didn't quit, I was headed down a very dangerous path.
Spent the next 6 months playing video games and recovering, with the help of
drinking alone, and trying to date again.

After 6 months, I was more or less better again, but picked up some minor bad
habits I still haven't really kicked. Quitting PhD was the best thing I ever
did for myself.

------
nulagrithom
I had spent the day up in Omak, WA trying to install a new router at one of
our offices. Omak is _nowhere_ \-- about an hours drive from the Canadian
border in central Washington. Both the fiber company _and_ the ISP had screwed
up, and I ended up drinking my lunch at a bar. I was really pissed off because
I knew there was no way they'd fix it any time soon, and I'd have to spend
hours driving back up to that god-forsaken town sometime next week. On my way
back, I started contemplating a career change, as one often does after a
particularly frustrating day, when I saw a hitchhiker on the side of the
highway.

I've picked up every hitchhiker I could since 2008, during the housing market
crash. That was the year I saw a very clean looking man with a dog hitchhiking
out of town. Being young and dumb, I picked him up. He was a construction
worker, and told me the story of how he'd lost everything during the crash.
He'd just sold his truck and was trying to make it to Spokane, where he'd
heard there was still some commercial work going on. It took him two days to
hitchhike from Seattle to Yakima; that's normally a two hour drive. That hit
home. My entire extended family had lost their construction business during
the crash. I've been picking people up ever since.

So I pulled over on the side of the highway just outside of Omak and offered a
ride.

We start with some small talk. He's looking for work picking fruit and was
striking out in Omak, so he figured he'd move along further south. I tell him
I'm headed through Wenatchee, which about that time was ramping up for the
cherry season. He'd never heard of Wenatchee, but it sounds agreeable to him.
I thought that a little odd, but then he starts asking me what I was doing up
in Omak.

I tell him about the router I was trying to install. He asks what brand it is
(Cisco). He starts asking more questions about what was wrong. We're about 10
minutes in to troubleshooting the problem verbally when I realize he knows
_way_ more about networking than I do. Finally I point blank ask him why the
hell he's picking fruit.

Turns out he had been working in LA as a Linux admin. He was also working on a
side project, basically Pinterest for outfits, when his girlfriend took
exception to the time he was spending on the project. He didn't go in to great
detail, but it became pretty clear to me he had _seriously_ , dramatically,
burnt out, and the girlfriend was just a trigger.

He decided to forget everything and take a bus north to do some manual work
for a while. He was still sending money back to her to make the car payments.
This guy had abandoned _everything_ , traveled to the middle of nowhere, slept
in bushes, and done manual labor in the sun all because he was sick of life as
he'd been living it.

I tried offering him a laptop. He wouldn't take it. He didn't want it. Said
what he needed was a bicycle. As we crested a hill in to the Wenatchee valley,
he became quite excited about the size of the town and the number of orchards
he could see in the distance. I dropped him off soon after. I'm pretty sure I
saw him riding a bicycle in downtown Wenatchee some time later.

