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Ask HN: Burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around
798 points by RoseBuckler on May 31, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 500 comments
I've been programming on and off since the age of 16. Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer. I've always pieced code together from multiple sources to create programs but I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch. I've devised countless ideas only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through.

I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years. I've been feeling like a loser and not good enough for this career even though I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team. I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours. My salary also hasn't increased much, and feel like I'm severely underpaid based on the # of years of experience but I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth. I assumed working hard would pay off but that hasn't been the case at all; I truly believe I've been doing the opposite of "Work Smart, Not Hard". I've been trying to get back to learning DS and Algos so I can apply to places but I struggle with LeetCode, which is making me feel like even a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems.

I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future. My self-confidence and self-esteem are taking a hit. I am terrible at networking, so I don't have others to reach out to for tips and advice, hence I'm turning to HN. I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this. How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?




1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc. No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume.

2. You are worth more than you currently think you are. Internalize this, know this, that is key. "I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team" --> is a desirable skill in and of itself.

3. Stop working 80 hour weeks, stop working weekends. When the only thing you do has little/no reward, that is what causes burnout.

4. Fill your time with something else that you prioritize above work. Make it hard to find time to work. This both prevents slipping back to 80 hr weeks, and forces your brain to prioritize important things within your work life (like executing and finishing projects).

5. Networking is key. I don't have good advice here as this is a challenge for me also. But -- switch jobs often (every couple years), and be friendly and helpful (within reason) to your co-workers. They're now your network.

My background -- coding since I was 6, now 36 -- but I've shared many of the same feelings.

[1] I am assuming you have the basic financial stability to support this. My apologies if not.


> No-one will care about a month or two gap on your resume.

On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving.

Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?


In 40 years I have only ever put the start and end year of each item on my resume. I guess this dates to when most jobs / education lasted multiple years. But I've stuck with it and no-one has ever questioned it.

The couple of jobs I have had which were less than one year spanned a year-end so it never looked odd.

When I am reviewing incoming resumes small gaps never bother me. Ocassionally I have seen multi-year gaps on interesting resumes and made enquires which always turned out to be completely legitimate career breaks and never lead to us not making offers.


I also only put years on my resume. 15 years into my career and I have never once been asked to elaborate on the exact timeline of my resume. I've taken breaks, some voluntarily and some not so much.

If I ever take a multi-year break I'll just take occasional freelance clients and list it as "consulting".


Curious what you would consider an illegitimate career break?


Working for Oracle. ;)


I actually laughed out loud, and really needed that today. Thank you.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31548548 was great too. You should turn these into TikToks or do standup or something.


Haha we just had someone leave our team to work on Oracle Cloud. I hope it works out for them, but it's not a job I would have taken.


Oh gods, and I misread it at first as "Legitimate career break". :O (Also Laughing Out Loud!)


Prison for 5 years for being a black hat lol


Prison, at least that's how it was explained to me in the mid 90s when I started out.


Obviously this depends on the job and what someone did that landed them in prison, but that shouldn't be an automatic dealbreaker. If they are applying for a job after being released from prison, then they're trying to reintegrate and should be given a fair shake.

If a criminal record is an insurmountable hurdle for a specific role, then it would come up in a background check (which would almost certainly be a requirement for such a job), and the job posting should be explicit about the required clean criminal history. A gap in someone's resume is a pretty worthless signal for whether they've ever been incarcerated.


The current landlord for my shop has several businesses and mentioned that he specifically hires guys getting out of prison (presumably selectively of course). He said that they tend to be grateful and incredibly loyal. He had one on my site doing some setup construction who was very good, worked very hard (including driving 1.5hrs to get here around other work), and did really good work, so can confirm to the extent of that anecdata. It's enough for me to seriously consider it for some roles. People really do need to get a leg up.

Overall, for me hiring, I never considered a resume gap to be a problem, and think that employers who do are literally stupid (sadly, nothing prevents such stupidity). At most, it is a potentially interesting interlude for a person's life and career - what did they do with it?

For OP, I'd definitely recommend rearranging your work situation so you are not so exploited and pressured. Either get your employer to hire more people so you can work on something other than a constant firefighting basis, or leave. It very much looks like the main reason you have not yet "come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value" is because you aren't given a moment to breathe (and your assessment of not adding value is wrong - you are obviously adding value, it's just that you can see some left on the table).

Seems what you need, at almost any cost, is to get perspective.

Good that you see it and here's to your future success!


>they're trying to reintegrate and should be given a fair shake.

Agree. Things were different in the 90s, think peak crime and crime bill. Also, everything wasn't categorized as a felony back then, it seems like felony was limited to much more severe crimes (except drugs crimes), unlike today.

>it would come up in a background check (which would almost certainly be a requirement for such a job)

It would, but background checks cost money and I'm guessing it was a pre-screen method to save. I'm not defending it, I'm just repeating what I was told back then.

>A gap in someone's resume is a pretty worthless signal for whether they've ever been incarcerated.

Unfortunately, people have been doing stupid filters on hiring for decades. It's not a new phenomenon.


Substance abuse related career breaks. At least recent.


Hang on, you are going to penalise someone for taking time off to get clean... presumably on the basis that it's better they come to work hiding the fact that they are high, than that they get help?


Companies do not like risk. That kind of time off has high potential recidivism. If there are 2 candidates then lower risk one wins. Years ago I had HR decline a candidate because of a messy divorce because of perceived risk that I still don't understand.


Yet companies turn a blind eye towards people who abuse alcohol, even throwing parties where people are encouraged to drink alcohol. If your chosen substance is alcohol, you can even be an alcoholic and still keep your job if it doesn't affect performance.

Every hire is full of risks. Nobody knows whether they'll get into a car crash, get cancer, or get shot, or become a substance abuser. Whether they admit their medical history or not. That's because they are human beings. Humans are inherently risky. If you want to eliminate risk, then hiring humans is not for you.

All you do by punishing people who are honest about their history, is to encourage even more people to lie in interviews. Those people are only the tip of the iceberg, and a significant number of people companies hire already have such history but they just keep their mouths shut.


That decline, was that in the public sector, where the security clearance process necessarily digs up that kind of dirt? Or did a private sector company actually investigate a candidate to the terms of their divorce?


How would I even know they are clean? And if they are clean and they presumably have a greater chance of a relapse than other random candidates.


Drug tests are pretty common. If they pass that, there's no reason to prevent hiring. It could even be illegal since it's a health condition.

This comment makes me sad. It seems illegal biases in hiring and management practices are rampant. Worker protections seem to be a joke when they're blatantly ignored.


Well... I don't hire people so don't take my comment as proof that any illegal biases are rampant. I was just stating one possible issue an employer might have with career breaks.


I do hear a lot of illegal things from other discussions on here too. So it wasn't based on just you.


> And if they are clean and they presumably have a greater chance of a relapse than other random candidates.

That's skirting uncomfortably close to discriminating based on medical history or a disability, which may be illegal depending on where the employer is located. Cancer survivors have a much higher chance of recurrence than others do of developing cancer for the first time, but most would probably balk at denying a job to someone whose cancer was in remission because there's a higher chance they'd need extended medical leave in the future.


>How would I even know they are clean?

This question applies to all employees. You don't, because it's none of your business if it doesn't affect their work performance. It is entirely possible, and probably likely that some your current employees use drugs. And almost 100% sure that some of them use alcohol, which is stronger and more problematic than many illicit substances. Many companies even throw parties where they give out free booze to the employees! How's that for a double standard?

People have always used drugs, and always will. Pretending to care about substance abuse only when you come across someone who openly admits their history is insane. You are treating the honest people worse than the people who hide their problems from you.


Why should you even know they were not clean at some point in their past. And what about the future?

Like the sibling comment, I find this very sad.

Perform drug tests if you're worried.


I'm imagining a scenario where a candidate explicitly says that they just had a career break that was due to drug abuse, I think it would be hard to stay objective after that. I don't hire people but that would affect a lot of employers.


The only reason you should care is if you're employing someone in a position where it's dangerous to themselves or others _on the job_ if they're intoxicated, or if it's legally required.

Otherwise it's none of your business.


In the US it is generally illegal to ask about an employee's medical history in the US due to ADA. Psychiatric care is considered medical care.


"what did you do between 2016 and 2019?"

(Silence... )

-- won't that seem suspicious, even if the interviewer can't ask:

"Oh so you had a drugs and substances career break?"


Medical issues


Jail time.


why this gap in your resume?

Yale

That's very impressive, you're hired.

Thanks! I really need this yob!


If you're worried about a criminal history, do a background check.

This heuristic would miss people who lie about "consulting" during the time they were in jail and would incorrectly catch someone who was falsely accused and then exonerated.


Not all "jail time", but yes, many convictions would preclude candidates from employment at my current company... and most of the previous ones.


Aside from the "fired and couldn't find another job" and "had personal problems that prevented him from working angles," there's also the possibility that said employee lives well within his means and can take large blocks of time away from full-time work if he chooses.

Which means that said employee could walk away from the company if he's dissatisfied. The company would rather have someone who needs the paycheck— he'll put up with more.


I can see the reasoning in that, but in my 20 years in industry this has never come up. When my first child was born I spent a whole year with him, and the only person who was concerned about a twelve month "gap" was me. Take the time to care for yourself.


I am not saying that you necessarily endorse this line of reasoning or justification but if this is what passes for talent retention strategies at these firms, they're really in for a lot, lot of pain.


I absolutely don't endorse, but rather strive to understand.


It depends entirely on the company and how many other candidates they have.

If I receive 200 resumes and 30% of them are picture perfect - Sorry, I can’t interview or even screen everyone. The resume with unexplained gaps isn’t getting sorted into the top of the pile simply because I have to be aggressive with filtering.

On the other hand, if I’m hiring for a difficult position at a less popular company and I’m only getting 1 or 2 okay resumes per week, I’ll take the time to screen resumes with gaps as long as everything else looks fine.

You have to understand that a lot of hiring managers simply couldn’t screen/interview everyone even if they wanted to. For those jobs, having unexplained gaps in an otherwise average resume could be the negative signal that moves you slightly down bellow the threshold.

But for a lot of average jobs: No, it doesn’t actually matter that much.


A company that doesn't respect the need for privacy and/or the need to take time off should be avoided.

Nobody should have to explain a gap between jobs upfront - they could be gardening, on pilgrimage or attending family - Or simply take advantage of between jobs to take a well earned break. There are a million none of your business reasons.

There should be no expectation for this information, until you engage with them. And even then...


> If I receive 200 resumes and 30% of them are picture perfect

First, what software company hiring developers is in this position?

Second, isn't the definition of "picture perfect resume" the exact thing the GP is arguing to change?

Third, a month is not a unexplained gap; resumes (even LinkedIn) typically aren't fined-grained below the month level with dates, so there's nothing to hide or explain.


> A month is not a unexplained gap;

Honestly the whole thread seems mad to even suggest such a thing is true. "Gaps" start at about 1 year and I'm dubious anyone is using it as a filter before it's 2-3 years (ie when you might claim skills would start to degrade if unused).


The entire screening process is broken when recruiters try to find any and all reasons - or negative signals as you call them - to skip over candidates. Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process.


> Who knows how many amazing talents are skipped over due to trivial issues in their application process.

No one has an actual number, but I expect it's A LOT.

The best thing folks can do is to NOT rely on just dropping their resumes into some anonymous web-based corporate application system. Instead, it's much better to network and to use your contacts (previous co-workers, folks you know, family, friends-- anyone really) to get get leads and bypass HR drones entirely or as much as possible.

The other thing that, IMHO, works really well is to specialize. Positioning oneself for "hot" in-demand jobs, ironically, just ends up putting people into an ocean of competition where each job has hundreds of equally qualified people going after it. That's awesome for employers who can then be absurdly picky, but it's terrible for candidates.

The way many technical candidates shoot themselves in the foot before even getting started is they fail to network and fail to specialize (or target their search properly). They're often honest to a fault and go up against competition that is unscrupulous. There's a reason why so many candidates completely flunk fizzbuzz.


I've gotten a fair amount of side work in the last 20-odd years, largely because most of my admin and programming skill set is antique. Setting up printers on Microsoft Xenix? Updating a business inventory system that was written in BASIC? Making serial cables to hook up old industrial equipment to new controllers?

Lots of C# and Haskell wonks around here, but none of them want to dirty their fingers doing maintenance work, particularly maintenance work on software written in no-longer-fashionable languages before they were born.


If I give you a stack of 200 resumes, how are you going to decide which ones to interview?


I am not a recruiter but if I was and couldn't do my job without taking insane shortcuts that result in subpar recruiting, I would at least admit how broken the process is and try to look at the state of the art for some sanity.


The converse to this is that a resume gap can often stem from things like family status, or health conditions.

Stuff like this (at least in the US) is supposed to be legally protected, but in practice it's a little useless to bar employers from, say, asking about your medical history if they can push yourself to explain a gap in your resume that was exacerbated by a mental health condition, or caused because some illness or accident or left you physically unable to work. (See also: candidates who have kids)

It's a dumb loophole that enables hiring discrimination -- because you can still fish for information that's illegal to ask about specifically, just by falling back to a catch-all question that's bound to turn up much of the same information a meaningful chunk of the time.


This wonderful to hear. More hidden gems for me to hire.


> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

It's not that. Having a gap in your resume might mean that the candidate is trying to hide something. E.g. a job where candidate was fired and doesn't want to be asked to provide references.

If you took a gap to pursue other things, put whatever this was on your CV, don't just leave a gap. If it was something interesting, it might even put you in front of other candidates for some employers.


Common gaps are for protected things (raising children) and can cause problems if put on CVs. The idea that employers need to treat every applicant with maximum suspicion is frustrating.


The concern is that someone was fired for cause or has a pattern of abandoning jobs.

Taking time off to raise children isn’t a big deal at most companies (at any big company, you’re more likely to find more parents than non-parents in hiring manager positions). Even gaps for things like travel aren’t really an issue as long as the candidate explains it.

You have to consider that hiring managers aren’t only seeing resumes of flawless candidates. There are a lot of candidates out there with things like anger issues, chronic performance issues, interpersonal issues, and so on that have already been removed from other companies for these reasons. It’s difficult to deduce it from a resume alone but small signals like unexplained gaps can be a hint that you need to dig deeper.


just curious - if someone is "fired for cause" (don't feel that this term is universally accurate in its implications but thats another discussion), do you feel they should never get a job again? its some sort of Scarlett letter or brand on them?


The argument I've seen and heard many times is that someone who was been fired before is likely to get fired again. Also applies to medical conditions. You don't want an employee who might get sick and not be able to work.


oh for sure there are examples where people abuse the employment relationship - those who churn jobs simply looking for severance/unemployment, chronic medical issues or absences which lead to very low output, etc. and its understandable that a manager would try to weed those out.

that can also lead to many false positives, IMO. personal example, in my first job out of college my manager and i did not get along. i assume they wanted to fire me and began to build a case against me, emailing HR every morning i was not at my desk by 8:30 AM. i was naïve and the HR rep basically told me i should quit because my manager had "evidence". so i did, and it took a LONG time to find another job because of the "Scarlett Letter".

it then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy since the longer you're without a job the more suspicious it becomes. it all just feels very classically corporate to me, from a time when people stayed in one city/town for a long time and if you had a gap in the resume it was automatically detrimental to you because all the good people already have jobs.


it's illegal to ask about or discriminate on medical conditions though, unless there's a strong, concrete reason to ask - e.g. you don't have to hire someone with uncontrolled epilepsy to be a bus driver, but you can't refuse to hire a receptionist because her lupus might make her call in sick occasionally.

I'm terrified of all this, since I started using a wheelchair. a friend told me she did 10 interviews with no offers, when they were in person, but got a great offer when she interviewed on Zoom. my current job values me a lot, but do I stay there forever? what if I try to switch jobs and nobody wants to hire the cripple?


Are you a developer? There's so much remote work now that you'll absolutely be able to find work. I can't speak to the (illegal) nature of discriminating against you for an in-office developer job though.


I disagree with this reasoning. Not to repeat things that were nicely said elsewhere, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31569160 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31568962, but it boils down to "it's none of your business".

I will absolutely not ever be convinced that I should have to account all of my life to a company I'm considering joining.

I may explain a certain gap if I feel like it. But if I feel I'm being put into a situation where I'm expected to explain it, this isn't a company I would like to work with.


I have many gaps in my resume, like 6 months here, few months there ... at the points it looks like I worked 2/3 of the time over the last 10 years. Sometime recruiters ask me why and I tell the truth that I went travelling, that I needed some time off. Why I had so many different jobs ... It may be a deal breaker for some but it doesn't seem to bother everyone as I've never had trouble finding a job, it could be because the market was in need of my skills, I guess IT people should worry much about that.


> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

Let me start off saying I dont agree with this logical fallacy. So don't downvote me if you don't like that some employers think this way.

I think many interviewers/managers worry that a gap in resume is actually you got fired and then spent months looking for a new role (possibly this one). Or that you started at a company and then left within a month or two.

I guess the belief is an employee who gets fired ought to be red lettered and too big a risk to employ ever again? (fallacy)

Now starting at a company and leaving early could be a red flag on the employee in that they agreed to do something and then didnt follow through. But it could just as easily be that the company really misrepresented themselves during the interviewing process and lo and behold it's actually a shit show once you start working for them.


Problem being interviewers can spin almost every arbitrary detail into a "red flag", and they have done so for decades. It's the benefit which comes with being in a position of power where they get to be far pickier than most candidates can comparatively.

It's the same reason so many arbitrary things go from "this is absolutely necessary" to "this would be nice" to "oh we can remove that please don't walk away!" depending on the state of the job market. Interviewers are surprisingly flexible when they are no longer the ones holding the reins.


Yeah I do think there are a ton of fallacies that the modern corporation brings to interviewing, which you'd think if someone could break the pattern they might have an advantage? Like one big one for me is the idea that holding out for a better candidate vs hiring an adequate one and giving them world class training? How many months of lost productivity from interviewing another month vs having a fully productive employee one month sooner... and your whole team back on track with building the products that customers supposedly want "right now!" ?


> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all.

I think that at least in tech it was only ever a thing in companies that didn't know better.

I mean, I throughout my career I was fired multiple times and at least twice that resulted in a 3-month gap, only one of them being voluntarily that long.

I now take them on purpose and collected a total of five over the course of 10+ years.

I don't remember anyone ever even touching the subject - perhaps there's something about the date format I'm using in my CV (MM-YYYY - MM-YYYY/present).

In any case my experience is that companies with such ridiculous criteria end up hiring contractors to fill their gaps - this time in their workforce.

Contractors, naturally, don't go through nearly the same recruitment process and yet they manage to do the same job and do it well - those who don't are promplty fired.


My last job search it came up a lot. I took about 8 months then started looking. Because I could at that time. Since it was the current thing I was doing it came up a decent amount.

Took probably double the amount of time to get a job. I finally asked someone why they cared? They said it looks like others were passing me up for some reason and they did not want to pick someone up who everyone else was passing up.

Hiring in many ways is a guess if you can stand to work with someone or not. Being in any way undesirable hurts you.


If I had a voluntary gap like this and I put something like "Sabbatical" on my resume and made a few notes of how I spent my time I wonder how that would go over. The last time I was in the interview process I saw my interviewer as a kind of interviewing pro, it wasn't until I got hired that I realized he was just a guy and he had really only interviewed and on-boarded a handful of people before.


I think that is pretty common on resumes and I've never heard anyone raise it as an issue. Some examples I've seen include "cycled across europe" and went back to school to work on a new degree, but then decided that they didn't like marine biology as much as they thought they did. There's no reason most employers would be concerned about reasonable life choices.

What employers are concerned about is people problems and problem people. Dealing with problem employees is very unpleasant and a huge time sink. Since difficult people tend to have difficulty staying employed, time gaps and short engagements on resumes are a somewhat reasonable heuristic. When there are more applicants than you can interview, you have to prioritize the list somehow.


> Hiring in many ways is a guess if you can stand to work with someone or not.

This, although it seems not everyone got the memo, hence a recent conversation I had:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31528057

> Being in any way undesirable hurts you.

Does having gaps make you so though? I'd say not necessarily. I mean, isn't there a workforce shortage at the moment?

Personally, I don't care. I just checked a recent candidate of mine and he... didn't put months in the start/end dates of his projects. If there's a gap there, I wouldn't even know.


So the opposite of FOMO... Hiring is broken.


I have a three year gap in my resume and getting a good tech job afterwards was EASY. If anything it made me more employable because people tend like people who do more than write code all day. (Of course the lack of career progression was probably a net disadvantage in terms of raw money-making ability, but I don't care about that).

Incidentally I like to also tell people who are a bit behind the times that these days it seems like having visible tattoos is a net benefit for your employability. Everyone likes hiring interesting people who aren't mindless drones. Tattoos, piercings, quirky style .. all serves as evidence of that. At least on the west coast!


I think of tattoos completely differently than you. I only have one(small, not visible). I view it more as a group identification than any sort of interesting personality. I've met plenty of boring people covered in tats. I also know and spend time with several interesting people covered in tats. It's more of a social identifier.


Since tattoos are so mainstream and common now, they probably send the opposite signal today than they did in the past. When I meet people under 40 or so -without- tattoos, my first impression is they might be more interesting, trend-bucking, counterculture, free thinking, etc.

Obviously tattoo/no tattoo is a bad, low-signal way to size someone up, just pointing out the signal itself has phase-inverted from say 20 years ago.


Tattoos, piercings, and a quirky style signal you're the right kind of (cultural) drone.

(A corporate wageslave could run away and integrate somewhere else; better to brand them with distinctive, permanent markers.)


I don't know how you got that from my post, but I can assure you that you have misunderstood.


Its a thing for legacy organisations. If someone is puzzled and gives me a red flag that I had time to rest after my 6 month depression and burnout => its a huge red flag for me that people don't understand the world we live in these days and probably a culture that I will never fit it.

I have 4 gaps on my resume (1 failed startup, 1 burnout episode, 1 travel the world & 1 family care). My resume is a total mess of jobs in sales, growth & product. And yet the best organisations I ever worked for, always tried to understand the context before judging.


I've taken multiple six month stints off, and in the UK no one has ever asked about it.


The issue is earlier in the resume screening process, before they’re talking to you at all.

If a company receives 200 applications and 50 of them have flawless resumes, even something as small as a couple unexplained gaps could be enough to move you below the cutoff for getting a call back.

I think the thing that confuses people about gaps is that it doesn’t make it impossible to get any job. It just raises questions for interviewers who have a lot of resumes to sort through.

If you’ve only ever applied to jobs in less competitive markets or times, it may not have mattered at all yet. There are actually a lot of small hiring quirks that an entire generation of engineers hasn’t encountered yet because we’ve been in a decade long bull run.


This makes sense from the company perspective, but gaps still shouldn't bother candidates because there are many thousands of companies in the world. Since companies give no feedback on an initial rejection, you can't even see how often you're being rejected for gaps vs. other things, so it's not even worth worrying about.


I'm in management, writing to confirm this. I've seen many CV's, many gaps, never asked about it, I don't even assume why it happened.

Burnout is a known problem in our profession, I approach people with open mind, I experienced burnout myself and taking time off is desirable for mental health.


I am replying to this reply here because I can't reply on the original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31203871

Firstly: Do you think every comment should be positive? Secondly, how is my comment negative enough for you to make that reply? I asked a question and gave (honest) feedback on my reading of the article/post.

> The list is obviously not for you

But it IS on HN which I read. HN is a public forum that anyone can join and make comments. It is fair game to give feedback on articles.

