
Ask HN: What next after burning out? - burnedout94107
After 10 years in Silicon Valley and several very early stage startups, I&#x27;ve burned out. Worst of all, I&#x27;ve completely lost all motivation and desire to continue doing what I&#x27;ve always done and loved.<p>I have a new job that is very low stress and low commitment. I hate it. The company is poorly run and I don&#x27;t have the drive to do anything about it. Every time I talk to a new company about positions I lose interest at the thought of going through the process or onboarding at a new company.<p>I&#x27;ve considered and pursued other positions outside of engineering such as PM, eng manager and similar positions. But because I&#x27;ve spent my entire career at early stage startups my experience on paper is limited to engineering systems so even progressing in my career is not an option as companies want experienced managers and people with proven experience for other positions. Essentially 10 years of experience is worthless even though I have been doing those things. Just not as a my official job.<p>My past experiences at startups has almost entirely soured me on every company I come across. I&#x27;m now negative and skeptical about everything. No company sounds interesting. I think every founder I talk to is full of shit. Every product is crap and a waste of time.<p>Maybe even the worst thing is that I don&#x27;t even have motivation to do my own project. Every time I sit in front of a computer to write code I stop almost immediately stop. I&#x27;ve been burned by Silicon Valley so much that I don&#x27;t even want to try anymore.<p>I don&#x27;t know what to do next.
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J-dawg
I've been having some therapy recently, and one of the things the therapist
has pointed out is that the more anxious I am, the more I make negative
generalisations. I believe this is quite a common pattern in anxiety &
depression.

I couldn't help noticing that your post contains several generalisations ('
_every_ founder is full of shit', ' _every_ product is crap', 'my 10 years of
experience is _worthless_ ').

We're all wired in different ways, and this might only be a small component of
your problem, but it might be worth talking to someone about generalised
anxiety or similar.

I hope this doesn't come across as patronising or anything. It's just
something I learned about myself recently that could be useful for you too.

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uptownfunk
Persist somehow until you've banked enough pto and get the hell away from
wherever you are. Go on a roadtrip or camping or a hike. I'm not a doctor but
consider using some of nature's natural medicines. (Not that a doctor would
ever advise you to do that of course)

Perhaps you may be depressed, seek counseling and see if that helps.

It can be a rough world out there. Look at what you have though, a ton of
valuable experience that you can apply towards the right opportunity when the
time is right.