This event still fucks with me years later. It could just as easily become my
story, or your story. Mental health is fragile. Take burnout seriously.

~~~
drdeadringer
I find this an amazing story, and at the same time cannot help but consider it
a real-life version of Office Space.

A part of me lives to meet such people, the type of person who has a
completely different history than you think they have.

------
burnout170819
Long time member, first time anonymous post. Here's my tale of woe and
burnout. There's a lesson at the end. Nothing profound. But if you find
yourself in a situation like this it may help.

Last job. Unremarkable but comfortable corporate job in web/backend
development. Longest stint I had done in my life, at least going back to
elementary school. Been there over 5 years. Got promoted to senior. My boss
got bumped up a step and another developer on the team got promoted to his
role as my new boss. Long story short, my new boss had it out for me. I
started to get reports from fellow team members that my boss was dumping on me
to others.

I ignored it until the annual review came up. After years of positive reviews,
I got a minimally acceptable review. I challenged it and a couple weeks later
I was slapped with a PIP. The allegations in the PIP were complete nonsense.
(In one instance, they actually cited a bug I had fixed at the documented
request of the project manager on one of our major applications as evidence I
had been working on unassigned tasks.) This is when the burnout started.

I talked to a few people whose knowledge and advice I trusted on the subject
and they said basically the same thing, "This is a battle you can't win. Get
out as soon as you can." I heeded their advice. I put my head down and
continued to do my job (more carefully and scrupulously than I ever had) and
started looking for a new job. I don't regret this. Actually, I had already
been actively looking by this time. But I started broadening my standard.
There is one other thing I wish I had done at this point. (Spoiler: this is
when I should have talked to a lawyer.)

As I had come to expect being a regular HN reader: finding a new job as a
senior developer of a certain age nowadays can be tough. Especially when
you're outside a major tech hub and not able to easily relocate. After six
month and a couple frustratingly close calls, I still didn't have a new job.
Six month review comes around. New PIP. New bogus allegations. I was fuming.
This is when my burnout peaked. It was affecting my sleep and I developed a
weird hives-like rash on my the back of my legs.

I was ready to quit but a friend recommended talking to an employment lawyer
she knew. So I scheduled a consultation. I wanted to know if I could sue for
defamation or something like that since the claims management was making about
my performance were completely unfounded and I could cite documentation, code,
and project management records to demonstrate it. He told me to get real. If I
couldn't demonstrate flagrant discriminate on the basis of a protected class
(race, sex, or age), I was wasting his time and my money. My company could
fire me at will and the only reason they were keeping me around was to "paper
my file" so they could quash anything as silly as I what I was dreaming up.

However, he also advised me not to quit my job. That's just what my boss and
HR were hoping I would do. He said unless they fired me "with cause", for
which poor performance does not qualify, I should stick it out. That way I
wouldn't give up my claims for unemployment or COBRA. He said they might even
offer my a minimal severance when they let me go. So I resolved to stick
around until they fired me. I also started to push back against my manager's
harassment. I tried to be polite but firm. But I started openly using the term
harassment in talking with him.

Once HR got wind that I had used that term, they were involved. There were
meetings with our HR reps and mediated sitdowns with my boss. They even
initiated something called a 360-degree review for my boss.

This lasted for another 2 or 3 months. The whole time I knew I was doomed but
at least I now had the satisfaction of feeling like I was sticking up for
myself and enjoying the chaos that was swirling around the team instead of
feeling like I was suffering the brunt of it. Finally, one Friday afternoon,
my boss and I got into a voluble debate about some trivial technical matter,
some tests I was working on IIRC, that he had called me into his office to
needle me about. Monday morning I was called into a conference room, where I
found my boss and our HR rep waiting. My boss read a statement notifying me I
was terminated immediately. I was walked back to my desk by the HR rep to
collect my personal belonging and walked out of the building. I wasn't offered
a severance. But I felt liberated. I signed up for Obamacare, kept my dental
benefits under COBRA, and HR didn't challenge my unemployment claim. Rash
disappeared after a couple months. It took me about 6 months to find a new
job. And no joke that 6 months was tough. I had to work much harder at finding
my new job than I ever did at my old job.

The one lesson I can offer from this experience, the one thing I wished I had
done sooner: as soon as you think your boss is out for you, consult with an
employment lawyer. It will be worth the $200-$300 it costs.

~~~
madengr
PIPs and 360 reviews; didn't happen to work for Honeywell?

------
v1k1n
Never told this story to anyone but here goes...

I was working at a consulting agency as a linux sysadmin pulling crazy hours
for two years. I ran support for a client that had an app that in house devs
had 'modified' and a mission critical file transfer service. I was on a team
of two with 24/7 on call support. Thing was, no one ever called the other guy
so I was always the one getting 5am phone calls on Saturday mornings. Weekly
late night (8pm - 3am) deployments were common and considered successful in
the eyes of the company.