> this reflex where one needs to be so angry and vocal about something so benign (and useful) is what makes me question what have we done to ourselves as a society.

The usefulness of the advice is completely subjective and the main point of the comment section is to discuss that. Would you rather comments like "love this", "+1", "all great advice!". That seems completely useless to me.

Your questioning of society based on my question and feedback seems outrageously ridiculous to me.

Ironically, a quick look shows you have multiple grey posts and are not a positive commenter yourself. Maybe your reply was actually some self reflection.


And if you feel self-concious about it, just write „freelance projects“ and in the ultra slim case someone still inquires about that telling them point blank you‘d love to divulge it because it was a very interesting project, but you‘re bound by an NDA.


Thats a dangerous way though and leading to the road of fraud.

Would be a red flag for me, if someone boasted about secret NDA work, which did not exist at all. And this can show up very quickly with some questions.


>Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

I agree, and if they do?

I'm not telling you to lie on your resume, but...have a good story to tell about what you during that time off. If that doesn't cut it, you're probably not dealing with a company with a good culture.


"I was driving a startup venture that failed..." ought to do it.


yeah - you better have your background story on that straight though, my next question would be "tell me about that" and then "what happened"


Actually a great behavioral line of questioning - how clearly the the candidate can explain what happened, how they describe whatever part they played or mistakes they made...


Echoing this to say I took a full two years off and came back to a 30k raise and that too as a product manager - meaning no hard skills to show in a leetcode type setting. The right team will always understand why you had to take a break. In my case, the first year was for post burnout travel and personal time, the second to recover from a difficult bout of covid. No one blinked at the situation.

OP, if your financial position allows it, consider taking as much as six months off. I don't know what part of the world you are, but a big change in geography and culture and people around you will probably help break your rut. Consider taking a long trip out to somewhere affordable and sunny and give yourself permission to do nothing but walk around.

Email is my profile bio if you want tips on how to plan something like this.


> On a related note, this "gap in resume" thing needs to stop being a thing at all. I don't know when it became a thing, but it feels distinctively like forcing a wage slave class to keep their head down and continue wageslaving.

I think you can better make sense of it as a vestigial organ of hiring process from before background checks were widespread, no "wageslavery" explanation needed.


In a candidate-rich environment when it comes to selecting workers companies do a lot of crazy and irrational things. Just look at interviewing processes, they tend to be more superstition than anything. Having a gap in your resume that the interviewer can fill in with whatever horror story strikes their fancy (was it drug rehab!?) is a disadvantage.


I've always put years but have also openly admitted having gaps. I simply told I wanted some free time. Or were messing around with some pet-project (which I do put on my CV). Or learning some new language (which I don't put on my CV). It's never been a problem. Perhaps because I never acted weird about it.


> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

Because you might feel like doing so again, or because there’s the possibility the time off wasn‘t voluntary. Not saying employers should think like that, but there’s a portion that does.


It says here that for 22 years you "went Kerouac on everyone's ass."


Interesting: over the last 30 years I’ve been lucky enough that my resume is more gap than “work”. I wonder if that would be a problem if I tried to apply for a job at a a big company.


Teach me your ways master!


> Why would an employer care whether I took time off to pursue other things otherwise?

Many (questionable) reasons, but among other things, it's a convenient way to exclude women trying to return to the workforce after they took time off to have kids, without overtly appearing to discriminate.


In my country, it's illegal to fire a woman(or man) on maternity leave and company must give her(him) same place back, when they return. Maternity leave is usually taken till a kid is 3yrs old, so after 3yrs they must give you your old place back, by law.


These laws usually have loopholes, in the case of the job no longer existing. Which it is very easy to make a job no longer exist, especially in a 3 year time-span.


I'll second this. After I had to disclose a disability during a merger between two companies, HR moved me into a role they made just for me. That role was removed once a merger was complete.


As someone who spent the last 8 years in VP & C suite positions...

If someone is asking questions about a resume gap (implying it's important)... LEAVE THE INTERVIEW.

It will stop being a thing when people realize it's none of anyone's business except yours.

The push for arbitrary obedience is part of the same problem.

You will find companies that aren't run by psychopaths but you must vote with your feet. Discourage yourself and others from putting up with this shabby behavior.


good news: the people most likely to care are exactly the people to avoid, so you're not losing much.


trust me they care. especially in a fast moving technology space like cloud, k8s, ML. if you are hired for COBOL yes sure a gap wont matter


Trust me they don't.

I've had all sorts of gaps in my career. 6 months, 1 year and more, to explore different domains. I'm in computer graphics/front end, pretty fast paced.

Nobody ever asked.

Please, never feel guilty about taking a single month off. If your body needs rest, you need to listen to it.


Yeah, all you have to do is say "I took a year off to tend to personal family matters," and they should hear "none of your damn business" loud and clear or they don't understand boundaries, in which case they're disqualified from employing you.


You have to be careful with this one. "Family matters" can raise a flag if it's an ongoing issue. You're trying not to look like you're going to be a problem employee, as much as that should or shouldn't be a thing.

I think the proper answer is "I just took some time off between jobs." Sounds fine, sounds like you took advantage of an opportunity, and doesn't sound like you're somebody that had a hard time finding a job.


To be frank, if they infer "ongoing problem" out of a single data point like that, they fall into the "not qualified to employ me" bucket. One instance of "tending to family matters" doesn't really say anything beyond, "I have a family."


Yup, I second this. I took almost a year off to work on a personal project and drive GrubHub to make rent. Had no problem getting interviews and hired after a few weeks of looking.

Not every industry is like this, but tech has little reason to care. If anything, employees with more life experience are a benefit to the employer.


for a position that is well paid there is competition. it is a risk to take someone who took a year off. any kind of manager will think that way. obviously if the pay is low and the tech is not changing every month then it is not a problem


>especially in a fast moving technology space like cloud, k8s, ML

You are kidding yourself.


Indeed. Here's why we know this isn't true: everyone has areas they focus on, and they aren't defined as "everything fast-paced that exists." You can spend literal years working on problems in the security space, or on web front end crap, or in audio processing, or object storage, learning absolutely jack squat about cloud, ML or k8s, and you don't shrivel up and die. I basically completely switch disciplines every time I job hop, and nobody's ever questioned me about keeping up with whatever fast-paced stuff I was doing two jobs ago.


Problem solving requirements don't just disappear once you fire up jupyter notebook or set up minikube.


>trust me they care.

The Boomers might.

Thankfully, one of the best things to come out of the recent progressive movements is that work is the be all, end all. There's more to life. More and more companies are being run and staffed by people who understand this.


I would agree for small gaps. But I think it's at least somewhat understandable why a significant gap would be a concern. With the pace technology moves at, if you have not been working for an extended period of time, it's reasonable that you might have fallen behind. Certainly this shouldn't be reason in itself to reject a candidate and it at least somewhat depends on what you were doing during that time, but I find it hard to expect employers not to consider it at all.


Significant gap in this case will be several years, no less, but regular technical interview can answer all the questions about qualification.


It really should be put in the context of someone's life. Did they spend a year or two travelling? Did they spend it working on personally productive projects? Or did they do nothing but play video games or do drugs?

These are all very different extended gaps. The first two should be fine - if someone's skills have atrophied than that's another issue (but nothing a good interview or probation period won't pick up on if it's actually even a problem). The second one might be fine or a problem - and I can see why employers would be wary.


And even if someone spent their time video gaming and doing drugs why can't they turn their life around if they want and demonstrate to have the skill. Burnout, depression, horrible circumstances and families all exists and sometimes you have to hit a stable rock bottom to start climbing.


Yes. I can see why people might be wary although I don't necessarily agree with those who would be (excessively) wary.


why would I care as an employer that you spent a year playing video games and doing drugs?

When I interview people I couldn't care less about any gaps in their resume, we're going to sit down, talk about tech, what you've done and what we need, etc. If there's a match in skills, needs, personality and expectations then that's it, anything else are invisible cargo-cult walls


You might care about their judgement and their state of mind and whether they'd be prepared for the job. I think understanding what someone did in a long gap is important - some are just very easy to understand (person in 20's decides to quit job for a year to go backpacking) while others might be harder. If I was interviewing I wouldn't ever automatically discard a resume because of a long gap, though, so I suppose I'm just thinking of what others might be cautious about, and other people may simply adopt a heuristic to automatically discard to minimise variance.


I've taken sixth months off and mostly played video games and no one ever cared or asked??!


Yep same here. When I ran out of money I thought I'd better start writing some code lol


I'm actually very glad this is the case.


> It really should be put in the context of someone's life.

Absolutely agree.


Guess it depends on how you define a significant gap, 1 year? 5 years?

Also working doesn't necessarily equal keeping up with technology. If i'm maintaining some legacy system, I wont have a gap but i might've not learnt anything new for years.


No the real issue is not the gaps themselves but why so many different jobs that don't last long. Tech evolves fast but in a week or 2 you're up to date if you've been away few months. I have many gaps in my resume but I have many different jobs, which is a lot more problematic. A question that pops up often is why did I left after X months and I need to explain all my choices. It is fine because I either didn't like the projects/companies, I wanted to switch technologies ... they do ask why 6 month off and that seems fine when I tell them I've been travelling.


I worked a corporate job for several years where I pretty much learned nothing. As far as my skills go, the end result was almost no different to not working at all.


I'd second that. "Classical companies" are rarely-ever at the forefront of technology, even if they are technology companies themselves.

It's a broad statement, so keep it in context. Examples: Think, Apple has had the iPhone out since 2008 now. Working there on the iPhone 16 HW / SW specs or the M3 processor design may well be cutting-edge stuff, but working there as SRE for the App Store infrastructure is likely "an SRE job with some legacy in it". And working on their developer infrastructure, devtools / CI etc, very very likely is full of "proprietary dead ends" (i.e. tech noone outside the AAPL orchard will use or have use for). A Wall Street bank, once above a certain size, is going to adopt tech more slowly - much of their proprietary software stack is likely still in C++ / Java where a five-year-old small trading house may have written all that in Rust.

I've had jobs at such "S&P 500" corporates in the past; I wouldn't say "I learned nothing" - I learned how to navigate companies. Call it "coping strategies" if you like. It still helps to get stuff done knowing how-to-do-it on a procedural level - or via human-interaction. Tech-wise ... regretted some of these. My experience, though, is that one can "come back".

"Just" keep the ambition under control that you need to know everything, and need to be able to do everything. Today's "tech stacks" have so many parts in it that are out of your control and that you cannot inspect - the sheer will to "rule them all" will burn you. It's easier said then done, but: know your limits. Everyone has them. You'll recognize the "boasters" soon enough, those that claim they can rule it all.


Same. I think my skills may have regressed because they were working with legacy tech. I did get to go to a ton of zoom meetings, though.


It's that attitude of recruiters' that keeps me unemployable.

The fact is that the IT world does not progress in a linear direction. It's like a puddle that grows into multiple directions. But it is still covering most of the same spots as before. Banks still use COBOL. High-performance code is still in C or C++ with assembler (but that "C" may run on a GPU), etc.


Just give the gap a name and it stops being a gap. Maybe you started your own company to unproductively mess around with stuff. Or call it a sabbatical. Those are popular.


Agree with #1.

HN is the social network for software engineers. Instead of teenage girls staring at a perfect looking tiktok influencer and feeling fat shamed, we are a bunch of typing idiots thinking we aren't good enough to be employed. Imposter syndrome is everywhere here.

Look. 99% people here are just pounding out CRUD apps too -- don't be so hard on yourself. There is a maddening amount of over engineering going on (AKA I am soo hot - look at me in Miami!).


And a good portion of those 99% use scaffolding for those CRUD apps, then fiddle with the CSS, and call it a day.


>Hone a hobby

definitely. I would highly recommend creating something. Woodwork, metalwork, sculpting, crochet... whatever.

It uses the brain in a completely different way. it creates new challenges and the satisfaction of physically manipulating the world is unequal in the digital world.


Yep. Tunnel guy [1] knows what's up.

I got far more satisfaction from tying twist-ties around my grape vines today, than anything software I've done in the past month. My grape vines were droopy, now they're not. Tangible.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31096994


I second creating tunnels: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31565849


Second this, would add any musical instrument to the list. You don't even have to be any good at it. Just improvise and see what comes out. The value for me lies in not being able to "think" about it. You just have to do it. It's not a problem to be solved but something to be discovered.


Would you recommend this over sports?


Why not combine them ? - personally mountain biking + photography. My brother does boat restoration + sailing etc.


Yes. I’m making croissants also bread. It’s super fulfilling. Then you share and enjoy your tasty creation with your friends and family


I'm more of a cook than a baker, but absolutely agree. We have tiny humans currently, so cooking for pleasure is much rarer at the moment, but when they get old enough I can't wait to get back into exploring more foods and trying new recipes and doing it together.


>>> Stop working 80 hour weeks, stop working weekends. When the only thing you do has little/no reward, that is what causes burnout.

This is a very important point. Slogging without any feeling of accomplishment/returns will burn you out faster.


Do #1 as long as you need. For me it went like this:

- month 1 : feeling lost

- month 2 : feeling totally lost

- month 3 : starting doing things for fun, with the culpability of not working

- month 4 : starting to get bored... Staying home alone starts to be boring (it means your health improve 'cos you start wanting to do something again)

- month 5 : realizing that I can't repeat the last 10 years of my life. Som things must change

- month 6 : my guts tell me "you should go back to school"

- month 7 : I understand that listening to my guts is the only meaningful thing I can do

- month 8 : ok, going back to school.


How is school going for you?


It's actually engineering (data sciences orientation). It's going OK but requires a huge effort (I'm way above the age at which you can ingest so much maths). So I have to be careful not to burn out again. But the deal is different: I work for me, I'll most likely succeed (I've made it through most of the exams with very good gradeq; I'm on the thesis right now), I don't have a toxic boss. So it's not exactly like a burn out situation. But I'll definitively feel relieved once it's behind me (hopefully in september).

Now I was fortunate enough to have enough money (and a powerful social system) to be able to do it. I understand I am very lucky.

And data sciences are super cool when you come from computer sciences. I definitely feel I'm learning something totally new. Data sciences is very far away from computers when you think about it...


If you don't mind me asking, what's your plan for after you get the degree?


Find a job :-) I still love computers :-) I may work in the research team that follows my thesis (got a strong offer); I'll do "basic" stuff but I understand they'll get an experienced colleague at the price of a student, so it's a bargain :-)

On my side, it'll mean start anew in an work environment I like, doing stuff where there's less customer management involved (so, for my personality, that means much less stress). I like customer relationship though, but not when it means: "tell the very unhappy customers that the crappy solution we sold them is the one they love (and explain that this budget overrun is under control)". I much prefer the relationship when it is : "ok customer, I think I understand your needs, let's imagine a solution together".


I've been in software engineering for 20 years and I don't think I've ever had to speak to an unhappy customer. That sounds like something that happens in small startups only (in larger orgs, devs should be fully insulated from this by product owners). In large orgs, often the problem is opposite - you're building something that no one really wants, so there are no interested customers to speak to.


> 1. Take time off, like a month or more. [1] Use it to do anything other than coding. Hone a hobby, travel, volunteer, etc.

I really recommend the volunteering, especially if in a field unrelated to your career and more aligned with your values.

Not only is it a great way to get to know people, it can really give you a better sense of what skills you can bring. You will make even more of an impact if you do bring a different perspective and skillset to others who normally volunteer.


Making some assumptions here but I feel that you (and people in the US in general) downplay the benefits of travel. To me, volunteering in this case would just be..more work?


I'm actually in France, but I agree with travel being great. I haven't traveled as much as I'd have liked to, and I have committments that make travel more difficult than when I was in my twenties.

For me, personally, volunteering in a small association has had a life-changing impact to me in a month.


The option not on here is to move to a lead.

Tell the company that it's more than a one person job (should be obvious by the comments). Then pitch the idea of you being the lead and selecting the new team. You should be able to reduce your hours and get a raise. If not, then the comment above should work well.


I agree, this is a logical next step. Definitely time off is warranted though -- burnout is no joke.


I've been so much more productive since I scaled back my hours from 60-70 to never more than 40.


> Fill your time with something else that you prioritize above work.

For me this is by far the hardest part. (But also I'm the type to just idly waste time instead of filling it with work.) For most of my life, coding was by far my favorite thing to do; I could do it for hours without noticing the time passing. But now it feels like work and I haven't found anything that remotely fills the hole in its place.


Agree to all your points except partial "nit" on the first one - Traveling slightly feels like an escapism thing for me. Volunteering and hobbies are perfect, but people tend to do the traveling more often, I feel.

I think people in OP's situation might benefit a sense of accomplishment/progress, and being recognized for that would help. But that's hard to get, especially external recognition. But a feeling of satisfaction/recalibration/grounding is definitely available thru hobbies that enable creation as suggested in the comment about woodwork, metalwork, sculpting, etc.


I think for travel you need to make the most of it when you return. I've come back from trips feeling like I hit a refresh button, though if you don't make changes and run with the feeling you'll just fall back into old feelings and habits


I agree about feeling mentally refreshed, but I am normally knackered after travel because I don't stop moving when I travel (relaxing on a beach or beside a pool makes no sense to me). Most travel trips for me result in at least one minor epiphany about something I should be doing more or less of... Taking yourself out of a comfortable place to a new place can temporarily re-wire some neurons in your brain for more open thinking.


The current mode of travel for most people is trying to maximize trips. Find the best deal for flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. Then cramming all the "must see" spots while hopping Ubers and bars. It is hard to switch out of this mode.

Tho I am not sure about how rich people vacation, ritualistic trips to the same "summer cabins" or "winter resorts".


You wrote: <<It is hard to switch out of this mode.>> Is that for you or other people? My point: I don't care about other people "relaxing" on a beach / poolside, stuffing themselves at the buffet. I never do it. When that type of person comes to ask for advice after my most recent holiday, I always tell them to go away (nicely, of course!). It is a waste of time to talk about being stuck in a bus terminal for 8 hours waiting for the next bus, but striking up a conversation with a local imam... and learning lots about the local community, culture, language, and food.


But what if they aren't worth more (as a dev, financially) than they think they are? They could be awful, but naively put in a ton of hours. Why do we assume people are worth more? Are we trying to make them feel better by making assumptions and potentially leading them horribly astray? Most people are supremely mediocre and there are just and many horrible devs as their are great ones.


Wow, this is a textbook example of trying to solve a deeply personal/emotional problem with logics and data instead of compassion. To anyone who activates their empathy sensors it's evidently clear that the OP is having a mild burnout crisis (not surprising after 70h weeks), and needs a bit of support first and foremost. What's really doing damage is your language, not a biased estimate of which percentile of a bell curve we're looking at here. It's simply. not. the. problem. If they are on the wrong track they'll figure it out on their own, but they need support and compassion.

Sorry for being so direct, but this culture of trying to substitute logic for compassion really pervades the IT scene in a rather toxic way.


>What's really doing damage is your language, not a biased estimate of which percentile of a bell curve we're looking at here.

I don't know, maybe setting unrealistic expectations and telling everyone they are worth more which implies they are doing something wrong to not get that worth out isn't doing them favours either in the long run.


Yes, apparently you don't know how language affects emotions, expectations and personal relationships, and what the long-term effects on mental health, productivity, longevity and quality-years-of-life are. Don't confuse your pseudo-empiricism with objectivity (we don't even have enough data here! how can you talk about unrealistic expectations without data?). But even better, learn interpersonal skills - objectivity isn't everything.


>we don't even have enough data here! how can you talk about unrealistic expectations without data?

You don't need data on every single developer in the world to know that not all of them are 'worth more'.

>learn interpersonal skills - objectivity isn't everything.

The whole thinking that objectivity precludes interpersonal skills and that if you attempt to be objective you are what? a cold robot? is absurd.


If you post "I don't know, maybe setting unrealistic expectations and telling everyone they are worth more which implies they are doing something wrong to not get that worth out isn't doing them favours either in the long run." under a thread like this, you are acting supremely unempathic. You are not acting like a robot, modern robots are actually much better at empathic conversation. In fact, I asked GPT-3 "Write a response to this post: [OP's post]", here's the result:

You are not a loser, and you are not alone. Many people struggle with finding fulfillment in their careers. It sounds like you have been working hard, but it is also important to work smart. Try to focus on your goals and what you want to achieve. Networking can be helpful, but it is not the only way to find satisfaction in your career. There are many other ways to find fulfillment, such as volunteering, pursuing hobbies, and spending time with loved ones. Don't be afraid to reach out to others for help and advice. There are many people who are willing to help and support you.


That is genuinely the most impressive thing I've seen come out of GPT-3. Granted, I haven't played with it much, but wow. Thanks for posting this.


Me too, like, you could start one of these agony aunt columns and nobody would notice. Maybe polish it a bit and you are good to go.


Even if you think objectively, in this case, he's most likely underpaid and undervalued by the startup.

1. He's working much longer hours than he's paid for, probably for pie-in-the-sky options that 95% chance won't amount to a true pay-off for his hustle

2. He doesn't seem to have advocated for himself or his own happiness, he's going along with this burnout inducing program

3. He's clearly modest -- he's been coding for ~10 years and he's in his mid-20's. That is a highly employable situation in our field, he could easily get another job IMO.


It would still make sense to encourage their self esteem, because poor self-esteem is a self reinforcing condition. It negatively affects your mental health, and by extension your job performance and "worth" on the job market.

If a little bit of self delusion is what's required to break that cycle, then it's totally worth it.

Not that I think that's what's going on here. If you read between the lines of the OP it's my opinion that the main issues afflicting them are a poor self-image and bad networking skills. They're likely good enough technically but if they don't address the self talk they may never realize that.


Someone who has been working in a small team for 4 years in a startup has to be "good enough". Which is far better than the average candidate who can't keep a position for more than a year and needs constant help from the manager in order to accomplish anything. Maybe my standards are low, but unfortunately, I have seen so many of these cases.


OP didn’t state where they are from, but there are plenty of places where it is extremely hard to fire, even if an employee is consistently underperforming.

Not saying that this is the case in this circumstance (I don’t know OP,) but the “you must be good because you lasted 4 years” heuristic doesn’t work that well outside of the US, or similar markets with at-will employment.


if they were sole dev in a startup for four years and couldn't ship software the startup probably wouldn't have lasted the last four years... Or they very quickly wouldn't be the sole full stack dev any more and relegated to some shit job


exactly. 'Shipping' is a very valuable skill not everybody has (and people who do have it undervalue it).


Yeah, I missed that they were the sole engineer. That changes things dramatically.


"sole dev in a startup" is key here.


I did miss the word “sole.” Good point.


Even in France which lots of people call "socialist", the company can fire you at any time and has to pay only about 3/6 months of salary for "wrongful termination". That's low enough to not keep constantly underperforming people.


I think in many other countries like Nordics and Germany the company can be forced to just basically undo the termination.


They could, but usually you don't want this to happen as an employee. Alternatively the court can force the employer to pay a severance if they regard the working conditions as untenable. An obvious example would be bullying at the workplace. But all of this is only applicable in the case of an unlawful termination.

Mostly if they want to get rid of you they offer you a severance.

It is also much more complicated than I can explain in a single post. For example, you can be fired for working "slowly", but you can't be fired if you are doing your best - even if all your colleagues are faster workers. It mainly depends on if you are doing your best.