Hang in there, time changes if nothing else, and that may be all you need.

~~~
michaelthiessen
I would agree with this.

It sounds like it's a mental health issue, not an issue with your skills or
the marketplace. You just need to heal your mind, and nature and a good
vacation or break can do that.

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muzani
I just got out of my burnout phase. It's similar - I've done a lot of
startups.

It took me well over a year to get out of it. I spent practically a year
playing games (thanks acquisition money!) My only job was teaching for a
while.

I honestly don't know what worked.

The games, travel, spas, and idle time didn't help much. If anything, they
made me feel worse about spending lots of money and time. They pressured me to
do more.

Freelancing was such a terrible idea. I ended up losing money and getting even
more burnt out. After that, I refused to do any coding at all for a while.

The teaching assignments helped quite a bit. It was well paid and I got to
achieve my bucket list of visiting every state in the country. Teaching is
also really easy with enough years under your belt and it's relaxing to have a
lot to say. It's even more relaxing if they pay well.

I did a lot of exercise. Felt better than ever, but didn't cure it. Same with
meditation.

I think what finally got me out of it was working 7 days a week on low
difficulty tasks. It sounds really dumb to treat burnout with more work, but
it worked for me. Maybe startup people have their comfort zone working 60
hours a week?

You might not even want to do hard work coding. Try working in F&B or some
other grunt job. Somehow it was like a meditative process. Just do something
that feels like it's not a total waste of time.

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sharemywin
I'm right there with you. Except, I've been doing corporate jobs but no one
wants to hire outside something your experienced in. So I'm stuck. And the
thought of even interviewing disgust me.

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jwilliams
Take some time off. The clarity you get from disengaging will be stunning (or
so I'v seen). I generally think for X years of high stress it takes 1-2 months
per year. So you'll need 1-2 years to recharge.

It might be difficult financially. I don't know your situation on how feasible
that is. Perhaps you have family and other hard commitments. But I think in
general people tend to overestimate the cost. Wind back your outgoings. Head
somewhere cheap. Meditate, exercise, eat fresh food.

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DrNuke
A vacation followed by a career stint as a mentor for an accelerator or within
an incubator may be your best shot? You have grown the anticorps first hand
and know exactly where sense becomes bullsh*t, so you may be good at providing
reality checks while acting the bad cop in these environments imho.

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itamarst
Take a very long vacation from work?

(Your experience is not worthless, if you've been doing the relevant work then
some companies will hire you even if it doesn't match previous job titles. But
if you're this burned out you should probably not think about it.)

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unavida
The United States is an overworked, competitive culture to the point of being
toxic.

For me, the key to a long, fulfilling life is finding what makes you happy in
life. It really is too short to be miserable.

Right now, I'm working remotely from a sunny, beach city in Vietnam and was
previously touring many islands in Thailand. Southeast Asia has been EPIC. I
love not being in the United States right now. I strongly suggest traveling to
a country you've wanted to go to. Also meditation in group classes really
helps.

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ajeet_dhaliwal
Sad how this afflicts so many of us - it truly is terrible. And yet I bet
we're all thinking 'may be there's a startup idea in here somewhere?' which
may be the source of the problem.

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Jugurtha
Maybe go to a country and bring the tribal knowledge only found in SV to
tackle problems never found in SV.

Plenty of countries with bright people who are like miscalibrated, misaimed,
lasers looking for a target to pulverize.

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segmondy
Get a hobby, start a side project. Your job should be to fund your lifestyle,
hobbies and side project.

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joshcanhelp
I'm sorry to hear. I can definitely sympathize with what you're going through
and currently recovering myself. This is just my perspective, of course.

The hardest thing to get past, and the first one I encountered, is the very
real sense that what I'm doing right now is a mistake or a poor fit or below
me or not enough of a challenge or etc, etc. When I'm in that burn-out mode,
like depression, what I see and feel is through a particular lens. So maybe
it's not that bad or maybe there are parts that are enjoyable or maybe I can
make it work but when I'm in it then all of that falls away. The first step
for me was to realize that I can't really trust my brain to give me an active
picture when I'm rushing from thing to thing and hate every minute of it.

So my way out was not to make any rash decisions but to figure out an escape
plan, even if it's temporary. I've been freelance for 10 years so I was able
to pare down my projects and stop taking on new ones. I'm down to basically a
single client part-time and everything new that comes in the door gets
referred to someone else. I've deleted all of my various Trello lists of
possible businesses to start and OSS to create and contribute to and unwritten
blog posts. If I'm at a computer then I'm working with that one client. If I'm
not I'm playing with my kids or riding a bike or building something in the
garage.

The reduced stress, reduced time in front of a screen, and less demands on my
time are very slowing starting to add up to what feels like recovery. I can
trust myself a little better and have been surprised by what bubbles to the
surface as important to do. It becomes easier to say no and enjoy life a
little more and make better decisions. I feel like I've still got a long way
to go but I don't dread my keyboard anymore.

For me, the pressure of "make a hugely important decision about your life
right now! you're running out of time! you hate every minute!" was immense. It
just felt like this always-looming thing that I had no answers to. What
company to start or join? What idea to build? What person to meet? WHAT
NEXT?!?! Once I started letting go of that question and just focusing on the
absolute basics - spend time with people, work enough to pay the bills, get
some exercise, eat well - then I become more competent to answer that
question. It's like trying to do your best work at 8pm after a 12 hour day.
Just not going to happen.

One more thing that I found can be tough but helpful. Regardless of what
you're doing at any given minute, charge yourself with doing the best job of
it that you possibly can. Not just for you but for those around you. Even if
you're fixing spaghetti CSS or washing dishes or driving or cooking or
anything else, tell yourself "I'm going to do this thing the best I possibly
can right now." Good things will happen as a result but concentrate only on
the action itself. I've found that I enjoy what I do far more, regardless of
what it is, if I stay really present and let go of whether the task is enough
of a challenge or enjoyable.

Hope that helps. Good luck out there.