After about a year of this my lifelong struggle with depression started to
reemerge. Feelings of loneliness and doubt began to crop up and I would cry
uncontrollably on my commute back home from work. It was around this time that
the daily suicidal thoughts took a turn for the worse. It was all I could
think about, every minute of the day.

One day I was chatting with a co-worker and my boss when they complimented me
on some recent weight loss. I was in a mood that day and told them the truth:
I was having trouble eating. I wasn't eating breakfast or lunch and most
nights would trade dinner for whiskey. After my weight loss was noticed, I
decided to hide the fact I couldn't eat by telling everyone I was on a new
diet. Side note: I had gained a considerable amount of weight over the time I
spent at that company. I recently celebrated my 100 lbs weight loss.

I continued to lose weight, though not entirely by choice. The suicidal
thoughts were deafening, blocking out any hope or joy in my life. I had become
my job and saw no way out.

Eventually the client I was working for no longer needed my services and I was
removed from the contract. I tried to celebrate but was so numb inside I
didn't feel any happiness at all. I took a week off but still had the same
feelings of dread and depression. I did a lot of reading on burnout and
realized I was on that slippery slope.

After returning from my sole week off, I was placed 'on the bench'. For those
who have never worked at a consultating agency, this means you still get a
paycheck but have no work to do. It also means you are in a constant state of
fear for your job until the agency finds you a new billable position. That
didn't help much to lighten my mood.

I made the switch from sysadmin to webdev during this 'bench' period. I was
able to secure a position as an internal React.js dev and for a few weeks
started to climb out of burnout. I thought I could start being happy again
with my new role but my company had different plans for me.

As I was still 'on the bench' and not billable, the company decided to move me
to a new contract doing dev work for M$ sharepoint. The project was in
shambles, had no tech lead, and the only other dev had decided to format the
site with tables (!) as he didn't know any other way. I expressed how
displeased I was but my complaint fell on deaf ears. I decided I couldn't take
it anymore.

After convincing the manager to make me 'lead sharepoint dev', I put my two
weeks in. I had setup a job at a boat rental I had worked at in summers past.
I now work the same hours but get paid for every hour, which is great.

I took a full month off after my two weeks. Spent the time laying around the
house and playing video games. One of the best months of my life. I thought a
lot about where I had been and where I was headed. I started hanging out with
friends & family again and realized I was on the right track.

I can now saw I've never felt better in my life. I lost a bunch of weight, met
a girl, and genuinely enjoy every hour of every day. The choking thoughts of
dread and suicide are gone, replaced by the joy and happiness I thought I
would never have again. I recently started my own consulting company and have
vowed to never let myself dip back into burnout again. Every day is a new
journey; you just have to find a way to make it work while not wanting to die
every day.

My advice is to recognize the signs of burnout early. It is far too easy to
attempt to 'push through' and stress yourself out more. Many companies are
willing to sacrifice your well being only to turn around and ask for more.
Dont be afraid to run far, far away from any place that prioritizes their
bottom line over your mental health.

apologize for formatting, wrote this on mobile.

------
throwaway97987
Happened to me and currently in the midst of it.

What happened : A disastrous startup failure. While the people I worked with
were nice, everything we did failed so completely and utterly, that I lost my
mind. Part of it was a seriously underperforming founder, partly just really
bad situations. We could not achieve even 10% of any of our goals. Everything
was a miserable failure, we were living together in an apartment and since the
other founders left after the failure, I lost my home too and had to go
crawling back to my parents' place to recover mentally. I had no desire or
strength to do anything at the time.

The worst part was, that it was a decent idea that has already worked in some
markets and I saw myself as the ideal customer. Our team, on paper, was strong
and had diverse skillsets. I had put all of my hopes into making this a win.

Now, I am left with no idea of what to do next, and still no motivation to do
anything either. The only thing I always wanted to do, is a door that is
permanently closed now (due to age. I'm young, but that path closes at 25. I
didn't pursue it because I used to be a dumb kid who wasn't mature enough to
make hard decisions early on in his life).