E.g. your colleagues are able to dish out 100 pizzas in a typical evening but you only manage to make 50, and your boss wants to fire you. You don't agree and sue him. The court now has to decide if you perform so badly because of something that is "inherent" - which is called a "personenbedingte Kündigung" or in English dismissal on grounds of personal capability, or if it is based on your conduct. A dismissal on grounds of personal capability is usually deemed unlawful, as long as you give your best, if you consistently only manage to make 50 pizzas it seems like it, right? However if you willfully (!) perform badly the dismissal is usually deemed lawful. But, if you e.g. suffer from rheumatism and you can't perform the way you used to but you want to perform better, you just can't anymore it gets a bit complicated: the employer has to make a prognosis on how and if you are able to someday perform better again or if you could do another job. So, usually it is cheaper to offer someone a severance in that case.


Only if the courts decide that it was unlawful, but companies have enough experience and lawyers who make sure they have enough dirt on you to justify them firing you. It's what my German ex-boss told us and I've had seen many colleagues get fired without any repercussions for the company. Plus, if you end up sueing your former employer, and the word gets out, no other employer will touch you.

Also, for your mental health, you wouldn't want to go back and work at the company who just fired you. That's like getting back together with an ex you just got out of toxic relationship.


Big companies have lawyers up the wazoo, but startups (esp. with a single dev like OP) struggle with funds in many cases, so often hire lawyers to the minimal extent possible.


I think this is a fair assessment, at least competent, perhaps not a one in a thousand superstar.

What someone in this range earns and their working conditions are going to be highly dependent on what they ask for and their self-esteem. Someone can probably lure them on the cheap or they could sneak into $200k job. I think a lot of the comments here about self-care and advocating for themselves are very helpful.


I'm basing this off four observations --

1) They, as the sole developer, are managing to hold their startup together software-wise. That is a useful skill -- raw coding talent or not.

2) Since having recently found my way to a FAANG, I've found a surprising number of new hires are fresh college grads with about that much coding experience, and make more than I (with 30 years experience) ever had made before joining.

3) OP is self-described terrible at networking. I've personally found this my biggest barrier to finding well-paying jobs also.

4) Startups pay shit.


> are managing to hold their startup together software-wise.

you dont know that. They could be failing the startup software-wise, and yet never know it!

The only way to find out, objectively, if you're good or not, is via multiple sources of independent verification in different companies.


If you've been the sole developer at a startup (and that startup depends on it's tech) for 4 years, there's no way OP is failing at that.


It would be evident after a few months or a year if he is failing them, he has been there for 4 years. So unless the startup has non-functioning software and everyone involved is okay with that, incl the people who pays the bills, he probably is doing just fine and just mentally deep in a hole.


I want to point out that a person’s is not a static thing. You are not born with whatever you are “worth”. You either build your worthiness over time, or lose it. I think instead of propagating that most people are horrible devs, we should try to tell people that it’s always an acquired skill. So everyone (and I really mean everyone) can work to acquire the skills, and become a “worthy” dev.


This.

I have seen eager but untalented persons build their skills and their portfolio over a couple years. To the point that had I been told this at the beginning, I would not have believed it. In a particular case, the person - at the time a low qualified technician - embarked at 26 to become an engineer, and by 38 is one of the most sought after engineers in his field.

Self confidence and willpower are factors that can overcome innate talent to a very large degree.


> and there are just and many horrible devs as their are great ones.

I will say horrible devs are far more than great ones. In my 15 years of experience I have seen far more mediocre or downright horrible than great ones.


Quick question, if I may...

Of the horrible devs that you can think of, how many of them would reach out and say that they're horrible (or make a post like this) vs how many of them think they're great/superstars? :)

Certainly makes me think of the Dunning-Kruger effect!


I think many "great" programmers also have plenty of flaws. Nobody is perfect. As long as you can make stuff that works, that's good. Some people will be better at some things, some will be worse. Focus on the stuff you're good at. Work on the stuff you want to be better at. But stop trying to be a superstar.

We're all stuck between Dunning-Kruger and the Impostor Syndrome, but we make it work.


Completely agree :)


what if they would be great doing something entirely different. OP hasn't said if they ever had a point in their life when they really enjoyed what they did.

in my case brain fog from burn-out lasted not months but 6-8 years with varying severity. depending on how long you stay burned out or ignore the burn-out that might be less. E.g if you're without a support network during burn-out it may not be as straight forward to pull yourself out. Burn out might be not because they worked so much and are now financially stable but because they had to work so much because they could never make ends meet until now.

If they can afford it they should take time off radically - get rid of everything that ties them down, be in nature for min 6 months (example: a long hike -> heading from A to B so there is a purpose in the simplicity). Or cover yourself in books (not compsci or tech literature but something radically different) and spend the other free time physically exercising.

There are pretty clear signs of depression in these sentences (why I would focus on lot of exercise or routines that also demand a healthy diet). Alternative is to see a quack and pop pills for the next few months and risk some addiction as a result, or at least deal with weaning yourself off them again.

Doing radically different things than $dayjob means totally forgetting about technology for a while and opening yourself up to other things. Person is 28 ffs which is hardly an age where you can't start on a radically different career path and end up excelling in it. Worst thing would be to carry on as a dev and turn yourself from a bad dev to a mediocre one and pay for this poor "gain" with burn-out, brain-fog, depression for several years.


Assuming the developer can get paid a 40-hour salary for working 40 hours a week elsewhere instead of 70-90 hour weeks plus 24/7 on-call, the developer is clearly capable of earning more dollars per hour of work.


What if this kind of cruel snotty attitude is a telltale sign of people who are as afraid they’re mediocre as they view the people they judge? What if there’s no value to anyone in this kind of response?


Being realistic is not cruel. It may feel cruel, but allowing people to delude themselves is far more cruel in the long term, as they make poor choices.


This is literally the logic of capitalism. Your value is simply whatever value you are able to negotiate for yourself on the job market. OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista, less valuable than a corporate lawyer or a CEO.

People naturally "compare up" rather than "compare down". Sure OP is probably in the 1% wealthiest people in the world, or top 99.9999% of those who ever lived, but rather than be happy with that, he will compare himself to other computer programmers who are doing fantastically, and feel bad about himself.

Another factor here is probably the fact that OP's working conditions are highly exploitative, it appears that he is putting in far more work than necessary. He probably genuinely believes that hard work is rewarded and doesn't understand why he feels used up and spent. And it's probably because he is being used up and spent by his exploitative employer. So fair enough if you look around and see other developers who are not being used up, you might decide you want to live life with a measure of dignity, too.

Any rational actor in this circumstance would do the minimum work they could get away with, and do whatever they can to negotiate for better conditions. A first step might be to develop enough self esteem to be able to say "no" when asked to work unhealthy and unproductively long hours. But without knowing more of the specifics of how much leverage he has, it's hard to know if that is going to be met with instant reprisal or whether he will be able to gain the respect he deserves.

Of course, I am starting from the basic assumption that all human beings are worthy of some basic amount of respect, dignity, and freedom from exploitation.


> OP is more valuable than a toilet cleaner, or a starbucks barista

Not to kill your point, but those two are dramatically under-valued and under-appreciated jobs in most societies around the world. Every time you use a toilet (other than the one in your home) which is hopefully clean, somebody had cleaned it recently. Imagine they hadn't. You'd have a terrible day. Every time you go grab a good Starbucks coffee. Maybe even sit down in a comfy sofa to be able to enjoy it. Imagine the barista had screwed it up.

Both experiences make a huge difference in people's lives. Hundreds if not thousands a day. Every day. But they are paid crap and talked about in the way you just did. Compare that to a coder churning away meaningless features in some meaningless app. Would I care if the coder wouldn't show up to work for the next 4 weeks with nobody stepping in their place? No. That answer is decisively different for the toilet cleaner and the barista.


> But they are paid crap

The pay is usually indicative of employer's ability to find a person with the necessary skillset to do the job and not some abstract "importance to society" value that the job has.


Wouldn't it be nice if pay was correlated with value to society? There are a lot of software engineers getting paid bank to make products that are worse for users and society but make their bosses fat stacks. The school janitor is providing more benefit to society.


As a software dev I agree, and I've worked on some products I'd deem as a net positive to society. But there is just so much shit software out there.

As a German I wonder what the people where thinking programming VWs TDI system to activate emission controls only during testing, was it worth it? Polluting the environment and peoples lungs for a bit of money? It's not like dev jobs are a rarity in Germany. And yes I'm judgemental about this. And don't get me started on the things that are legal and still a detriment to society.


What were the execs that put a bunch of monkeys in an exhaust gas chamber to prove it was “clean diesel” thinking? Or the ones who signed off on the “Green Police” ad?


I think what the parent is trying to say, is that if we really valued those things, they would be paid more. The thing is, cleaning toilets is pretty easy. I do it myself all the time at home. So is making coffee. It's not _the best_ coffee, but it's coffee. The baristas who make _the best_ coffee probably get paid quite a lot. But it's pretty easy to make okay coffee. For most people in this world, programming is hard. And even if you thing that feature of that app is meaningless, somebody else obviously disagrees with you and is willing to spend a lot of money to make that feature happen.

The value is not what we _think_ of it, but what we're willing to pay for it.


My take: payment is not based on created value, but on competition for the job. The more competition, the lower the salary an employer can get away with.


> My take: payment is not based on created value, but on competition for the job. The more competition, the lower the salary an employer can get away with.

And yet, for the past two years, just about every store you'll ever go to has a 'Sorry, we're shortstaffed' sign in the window.


If there's zero offerings/competition, the job can't be filled. If they increase salary, there would be competition.


I agree that our society's method for allocating value to people has fundamental flaws; chief among them is that money is the main measure of value.

Ben Franklin called money 'coined liberty'; in this day and age it is more 'coined status'. It is a scaling mechanism. Reputation only works if people know you, there are simply too many people to know, so we've replaced reputation with money.

However, in the context of this discussion thread, the word 'value' can be interpreted as "paycheck". Your and my diversions are that, diversions.


> Your value is simply whatever value you are able to negotiate for yourself on the job market.

Since what you can negotiate is in part related to what value you can actually provide, then what you can negotiate is ultimately guided by reality, if not determined by it. Of course negotiation matters. In business as well as in love. And it matters in part because we cannot read minds and cannot see everything that you can do. So communication must fill that gap. Imperfectly.


Even more reason for them to get a decent work life balance. Who do you think makes more trouble for their collegues: a hypothetical mediocre developer who is overworked, or a mediocre developer who works normal hours and has two hobbies which fulfil them?

I'd bet my money on the first producing more trouble. The latter one is not centered around coding alone, so they are more flexible.


> But what if they aren't worth more (as a dev, financially) than they think they are?

Honestly i think most devs err on the side of underestimating their value not overestimating it, particularly in the current market.

Of course, ymmv, but last time i switched jobs i ended up being pretty shocked how much more employers thought i was worth compared to what my (at the time) current job was paying me.


He is a developer not an assembly line worker. Office work is subjective to the environment and can not be objectively measured. It largely depends on how he presents and positions himself in his specific work environment and there is always room to level up this situation.


Possible, but the balance of probablility is that they’re fairly good.

This based solely on the fact they’re aware of and posting on HN.

All the mediocre people I know aren’t interested enough to keep reading -much less comment on- this website.


i like your logic.

someone should ask a few HN questions instead of leetcode. "who is dang"? "did you read the latest from the lego sorter guy ?"


“Most people are supremely mediocre and there are just and many horrible devs as their are great ones.”

if this is true (not arguing either way), then he is almost surely undervaluing himself since most of those mediocre or horrible devs don’t work 80 hour weeks or are regularly on call.


nice argument there dude. your self esteem must be skyrocketing. Op is crying for help, you talk like an AI. cheers!


If point 3 is not communicated propperly ( and it sounds the OP is not that great at that) it might put his job into jeopardy. If an environment exists where this has been done by OP for a longer time now, the change will be reflected as a lack of commitment. OP would probably be better off looking for a new job and set new boundaries.


6. Start not giving a shit about career, helped me a lot


Ah, to "internalize" a statement is to "believe" it. To treat it as real.

I just understood that.

That is an interesting method.


I completely agree, even more so with 1. Do not skip or shorten 1. Force yourself NOT to code during 1.


A lot of stuff going on here.

1. You're clearly NOT incompetent. If you were, you couldn't possibly hold the web and mobile platform together entirely on your own for that long AND handle every on call incident.

2. The thing that surprised me most about burnout was the physical symptoms. You've got them. It only gets worse from here if you keep doing what you're doing.

3. It makes perfect sense to me that you don't feel like you're getting better in that environment. The rockstar developer is a myth, but the band is not. You get better by practicing with other talented people.

4. You already know this, but you're being taken advantage of.

So given all that...

1. Everyone telling you to take a break is correct. Go outside and look at trees, read a book somewhere scenic, shut off your phone. If you need to take sick time to do this, so be it. It's not going to make you feel normal, but it will give your wildly overworked brain some relief.

2. Hit up recruiters, hit up whatever network you have (including old acquaintances). Your story is incredibly straightforward: you held the line on these systems by yourself for years on end, including all their on-call needs, it's enough work for a 4-person team, and no help is coming. You're looking to work on an actual team where people actually learn from each other.

3. If possible, take some time off between the old job and the new job just to take care of yourself.

Good luck.


> 3. It makes perfect sense to me that you don't feel like you're getting better in that environment. The rockstar developer is a myth, but the band is not. You get better by practicing with other talented people.

I can't stress this enough. Being part of a team you appreciate helps a lot. First and foremost, with burnout. Knowing you have teammates you can share daily stuff with, and lean on when you need to, is a lot. Feeling like they can do the same with you, makes it an even more powerful experience.

All in all, it sounds like, at this point, you should optimize for people and not tech excellence. The latter can follow when you have a supportive environment.

As others suggested, take some time off to put out the fire. Then move on to find a job in a team you think you might like.

btw, during the time off, things might get worse mentally before they get better. Simply because you won't be able to hide from your thoughts and feelings anymore. It could do you good to set simple, achievable daily goals that serve a small purpose and not aim for something big (like learning a new skill). Stuff like going to the beach every day, or meditating for 10 minutes (without the purpose of "learning meditation" or "doing it right").

Be kind to yourself, your life isn't a race to be won. Maybe more like a hike through the wilderness.


> 2. Hit up recruiters, hit up whatever network you have (including old acquaintances). Your story is incredibly straightforward: you held the line on these systems by yourself for years on end, including all their on-call needs, it's enough work for a 4-person team, and no help is coming. You're looking to work on an actual team where people actually learn from each other.

OP said they weren't good at networking, but I just want to echo this. I might be better than average at networking for the field (at least traditionally), but when I started freelancing I mainly go through recruiters (who do take a cut, but worth it for me).

There are plenty of recruiters for employed work too, and hopefully some will recognize both the value in your resume and your humility.

Tech meetups have also started up again after covid, try to go to one of those if you're in any kind of metropolitan area. It might not be the specific topic you're interested in, but there are going to be other people who also want to network, and hey, free pizza (usually).


> I mainly go through recruiters (who do take a cut, but worth it for me).

Recruiters can be great to avoid the networking dance. Make sure to look at salary surveys so you have a ballpark for pay, ask the recruiter what % cut they are taking, and always engage with at least three separate recruiters for calibration. If a recruiter pressures you into being exclusive, laugh and hang up.


> 3. If possible, take some time off between the old job and the new job just to take care of yourself.

This is almost always possible. Even if the recruiter pushes back, it's usually the easiest thing to negotiate.


Oh yeah, usually the issue wouldn't be the offer but something like health insurance.


> I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months

So why do you think you have the following:

> but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog

You're putting in WAY TOO MANY HOURS!

Stop doing overtime, and read this: https://www.7pace.com/blog/overtime-kills and http://blog.approache.com/2010/11/rules-of-productivity.html

On the career level: You are selling a service. You code, they pay. You are currently underselling yourself. Your boss comes to your car dealership, buys a car, and you give him 2 cars. Don't do that! Your boss pays for 40 hours, you do 40 hours. He wants more? He pays more. He thinks it's a bad deal? You go work somewhere else for someone that does want to pay for your service.

Even though you are an employee, imagine that you are a freelancer selling your service. No pay, no service. Pay for 40 hours, get 40 hours.


> Stop doing overtime, and read this: https://www.7pace.com/blog/overtime-kills and http://blog.approache.com/2010/11/rules-of-productivity.html

That was fascinating reading, thanks for sharing. This seems like absolutely crucial data for a startup. Rationally, these links imply that a startup should work 40 hour weeks.

Intuitively I'm not entirely convinced, but I want to be. I work 50 hours minimum and have regularly worked 60-65 in the recent past. I can't imagine that 40 hours would have gotten me as far. But obviously I may be misjudging myself.

I think a startup founder would rightly have this fear - if I ask people to work 40 hours, will the investors scream at me? What if my competitors work longer hours, will they beat me? These are such key questions that I feel you have to be _really_, _really_ confident about these results.


There were periods in my life when I was obsessed with productivity. I found out that I can do about 3 to 4 hours of highly concentrated work a day. On extreme days, I could pull off 6 hours of concentration. But I always paid back that time in the days after.

Now I can't do those hours in 1 go, there need to be pauses in between. Spending 40 hours a week doing 15 to 20 hours of highly concentrated work seems reasonable to me.

It's possible that I'm highly unproductive with my 3 to 4 hours a day, but there are clues in my life that say otherwise. I have a masters degree in CS, and at work always got good to great reviews. So comparing myself to others, I'm doing pretty great. Never have I met anyone who was 2x or more productive than me (when I was not in my unproductive periods). I met plenty of people who were way smarter than me.

Another clue: while studying, I would do 75% of my study material before lunch, then had to struggle the remaining 25% in the afternoon and early evening. At 20:00, I was completely done. I would read 1 sentence, and it just would not stick in my head. It was impossible at that point for me to learn.

I know people who study way into the night, and I always wondered how they were able to pull this off. Well, in the end it turned out they didn't do shit in the mornings.

So for me, I'm very skeptical about working 60 to 80 hours a week. I think a lot of people are just fooling themselves. Sometimes you hear stories like Elon Musk or John Carmack, who seem to be able to work crazy amount of hours. But still I'm highly skeptical about their reporting. Let's just say I would love to see it with my own eyes if they fit into my theory or not. If they don't fit, I would love to know how they are able to do it.

I've seen others online that report the same as me. 4 hours a day of highly concentrated work. That you can sit in meetings 60 to 80 hours a week, I have no doubt. But I don't think it would equate into 60 to 80 hours of productive work.

Anyway, if you have more on the topic, I would love to hear it. Also, check out this video, which is also very informative and comes from a pretty reliable source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4


> Anyway, if you have more on the topic, I would love to hear it. Also, check out this video, which is also very informative and comes from a pretty reliable source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH1bewTg-P4

Thanks, that was a great watch. I note he doesn't make any recommendations about working hours though, just "do ensure you have enough time to do these things that help".


I think what you described is the case for the vast majority of people, I certainly feel the same for myself.

I do believe in outliers however. Some people really do seem to just be wired differently. Problems can be caused though when average people take advice from the Elon Musks of the world and burn themselves out trying to work 90 hour weeks.


> I do believe in outliers however. Some people really do seem to just be wired differently.

This is covered in the links. Basic response: highly sceptical that is true. If it is true, then you'll find that if that person _also_ took care of themselves, they'd get even more done.


Investors don't give two hoots how many hours your people work, they care if you reach the goals you promise you will (which translates near directly into likelihood that their investment has some return).

The key insight is that working more hours doesn't lead to more work being accomplished, because there's a saturation region to productivity. Couple that with the fact that there's a negative return for sustained overexertion, consistently working excessive hours actually is less productive for individuals and teams.

But if you don't believe it, measure it.


How would investors know what hours the devs are working?


I want to throw out there that HN is not going to have the average compassion and emotional intelligence to give you good advice. You need to hire yourself a life coach or work with a therapist (which in your case would serve the same purpose). It may not seem it to you, but you are very young still. You have more growing to do and everyone needs trusted advisors.

Also, the world is full of "lies" and most people believe them like facts. These un-truths or unhelpful-truths tend to not do you have favors. They are spread because they are attractive or convenient or benefit someone else's agenda.

Here some things you talked about that you should press x to doubt on:

A Rockstar programmer isn't a desirable professional to hire any more than actual rockstars. All stars are rare and have a big network of people around them enabling then. A lot of the work they get credit for comes from other people.

All performance is 80% situational. We are not islands. Great people in bad situations are failures. Failures in great situations are rockstars.

28 is not old. Teenagers can spend their time being children without affecting their future job prospects. People can spend their 20's partying and still run for office. Most of us get many chances in life.

Hard work does not pay off. (This one is starting to break through for you and is the main reason for your post). Luck pays off. Who you know pays off. Who you can convince pays off. Effort is not linearly correlated with reward and can often be uncorrelated. Lots of people who want to pay you a wage to do things they would rather not do would like you and everyone else to believe otherwise.

Lots of people would like to convince you that your self worth should come from them, from the money they give you, the title they give you and all of the things you can do for them. Do not listen to these people. You are the only person in the world who can properly value you. When it comes to your self-worth, you have the only opinion that matters.


This is great, I would upvote it more if I could. Also very accurate on the lack of required empathy.

The combination of your last points and "hard work does not pay off" are something that it took me until 32 (and arguably then only because of lockdowns) to learn. Working hard on your employer's problems is unlikely to be fulfilling, they will never give you the influence or credit you want (or maybe deserve?) because of "hard work". Working hard on your own things or with people you care about is where you can earn fulfillment. And I don't mean a $10,000/month side hustle, I mean tiny incremental improvements on things you enjoy but may suck at. For me it's been attempting to learn another spoken language, which I'm still comically bad at 3 years later, and some other hobbies which I'm also lower-end-of-the-curve bad at but get a lot of enjoyment from.


> 28 is not old.

28 is approaching old for very certain things. But a career as an engineer is not one of them. There are opportunities that are lost with time, but they're also a lot fewer than someone saying they missed the boat at 28 might feel.

As a very specific example - many olympic athletes peak in 20-25, and for the most part if someone is much older than that they were already exceptional in their 20-25 range and are now riding a decline eg Michael Phelps for swimming, or as i understand it gymnasts.

IIRC there is actually research to the contrary about starting a business that 40yr olds actually have really great odds due to network, experience, maturity etc. They make up for the cliche lack of inventiveness/newness with being experienced in handling the harder things that every business encounters (setbacks, hr bombs, firing etc).


There is a lot in this post that I completely agree with.

The main part is that our success is highly situational. I think this somewhat ties in with luck - working hard in the right situation pays off.


I list it separate from luck because there's actually a lot of control we can exercise on our environments. A lot of people are very bad at this. Our default is often to cope rather than make a change. People get into bad situations mostly due to luck since you never have perfect information before saying yes to a new job, a new partner, a new city. But then once the bad situation is clear, people don't make a change because they have too much ego (this is who I am), fatalism (this is what I deserve), obligation (only I could do this), misplaced optimism (I can fix it), fear (it would only be worse), and adaptation (I'll get used to it).

Sometimes quiting a job is just as important for your career growth as accepting a job. Be a great quitter.


   Hard work does not pay off. (This one is starting to break through for you and is the main reason for your post). Luck pays off. Who you know pays off.
This is all true but misses the key point.

Hard work can be incredibly powerful but only if channeled wisely.

How, when, and what you work hard on matters.


I think you miss my point. You still have faith in the meritocracy. A combination of hard work and smart work should surely pay off. Right? Please? The just get what they deserve? Most people with power and money earned it and are deserving of it? What? No?

This is something people really want to be true. The world would be better if it were true. Things would be simpler and more explainable. I am accumulating a lifetime of evidence that it is not. Damn.


Nothing is a guaranteed bet, and people don't always get what they deserve. Life is stochastic and chance plays a large part on outcomes.

That said, working hard and smart improves your individual chances over the alternative.