My GRE score expires next year, so I am considering a higher degree and a move
to the US or Canada. Maybe even a Phd, since I did some research work in
college and liked doing it. But I am terrified of a big commitment now.

The quality of startups in my country is really low, and while I have
interviewed with a few, nothing stuck out.

A few good, big companies are there, where I SHOULD apply, but haven't. I have
failed in everything I have done, even prior to my startup. Nothing has
worked, and nothing has amounted to anything. So why even attempt right?

/meaningless rant

Advice to others : Do what you REALLY want to do, and stick to the most
proven/established way of accomplishing it. Startups should be attempted ONLY
if there's no other way at all of doing what you love. That precludes 99.999%
of the cases.

------
dkokelley
I've found this story to be an interesting perspective of what burnout looks
like: [https://tim.blog/2014/02/13/anxiety-
treatments/](https://tim.blog/2014/02/13/anxiety-treatments/)

------
hn2a76dc2a
In the late 1990s I was on the top of the dot com world, I ran internet
operations for an F100 company. I had 35 direct reports, over 1000 people
spread throughout the company indirectly reported to me. I did it all: systems
admin, networking, application development for front and back end. I advised
the CEO and senior execs on our internet strategies, what companies to
acquire, which ones to avoid.

I poured everything into that role, shunning personal relationships with all
but a few very close friends.

I made the calculus that, like others in the same company before me, I'd put
my time in and after 5-7 years I'd downshift roles. Write some papers, some
patents, put everything I'd learned into product and service development.

Thing is, I didn't appreciate how much the company and company culture was
changing even as I was helping drive that change.

The company changed from focusing on experience to certifications. Personal
loyalties were almost frowned upon. If you were a technical professional you
had to demonstrate that you filed for multiple patents per year (in my role I
was actively discouraged from filing patents for corporate politics reasons…I
could always file later).

In very short order I lost my team and lost my role. It turned out that while
I was excellent at "internet stuff", I sucked at corporate politics. Once real
money started being spent on infrastructure and applications I grew a target
on my back large enough for its own corporate task force.

Multiple executives pulled me aside to tell me bluntly that I had no future at
the company, but I didn't listen, I'd been there close to a decade, doing
"internet stuff" most of that time, how could they throw that all away?

I got a consolation role in another organization at the company which lasted a
year and then the entire organization was disbanded.

In parallel in my limited personal life, both of my parents were dying, with
their deaths bracketing 9/11 by months on either side.

9/11 destroyed the neighborhood I had been living it.

By 2002 I walked away from all of it.

And I've mostly stayed away since then. I made quite a bit of money in the
1990s, not enough to be a VC, enough to semi–retire.

Every now and then I resurface and work with a startup for awhile, but I just
can't pour myself in anymore the way people expect. It's just a job. I hope
the startup does well, but I've become too jaded.

I briefly tried raising money, but found VCs were turned off that I walked
away from the 7x24 lifestyle and my conservative approach to growing a
business did not comport with their goals for portfolio returns.

So, yeah, it was a meh experience. I remain surprised that I survived the
final year of working insane hours for the company even as I knew that they
would jettison me as soon as I was no longer capable of working 18 hour days 6
days a week.

I'm in a much better space mentally, but it took over a decade after that
experience before I "felt better".

My family and personal relationships take priority, and I actively turn down
gigs and new work if they conflict with that choice.

I don't really have any advice. I feel like I wasted a decade creating capital
value for a company way out of proportion to my compensation. And another
decade wasted "recovering" from rejection from that company.

I guess my only advice would be, when you do burn out figure out an acceptable
cover story if you decide to ever return to tech. Recruiters & head hunters,
let alone hiring managers, will avoid at all costs anyone who admits to having
burned out.

------
guestimation
My first job was at a startup with ambitions wildly out of proportion with
it's funding and leadership. From the time I started until the entire
engineering staff quit/got laid off (~24 months), the CEO and COO hired and
fired (or lost) 4 CTOs, 2 Directors of Engineering and 3 Sr. Engineers for
offenses that ranged from disagreeing with project estimates to fomenting open
revolt in the engineering team.