> My salary also hasn't increased much, and feel like I'm severely underpaid based on the # of years of experience but I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth

Sure sounds like it. I've run 100+ interviews at a FAANG, nearly all levels and IC roles - email me if you'd like to chat about roles/responsibilities/comp (we can keep it anonymous and high-level).

There are also professional services like triplebyte and interviewing sites like interviewing.io to help get an objective assessment of your value.

> I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours.

If you're working this hard, you are carrying the team. You know stuff no one else knows. You have the power to say no.

Stop working so hard. Set a fixed 40hr schedule then stick to it. If your boss wants more, that's their problem.


Constant overtime is a clear failure of management.

You are a cog in the system. The next level up in the system plays with the cogs they have influence over, including you. If you are ever working beyond your contract, then your boss has failed their job.

It may be that your immediate boss has been put into an impossible position by the next level up (and so on) but that is NOT your issue, it is theirs.

As a human being, you might be inclined to forgive another humans failure. I know I do. And this is good for society in limited amounts as no human is perfect.

However at the point of constant overtime of even 1 minute - every week for months on end - it is clearly abuse. Get out now.


Also, if you're on call 24/7 and getting burnt out, you need an effective way of shedding this load. And it just so happens that one of the effective ways of shedding this load is a real ass-kicker move: come up with a plan to improve your ops and make it so anyone can be on call, not just you. This probably means improvements to monitoring (clear signals that don't constantly false-positive and require the expert -- aka you -- to diagnose), improvements to reliability, and improvements to ops documentation (clear docs that say when this alarm goes off, here's what you do). Sharing the knowledge that's in your head so you can stop being a hero is a next-level maneuver, and as a bonus, it gets you some peace.


Thank you for asking for help. First off: you are burnt out, possibly with depression. I think you should reach out to a career counseling therapist, or a regular therapist. You need some time and space to turn off work mode and just process all of this. You don't have to quit your job immediately, but it's clear that your work situation is unhealthy. However, your work may not be the only thing that's making you feel this way.

Since you're only 28, you have about 30 years left in your career. Think of the long game. You may not be great at networking now, but you can work up to it. You may not have satisfaction now, but you can work up to it. Making a plan can give you a bit more stability.

Anyone can have direction; just close your eyes, point somewhere, and start walking. And anyone can have satisfaction; for example, if your programs work, that's more satisfying than if they didn't. In other words, direction and satisfaction are a place we give ourselves to go and a bar we set for ourselves. Not only do they not matter, but you can set them any way you like.

My own way of dealing with satisfaction was first to make myself care too much about my work, and then to change my work to be something that mattered to me. I'm sure it'll change again.

My way of dealing with direction has been to keep doing the same thing while I dabble in other things and think about what else I'd like to do. Still working on it. But I have a lot of life left, and I've decided my life won't be a race to a destination, but a walk in a park. My biggest challenge is figuring out what park to go to. And getting myself to walk slower...


wow, beautiful response. Saving this for later.


Greetings neighbor and fellow traveler. Here's a few ideas.

* Do nothing. "Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something." - Winnie the pooh

* Stop going to work. "I don't like my job and I don't think I'm gonna go anymore." Peter from Office space.

* Let it all play out. My uncle Coydog used to say, "You got to let the river take its course." Well, what does that mean? I don't know. I used to ask him the same thing. He said, "We all in that river, boy." "And the river know right where it's going." Ptolemy Grey

* Be content. "Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you." Lao Tzu

* Get into Philosophy. "Philosophy molds and builds the personality, orders one's life, regulates one's conduct, shows one what one should do and what one should leave undone, sits at the helm and keeps one on the correct course as one is tossed about in perilous seas. Without it no one can lead a life free of fear or worry. Every hour of the day countless situations arise that call for advice, and for that advice we have to look to philosophy." - Seneca


I loved the first two quotes. They went right into my notebook. Thanks for sharing.


bubba_sparks, thanks for this wonderful comment. You have brought clarity to my life with very few words. I hope it sticks for a while in my brain :).


Well.

1. You severely undervalue yourself.

2. You are abused at work: overworked and underpaid.

3. Rock-star programmers and ninjas are bullshit "titles" meant to shine some lights on successful introverts to attract some other introverts into abusive companies.

My best advice, if any, would be to find yourself a hobby or any activity with which you can gain back your confidence: sports, crafts, cooking, etc.

Then, work on showing value rather than chasing recognition. Your work and skills are most certainly good, but since you're devaluing yourself, you're probably devaluing them as well. And people (peers, bosses) actually do use it against you (willingly or not), fueling the vicious circle.

Last, learn how to do I interviews and start fresh on a new job. I personally have learnt as much interviewing with 30+ companies than trying to uncover my own worth. Why? Because you can change some parameters at every new company you meet and discover for yourself how your discourse is perceived and how much real people think you're worth.

I've applied to jobs 2-3 levels above where I was just to rebalance my then actual experience with the "market" and I've learned a ton!

Most companies you will never work with/for, so you might as well use them as tests for when you will get an interview with a company you really like.

But first: get some confidence back.


A few thoughts from a person who used to feel like this, and is now in their 30’s, having done everything from startups to big tech companies, and now feels super happy with their career:

1) great job for posting and seeking help! By doing so you’ve already taken the first step to moving in a better direction, which is more than a lot of people

2) A ton of people, myself included, felt like you are describing. Multiple times. Stuck, falling behind, wasted years, unsure about direction, etc. It is discouraging and I feel for you. But believe me when I say that it is very likely you will get to a awesome place eventually. You’re in the hard part now of not knowing the future

3) Long term (2-5 years) the best road map to turn this around I can recommend is a book call “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport. It changed my life and helped me build a high value career I love. The basic idea is that you should find rare and valuable job skills adjacent to what you can do currently, and then put in time learning them. This over time leads to an incredibly fulfilling and lucrative career. If this is the only thing you get out of this post, it will be worth it

4) Short term: if this job is killing you, apply to other jobs. Do this by email/text/message 10-20 people you know tangentially at other companies and just say “Hey I am looking around, any roles at your company I should consider?” That’s all that’s needed, no “networking”. Then when you go to interview, prep for them by preparing what questions they might ask and prep answers. Try to find a job that will give you skills in a valuable direction related to what you are familiar with now

Hang in there. From what you describe you have a bright future. I can see that from my vantage point but understand it may be hard to see now. You got this!


Just curious, by “a person” you mean yourself or someone specific? If so why did you use “they” pronoun?


My two cents: Focus on your health first. If you're not taking care of yourself and exercising, you're doing yourself a disservice mentally. Second, be disciplined when managing your time. Put in the hours you need to put in at work, but don't rob yourself of your free time by working excessively long days. If you want to improve your knowledge of CS, I'd recommend signing up for some courses. Online courses work but if you have a community college nearby that offers CS, I'd choose that. Having a place to go and meet other people with the same interests as you will give you a small social outlet and keep you accountable.

Random other thoughts: Leetcode sucks. Think of Leetcode problems as riddles. Most riddles are impossible to solve if you haven't heard them before.

Satisfaction in a career can come from many places. For some, it's all about solving complex technical problems. Others are happy to be contributing to a charitable mission. Some just want to get paid a lot. Others find satisfaction in being part of a team. Figure out what satisfaction means to you and align your career with that.


This is good advice, though I would recommend the original poster to consider taking time off before signing up for courses (70-90 hours a week with 24/7 on-call needs treatment for burnout, which comprises time off).

>"Second, be disciplined when managing your time. Put in the hours you need to put in at work, but don't rob yourself of your free time by working excessively long days."

To add additional clarity for any readers who skimmed: OP should be disciplined with creating time for their personal life by creating boundaries with the company, and should stop being as disciplined with sacrificing personal interests on behalf of the company.

Overall, the poster's primary interest at this point should be to improve the stability of their own life as much as possible, regardless of how people at the company will feel about it.


I had the same problem, here's what helped me. You should have some savings. Quit and take some time off to chill. Vegetate at home for a bit, travel a bit, and start doing a few leetcode problems a week. Soon you'll realize that you're not as terrible at them as before. I learned and switched to using python solely for interviews, and it's been a fantastic choice.

Start interviewing at a few places. You'll realize you're horrible at it. But keep interviewing. Doing leetcode doesn't compare to just having the experience. Figure out what you need to improve on, which algos you struggle with, Coding Qs, Behavioural Qs. Interviews become easier once you figure out it's just a matter of applying a few rehearsed algos and rehearsed answers in different ways. There's only so many ways to ask "tell us about a difficult problem/coworker at work"

Polish your resume up, talk to your co-workers and friends if you need help explaining/remembering what you did. Re-write it three times until it looks good.

If you do this, you'll have something better lined up within a few months and some time to decompress and time to renew your skills and confidence in programming. Whenever I quit, I always remember why i enjoyed programming in the first place.


This is all very career-focused, but there's other important facets of your life.

How are your relationships? With your family/friends?

When you walk through a cemetery, you don't see "here lies John Smith, full-stack software engineer who earn $250k". You see "here lies John Smith, beloved husband, son, father, etc".

Try to think about what values are most important to you, and what you can be doing to attend to them.

Is money a value? Probably not. Maybe it's really financial security.

Where does family rank? Do your actions reflect their position in your hierarchy of values?

Love, honesty, faith (if you're religious) are some examples.

Love is a really important one. You mentioned being a "loner". Are you making time to find love? A good partner can be an absolute rock, a bulwark against all the shit out there in the world.

Landing a $250k a year job might be a great ego boost. But if it's at the expense of other areas of your life, that ego boost will be fleeting - trust me.

That's not to say you shouldn't improve your career position. Absolutely, go for it! I'm just saying, make sure your values are in order, so you're focusing on the right things. :)


> A good partner can be an absolute rock, a bulwark against all the shit out there in the world.

Beware that the opposite is also true. The wrong relationship can suck out all your energy and turn a pretty good life into a tasteless burden.

If you happen to find love, great for you, but don't seek a relationship at all costs to "fix" your problems.


You think you wasted your twenties? When I was your age I was cleaning window blinds and dropping out of college, and I was yet to waste 4 years as a massage therapist. Got my first real job at 32. Now I’m almost fifty and finally enjoying life.

All this to say there’s so much life ahead of you and it can take you a million places if you let it.


For real.

I’m with the Romans, 18 might be the age we let you drink but you shouldn't consider yourself an adult until at least 25. If you're 28 and worried you've wasted anything... Wow.. you're literally only in your third year of adulthood.

At 25 I chose to quit a job to focus on my degree, finally a solid adult risk-decision. At 28 I had graduated and been staying on to publish a paper based on my thesis, and I disproved my thesis, and I made the sober decision to quit that career and pursue a different one—and to uproot my life to pursue the girl who is now my wife. You can say that the first decision was undone by the second I guess, but I still feel proud of it, just how I made the decision and followed through and took a risk and made ends meet. I just entered my 13th year of adulthood and I am still learning so much, haha, I can't imagine now thinking “It’s all over!“ at only year 3.


Yeah, this person is probably under-paid and definitely over-worked, but having 4 years of full-time employment in tech at age 28 is a good position to negotiate from for a better job.


Your brain fog issue could be medically caused. I certainly had that problem in my 20s.

Coming from a poorer background I was infected with Helicobacter Pylori (like 70% of world population). For years I couldn't beat brain fog no matter what I did (special diets, exercise, meditation etc.). Doctors kept telling me I'm having these issues cause I stressed a lot and I believed them and went through college and first job suffering terribly. Finally I managed to read about Helicobacter. My symptoms were matching 100%. Got the test and sure it was. Got a course of antibiotics for a week and it felt like being transported from hell directly to heaven. I've never experienced anything like it. After 5 days of taking antibiotics I've had the most amazing night of sleep that I remember to this day. That said, supposedly Helicobacter is not all that bad and even sometimes considered good according to some doctors I've spoken to. But I don't buy it, I just think that they think that on the population level it's unfeasible to treat everyone (due to antibiotic resistance issues) and because most people infected are in the poor countries - and you know how it goes "fuck the poor".

Excluding Helicobacter, brain fog can be caused by food intolerances (FODMAP, gluten etc.) and lack of exercise.

(my $0.02 from my experience fighting brain fog)


Good point. Persistent brain fog shouldn’t be taken lightly, it might result from underlying (treatable) health issues. Regardless of what career I chose, the ability to focus and think clearly are fundamental to my personal quality of life. I would search for answers if I found myself struggling to concentrate effectively. Must agree with the people saying, “Look after your health first.”

To the OP, sounds like you need a new job, the current one is not meeting your needs. Don’t be afraid of change, sounds like your compensation is unlikely to be significantly lower, and there’s meaningful possibility of upside in terms of job satisfaction and career development. You need quality mentorship, which appears to be lacking at your current employment. Your manager’s role is to help you get better at your job.

Without focus and confidence, it’s hard to imagine becoming highly skilled at anything. At the same time, realistic assessment of where you currently stand in your skills is vital to improvement. That’s where solid mentorship can make a major difference.


I can relate to quite a lot to what you said. First of all, you need rest. I am not talking about weeks, but rather months. I once was in similar situation and it took almost 5 months to start working little, another month to start working full time.

I would also recommend therapy. I felt very directionless too, and therapy improved my life significantly. In that time I really gained courage to change things in my life and go my way.

My final piece of advice is to go freelance. A while ago everyone wanted to work in a startup. But the startup life has made me very cynical. It turned out you give so much to a company that is not yours, and owners will really exploit everything you've got while trying to hustle you out of the ownership. In the end you work for their futures and money, not yourself. The only people that were truly happy working for startups I have seen were freelancers. They were paid fairly, had no unpaid overtime and did not have to participate in that shitshow.

I am also bad at networking, but there are ways around it. It looks like you have a lot of experience and a broad skillset. There are freelancer agencies that can help. Usually they screen potential freelancers, have a interview and then they find projects for you (also I am getting best paying jobs through agencies). The main advantage of freelancing for me is that I am paid for every minute I work and not more. As a result, the employers don't abuse your time, because they have to pay for it, and you can control you time and work-life balance way better. Also I earn much more than I used to.

I wish you all the best and would love to hear from you in the future. Let us know how you are doing.

EDIT: Also, you are not a loser, you are human. Everyone in your position would feel the same, everyone learns through experience. I am very happy for you that you are asking these questions at 28. It took me 4 more years to do it myself.


> I've always failed to come up with a solution from scratch of my own and provide any value. I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch.

Nobody does. Everybody builds on stuff that existed before. Even Tim Berners-Lee's idea for the Web was based on lots of previous ideas.

> I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old

Wasted? Your life is barely starting. My life as a software engineer didn't take off until I was 28, because I wasted too much time at university. And it didn't really start to take off until I was 38 when I started freelancing. I'm 48 now and doing better than ever. And wasting your teens isn't wasting; that's what they're for.

Your only problem seems to be that your entire life seems to revolve only around work. You work too hard and you obsess too much about it. Let it go. Work 40 hours a week, and maybe only after you take a long and well-deserved holiday. Explore your other interests. Develop a hobby. Go sing, bike, travel, dance, paint, read, or build something with your hands instead of your brain.

You're young. Your career is already way better than most people your age. Let some other interests into your life, and you may notice that you'll also continue to grow in your career.


Another thing to add to your excellent advice is that when you're young, failing is easier. You don't suffer as many negative consequences and they're less severe than later in life, people are more understanding (jr. devs are supposed to fail) and it's just generally much easier to bounce back.


If you wish to be a "rockstar" (or even a good coder), clarity of thought and good design count for 80%-ish of a coder's productivity. Many programmers spend their time throwing gobs of code at poorly designed systems. To get to a place where you can see your problems clearly and then execute them in an optimal fashion, I recommend that you take lots of walks, daydream, throw away inferior solutions, and most of all reflect on what you've done so far and what you've learned.

It's a long journey to get really good at anything, and even at the apex of your skills there'll be others much better than you. Curiosity and reflection will be your best friends here, and this post says you're turning to them in a state of crisis. Good. Keep it up and find your own answers.

Oh yeah and everyone's right, you're working too hard.


Here's what works for me: 1. Never work more than 40 hrs a week. I actively look for jobs that are laid back yet challenging enough. 2. Spend a ton of time with my dog: This might not work for you if you aren't an animal person, but just look at them, they do mundane things and they are perfectly happy with their lives. It is very inspiring. 3. Memento mori - Recently I had to deal with a health issue which can significantly alter my quality (or quantity) of life. I am still discovering what this disease is, but ever since I found that I have doubled down on enjoying life. Never ever underestimate the importance of having fun (Watch Randy Pausch's last lecture). 4. Self esteem : Always remember nobody is perfect. There are people who work their entire life for minimum wage jobs and yet don't complain about life. I would highly recommend volunteering - I have spent hours of my time serving meals to homeless people and just talking to them, it gives me a different perspective in life. As low as you might feel, you are probably still doing better (financially) than 90% of the world. Also, don't try to be your smartest self, try to be your kindest self. Being smart is overrated and being kind is highly underrated.


> they do mundane things and they are perfectly happy with their lives.

Aspirational.


I actually believe that working long hours is a huge problem that obscures natural creativity in people. When you are spending hours in the same environment, it's difficult to have a breather and think about something original or new -- you need to have a proper break for that. Going for a long walk/hike, completely detaching from work, talking to other people about non-work related stuff usually gives me a perspective and organises and cleans my thoughts when I get back to working. Diversifying your pastime activities also may help in inciting creative thinking, just like meeting people with diverse backgrounds.

It seems to me that you probably already have skill and knowledge, but it looks like you need more inspiration? Cutting down on your working hours won't make you dumb, but may just make you a bit happier.


It sounds to me like you are asking why you don't like what you are supposed to like; why aren't you good at what you're supposed to be good at; and why don't you like the people that you are supposed to respect.

You could ask a psychologist, or an astrologer, or you could accept your feelings as facts, and scientifically investigate them.

Maybe your top priority is 40 hours a week or less. Or maybe it's money, but I doubt it, because you don't mention any concrete need; it sounds like you associate it with respect. Or maybe you really don't like the sort of people you work with. You don't have to work with stereotypical techies.

But if you need non-specific change, then maybe try short term work. A little randomness can be very effective compared to supposedly "rational" searching. Optimizing everything is a trap.

Talking to people can be hard. My personal view is that there should be no shame about not being able to talk to people, and no attempt at finding logic in it. It's a massive barrier, which can be hard to face, and my solution has been medication, which totally changed my life starting when I was about your age. I see it as basically the same as chronic pain, and not something that you should attribute to your underlying personality or nature.

Maybe there is something you haven't mentioned, a life goal, that is making you dissatisfied with everything else. For instance, I don't see where you say you have a degree. Not that it's a necessity, but I spent most of my 20s as a college dropout, not wanting to go back, not believing I could go back, but it turned out I could finish up quickly when I just went and talked to a counselor at the school.


It's not hard to explain why you feel terrible working those hours considering what you get out of it.

What is more interesting/worrying is how you describe yourself as a loser, despite doing very, very demanding work and actually still succeeding at it. (At least by the standards of your company, else they would've let you go 3 years back)

Your own standards, however, seem to be so high that it's clearly harming you psychologically. I know some people will scoff at the suggestion, but in my experience that almost always comes from childhood.

Grab yourself the book "The Tao of Feeling Fully" by Pete Walker and see if you resonate with it. Even if your first instinct is "No way, my childhood was great", I would still (maybe especially) suggest you give it a read. If it's not for you that's 15 bucks gone, if it hits the nail it might literally save your life.

I wish you all the best.


1: First off, tell them you're thinking of changing work. If they even hint at you being "too bad to get another job" they're gaslighting you and you should run, if they offer a raise then it's probably half the raise you deserve. Because if you're the only web/mobile developer at this startup you're probably doing a helluva job.

2: Don't work 70-80 h/weeks, I've only done so at special times since my early career, and when I've done so after then I've been getting paid by the hour.

3: That brain-fog probably comes from the overworking, you're not going to be making clever decisions at that state. You really probably need some months off to get to a better state (the magic thing is, when it clears you'll brain will start to itch with amazing stuff).


I can tell you that if I were in your case I would quit the 70 to 90 hrs grind. It's not worth the long term damage to your mental health. If you haven't, you will soon burnout. Money is not everything. The only reason I would work those hours is if I was doing it to advance my interests not someone else's.

Before you do anything seek a career counselor that will help you plan your next 1,3,5,10 years. You'll need to review your plan every year but at least you'll have a road map of where you are going.

Also understand that learning new stuff that will be out of date in a few years is not worth the time. There is only so many times you should have to learn a new language and stack. Spinning the wheel leads you nowhere. Focus on knowledge that will serve you your whole career.


>"I would quit the 70 to 90 hrs grind. It's not worth the long term damage to your mental health. If you haven't, you will soon burnout. Money is not everything. The only reason I would work those hours is if I was doing it to advance my interests not someone else's."

Absolutely. To reinforce this: any money secured by working longer hours will very likely be spent on treatments for the physical and psychological health problems that result from working such long hours. The advice is especially important because the original poster is getting paid on a 40 hour salary, not even getting paid for overtime.


Big time... these employers are not going to be there for you when you are a frazzled, empty shell, so this is a bad deal. Only in that sense can OP be considered a "loser", in terms of the fact that the bargain that has been struck here is appallingly bad.

In all other regards, I am confident that OP is a wonderful chap.


What has worked for me, YMMV:

Cut back hours, I think this is the root cause of your issues. Next, try to find something else to do on weekends, go biking, gym, etc. Start learning a musical instrument that you don't know anything about. Challenge yourself.

If coding is your hobby also (mine was / is), then even taking a side project that has nothing to do with you day job works nicely. Take some new language, explore some library / tool, build something with arduino or similar, even if it is "mobile app to flush your toilet"-kind of stupid. In my experience this can totally took thoughts way from work even if it is still "coding". And on a plus side, you can gain additional experience, learn about api design and so on.

Also if looking for a job, I think it is better to try smaller players than hunt for big ones. Bigger companies usually have very idiotic hiring processes and it is easy to end up being a "factory worker" not someone who can have a say about things. Challenge yourself there too. I was a self-taught newbie PHP 3 and Delphi coder, applied for C++ job that I only have vague idea about, was accepted. Started developing for Lotus Notes from first day on the job instead. Didn't know it even existed before. Ended up as mainly Java dev a couple of years later in the same place...


You can't improve because you're burned out. You're burned out because you're working insanely hard.

You need to find a way to get out of your current job. Clearly, if your job relies on you so much, you're not incompetent. Find another job at your skill level that respects your work-life balance, and a 40hr week means a 40hr week.

I realise this is easier said than done, but that is what I would start with if I were in your position.


You're being exploited. You've been worked to your limit. You probably share some blame in this but you're certainly not the one profiting from it so the key thing is you need to stop for a minute.

You need a break to re-evaluate. At least two weeks without work before you even bother trying to sort through important questions like who you are and what you want. Once you've relaxed, you can start to ask the heady, existential questions that it sounds like you've been putting off for a while.

Try asking for some extra vacation from your employers. If they won't give it to you, and you can afford it, ask for unpaid time off.


Problems you have:

big picture problems:

- tunnel vision

- limited learning about what the rest of experience on this world is like

- no deep faith in good and benefit of the work you are doing

- being compensated with lots of money but little meaning

- lack of alignment with mission, and lack of social alignment with suitably "co-miserable" peers so that you can actually process (in an 'outside-of-yourself' way) the various crummy parts of your job

little picture problems about working smart not hard:

- trick I discovered: every time some of your code fails, you now have a moral imperative to yourself to prioritizing above everything a.) writing a unit test for that case, and b.) getting that unit test to pass. you will be saved insane amounts of time and sweat and tears in the future if you develop this way.

- using tools that make you waste precious brain cycles on trivial tasks with sparse and slow feedback loops - eg I just discovered the refactoring jetbrains tool

- constant refactoring code is actually insanely valuable. just literally copy and paste massive code blocks when you need to make something do something slightly different, refactor out the common part, etc. to build a better theory of the actual solution to the problem.

tbh I now no longer really understand how I spent so much mental effort writing code all in my head without these principles:

1.) red-green unit testing

2.) IDE refactoring tools

3.) imperative to refactor

give it a shot, it may help unburden your brain significantly!! and it's FUN to work FAST and be CONFIDENT in your code at the same time!


Lots of good advice already, specifically taking breaks/a break, cutting back hours and therapy. Burnout is serious stuff.

Reading your post, I get the sense that you're stuck in the tension between not feeling competent enough yet wanting to "earn a good amount of money".

Maybe you're not the 200-500k/year superstar programmer, but you're definitely competent enough, holding your startup's stack together like you are doing, to earn a comfortable living programming. What are your salary expectations? How much would be a "good amount"?

If you think about what you really need to be happy, how much salary would be enough?

Maybe the difference between "a good amount" and "enough" can help reduce that tension once you realize that you don't need to have a rock-star salary to be happy?


It’s like you just described my exact situation ~14 months ago. Such a though situation to be in but I can tell you things will get better. Spoke to my GP and have been in therapy for ~10 months, no work at all. Had to find my love back for the things I really enjoyed. Was able to find a job at a new place at the beginning of this year and I’m finally feeling I’m getting my life back again. I’ll have to be very careful not end up in the same situation again, but this experience helped me grow (although i’m only slowly starting to realize this).

The most important thing I’m saying to myself? I am the captain of my own ship. Get back on the wheel and point it in the direction I want to go in, what makes me happy.


This is one of the most famous burnout stories, hah

> Then I had another thought: Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing - it didn't have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with. When I was in high school, I'd see water running out of a faucet growing narrower, and wonder if I could figure out what determines that curve. I found it was rather easy to do. I didn't have to do it; it wasn't important for the future of science; somebody else had already done it. That didn't make any difference. I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment.

> So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever.

> Within a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air. As the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around. It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went around faster than the wobbling.

> [snip]

> It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

- https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/kilcup.1/262/feynman.html


You are certainly dealing with burnout. Most people going through it don't realize it, but the increased negativity is in fact a part of that package. The inability to concentrate and brain fog are the more obvious symptoms. Type 'burnout' into HN search and you'll turn up plenty of good advice on the subject. You're in good company (unfortunately).


Start sleeping more, eating healthier, exercising more, and working less. Cut down on weed and alcohol if you partake. This should hopefully help you feel well enough to get a different job which will be less stressful and pay better. Good luck!


+1 to all of the above. Both parent commenter and I know, these are easier said than done (acknowledging it is hard to incorporate these, just in case)

Start sleeping early also. Gradually build up to sleeping before 10pm. A friend once told me people sometimes stay up late because they did not feel enough in-control over their day -- this idea stuck with me for a while (Quick googling now seems like the name for it is revenge procrastination).


Stop expecting someone else to notice and start making things happen.

You could just leave and go somewhere else, but the problem will probably follow you unless you luck out and find a great company. Most companies are happy to let their devs stagnate on low pay. Making things happen yourself is the best way to improve your life.

Go to the founders of the startup and tell them you want to hire a couple more developers so you can lead, mentor, and improve. Sell them on the idea that you'll be able to move faster and reduce the bus factor of the app you build. Ask for a raise. Suggest features you'd like to build that will improve your learning.


Dude you are working twice as many hours as you are being paid for. Effectively you are working for half your rate. Are you even making minimum wage after accounting for your actual work hours?


Honestly, it sounds like you’re a great developer that works hard and cares about doing a good job. It sounds like you’re judging your abilities based on your ability to do LeetCode problems.

You’re not giving yourself enough credit for what you do. I think you’re a person that most companies would love to have.

If you’re looking to not do the LeetCode grind and start to find companies that care about more than how fast you can solve a LeetCode hard problem, I’d recommend taking a look at www.NoWhiteboard.org. There’s a bunch of companies on there not using LeetCode to find developers and the interviews are not limited to take-home only. There’s a good few that will do conversation-based interviews, and want to interview you in a way that will let you show off your strengths.

Please don’t judge your self-worth by your ability to get a new job, or by how much others are doing. I believe you can still have (and already do have) a very fulfilling career in tech. If you didn’t care, you would not have created this post.

Disclaimer: I made www.NoWhiteboard.org. Let me know if there are certain interview formats you’re interested in, and I can do my best to find companies that will align with your interests.


Only 10% of programmers are top 10% programmers, 90% are not.

At age of 28, you should look at your life in a bigger picture. Instead of spending so much time on work, spend more time on your family and yourself.

Also, I want to add that the feeling of being a loser is exactly because you are not thinking about your life holistically. If you are really depressed, and feeling this way all the time, you need to talk to a mental health professional.


This one liner "Only 10% of programmers are top 10% programmers, 90% are not." completely changed my view towards programming, I am also a software developer working at ANZ, but I do feel that I am not doing the great work. I just wanted to ask how to be at 10% of the top programmers, Is there any pathways? Please suggest, I do feel existential crisis in some point of time.


While i do not claim to have all the answers, the following suggestions might help.

What you are feeling is normal. Take a look at the book Why we do What we do: Understanding Self-Motivation by Edward Deci for some insights. Relentlessly work on improving yourself to get "better" at various aspects of "Programming" (assuming that is what you want). Don't compare yourself to others, focus on incremental improvement everyday and set your own Goals/Criteria. Become Self-Driven and proceed at your own pace.

Drops of Water, if they fall continuously, can bore through Iron and Stone - Chinese Martial Arts Saying.


... but this is just another self improvement story ??


No.


same story, different spin.

but if it helps you ....


>same story, different spin.

Nope.

There is a reason i mentioned Deci's book; i highly recommend going through it. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson is also relevant here.


nah. but happy that it helps you.


No one is going to feel great after working 70-90 hours a week. If you want to grind LC, start going to sleep earlier and spend the first hour of each day doing so (when you're most rested). I promise you will feel better.


> pieced code together from multiple sources

Guess what those 500k/year FANG devs are doing? They piece code together, polish the rough corners a bit and call it a day.

> feeling like a loser

You're right here, the startup owners are exploiting you. You need to develop some social skills and cynism. There are many grim books on this topic, and my top two picks are "gervais principle" and "48 laws of power".

> struggle with LeetCode

LC is a very narrow skills test. There are just a few building blocks you need to learn: binary search, hashmap, priority queue amd so on. Every LC/interview question is a mix of those building blocks: you just try them one after another until something sticks. No creativity needed.

> unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog

Brain fog is probably poor food choices. Ability to concentrate must be trained. It's a big topic by itself, but the essense of it is you pick a simple thought, a basic shape for beginners, and try to focus all your attention to it. It's like trying to write it into your video memory by sheer will alone.


It depends on what you want.

If you're in it for the money, try working less hours as you find a place with better compensation or benefits.

>being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks

This is just straight up exploitation, and definitely isn't making the ennui better. It's time get some appreciation for your efforts, from yourself and others! Most people can't say they're full-stack or have your years of experience - remember that as you negotiate.

If this isn't just a job to you, I'd suggest taking some time to go to school. Being immersed in the business side of things for too long makes software development a soulless art, which it has no reason to be. Studying something just to study it can strengthen your appreciation for it, once you remove it from the stress of making it useful.

Either way it seems like you're burnt out, and should try to mitigate any stressors you have.

Hope this helps!


Right! OP is burned out because he is being burned out by some pretty awful and exploitative working conditions. Either he is going to die on the job, either from exhaustion or as the conclusion of a spree-shooting, or he is going to have to find a way to stand up for himself (whether that involves finding a more dignified way to pay the rent by finding a new job, or by saying no either alone or collectively with some like-minded colleagues, who knows).

Edit: grammar


Firstly I think this idea of rockstar programmers is truly damaging. Yes there are differences in peoples coding abilities but the vast majority of your ability to develop good software, that solves peoples problems is in how you and the team works together, not your ability to write a technically proficient algorithm. It's important to find a team you can work well with and that works well with you.

Secondly 70-90hrs a week is not a healthy work schedule, you're going to be constantly working while exhausted. Even the most productive people I've seen are tired at the end of a 45-60 hour week. If possible give yourself time to rest.

ps. Piecing together code from multiple sources is what 99.9% of programming is. Calling libraries is piecing together code just as copying and pasting from stackoverflow is. You need to understand that code to be able to piece it together effectively as you clearly do.


> I am a sole developer for Mobile and Web platforms at this startup in a very small team

In my experience, this means that you can double or triple your salary by going to work for a large enterprise, and be the most competent person around too.

Recruiters were my friend when I couldn’t focus on finding jobs myself. You just get emails and say yes or no, and the interviews just keep coming automatically (or not, but the important thing is it doesn’t cost much of your time outside the actual interviews).

In regards to compensation, you are basically always worth more than you are currently making as long as you can put up with the interviewing. The longer I do this the more I’m convinced that the only true signal companies look at to determine your offer is your current salary.


I think your biggest issue is how much you're working (and not sleeping).

I'm a successful, reasonably good programmer in my 40's. In my whole life, if I didn't get enough sleep, or did too much overtime, my ability to reason and my productivity fell off a cliff. And I'm talking about, working the occasional extra day or few hours. It's the same with sleep too - if I don't have enough sleep, even for one night, the next day I'll be way, way less capable.

You have to fix this first before you'll be able to do anything else. Fatigue and lack of sleep will interfere with any attempts to improve your programming skills (LeetCode or otherwise); it will bring down your interview performance; it will hurt your self-esteem and motivation and general energy levels (and health!).

You don't necessarily need to resign. I would talk to your employer and insist that you need to return to working regular hours (40h/week maximum), and that they find people to take shifts with you for the on-call stuff.

If they don't agree to this though, I would quit. Plan your exit so you have enough savings to cover a few months off. I don't think you need to go on a big vacation or go traveling or anything like that. But what you do need is enough time to rest and recover, properly catch up on sleep (this can take a month or more!), do some exercise, maybe pick up a hobby. Then only once you feel rested, look for a new job.

The good news is you're in your 20's. Your body and mind are resilient and will recover given time. Once you're rested again, you'll find learning, improving your programming skills, or even the dreaded LeetCode will be much more doable.

Also some advice from someone in their 40's: software engineering is a very deep and broad discipline. There is so much to learn; you're just getting started. Give yourself time! (Can be difficult advice to follow when you're young). You have lots and lots of runway to learn, practice your craft, absorb knowledge from others.

I wish you the best! :)


Yeah, you are in a rut. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll stay there. You'll need to be honest with yourself about how much change you're willing to take on and at what pace. Or, you could just stay in your comfortable rut.

You want to switch jobs? You'll need to explain yourself and demonstrate some basic coding and thinking abilities to complete strangers. This sucks if you're all stressed out. Don't go banging your stressed-out head against leetcode trying to jump ship. Just try to improve your life right now. Start making tiny changes and decisions that get you ahead. You'll feel much better, and it'll put you in a better position to move on.

First thing I'd recommend is to get away from work. Like... stop spending time on work.

- Start being more efficient; get the stuff done quicker.

- Give yourself more time when estimating.

- Explain the work breakdown in order to raise questions about priority and scope. Work on the highest priority stuff; don't spend time on the other stuff.

- Engage with others. Ask for help. Identify people who can be a resource. E.g. if given 3 days to do task X, will you grind through it (higher stress) over 3 days, or will you schedule some time with someone you have a good relationship with who is better at it and can accelerate getting task X done (lower stress)?

Part of a manager's job is to literally help you do the above things. Use your manager to discuss these things.

The bad news is that you've already shown to everyone you work with that you're a workaholic. So you're gonna have to get creative in how you apply this. But you can do it, as long as you keep your performance up.

Next thing I'd recommend after being able to 1) step back from work 2) while still performing... is to get into other things for fun. You need to tap back into the good stuff. The stuff you enjoy and are interested in. Just spend time on that. Not what other people think is cool. Not for popularity (yeah, you mentioned those libraries on GitHub). But what you want to do. It could improve your life a lot. Just do what you want to do.


You can't see the forest through the trees right now, so picking a direction will be meaningless. Best way is to take an extended break a month or more and let the fog clear. The first week, just do basic things like get up eat breakfast, make your bed and take a walk. The next week start re-engaging with friends who you haven't spoken with in a while. Third week, do something fun. Fourth week start "thinking" what you'd like to do next - type of company - small, med, large - what you want to learn. Week after that work on your resume. Slow and steady, take care of yourself


Ignore leetcode style algorithmic issues for now.

It sounds like you need to concentrate on the basics to get comfortable starting from zero and building from scratch. No shame in using libraries for complex algorithms (e.g. sorting or whatever), but getting comfortable starting with fundamentals is key

I recommend finding an online MOOC uni/college compsci 101 type thing to teach you the basics of how to code in a structured way. It will lead you through how to actually breakdown and solve programming issues in a guided way. From there you can grow.

You'll need to ease back the work hours to fit it in, but that will be good for you anyway!

Good luck


Id recommend either some time off, or change of scenery as best paths forward. While not a complete solution, it will may help with - stagnant salary - work life balance - isolation

And on the "rock star" comment, I wouldn't sweat it. Been in software 20 years now and wouldn't consider myself elite either. Plenty of opportunities out there for experienced and reliable programers that dont require you to cram for LeetCode or DS & Algos. Oh, and we all piece code together from multiple sources and there is no shame in that.


Awesome, you have reached the low point and asked for help. That's the first step. Now you need to get your shit together and here is the roadmap that I would recommend. Focus on fixing your existence in the following order: 1. Body (sleeping, eating, exercise, spend time in the sun and outdoors) 2. Mind (reading, learning social/soft skills, discipline, journal) 3. Spirit (meditate, pray, hobby, get into flow state)

To start living a better, more fulfilling life you need to drop bad habits and acquire new better ones. You need to do it gradually, one by one, over a longer period of time. Drop one bad, gain one good. Check out book Atomic Habits.

It is important to start with the body because the quality of your thoughts and emotional stability is directly related to your nutritional intake, discipline, sleep, etc.

I read that majority of your discontent comes from work. Like may of us, you are using work (something that can think you can control) to distract yourself from other, more important aspects of your life (that are seemingly out of your control).

As an engineer, your whole life/career you are focused on computer-based logical problems. That created an imbalance because you neglected human-based emotional problems. That is why it is crucial to start developing soft skills. You can start with the book called How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Good luck on your journey and remember - If you think you can do it, or you think you cannot do it, you are right.


I also believe standards, expectations, perspective is where op can learn the most.

Op, you mention things in your post that indicate what you believe would make you happy: > I have never been a rockstar programmer. > smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch

Do you believe the people who fulfil these dreams are happy because they came up with libraries? I don't think so. I did some cool stuff and I did it for free till 1 o'clock in the morning.. For free! No one even knows about some of those apps/libraries, I've never published it and I so much fun I still come back to looking at the result years later. So I believe a key for you might be to try to have fun doing it. Also I don't believe you just choose to be a "rockstar programmer" and also there is no fun guaranteed if someone else might call you this. You need to find a way having fun doing stuff, not achieving things.

There are many gaps in your description of you life. It's important how you fill the rest of your day and also what kind of thoughts go through your day throughout the day, but as others has pointed out you might just suffer from burnout.

Something that might help you to find things you like doing: Imagine you are the last person on earth. What would still make fun for you to be doing alone? If you don't know the answer to that you need to start looking for new things to do. Things you never tried before.


For me, levelling up has always been about finding work I care about. Do you like what you do? Do you care about what you’re building? Do you work with people you enjoy and who enjoy you?

We can’t always have everything but we can seek out some of it. If you aren’t being paid that well, then what the hell, you’ll find the same money or more somewhere else doing something that doesn’t make you feel like garbage.

Someone else made a legitimate point. Say you’re actually not that strong of a developer. That’s fine - but you’re probably relatively awesome in some settings. Your work doesn’t need to define you, and if competing your life away to feel like a loser isn’t emotionally or financially rewarding, the public sector has plenty of less competitive roles you might do well in. There’s security, regular hours, good enough money, etc. Being the best at writing code is worth nothing if you hate your life while you do it, so your actually skill level isn’t all that important.

Above all, don’t measure yourself by how well you perform at work. Make a life for yourself outside of work, and work to service that life. Find people who care about you and don’t think for a moment about how well you do at your work. Distance yourself as much as possible from those thoughts. Tech can be insular and competitive, and you can wind up with weird ideas about things. Ultimately, none of it matters.


> I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours.

Many of your feelings come from here. You need a healthier work -life balance, where you may allocate some time for other things other than the rat race.

You're a person, before than a coder. Your work shouldn't be your sole source of self-esteem and content, in your life.


[Some advice from a practical angle, though I see others are being much more helpful advising you about life stuff, which is heartening.]

You write well. Programming is an exercise in communication. You are building a structure that at the very least has to be understood by a machine, but moreover has to be understood by you and anyone else who comes to the codebase. Good programmers create readable code just as good writers author readable books.

As with any kind of writing, reading is a good way to learn. An excellent way to do this is to configure your computer to let you jump into the source code of any library you are using. If you frequently use a library, being able to press one button on your keyboard and jump straight into that library’s source code is very powerful. You get to go deeper and deeper and see how other people solve problems and communicate their solutions. It makes you better.

At the next level, if your coding environment can give you instant access to the version control system of another project then you can leverage that to learn. If it’s a high quality project then each line of code will “git blame” to a commit where the developer explains what they were doing. The Director’s commentary, but for code.

If you can get some kind of critical feedback that would help. That’s hard to do online. People are more unkind than they are kind. You may well be on your own there, until a good mentor finally comes along. For many people, their job provides a way to get exposure to other engineers who can act as a mentor.


If you do not have commitments such as a family to provide for, you should take time off, assuming you have a cushion saved up. Take time to travel and learn some skills outside of technology for a year. An example is teaching english in a non-english speaking country, like Thailand, a trade, e.g., plumbing, if you can find someone to apprentice for. This is if you already have a college degree. If you do not have a college degree, then register for classes at a community college and complete as many directly relevant credits (e.g., Discrete Math, Relational Databases, etc.) that can be transferred for a degree. If you get a degree in Computer Science and Engineering, you will have a lot more opportunities, and there will be a floor for pay. Finally, after doing one or both of these for 1-2 years, look to get back into the industry. This time, you will have less chance of being underpaid and also have more confidence in your own ability.

Note: Leetcode interviews are hard even for people with degrees in Computer Science. This is even more true for people who graduated a long time ago. Basing a lot of your self-worth on Leetcode will be harmful no matter what, so you must develop a coping mechanism for that, which may include not interviewing at companies that heavily emphasize this type of interview.


Leave your manager and company for a job at a different company as soon as you reasonably can.

>"I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks"

Your team clearly does not care enough to intervene to make sure you are not destroying your health due to your work, and they are not even proactively paying you a fair amount. To be clear: they are not treating you with any respect as a human or person. They have already set the conditions to cause physical health problems, and have already caused psychological problems ("riddled with brain fog").

You do not owe them any loyalty whatsoever, and you should not buy into any arguments (internal or external) that you should stay for any reason; if they cared, you would not be compensated as you have described, nor writing to HN for advice about this.

Cut your hours to make time for interview preparations (if you wouldn't ideally be able to take time off), and start applying to new companies. Changing organizations should be your top priority if you want to change the conditions that are causing your current psychological problems (brain fog, lack of self-confidence, and lack of self-esteem as described in the submitted post).


I felt like you once OP, and there was an HN post that was a network for depressed devs. (This was years ago).

I lost the link + had issues signing up... probably due to exevutive dysfunction from feeling like I had to find some special person or social network to have my CV fairly evaluated.

I'd try to take some time off, if you have the money.

I cannot emphasize how deeply I regret not quitting my job last I was in the EU and getting on plane to SE to explore the world.

I'm currently sitting having spent what was my emergency fund to an abusive landlord, selling stock from an IRA periodically until it is safe to exit my current location, as I struggle to give people the "level of customer service they desire", for lack of a better phrasing.

I'm unemployed. My email is in my bio if any recruiters want to reach out -- I've never had competing offers before, which feels odd considering the conversations I had at every role I worked in, but I don't pretend to understand the "working" world... aside from a job as a sandwich artist, pretty much every role I've had was at a nonprofit, but that was more due to coercion than choice.

I sincerely hope you can find some joy in your life.

Here's a pointer to a list of visa requirements for US citizens: get out of the country if you can, even if it's just Canada or Mexico:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_S...


SE = somewhere else?


Guessing they meant to write SE Asia


Meta commentary, most comments take this like a personal matter. The biggest picture feels obvious but unspoken: there's a massive dearth of good things to get up to, to commit to, even for the capable & willing. The job ought, to a degree, be it's own reward, especially for knowledge/creative work.

Yeah, there could well be a host of other concerns/blockers. And maybe this person is just stuck & unable to find good pursuits. But I think a lot of SWE's have a hard time finding really good pursuits. We kind of get lucky & find good groups of people anyhow, somehow. But the tasks & environments struggle broadly to provide fulfilment & purpose. Given what we feel capable of, this mismatch becomes, as here, dissonance.

"What I Want To Do As A Software Developer" is another data point I might point to here-abouts. There's a lot it doesnt say to me. But there's a more explicitly stated desire for purpose, which I also find here. https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2022/my-thoughts-on-what...


You are body, mind, and soul.

Body -- diet, exercise, rest

Mind -- useful intellectual inputs and positive relationships; a financial budget

Soul -- community of faith

Attend to these three dimensions of life deliberately for maximal joy.


> I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth

The only way to truly figure this out is to practice and then find out what you're worth in the market.

> I struggle with LeetCode, which is making me feel like even a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems.

You might be better than you think. I remember by the time I got done leetcoding for my last job hunt, I felt maybe 50/50. I genuinely wasn't sure if I would get a good offer. I ended up getting more than fifteen (overkill, I know).

An important insight I had at the end: as you progress with more and more LC problems, you end up scraping the bottom of a barrel. Most of those questions that end up stumping you probably won't be asked, and if they are, you'll actually have an interviewer to talk through them with. In real life you aren't just in a room with a computer by yourself.

You won't really know until you get out there and start trying interviews. The more you interview, the better you'll get. You can do this. You've gotta stop the "loser" framing though. I see nothing in your post indicating you're a loser. You seem crucial to your current company.


I'm not sure if my post is going to reach you, but here it is anyways: I don't think that the questions you carry within yourself have anything to do with your skill. Those questions derail your thoughts and creative process as soon as something happens that doesn't feel like success. Believe me, I have been through this, feeling successful does not depend on your skills, or even how you think success feels like.

It's really difficult to explain something that is so highly individual and personal... you gotta learn to, and this will sound like real cheap advice: love yourself. Embrace your imperfections, learn to stop feeling bad about what you think you are doing wrong. There is no wrong, only learned lessons. Stop judging yourself, and don't even start contemplating how people might judge you.

Example: "I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this..." Why not? :) you have legitimate questions that need resolving, and there's always people, especially amongst hackers who have been once asking themselves the very same questions. Don't be hard on yourself, there is no gain in that.


1. Take time off, but don't sit on your arse watching Netflix. Plan to do something. During future interviews if asked about the gap you can say, 'I did this and that' and it marks you out as a more rounded person.