10 months into the job, CTO #3 had been forced out, DoE #2 had just turned in
her resignation and we were completely unable to attract experienced engineers
of any quality. COO assumed direct control of the engineers while marketing
and sales kept themselves busy as "product people." I was looking for a new
job and getting ready to jump ship when marketing and sales, giddy as
children, came up with the idea of pivoting into EdTech. I was offered the
chance to lead a small team in building out these new products and because I
was a young engineer with ambitions wildly out of proportion with my
experience and skills, I accepted. What resulted was the most stressful 10
months of my life. The hours (14-18 M-F and 10-12 on weekends) were doable but
I was constantly second-guessed and undermined. My engineering teammates were
all incredibly supportive and I would turn to the more senior guys for advice
on navigating the technical landmines but it was a war everyday with everyone
else. We had market research from parents, students, teachers and school
administrators that would be ignored by the product guys in favor of
"instinct." We had UI/UX designs that we paid for that were ignored in favor
of "I like this better though." I can't even count the number of times I had
"If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me a
faster horse" quoted at me. I had marketing guys bully their way onto our
sprint boards so they could move their half-baked, pet features onto the top
of the pile. I had sales guys promising clients features that weren't even
possible given our budget and deadlines.

I finally broke and set up some rules, some bullshit and some good, so we
could make some progress. For starters, my team took over our main conference
room and kept it locked. I told them to ignore any form of communication about
the project from anyone that wasn't based out of the conference room. I would
cancel or skip all internal meetings with sales and marketing and would only
attend meetings one-on-one with the COO. I made sure that no one went on a
sales call for the product we were building unless one of the team was on the
call with them. I would monitor our sprint boards to see what features were
being pushed up on the sly. And then I would delete them. In the end we
managed to push out a fairly polished product (really nice beta) with about a
quarter of all the promised features. Our clients did end up buying it but no
one really loved it and no one really hated it. I quit 4 months later when I
was asked if I was interested in leading the team to build out more features.

The entire experience was terrible during but I kept going because I thought
it would look nice on my CV (it does). I took six months off to "crawl back to
reality" as you put it and realized halfway through that there was no reality
to crawl back to because I had lived reality in all it's HD, 4K shitty
goodness. Sometimes when people are assholes you can be a bigger asshole back
and win and sometimes you can't. That's all there is to it.

------
herbst
First I let my doc give me amphetamines in order to be able to work again. But
it only got worse so I quit my job and bought a one way ticket to Thailand.
Since then I am travelling and coding whenever I feel like it. Never felt
better. But i cant see myself ever going back to a normal work life. What kind
of scares me a bit

------
dilemma
Looking at the answers here the common point is, expectedly, overwork. It is
obvious why this causes burn out but there are a couple of reasons why you
should not overwork that are not so obvious.

To handle stress and not burn out, you need:

1) A sense of self. You need to not just understand but to feel that no matter
what happens at the office, and even if things go wrong, you'll be OK. You do
this by having a life outside of work - friends and a social life not
connected to your workplace or even industry, hobbies or side projects that
give you confidence outside of your professional life, and people who care
about you for non-professional reasons.

2) To compartmentalize. Work is work, and just part of your life. While it
cannot be completely so, what happens at work shouldn't affect your outside
life in too large a degree. Success at work should bring you some kind of
satisfaction, and failure should make you reconsider your choices, but not to
a too large extent. You can only compartmentalize if you have the things in
1); you need more than 1 thing that is important to you in your life.

If you overwork, you can't have 1) because you simple don't have the time or
energy to cultivate it; you can't compartmentalize and leave work at the
office, and work pressure will cause negative stress in all aspects of your
life, resulting in burn out.

Even in high-level positions you should aim to stick to a 9-5 schedule as much
as possible because otherwise you won't have the mental energy to be
effective.