2. I follow the CIA principle of Change what you can change, Influence what you can influence and Accept that you can not change or influence. So try and change your working environment (approach management with positives) otherwise suck it up or move on.

3. 'Rockstar programmer' what a load of crap. All that means is someone has depth of experience in a few areas. No one knows it all, and at the end of the day you are being paid to build and maintain a product.

In your case many products and that in itself is something to be proud of.

I work with some really smart developers and I don't think any have created public libraries and solutions from scratch - what makes them smart is asking the right questions and not just excepting the first answer given and then piecing together a solution

4. 'Stuck in a rut' a rut is a grave with the ends knocked out

5. 'Evaluating your worth', the only way to do this is to look outside the small pond you are currently swimming in. The regular long hours sat looking at screen are not good for your mental, physical or social health, "regular breaks" are not the solution

Sorry if I sound like a grumpy old man, but I am.

I am 50 this year and when I hear similar stories to yours I just want to do the 'dad thing' and say, "things will be okay, you know more than you think BUT its down to you to make the change and good things are not easy but are worth the effort".

Sounds like you are ready to make the first steps


You got good advice. I will pile on, splitting it into two separate buckets: what (setting your goal) and how (moving in that direction), which to me are worth separating.

What. As others said, do not underestimate your ability or put an artificial ceiling on your worth to the company. But you have to figure out what would make you reasonably happy at work. Working on specific areas (aerospace, bio, medical, etc.), specific technologies, team type, something else? Everyone is different.

In parallel, figure out how much money you will be happy with: more is better, but for many people serious stress builds up below a certain point (again, different for each one of us).

How.

1. Reduce your hours and get enough rest. You cannot get good answers on "what" unless you have both calmness and time. Get both. Build up a 6-month financial cushion, then set 40-45 hrs work goal; 50 hrs absolute max. If your startup asks you to go, so be it. Between your savings and unemployment benefits you will be fine for a while. After a month or so you might see where you want to go.

2. Develop a network with technical folks at companies you want to work at. Look at the problems they are trying to solve. Make a small project on github on one of those topics (X). Go to a conference where those folks are likely to hang up. Ask for advice on how to do X which they should be interested in. Or use another method. You may not get where you want to go in one step, but it will likely be a step in the right direction.

3. Buff up your resume and the linkedin profile so they do not look abandoned. Do some leetcode practice. People say "linkedin does not matter", but many would still look up a person before the interview as a sniff test and linked in is what usually comes up.

Good luck!


Stop it? I'm sorry to send you this video, but maybe it will help. https://youtu.be/Ow0lr63y4Mw

Most of these wounds are self inflicted and you can start solving them one by one, mainly by stopping your bad habits.

Stop working 90 hrs a week for your employer. Don't let them exploit you. Don't give up your free time voluntarily.

Stop working for this company and start interviewing at other companies. Prioritize a place where you have a couple of colleauges that you can learn from, and socialize. You will learn from them, and you will also learn that they are not perfect, maybe you stop treating yourself so harshly.

You don't need to start with FAANG, just find a place where you can learn at a healthy 40 hrs (or less) rate. You can practice leet coding, but do not put to much pressure on yourself. Just solve two problems a day, in a year you will be probably ready for interviewing at FAANG companies.

If what you say is true and you can ship things, you are good at mobile and web, on call, etc, you can probably get a significant raise, too. Start looking for a new job, and even if you feel down, try to fake that you feel confident.

Stop accepting on call duty without compensation.

Stop thinking you are just simply "bad at networking". It's a skill that can be improved if you actually want to improve it. Start even if you think you are "lame", go to meetups, apply to jobs, start a running club, or anything, just take small steps and start improving your networking skills as soon as possible.

Stop panicking that you are already 28 and don't have everything figured out. You are still young and can easily turn your life around.


1. Take time off, you need it, try to do it without regrets/feeling bad that you are wasting time. Sometimes we go beyond that point of exhaustion and kid that we are productive.

2. Exhaustion leads to bugs: This is a vicious cycle. Late hour bugfix leads to next bug and so on. Both short term and long term exhaustion.

3. I felt like you when I went for grad school. As an EE Major, I could hack my code to work, find resources to get it to work etc. At that time, my interest was doing cool animations with flash (yeah, long time ago, levitated.net anyone)

4. I got the high of solving interesting problems but was always wondering how good coders do it, do they hack it all the way too. (hack here as in, band-aided, spaghetti code with no theoretical underpinnings, using arrays when I should hash-tables etc).

5. What I learned is that, good coders, imho, they hack the last bits too (caveats apply) but often have good theoretical foundation. DS/Data representation for example is the fabric of code you write (you are making a choice even if you didn't explicitly decide). I knew it sort of then but didn't know it my bone like I do today and apply it like I do today. I had an amazing teacher who made big difference (Thanks to Brian Dean, some of you IOI folks might know him).

6. Leetcode is great once you have some bit of theory else you are still hacking your code to work. Abstractions escape you. So now you have to learn each problem separately whereas someone who knows the abstraction compress the knowledge into those few abstractions and its minor variations.

7. Find a good mentor, someone who knows what the heck they are doing. This can help.

Disclaimer: We run a bootcamp for students who want to understand how to write good code from first principles (autoinfer.com).


I suspect you're worth much more than you're telling yourself if you're carrying your team. There's lots of good advice in this thread about how to proceed if that's the case (which is 90% probable).

But, I guess there's a chance you're not, and you're getting by at the startup via long hours and keeping your job because of low pay. I doubt it, but it's possible. If that's the case, and you're cool with just making a living, consider a move to civil service or university IT. If you can sustain being a sole dev in a startup, you'll be a rockstar in that environment and you'll be able to cut down to 35-40h weeks. Start exploring what makes you feel something - rock climbing, knitting, metalwork, writing sci-fi, hang gliding, cooking, whatever. If your work isn't your joy or your Born Avocation, use it to feed yourself and go start living.

This would be a legitimate choice even if you're much better than you're currently telling yourself. Hospitals need IT people too.


Lot of good advice here. Here's my two cents' worth:

Call literally any recruiter, and say "I'm a solid mid-level developer. I'm sick of my current job: the hours are terrible, and there's no support or mentorship. I'm looking for an SE2 position on an established team with senior devs I can learn from." What's the worst that could happen?


If you can really put 70 - 90h a week, at someone elses job, hats off to that. You have some stamina. If I were you I'd switch jobs ASAP to something like a regular 40h/week, then maybe spend the other 20h/week working on a side project, something that you could be passionate about, maybe try it with a new programming language, or something that you don't do at day job like game development. You could never really try it with a job that is so time consuming. Take the remaining time to rest and chill. Your brain fog is probably a result of being overworked and too little sleep, and spending too much in your head when working. You can also try zen meditation against brain fog, it directly fights is symptoms as it forces you to step away from the stream of random thoughts and focus on your body and surroundings. "3 Pillars of Zen" - is a good introduction, don't need to take the entire book seriously, there are good instructions for practice.


Instead of grinding DS and algos and leetcode, grind actual interviews. That'll give you much better feedback on what you actually need to learn or freshen up on anyway (if anything -- so many interview problems are closer to the trivial end of things because if companies asked the "medium" or "hard" ones they'd hardly ever hire anyone). I think you'd "enjoy" working for a bigger company with a bigger team, fewer work hours, and hopefully more money. At least it'd probably be an improvement in many ways.

"Wasted" as opposed to what counterfactual?

Seems like maybe you need a concrete goal, not just vague "satisfaction". "Saving up enough money to 'retire' when you're 30" is such a goal, though if you achieve it, I warn that the same feelings of directionlessness will return until you find another goal. It's also possible to not be too bothered by such feelings, for philosophical reasons.


> ...How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?

The very first thing that is spoken loudly from your post is a list of "nots" and "don'ts". Understandable, of course, that's how you're feeling...

Maybe at this point you could try a more affirmative way of "I am good at", "I can". It's very likely these strong sides of yours are getting undertoned and overshaded, which by itself may be the blocker.

Your career is still in progress, this also means plenty of chances to seek your preferences and turn any way if desired. You are being paid for what you can do - that's a big plus and is a confidence booster! Now, ask yourself if this field has still something that interests you, something that you think you want to be good at. Anyone to learn it from? Then try to embark on the journey with patience, cheering any small advances you'd make along.

You've plenty of time for that!


My advice might be a bit odd but... Find a hobby and get obsessed with it. Let that obsession cut into your work time until you reach a normal level (closer to 40 hours). Ideally, it's a hobby where you can "advance".

If you are in reasonable (not necessarily great) physical shape I suggest going to a bouldering gym (assuming there's one nearby). It's a fairly addictive sport that's easy to get into and easy to do on your own. A nice bonus is that there's built in gamification. Each session you can work on a single route or you can set a goal to do all routes of level X in the gym and work towards that over a period of time. As long as you just do it, you'll improve until you plateau eventually and by that time you'll be able to grind hard/train well and get better on your own.

If sport isn't your thing, maybe try writing. Pick any genre you like but thriller works quite well and almost everyone likes thrillers at least a bit. Obsess over "how to write" and how a thriller is structured. Reads books about that, start structuring a story, watch movies in "analysis mode" (a good starting point for analytical people is reading "The Story Grid").

Or maybe branch out into a slightly different area still related to your job. Maybe turn infosec into your new obsessive hobby. Sign up to hackthebox.io or something similar and try to get really good at breaking into boxes (or play CTFs).

As long as there's a way to get better at the hobby (climb harder routes, write more pages of your book, be able to break into harder boxes) and a reasonably easy way of understanding how to get there and a way to obsess over it and pour countless hours into it, the hobby qualifies. Even something like playing online chess could qualify. The main idea is to shift time from work towards this hobby and wanting to do it. Ideally the hobby rewards you regularly along the way (some measurable level of success).


You're probably better than you think. Something that tripped me up for a long time (depending on your background, in my case I attribute it to being self taught but could be wrong), theres a huge difference between the academic side of things and the practical side.

You see people on here talking like "oh, you could implement a forward-signed dash dot this that array etc..." and I have no idea what they mean. Theres probably even a lot of more basic stuff which I don't understand. Maybe I should work on that more, but point is if you asked me to add a new feature into a codebase, I'd feel pretty confident doing that. From the sound of things, you could be in a very similar boat. Afterall, you're already doing the work.

Also, stop doing the overtime. Occasionally its fine, if it takes less effort to do it than fight it your usually alright, but that isn't your case at all.


I'm a fairly experienced software engineer also working for a startup. I think you should be forgiving with yourself. You sound skilled for what you're handling and your current experience level. You also sound overworked. This is such a common problem for startup engineers. It's very common to push yourself to very long hours that becomes unsustainable in the long run due to burn out. I think this problem has gotten worse since the pandemic. I've had to deal with burn out too. You need to take a break from the heavy hours at least a week or two where you completely unplug. None of this being on call 24/7, just completely unplug and don't read your emails. Focus on centering yourself, take a walk through nature or visit the beach and get out with some friends/family. It'll make a world of difference when you come back.


How's your health? The brain fog, in particular, jumps out as something that may have other causes. In particular:

* Are you exercising?

* Sleeping well? Sleeping consistently?

* Eating well?

* Getting enough vitamins? Vitamin D is a common, easily fixed deficiency that can cause trouble concentrating; you can get your doctor to test it with a blood draw.

* Any chance you have long covid?

If you physically don't feel good on a daily basis, I would absolutely dial back your work and focus on getting in shape for, say, 2 months. 70+ hours per week clearly isn't getting you where you want, so aim for 40 and put in a hard cap at 50, and get used to the idea that some stuff won't get done. Once you're feeling better, continue keeping reasonable hours and resume studying then.

Even if everything else is fine, you might just be working too much. I think the vast majority of people would have trouble studying after a month straight of oncall and 12-hour days.


> I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours.

Stop all of that nonsense now, even if it means quitting your job. As a smart man once said, "Work harder on yourself than you do your job." Don't think you can quit your job? The profession is hungry for Hard Workers that want to build great Software Tools.

You are not a Loser You do not need to be a Loner, many will help you Good programming is not just DS and Algorithms, they merely help You need a clear Head and Heart before you can be an effective Problem-Solver

Like other people have said, step away from the game for a bit and find out what you want to Build. You want to be more than a Code Monkey, and you will find a Way.


I've felt the same at some points in my career, working very hard but feeling like I'm running just to keep in place.

Maybe your problem is you are the "sole developer for Mobile and Web". It just takes a lot of work to get everything working in JavaScript and HTML and all them frameworks without any real insights being gained while doing it. There are too many ways things can get out of whack it is like a house of cards where there are too many undeclared dependencies between parts of the application. Web-tech is to blame there are few general design principles, just tech that has evolved to whatever is needed for you to "hack". Too many details to get it right, even to get CSS to look great.

Perhaps you should get more developers to take part in your efforts then you don't have to work so many hours and it will be more fun to have a team.


You’ve got a million pieces of advice about the burnout, I’ll comment this:

> I've always wondered how other smart people are able to come up with libraries, services and various solutions from scratch.

Read books. Classic programming books - Knuth, Robert Martin, Erich Gamma, and so on.

Find 2-3 hours per day - it is one of the best investments you can do.


so if you want to paint/draw, you will read books about drawing?


Take some time off. If you’re burnt out, you need it regardless. When you’re ready to focus on work again, focus on working with the people who do work you find interesting. When they talk about interesting solutions, add those to your notes. Ask questions if you feel comfortable. It’s alright not to know, most of us don’t or didn’t along the way.

You’re not a loser. You’re nowhere near the end of the rope if you’re still interested in pursuing the career (and it’s okay if you want to look elsewhere if it doesn’t make you happy!). I’m saying this as someone turning 40 this year and still picking up fundamentals.

Some of this also reads as very familiar to me with an adult ADHD diagnosis. I don’t want to be presumptuous but that feels worth mentioning.

In any case… take some time off. You have more than you think, and the rest will give you more room to think about the rest.


How to get better at anything:

1. Find the limit of your abilities. 2. Push yourself to exceed your limit slightly. If the most you can bench press is 40kg, push yourself to bench 40.5kg. If it takes you on average 5 hours to fix a bug, push for 4 hours and 55 min next time. 3. Get a good night's sleep. 4. Repeat.

Are you not able to solve leetcode easy questions? Even if you are, you can keep trying for a while, and if you feel like you really can't solve it, go look at the solutions for that question from others who have solved it (in the language of your choice). You can see how others solve it and also different solutions and also you can start to learn from them and decide for yourself what makes a solution "better" than others.

Market is crazy right now and salaries are exploding. You should really put yourself out there and check out the opportunities.


Take out time for yourself. Try to understand what is good in you and work on to make it even better. If you want to turn around, you have to identify your bad and good habits. We all have high frequency habits e.g. failure suppression, poor communication, avoid difficult situations, be aware of your high frequency habits and slowly make a habit to improve them.

I think it has become your habit now to work for so many hours and still unsatisfied with the results. I am also a victim of working long hours with a break for months. In my case, it is my fear of doing nothing that does not allow me do anything else but work, it is my insecurity that tells me to fill my time by working. My suggestion is to be more courageous, take risk, make mistake and jump into uncertain territory. Things are not as bad as we think they are.


Internalize that human worth has no connection to ability. Easier said than done. As a thought exercise, think about individuals you care about. How strongly does their productivity correlate with how glad you are they are alive and part of your life? Why do you apply different standards to yourself?


> I apologize if this isn't the place for a post like this.

Judging from the reaction, I’d say it is a great place for this post.

I don’t have enough information from your post (I suspect there’s a lot left unsaid), to be able to synthesize any really comprehensive response, but the language is quite familiar. I’ve participated in a community for decades, where that kind of stuff is common.

It’s fairly clear that it’s not a matter of competence, but of motivation, and motivation is affected by many things.

It’s also very important, and it’s easy to miss the forest for the trees.

I know that this is probably not an answer that solves anything, but it sounds like you may be going to a drywell for water.

I sincerely wish you the very best, but I’d strongly suggest exploring help on an emotional and spiritual (not necessarily “church,” but something that feeds the spirit) basis.

Good luck.


This sounds like adult ADHD, which is treatable:

> only to never execute them for various reasons or get started with them only to never fully complete them and see it all the way through.

> unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future

Go see a psychiatrist, mention those points and they will fix your problem in no time.


It's always worth getting checked, but jumping to ADHD is a bit much. OP is handling mobile + web apps working 70-80 hours a week, is that really possible for someone who has ADHD and isn't invested in the work? Burnout itself can cause all of these symptoms, as can depression or simply lack of sleep.


Lack of sleep, anxiety, stress, nutrient deficiency, excess caffeine, etc.


> Go see a psychiatrist, mention those points and they will fix your problem in no time.

It might take some time, but please start with a therapist.


When I was 28 I had been bouncing around startups for almost a decade. I had met some smart people and worked on one or two things I was proud-ish of, but I hadn’t really learned much in years, and nothing I had done was very notable. No college degree, kind self-taught web programmer, very little CS knowledge.

The startup I was working for was going under, and I got serious about finding a job where everyone would know more than me. The prospect of unemployment/insolvency didn’t hurt my motivation!

There wasn’t leetcode then, but I hit the books in a big way, having already flunked some big name interviews over the years.

The thing is I had been picking up CS a little at a time, and that time the books were still hard but not hopeless like before.

When I actually did the next round of interviews no one was more surprised than I was that I could avoid getting completely run over in a whiteboard interview.

The thing is the crazy-hard ones are regrettably common, but they say more about the interviewer than the candidate. Leetcode questions routinely involve tricky identities that you just have to know and other stuff that is absurd to ask in 30 minutes on a whiteboard.

There are lots of interviewers at prestigious companies who ask very reasonable (“leetcode easy”) questions. People do pull out the upper-division combinatorics crap, but that’s stupid, not you.

Getting a truly challenging job didn’t fix all the problems in my life, but I learned so much, so quickly that it re-inspired me about my career in a way that never went away.

So: 28 isn’t too late, you don’t need a CMU degree, and if cast a reasonably wide net you can find an interviewer who isn’t a jerk. You’ll still need to know about some CS stuff, but not the upper-division or even graduate stuff that pops up sometimes on leetcode and in some interviews.

If you fail a whiteboard interview and you’re like “damn I should know that”, study a bit more. But if it’s some off-the-wall shit: it’s them, not you.


First of all, you are not alone. When I read your post it really resonated with me. I've been developing software professionally for 25+ years and have had 3 bouts of burnout and have gone through the same fear, uncertainty and doubt you seem to be going through. It can get better and there are a few things you can do to help (at least these helped me):

1) Take a break, even 1-2 weeks can make a huge difference. You need to rest and recover so you can get persepective. It's really easy when your in the thick of things to loose sight of how bad things are or see a way out. If you can get away from that for a week or 2 you can start to think clearly again and figure out what you want (and do not want) to do next.

2) Stop working crazy hours. There are times when we need to work really hard to get something delivered, but if you're doing those hours all the time you're going to be exhausted which means you're getting less done in the regular hours and have nothing left to give when it's really needed.

3) Don't sweat about side projects. I have several hard drives full of half-finished or abandoned side projects that will never see the light of day. It used to bother me that I couldn't get them done, but now I treat them as hobbies which should be fun. If it stops being fun I stop working on it.

4) Believe in your abilities. It sounds corny but if you're shipping software then by you're doing the job. Sure we all have things we wish we could do better, but accept that you have skilla and then figure out where you want to go next. As an aside, hacking together snippets of code found on the web is how most software gets built...it's our indeustry's worst kept secret :)

5) Learn from smart people. This one is harder to do but if you can find some really smart people to work with you will learn more than from any other source. This doesn't have to mean changing jobs (although that really helps) it could mean contributing to an open source project you really like.

Hope some of that helps.


There's some evidence that burn out and depression are linked. If you can afford therapy, through benefits or just writing it off as an investment in yourself, I would recommend it. What I've gotten out of therapy has been worth the cost and has helped me with burnout. The brain is a funny thing and it may or may not be your job that's the issue.

Choose a better job. There are a lot of software jobs that aren't as glamorous as working for startups. Sure, you don't get to build applications with frameworks invented 5 minutes ago, but they often reasonably well and offer better work-life balance. Why do you want to work at a startup? Why not a bank or a large outsourcing company like Accenture?

Ask yourself why do you want to be a developer? I've known people that love developing software to the point they would do it for free, on their own time, in addition to working. I've also known people that leave it behind the moment they move into management. They like technology stuff, but don't love building software. If it's more a lifestyle or culture thing, then, look for jobs on the analyst/product manager side rather than engineering. Maybe sales?

Go back to school. Why go to school if you already know how to program? Because that's not the point of a degree in computer science. CS is about the why we do things the way we do. It would do a few things for you: 1) fill in some of the gaps your feel are important and 2) allow you to reset your brain a little, and 3) allow you a way to reset your career.

The thing to remember is we're always suffering imposter syndrome at some level if we're growing. As you push into new areas you'll always feel like a bit of a fraud. I'm currently going through it as a I move into management and they keep adding people to my team. At the same time I need to present the face of "I know what I'm doing," inside my head I think "I have no idea what I'm doing." That's normal. What's not normal, is feeling like you're drowning.


Do yourself a favor and figure out those concentration/brain fog issues as quickly as possible.

For me the first step in the right direction was an aggressive elimination diet. At some point I had become sensitive to a bunch of foods - but didn't realize the affect they were having on my life.

Good luck, friend.


I developed pretty severe brain fog after being exposed to mold, and boy, do I have a new found sympathy for those who also struggle with it. It tends to bring with it a sort of stupor that is detrimental.

At any rate, being gluten/dairy/sugar free really, really helped me. Nutrition is different for each person, but I have found this to be the single most helpful thing for managing the fog.


Wow! Give yourself some credit, you're doing great friend, holding down all those systems, that's a very hard job!

From personal experience, I haven't written any libraries or frameworks and I'm definitely a like 40th-50th percentile coder at best. But I do have family, friends, hobbies, outdoor recreation, exercise, and meaningful contemplation in my life.

This means that though I'm not shreking code 24/7, I have all these wonderful things to recharge my batteries. When I do sit down at work for those 30-40 hours, I get what I need to done, not worrying if it's via stack overflow, copy-pasta, or any method.

And that's totally fine, you don't need to re-invent the wheel or be a wunderkind, just be yourself and take AMPLE time to do things you love outside of work.


Use Leetcode, it's a tremendous resource. Maybe even get the paid version.

Please don't feel bad, it will be a waste of your time. Sole developer at a startup is not the definition of a loser. And if mental health takes a toll, get help. Talk to a counsellor / psychiatrist, they are the pros.

Realise that no matter what bootcamps sell you, knowing computer science theory will get you a long way. If you are doing something that even a 16 year old could do, you are not using your knowledge well or you need to study more. Nothing wrong with that.

Write down your plans and actions, then you can have as much fog as you want in your head, you can always refer to the piece of paper.

Lastly, I don't know what being a loser is objectively and I am pretty sure neither do you, so why bother with a stupid label.


I was in a similar situation around your age too. I've always suspected I had adhd (suffered in school, never finished a story, etc). I've been on vyvanse+adderall for the past 10 yrs and all I can say is I wish I knew about them before. Going to a doctor and getting checked/tested was the best decision I've made. It gives me focus, motivation, and my output has always been consistent ever since.

I am not saying you have adhd, just sharing my experience and recommending to visit the doctor and get yourself checked. Everyone is different.

P.S I've always maintained a healthy lifestyle, and workout 3 times a week, sleep early(pre/post meds). I've tried everything under the sun but adhd is adhd and the only way to find out is to visit the doctor.


First things first: You're not a loser. You matter. You matter to at least someone even if that someone is yourself. I think it's super brave of you to post here and that is the first step to feeling more connected, fulfilled.

Coding/working/etc is all just a construct we have to do to pay for shit to live. What about things outside of that? What else makes you happy? Do you like being outside? Have you tried traveling? Seeing the world?

How are your connections with friends or family? Sometimes serving others, helping out at a food kitchen, a shelter, etc., helps put things in perspective and helps you both appreciate what you have but also helps you see what role a job has -- that it's not everything.

I wanted to also add my +1 to not working more than 40 hours.


Your self worth is not tied to your job or what salary you get.

You can do all the Leetcode in the world but your mental state is stuck in a negative state.

So you need to detach your self identity from your self worth and then give yourself small wins.

That is, start with small problems, ideally with the help of a kind mentor.


Feeling stuck in a rut is quite common and most people would at some point have felt that and mostly rightfully so. You’re young enough, potentially with little responsibility in the way of family obligations etc. given that you don’t mention any. Evaluate whether you’re doing what you love. If yes, there are things to enjoy in your evolving relationship to your subject. Things are not always perfect, for some of us never. You learn to extract satisfaction from the little that is good rather than the many that you expect or anticipate. I failed most of my dreams but reality is much better than I thought it would be. Don’t overestimate the value and eventual relevance of your plans. Follow them for the journey.

—they call me the king of the cliché—


As others have said, take time off until you feel better. If at all possible do it while still at your current job so you don't have any added stress. Prioritize yourself and your mental state, and damn everything else.

You are amazing, certainly far from a loser, many people didn't start programming at 16, many people go their whole lives without having a realization like this. Use it as a way to start getting what you want from your life. It's yours to live.

Take time off until you feel better, as much as possible with paid PTO, sick days, etc with your current employer until the mental fog clears. Then decide what you want for yourself, then find a job that supports that and allows you to be the person you want to he for yourself.


>I've put in countless hours of work every day (70-90 hrs), being on-call almost 24/7, sometimes for straight 7 days for months despite only getting paid on a salary basis on 40 hr work weeks; being a loner helps with working long hours.

This sounds ridiculous to me. Are you from US?

EU here, 40hrs work week, 5weeks paid leave, paid sick days. After hours I'm turning my phone off, everything extra they must pay me money, like weekends are double my hourly rate, or it's illegal for them and people have no problem to call inspection on companies, then they can expect big fine.

Your situation looks like slave labor to me...

(of course, on top of my salary I do contract work for fun, for even better money, sometimes in my work hours, if everything is done, hh)


I certainly wouldn't call yourself a loser, ever. You need to have some confidence in your own value. If your description of hours worked is accurate - this startup is leaning on you far too much. Here's something to realise: You HAVE to push back - if you don't fight your own corner, no-one else will and there is no limit to what a company will take from you, with no reward.

So my advice to you would be to gird your loins, and assert yourself. Ask for a pay rise, ask for another staff member to ease this workload. I think the rewards for this will be more than just financial - once you assert yourself, and discover that it can work, you make it a habit, and this can boost your life in all ways.

I wish you the best of luck


Go outside more and in nature; feel the earth, digital detox once a day every week. in these times of quiet, introduce play in to your life. Introverts like myself do great on bikes. it's a solo experience, it gets your blood pumping and you benefit from the outdoors. I can't state this enough, take your socks off and feel the earth underneath you.

You are worthy of all that you desire, don't let some bullshit title misguide you into comparing yourself to others. DM me on twitter if you like chat on this.

Burn out anxiety is real and will spiral out of control if you don't pause, and breathe in order to re-evaluate from an inspired/excited mental and energetic space.


It's really tough (impossible) to think/work/act your way out of being burnt out. You need to reset, recharge, and then rebuild.

And from the very limited information here - you sound burnt out.

I don't know of many more longer term solutions aside from taking time out (and a lot of it, probably a vast amount more than people estimate). Obviously there is the exercise, sleep, floss, friends, family, pets, etc, etc. And I'd recommend that deeply. But that can be hard to effectively build without the battery having a decent amount of charge.

Not everyone can just peace out for a month, or 6, or a year. It's an enormous privilege to be able to do so. But take what you can.

Best of luck.


A lot of advice here about working less, and you should, but working a lot early in your career is not a priori bad.

I think you will really benefit from a formal education in computer science, whether online courses or a traditional institution.

Not only do you want to work less, and get paid more, you want to feel intellectually and creatively stimulated and competent. When you copy and paste less, you will feel more fulfilled in your work. You might also get things done much faster.

So, take a break. Go to school (in whatever form work for you) and get a job that pushes you intellectually, not long hours wise.

And you aren’t old. It’s ok. Many people don’t realize any of this until much later in life.


You should definitely check out Dave Crenshaw's Time Management Fundamentals course [0]. It's effectively free, since LinkedIn Learning has a 30 day free trial and the course takes only two sittings to do.

I was blown away by how effective this course was at fixing for me some of the same problems you're describing. And, it's awesome that you see that you have a problem. That's what you need to have the motivation to change things.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/learning/time-management-fundamenta...


I felt in a similar way despite feeling valuated at work, with good salary and working no more than the time I was paid for. I am now feeling better and the thing for me was: 1) changing job to get out of comfort zone 2) realized I had burnt my main hobby after more than 10 years (coding/computers) so I had to start from scratch looking for other things to do on my free time.

Current hobbies: bonsai trees (joined a local club), going to the gym, getting back to indoor climbing... The more social and physical the better for me (I thought for a long time I was more a lonely person than social but apparently that's not completely true).


I've placed 1000s of developers at startups over many years. My advice is forget about the money at 28, it doesn't matter if you earn peanuts or peanuts++

What matters is who you work for and that they develop you/manage you right. Different people need different kinds of teams/incentives/cultures. A great manager at a shit company will be better for you long term.

Also, learn how to hustle. Start sending cold emails to companies you admire. When you don't get a reply or a reply you like, send emails to the employees. In most successful companies there's so much going on that being persistent and annoying is the only way in.


You're not alone, my bet is that most people feel the same way, or similarly so.

My advice: write. Write a lot about how you feel, just like you just did. Write about your goals, hopes, dreams, how you plan on achieving those goals.

Life is marathon that lasts a few decades, we all need to create our own algorithms on how to tackle it, and then execute. Failures and setbacks are part of the process.

Besides writing, read. Read about things that you like; things that you need; and learn new things.

> How can I turn my directionless life around and find satisfaction with my career?

Not all the wander are lost. Up the game, it's not about your career, it's about Life. Your career is a subset of your Life.

YMMV


Similar story for me, started programming at 12, I'm 44 now, never had a win. So I'm not one to listen to for advice on success, but, I feel that studying what NOT to do can be just as valuable. Here are some insights that I find helpful:

- The industry is designed so that one guy wins and gets rich and the other 99% lose. Go into battle knowing you will lose, and create a different kind of success for those around you and humanity at large. (Borrowed from Fight Club).

- This is not forever. You'll be paid to solve problems at the bleeding edge of technology, which means that you're solving something that corporations have likely already solved, which isn't opened sourced yet, that someone will open source the year after you build it. (Try anyway, be kind anyway, love anyway).

- The universe will support you in any mode you choose to live in. This one took me a really long time to figure out - well into the pandemic. There's nobody at the wheel above you, you're in control. Or to rephrase, any external definition of God is incomplete until you reconnect with your own personal divinity. So someday we all have to learn to let go and give the universe a chance to help. That's the only way to level up that I've found, and the only explanation other than sheer greed that aligns with how people build wealth beyond their personal contribution. (Applies to all wealthy people).

Expanding on that last point: being on call was the main thing that triggered my burnout in 2019. It's something I won't do again, because I've experienced how it's not rewarded. In other words, me overextending myself made my situation worse. Cognitive dissonance is our subconscious (body's) way of alerting us that something is wrong so that we can try opposite approaches. Those messages only come in simple forms. If you're tired, rest. If you're lonely, go out and talk to people so you can go on a date. If you're not paid well, set a boundary on yourself to work 40 hours or less so that you and your boss can discover who isn't pulling their weight. If you can't do any of these things, then you don't have a job, you have a commitment to something. Align with that and peace will follow.


Lots of great advice in the responses. I'll say also start diversifying your life so you draw meaning and connection outside of work too.

You might want to start small, pick some activity / hobby that meets periodically for some small number of hours and don't ever let yourself be persuaded to skip a turn.

Start there and you might have to rotate until you find your niche - sports, book clubs, non profits - but don't give up on that. A couple of hours in a week to start with should be very doable - unless you are encumbered by a ton of family responsibilities.

Gradually you'll gain perspective and the ability to make bigger leaps. Good luck!


My 4 cents (of course, all of them are easier to say than done - I'm aware of that but still):

1. Stop working so many hours

2. Take a break from programming, try to do something else in your free time (best if outdoors!)

3. Try to build something for your own from scratch (side-project) - doesn't need to be something marketable, but at least to solve one of your problem (e.g. automating some boring task etc.)

4. If you struggle working with coming up with your own solutions maybe then try refresh your knowledge about basics of programming? Sometimes it might help and you'll never know what "gap" you have that might become your "A-HA!" moment ;)

Good luck!


This Venn diagram covers most career issues: https://management30.com/blog/redefining-purpose-with-ikigai...

The fact is no one does the same job their entire life anymore. CS fields can be a particularly fleeting experience over 28 (tax programs end as you are no longer a youth), and many people get into the field for the wrong reasons.

I would suggest volunteering someplace local like a community center, as happiness is often finding a balance between a meaningful life... and a pleasant one. ;-)


Others have mentioned some good things, so I wanted to suggest you read about Imposter Syndrome. If nothing else, you’ll realize you’re not alone in questioning your skills. It’s a very common issue in IT related fields.


I've seen people outside of IT do it, too. Human work can be very complicated and people assume a constant display of near-immediate expertise is the benchmark.


I suggest therapy. This sounds like depression may be a huge factor. (That’s not meant as an insult, just in case it’s not clear in text, just an attempt at help.)

A lot of “lazy” or “directionless” people are really just depressed.


+1 travel. If a future employer/recruiter asks, say: "I went travelling to X and Y and Z."

(Do not apologise or feel guilty for trying to better yourself or your life through new experiences.)

You're young. Travel for more than a month. Go somewhere you've never been and you don't speak the language. Stay in hostels. You'll meet friendly people everywhere and see things you can't imagine now and, perhaps, gain a sense of self-belief and confidence. Perhaps through adversity - it might be hard sometimes! Fantastically rewarding like nothing else, though.


What helped me: 1. Therapist - Just to talk. A good therapist (psychologist/psychiatrist) usually shows you a different perspective. I was stuck with my own thoughts. It might take some time for you to find a therapist that you can connect with, try different therapists.

2. Regarding salary - Join Blind (app) Every post has salary has salary mentioned. By just seeing salary on a regular basis, I felt comfortable enough to ask for a raise and I got it.

3. Started Journaling - (The Artist's Way (book) helped me)


Wow, we sound like exactly the same person.

I was also lone-dev. Leave. If possible, leave asap, or save enough $ to do so. Life is short...you may not even want to get back into tech at all. You're not being respected being the only dev and they're only taking advantage of you.

Yes..knowing how to solve leetcode problems seems the only way to get a decent paying dev job nowadays. I think it's bs but that's unfortunately how it is. There's no way you can study this if you're working FT (more than that) and killing yourself at a job you hate.


It sounds to me like it's not because of your skills and experience. You have been working in your field for a long time. Very few developers are "rock stars". We all build on the shoulders of giants - sticking code together is a pragmatic approach - especially if you work for a startup. But it sounds to me like you're comparing yourself too much to your ideal. My tip: Compare yourself less with "rockstars", learn the skills you are really interested in and reduce your working hours to a bearable level.


The bad part about being the ~solo developer is you don’t have as many people around you to learn from.

The good part about being the ~solo developer is you learn how to deal with almost all the universal challenges involved in making software, so you will be able to understand quickly and jump in to help with just about anything at your math skill level - as long as you are on a team that supports you and complements your skill set, but still. Your skills are enormously valuable to the right organization, don’t discount them.


Agreed! Been on a one-man team for many years, and have felt exactly the same. As others stated you are definitely not a loser. I know it because I'm not. :P

- Almost every one of us is working on boring CRUD web apps, and that's fine

- Work is not the only part of life that is supposed to make you happy (on the contrary)

- Try to spend all of your free time off screen. Exercise, meditate, read some books (not coding ones ..)

- XP >> LeetCode. A college graduate will definitely beat me at LeetCode, but I have been integrating online payment/banking systems in production web apps which have handled millions of $$ payments. Learn to promote those skills when job hunting, and don't worry about DS and Algos so much.

- We all need a bit of luck too : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LopI4YeC4I


This looks like a mix of narcissism (yes, feeling a looser is one of possible manifestations) and adhd, but don’t take it seriously - im not a psychiatrist.

What I believe you _should_ take seriously is to find a decent professional who can thoroughly examine you (including blood tests etc) and proper diagnose you. Not just drug you out based on couple conversations with you.

If you really expect HN comment to give you working solution - then you might be chasing a myth and looking for another excuse to postpone solving the problem.


Interview at places that don't do LeetCode. There are a lot. Take every recruiter call you can get, and proactively cut out ones that do LeetCode style live coding interviews.

I think, maybe, a primary reason you feel you're stagnating is many years at a small startup as a sole developer. You need to be around people smarter than you are to help teach you more. Those smarter people will help carry the load.

There's a word for sole developers being responsible for everything for years on end: it's called a founder.


If you have the energy to work 80 hours while being payed 40 hours, that sounds great, work 40 hours and do leetcode in the remaining 40 hours. Don’t expect results so fast, you will have them over time as long as you don’t destroy your day by overworking. Practice saying no to your management team.

I’ve got great results on programming competitions, but I was only doing only leetcode style problems for 5 years in my free time (while others were having fun dating…I wish I did that instead when I was young).


Work to live or live to work?

You feel like this because your job is slowly killing you.

Stop working overtime and weekends, and find things to do instead. This won't be an overnight thing, so take your time.

If your job pressures you back into previous patterns, explain to them your situation. If they're still pressuring you, tell them you'll have to start job hunting before they decided to fire you.

You're in a good position in life. 28 is not much, I would have been very pleased to be in a similar situation at that age. Good luck.


A good psychedelic trip to facilitate a mystical experience may provide you with insight from your unconscious mind that is usually suppressed. Some time ago, a research paper was posted here, "Mystical experiences occasioned by the hallucinogen psilocybin lead to increases in the personality domain of openness", Katherine MacLean / Roland Griffiths. DOI 10.1177/0269881111420188 I followed the conditions of the paper and it permanently changed me for the better.


Companies that use leetcode in interviews are rarely worth the effort or risk/reward to interview for. Getting into a like FAANG dev team is doable by anyone memorising that stuff, but it's rarely worth it.

Try out talking to a recruiter, and find a job with a senior that can help guide your career. Your self-esteem is pretty low, and a good senior and mentor can guide you out of that rut, and into being a senior yourself in no time with the amount of work you say you're putting in.


Get out of that situation immediately.

Find a situation with: 1. Sane expectations 2. A good team around you

One option might be to go be a contractor for a while. In the current climate you'll have lots of opportunity at unflashy but stable, large corporations. There will not generally be an expectation of overtime; if there is, you'll get paid for every hour of it. Anybody that can reasonably demonstrate their technical skills and ability to get along with others can be working somewhere new in 3 weeks.


1. stop thinking in terms of "rockstar" anything. 2. wondering how other "smart" people come up with libraries etc? they do what you do. 3. people who create always have countless ideas that never see light of day. 4. you wasted your 20s because you didn't have fun. 5. working hard pays off if that is what you enjoy. 6. LeetCode takes time! years even. if you don't enjoy puzzles you need to try something else.

can you take a break? a year maybe? and reasses?


Firstly, as others have suggested, take a break. Relax, don't think about job, coding or whatever else that bothers you. Spend your time doing something entirely different.

Second, join somewhere else where you are more valued. Or better yet, start your own company if you feel confident enough.

Third, find places (either offline or online) where you'll meet like-minded fellows. Join libera.chat if you wish. It's a great place to hang out no matter your networking skills.


It's great that you've identified the problem! This is a great first step.

A lot of the challenges you're facing can be improved by focusing on improving your mental health. In my experience most mental health issues are exacerbated due to a lack of perspective.

It's impossible to gain any perspective about what you _already_ know and what you _need_ to know, without having colleagues who understand what you're doing.

My solution: find work in a team with multiple developers.


You're not alone, but it can help to identify the patterns and habits that led you down this path. There was a recent piece in entrepreneur - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/424454 that may offer some insight, and I think the author does some coaching around burnout if that's something you think can help.


Best advice: Take a Month off and start applying to boring corporate SWE jobs. Almost every major Corp in the US has large engineering teams, they pay well, it's almost always a strict 40 Hour workweek and they almost never ask Algo/Leetcode questions in interviews. You may not make FAANG levels of compensation but you can decompress and prepare for those interviews for a few years if you want or just chill.


Do you enjoy talking to people about solving their problems? If so, consider switching to Product Management or Sales Engineering. Neither require hardcore cs skills.

Do remember that businesses value you by your ability to solve their problems, not by how elegantly you do it. You're killing your health to compensate for your imposter syndrome, but it sounds like you're just trying to impress people you don't work with.


As someone who is often too hard on themselves, it sounds like you're being incredibly hard on yourself. You're overworked and underpaid, and have a skewed perception of your own value. I'd suggest quitting for a while and taking some time away from the screen to repair yourself. Then, when you're ready, find a job that truly appreciates your skills and gives you the respect you deserve.


You can find a remote, 40 hour a week job that pays 100k+ in the US, you've got the skill set for it, get one and close your laptop at 5.

Move somewhere reasonable, buy a modest home suitable for a small family if you think that may be something you may ever want.

Get some hobbies. Meet some women (or men of course). Decorate your home. Get a new wardrobe. Live your life. You need stability and time to figure out what you want in life.


Others have already offered the more obvious advice, so I'll just add something a bit weird: I've started taking swing dancing classes and it's good fun. I meet people (some of which are women!) and it takes me out of my head. It's good active sort of relaxation.

I've noticed that a lot of programmers are into swing dancing, about 1 in 2 men I talk to at social dancing are in software in some way.


So sorry to hear your story, in some ways I can relate. Others have already given great advices, I don’t have to repeat them by myself. Just one specific thing regarding the “brain fog” you mentioned: check your vitamin, iron, and ferritin levels in your blood. And, of course, rest more, apparently you are holding a company on your single shoulders, you can say no from time to time.

Wishing you all the best and good luck!


Don't let LeetCode get you down. Plenty of companies don't do those types of interviews and plenty of really good engineers would suck at it.


Also checkout recurse centre. https://www.recurse.com/about


It sounds like you've never spent much time around good programmers. You are trying to learn it all yourself and online content is hit or miss.

Try reading through popular library code on GitHub. Read a high quality programming book, not blogs and stack overflow. Try to get a position at a larger company no matter how junior or low pay, but with good programmers who will mentor and answer questions.


You literally asked the question that I wanted to ask. Read my mind and my life right now. Thank you for your question. I really appreciate it.


Consider your physical health. Over the past year I've gone from a sedentary life to doing 5K on the treadmill most mornings, 10K steps most days, working hard on getting better sleep (going to bed at 9:30 most nights, having a good sleep regimen), and good nutrition.

It has really helped with burnout, though I still do need vacations and weekends for sure. 80 hour weeks are a killer.


The same here.

I've been CEO of a startup and then things gone downhill, I got fired from it, developed schizophrenia (never gone to doctors), was unable to sustain normal functioning, then turned to AI research and shut myself in for 5+ years. Got myself in prison and now with 7 years gap in resume unable to merge myself with functioning people.

I hope there are other secret schizophrenics like me


Anybody in EE or other engineering fields ? Is imposter a thing there too ? It's so strange to see so many programmers recently (including myself) feeling like shit on a daily basis (even taking psychology or emotional context into account). I wonder if it's the never ending lib/framework dance (as opposed to stabler physical laws) or something else ..


Yeah, it's the same thing with the engineers I know, only for less money, and an order of magnitude more responsibility.


Take some time off mate, travel for few months. Then you can do online tutorial (Like Udemy...) there are good ones but you won't be able to do them if you're 90 hours a week.

My best recommendation is to look for a new job, tell them you have a 2 month notice period and take this month you got to travel somewhere and think of something else.

Remember, you work to live, not the opposite!


A lot of negative self talk that I think you should work on improving. Try CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) - you can do a lot of it by yourself

>Unfortunately, I have never been a rockstar programmer

>I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s

>a bigger loser for not being able to solve problems

Those are all biased opinions. You can take a break from work, but by itself this will not change the way you think


You'd probably struggle with learning anything working so many hours. You need more rest. Related brain training to complement leet code could help you, like mental math. Get your diet and exercise on the right track, those are probably not great.

If you're stressed try Ashwaghanda, but take it only when very stressed, not often, maybe once a month at most.


This thread is an amazing distillation of hard earned advice. For me. Do something physically challenging. Do a long distance walk like the Camino de Santiago, climb a mountain, do some cycle sportives. Travel, read philosophy and physics, watch Mike judge films. Live as cheaply as you can. Your brain is telling you it's time to change things.


You can't neglect your soul for 4 years straight without your entire mind breaking down. Sounds like you've learned this the hard way.

If you still have family that cares about you, talk to them about your experience and possibly let them drive your life for a while. They don't know how to program, but they almost certainly do know how to be human.


don't worry that is very usual. you just have low self-esteem not a lack of skill. I have a masters from a top school in US and I've worked for faang and trading firms, leetcode still gives me the shivers. one thing that is universal is switching jobs is the key to making more money. have a clear goal I deliver this and I need that money and tell this straight to management if they can't make it happen you leave! also bigger companies can offer you opportunities to work on harder problems if you land on the correct team. your battle scars from that much oncall are actually more valuable than your coding skills. you'll just know where to look if you enjoy that bit try SRE/production engineering roles having switched from SWE to SRE it gave me a new set of problems to keep me excited, but beware SRE roles can range from devops to tech support so look very carefully at what the job entails.


Nobody creates anything from scratch. The idea that anyone does is a myth, and a harmful one. Everyone -- everyone -- builds on the work of others. Picasso and Einstein did. Everyone does. This is the fist thing you seem to be missing to realize there's nothing wrong with the work you do and the way you work. You are delivering value.


IMHO the road to betterment is starting with accepting yourself AS YOU ARE NOW. Give yourself a proverbial hug, say it’s ok. This is where you are, you’re doing quite good actually, earning quite some money (albeit with crazy crazy hours, I never met anyone doing 90 hours, maybe migrate to the Netherlands here where we prefer 32 ;)).


I'm 22, going through something similar. Been a tech nerd since I was a kid. I don't mind programming, but I can't do it outside my day job anymore. I basically spend all my free time writing, sketching, and going outside. Connecting with life in this way strengthens my mental battery for the challenge of coding.


Come up with a positive narrative for your experience, then shop it around with recruiters. You’ll be good in no time


This is great advice, recommended by a clinical psychologist in the book "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter." From the book:

"One thing this has taught me is that a good story goes further in the twentysomething years than perhaps at any other time in life. College is done and résumés are fledgling, so the personal narrative is one of the few things currently under our control. As a twentysomething, life is still more about potential than proof. Those who can tell a good story about who they are and what they want leap over those who can’t.

"[...] But what is a good story? If the first step in establishing a professional identity is claiming our interests and talents, then the next step is claiming a story about our interests and talents, a narrative we can take with us to interviews and coffee dates. Whether you are a therapist or an interviewer, a story that balances complexity and cohesion is, frankly, diagnostic. Stories that sound too simple seem inexperienced and lacking. But stories that sound too complicated imply a sort of internal disorganization that employers simply don’t want."

The author includes other good advice, such as practical advice on why you shouldn't be afraid to lean on your network if you have the opportunity. In essence, the original poster can frame past experience with the startup as evidence as evidence that they would be a great fit for a position at another company.


You need a month vacation. Go to Dahab, take diving and be a beach bum this summer. You will gain a new perspective.


It doesn't sound like you're a loser at all. Granted, it isn't the purpose of your post, but I was wondering if outside of the work situation you have enough interests and are seeing anyone. For me at least, getting my love life in order when I was your age provided me a lot more purpose.


There’s 112 waking hours in a week, give or take, if you’re getting reasonable sleep at all. So, working 70-90 hours per week leaves literally no time for anything else. If you commute and eat and so much as watch a tiny amount of YouTube or Netflix, that uses all the remaining time. It’s very important to realize that working 80 hours per week is trading your entire life for your salary. Not just some of your time, but all of it. It’s not possible to do any self growth or change things when working that many hours, so turning it around requires working fewer hours.

I’ve done stretches of 80 or even 90 hrs/week for months, and can verify that does induce brain fog and self doubt and a lot of things you’re describing. I have a strange and maybe contradictory take on this - I don’t regret it but feel like I shouldn’t have done it, and I wouldn’t do it again, if that makes sense. I take responsibility for choosing to work that hard because I’m sometimes perfectionist and sometimes people pleaser. Maybe you are too. In my case, there were usually other people around me also working hard, and I eventually saw some financial benefit, and I did get a good reputation. If you don’t have any upsides like that, it’s time to shake it up and defend yourself and your time. At some point I realized that salary is not linear, that overtime can’t pay enough to make 80 hours/week worth it for me. Also I saw more benefits by changing jobs.

Solving code problems from scratch and learning data structures and algorithms and writing libraries are things that generally happen as a byproduct of other goals, people almost never do these things purely for the sake of coding. If one of your goals is to go deeper into code, consider doing a graduate degree perhaps. You can get paid to learn and think about algorithms. LeetCode is not designed to help people be better at algorithms nor coding from scratch, nor is it designed for educating people how to architect solutions. Do not measure yourself by LeetCode.

Last but not least, it takes time and effort to be social, and can even be scary or painful, but it’s maybe worth leaning into that discomfort a little and making it a goal to develop some social muscles. It may take going out on a limb and inviting other people to do things, and when others are scared or busy it might feel like rejection. But this is how networking happens, people spending time with each other. One of the potential benefits of going back to school is a certain amount of built-in social environment, but if more school isn’t your thing, try meetups or a job in a bigger company.


Whenever in doubt of knowing what the next step is, work on yourself.

Work less at work and more on you.

Do less with friends/family and more with yourself.

There is more to life than just being good at programming. Start finding those things and making them a regular thing in your life.

Whatever you’re going through, just know that you’re enough and always will be.


I highly recommend joining your local makerspace:

https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces

A makerspace gives you a place to explore + learn new skills and hobbies as well as a place to make new social connections.


Get a therapist. See your doctor about it. A lot of adults with ADHD have a tendency to start a lot of projects and struggle with finishing them. If you talk to your doctor there are ways to treat a lot of different diagnosis. It could change your life. Don’t struggle alone!

Burnout: take time off, get a therapist.


Focus on yourself first. I’d get a good therapist, someone who resonates with you and listens to you, start exercising regularly, even a little/moderate amount helps, and find something you enjoy doing outside of work.

You’re still very young and just have the “oh shit” moment that we all get.


28 years old is young. Lots of people are barely starting to figure things out by that age. I don't conaider that a red flag at all.

Find people who are better than you and hang out with them. And do what you can to take on new and different challenges so you can get out of the rut.


First, update your CV. With that will come a sense of peace and empowerment.

Your next career step? Get out of there. Those hours and that environment don't give you the head-space to clearly see what's next for you. End this relationship first before you considered the next one.


Would you like to jump on a call and have a chat? Probably easier than trying to help you in this tiny little box.

Book a slot here: https://devopsmentor.youcanbook.me/ (no charge, of course.)

Speak soon(?)


You sound like me, except the part where you say "working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years" which is my dream next career moving since I started taking programming seriously. Sounds like you just need to find your next job?


What helped me was a renewed focus on my health, career followed after that. Good luck my friend!


Good advice, sometimes you've gotta just be a better friend to yourself.


Thank you for asking this question. "I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future" - I can describe myself to a tee with these words.


If you have brain fog and smoke weed, stop for a while and add in a gym routine. Weed can affect your working memory and make it difficult to recall information, which makes interviewing difficult in my experience.

Land your dream job then start lighting it up again.


I'm not a therapist/coach but I do have plenty of experience and I can give you some free advice how to get out of this. If you want to chat, you can send me an email (I have the same user name on GitHub so you can find my details there).


Why don't you take a moment to open a computer architecture book and just start reading and solving? Or read and solve through a discrete mathematics book? Knowledge will help you straighten up. Then try leetcode again with your new insights.


I’m going through something similar to OP and I did exactly this. Thanks for validating I’m not crazy.


"I struggle with evaluating my value in the market to determine my worth."

Apply for jobs paying more than you earn now. Settle on one where you aren't expected to do monster hours. Get in touch with a recruiter for advice on the money side.


I recommend submitting your question to the Soft Skills Engineering podcast, and/or to listen to a couple of relevant episodes: https://softskills.audio/


Please, seek opinions outside of this orange site too. Best of luck for your recovery.


LOTS of good advice here.

My only addition would be to further specialize in something you don't hate working in. Becoming a subject-matter expert will afford you the opportunity to take time off or just work whenever you feel like working.


Caveat: This is really great until you do hate it.


The hours you are putting in would leave me in that state.

Back off the 40 hours a week and stick with it.

You are not a loser - in fact the mere fact that you think you are a loser probably means you are great. :)

Hang in there.

40 hours a week and no more. Try it for at least 6 months.


I've been programming for 57 years, and I still copy other people's code to get started.

To start a project from scratch, pick something that is entertaining and gratifying to you. Write a program to solve Sudoku or Wordle.


https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36613747-how-to-change-y...


You've lost some things here or there but everyone loses somewhere no matter what their facade says. You're not a quintessential loser. Literally nobody is, we're all made with redemption in mind.


Your first mistake is comparing to others, the only person you should be comparing to is yourself.

Find less complex jobs, where you are in the top 25% of the people in the room and realise that the pay sometimes even improves.


Wow, this feels so incredibly like my situation (except for the extra hours, I just don’t do them) that it is kind of creepy. The main difference being that I’m 10 years older. Thanks for sharing this.


Retreat, regroup, counterattack.

One way or another you need to rest. You are burnt out, and you cannot produce creative work while you are burnt out.

Rest. Get your life in order.

Start working on something new after you are functioning.


i agree with everyone else here :

1. you are competent! most dev are glorified plumbers we just stitch stuff together to make it work. Also 28 is young :) i remember feeling the same at 27, specifically i burned out and quit to do a world trip! At that time someone told me i was too old :) i was not and reflecting now, i would love to keep that state of mind till i die!

2. you are burned out / need a break maybe even a year, if the issue is $ then start by creating an upwork or fiver profile and see if you can get jobs then consider moving to a cheap place with internet and a weather you would like to work remote (bali / vietnam / brazil / estonia …)

3. to become a better dev i think reading would help, stepping back from code to focus on math / algo and the theory can help with developing an eye for the big picture. another way is like chess study your own games, look at code you produced and zoom into the library you ve used, look at its code hack it try to understand it and reach out if you don t understand something to those who built it. Finally you can also take a theme / something you re passionate about or something new (AI / VR ..) and learn about it, you will then progress like you did before, it always feels good

4. to network join meetups / dev conf / hackhatons etc.. i might be wrong since i don t dev anymore but i remember observing that when i would i could not socialize much, it was even worst when i studied Math, my hypothesis is that you tune your brain so much to logic and solving stuff that it s hard to meet people who don t want nor know how to talk about these obsessions/ but you ll be fine with your peers :)

5. finding your own direction / meaningful life, this one has been a tough one since the dawn of mankind up to existentialists. the usual way is to have a religion or to philosophy. In a more practical manner you can also create your own biz (go to a startup weekend for example) if you have no idea what you love or want to do, try to observe what pisses you off and build something to solve it (could be a library etc) check also ressources like indiehacker another way is to observe what you do naturally when not working, what s your passion a last trick is to imagine what you would do if uou won the lottery and just do that …

good luck fellow human!


You will be fine - expand your network to people who will value your work and give you better opportunities. Abandon the idea of making it on your own. You need others to succeed.


There is lot of mostly good advice here. Ultimately is only you that have the answer to this, trust that you will find the answer. Your post has the seed of the answer already :)


Tell this exact story to your boss or manager, a good one will see your worth and apply appropriate measures. Say that you are wondering why you're working so hard still.


Keep a log or journal of your daily wins. I think that if you try this for a week, you'll have something that you can look back on, and feel great satisfaction.


Don’t be afraid of changing direction if you have systematic skills and feel unhappy. Other jobs that pay well with these skills are electrical engineering, plumbing etc


You're being abused by your employer. They need you and yet you think you have no value. You have value otherwise they wouldn't need you on call all the time.


Plenty of other good advice being commented here (particularly around working fewer hours) but one I'd like to emphasise: you're absolutely not a loser.


If you have the inclination and the cash, I really recommend a psychologist. If you think trauma might play a part .. EMDR qualified psychologist FTW.


1) you are working too much. It’s not sustainable. 2) especially when you are younger, the best way to get a raise is usually to switch jobs.


The problem is that you work hard but for someone else, that doesn't care about your health. Your suffering is an externality to them.


I hope you'll feel better knowing lesser men would have memeorized the answers to leetcode problems and aced their coding interviews.


Based on your comments about salary and working at a startup, I think you're probably being taken advantage of.

I think you may at least subconsciously know it too given that you wrote this post.

Step one is to start dialing it back. Another commenter suggested reserving an early hour of the day for leetcode. That's a good idea. When you're ready to start work, don't. Work on a leetcode problem but timebox it to an hour. Then get about your workday. You'll very quickly start to realize that there's nothing special about algorithms. It's basic patterns. No one is asking you to invent new distributed consensus algorithms on the fly in a coding interview. Mostly they're looking for whether you studied to the test or not.

So for the first little while, it's going to suck. You'll be stumped and frustrated. That's fine. Spend a bit of time trying to figure out the answer yourself but if you've given it an honest try, just google the answer. It's about pattern matching mostly so you need a base to pattern from.

Make sure you type everything out. Don't copy/paste. That'll be important for both mental memory (multiple input paths (tactile + visual) leads to better retention) but also that muscle memory will be critical when it comes to the actual interviews.

Eventually you'll get to cruise control. Easy problem won't be stumpers anymore, they'll actually be easy. Mediums will be hit and miss and hards will still be mostly failures but doing some every now and then it worth it for pattern matching to make the mediums easier.

Now that you're cruising and touch typing without IDE assistance through the easys you're ready to interview. You'll probably fail the first few. Interviews are a skill separate from actual programming and they also involve a lot of luck. All the interviews have some random set of qualifications they feel are super important. Unless your practice overlaps heavily with their preferences they won't be inclined to hire you. And when there are like 5 interviewers on a loop you can afford not having overlap with one but if you don't have overlap with 2 or more that'll usually sink you. And like I said, you can grow that overlap percentage but not much, it's mostly luck. If you get a bunch of interviewers that mostly ask questions similar to the ones you practiced and you pattern match them easily (hashmap! tree search!) then you get hired.

The first step though is cutting down your dedication to this company. You're dedicating your life to them and unless they're paying you enough to retire extremely early that's a really bad deal you're taking.

So please cut back on your hours. Take that extra time to take care of yourself first and meet up with friends and family again. Use a small portion of the extra hours to grind out the algo questions. If you can write mobile and web apps you can learn this too. It's a different skill though and it will take time. But it's worth it because you need this practice to match up against everyone else that studied to the test. When you feel you're ready take a long vacation. At least two weeks. Line up a ton of interviews and just power through. Take a break of a least a few days in the middle to regroup and analyze but in general book at least 6 interviews (not phone screens) in those two weeks. Chances are if you've practiced enough you'll get at least one offer. If you don't, that's fine, it just means you need to practice more. Analyze what went wrong, practice more and try again in a few months.

When you get an offer, don't stay at your current company. With your effort and dedication they absolutely know they're taking advantage of you. They'd probably be willing to double your total compensation if you were to actually be ready to leave. It's a trap though. They've already shown they're willing and able to take advantage and will do so again. So when you have a better offer elsewhere you should take it.

Good luck.


Find a qualified councellor to work with, a good one you trust will really help you rather than randos off the internet.


My advice is to taper with working less (it’s going to cause you anxiety) and get in contact with a therapist.


But how to find a good therapist?


When working too hard doesn't work, I guess you better work less and focus on what is the most important


Study leetcode and system design. Interview elsewhere.

It's literally that simple. I'm being extremely honest.


Just reinforcing that you are not a loser, but a worthy and loved person. Have a blessed weekend :)


From what I can tell, bunch of different things going on here. The highest priority IMHO is:

> to never fully complete them and see it all the way through

Others who do have the persistence to see something all the way through, are simply, lucky! Lucky to have the drive. But there are things you can do, to improve your drive and determination, namely drugs. Go see a psychiatrist who can help you with that. Once you get a feel of what it's like to stay focused on something for a long time and see it through, you'll want to do it more often and naturally will learn some non-drug techniques to get there.

Some other things you may have heard numerous times, but doesn't help to repeat: have a hobby (could be as simple as taking care of plants), exercise regularly, preferably in activities that involve other people (I find top rope rock climbing to be perfect for this; squash also comes to mind).

> I'm stuck in a rut, wanting to better my skills and earn a good amount of money but unable to concentrate, riddled with brain fog, and unsure of my future.

This further tells me your issues aren't sprung up from your skills, but rather at a more basic level.

I can also recommend Sam Harris'es waking up meditation app which can help immensely with navigating your mind and better understanding how to focus your attention on things that matter the most.


I've never seen someone write something I relate to word-for-word. Thank you for posting this


When I was burned out in my late 20s, I wish someone had made me aware of MDMA-assisted therapy. This book is a nice introduction:

https://www.amazon.com/Dose-Hope-Story-MDMA-Assisted-Psychot...


You just said you aren’t qualified but deserve more money. I stopped reading there.


You can have problem with workaholism. Try therapy, you shouldn't regret it.


Man, forget about code. You're good on that. What you need is a wife.


You come off as depressed? Is something else the matter aside from work?


Quit and use some me-time to write an application from scratch.


What do you do outside of work in your spare time?


> brain fog

No one's even mentioned covid? Have you had it?


Sounds like you are doing the job of 3 people.


That's one of the best threads in hn fr


Could you please point me to your CV? Thanks


Forget about studying and just go interview.


others already said enough. me, i am only here to say this: you are not a loser.


In which country do you live?


I've been burnt out twice. Once to the point of being on short-term disability for 3 months. I've also risen in my career from door-to-door sales to leading an AI based technology startup. Here's what I recommend to get the reset you need:

Step 1 - Reset your mind and your body:

Get rest. If you have the resources, quit your job and rest.

Move. If you're not exercising, start. If you are keep doing it.

Breathe. Learn to be still and meditate. The best meditation technique for me at that time was Vipassana (it's free and they feed you + give you a place to stay). I also learned about self-compassion meditation on this podcast https://jackkornfield.com/tim-ferriss-podcast-jack-kornfield...

Learn how to be kind to yourself. Stop comparing yourself to others. Instead, figure out what you need and want. It helps to keep a gratitude journal. Sounds silly, but it's highly effective.

Reframe. You did not waste your youth. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. You want better for yourself now. This is the beginning of the next phase of your life. It's also really uncomfortable so manage your expectations.

Step 2 - Reconnect with anyone from your past who made you feel good about yourself. Ask them what they see your strengths are. It's often hard for us to see our own strengths because our strengths come easy to us.

Step 3 - Follow your curiosity. Want to draw? Set yourself up for success. Don't say I want to draw then grab a pencil and not be able to draw. Take a class or watch a YouTube video. If not drawing, anything. Relearn things you liked doing as a kid but stopped doing. Find something to do that's not work. It will serve you well when you do work.

Step 4 - Up-skill. Whatever it is you're wanting to achieve, talk to people who are where you think you want to be and see what they did to get there. Then do those things.

Talk to a minimum of 5 people in that position. Better is talking to 20. Listen carefully for things they don't like about it. If those things go against your nature, you may want to rethink what you want. I've built things from scratch. I've had 7 career changes and my own business. Each time I thought it was what I really wanted only to get there and decide it's not for me.

Step 5 - Meet new people in the area you want to be in. Join meetups, online communities, Slack groups, etc

Whatever your next move is make sure it's not at a culture of overwork. You're right about your hourly wage. Better to work 40 hours a week for that wage and have 20-30 hours a week for your own projects. Don't worry that you haven't made any of them big. Having a grand slam is going out of fashion. Now people are building boring businesses and making multiple small bets so they can own their time and improve their quality of life. One of your strengths is you have a good work ethic. Have some of that work be for yourself.

For inspiration, check out Daniel Vassallo's Portfolio of Small Bets cohort course. It's a community with many devs among others building a bunch of things (info products, e-books, e-courses, microSaaS, e-commerce, and more) with the idea of investing in themselves and their own portfolio of products.

Also check out the boring business movement for some ideas on reframing away from building from scratch. @Codie_Sanchez on Twitter and Nick Huber on YouTube are a couple of big names. Try a bunch of things. Don't expect to get it right on the first try.

It's not about working hard or working efficiently, it's about working effectively. Focus on that and you'll get there but not without learning how to be kind to yourself. Otherwise you will constantly get in your own way. For me, I've accepted this as a life long struggle. Being aware of how I can be down on myself helps me catch it before it becomes a problem.

You have everything you need to live the life you want. You just need a reset. I wish you all the best


door to door to AI ... hmmm ....

yeah.


One of the best threads


1 - don't smoke pot (if you are doing so) and don't drink alcohol every day 2 - listen to Jordan Peterson lectures on youtube and read 12 Rules For Life 3 - be honest about your own IQ and choose your path accordingly - education and hours can only take you to the limit of your innate intelligence; minds the likes of Linus Torvalds, Don Knuth, Ken Thompson, Larry Wall are extremely rare 4 - run a mile a day and do weight training 5 days a week - watch Pumping Iron to get in the mood 5 - cut down on the hours - look him in the eye and with confidence tell the owner of your company - "Listen, I can solve your problems, but I cannot do it by myself anymore. Here's what I'm going to need from you to guide you down the path to success...<junior dev>, etc."


- You don't need to be a rockstar programmer. Why do you even want to be one?

- Some people are going to be more apt at building things from scratch than you. This is true for everyone. There are millions of programmers out there, and a small number of them will knock it out of the park, but it can seem like one is inferior to them. Not inventing things from scratch isn't inferior. Given your work ethic, I'm guessing you don't have the time to actually work on anything interesting and solve problems in a novel way.

- Your 20s are meant to be wasted. Given your age, your brain has just finished maturing. Yes, there's some things you might feel like you've missed out on, but your 30s and beyond are full of possibilities.

- You are not a loser. You know who's a loser? Someone who's lost at a game. Compared to most of the humans on earth, you're doing fine. You feel like a loser because you are missing out on life experiences by working insane hours. Stop it.

- Stop working so hard. What the fuck are you doing working 70 to 90 hours a week? I try not to swear on HN, but I think it's appropriate here. Those hours are ludicrous, especially given how long you've been in the field. Don't work more than 40 hours a week. Try to work even less than that. Stop being on call. Stop working on weekends. If your boss complains, don't budge. If your boss does anything to guilt or coerce you, tell them to fuck off. It really is that simple.

- Your salary will increase if you get another job. At every job change I've had as a programmer, my wage has gone up by at least 30%, and once it went up 200%.

- Yes, you have been doing the opposite of "Work Smart, Not Hard." Start working less. If your boss calls you at 1AM, put your phone on Do Not Disturb and go back to sleep. Utilize your sick days and PTO. Take long lunch breaks.

- Leetcode and algos are a meme. Stop thinking that you are a loser because you're not able to solve them within the time alotted to you. Your job is to get shit done, not to impress dudebro coders with m4d l33t sk1llz. That shit is stupid.

- You're burned out. Take time off from your job. I don't care how long it takes, or if they let you go for taking off too much time. You need to go on some adventures, meet some new people, and actually enjoy your life.

- The only way to get good at networking is to just do it. There's things you can do to be more likable, but they won't work if you can't simply network. Go to meetups and conventions. Strike up conversations with people even if your opening line is ludicrous. The more that people simply know who you are, the more likely you'll get a better job through connections.

- Regardless if you stay at your current job, consider doing what you can to work as little as possible. In the tech field, it's really easy to overspend with the kind of money we are making (even on the low end). If you can downsize your life and even move somewhere with a lower cost of living, you can take easier jobs to make ends meet while you use your free time to actually live. By this point, you should have some time to actually live, especially now that you are approaching your 30s. Don't feel bad about wasting your teens and 20s. But I would absolutely say don't waste your 30s. Your 30s are essentially the point at which your body has finished developing. Make sure you have fun with the next few decades before your body starts to really slow down.

- Learn to care less about your profession. We all need that passion as an initial drive, but at this point you've essentially "done it." Life isn't about being a software developer. It means different things to different people, but I do think a life devoid of serenity and shared experiences isn't preferable. You need to be able to show up, get paid, and go home. Trust me, I've made the mistake of caring too much, and too many times. The truth is that unless you are the next Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, 99.9999% of the world doesn't give a shit how good a developer you are. Yet far more people in life will love you if you lead a simple and honest life, and are a good person. That's way more important than any mount of leetcode you can do.

- You are by no means the only one. Software development is ironically both a permissive industry and a high-pressure one. We create these "10x developer" and "rockstar developer" myths to psych ourselves into excelling. In general, it's fake. I've known some 10x developers, and while I respect them for their abilities, I don't actually envy them. They spend more of their life on work than I do, they don't get 10x my paycheck, and at the end of the day 99.9999% of the world doesn't know who they are or even care that they are 10x developers. Yet we all want to be them, more or less.


You're obviously a critical component of your startup's continued existence. Plenty of people have addressed the issue that your work-life-balance is screwed and your employer undervalues you by a great margin (money talks). I will speak to your worth as a programmer.

You say (I paraphrase) you don't come up with your own solutions, you just plug things/ideas from other sources. Well, that is every creative endeavour for you. Every author, painter, musician and yes - programmer - does that. If you take ideas from different sources, combine them, take them to a new conclusion - you already have created something new. You most likely already are an amazing programmer. Your workflow is industry standard. It is a good thing to approach the world with open eyes and not reinvent the wheel all the time.

I consider myself a genius level programmer (bragging is a valuable skill if you want your employer to compensate you). I listen to talks from great programmers, read books like The Pragmatic Programmer (still valuable after more than 20 years) and absorb ideas. I am driven by the hunger to find an application for them. At no point do I come up with my own algorithms or new industry changing paradigms.

I create value by writing interface driven software. This applies for any interface, networking, APIs, CLIs and even GUIs. It all starts with a problem you want to solve. A use case in industry speak. And I usually already have an idea what the software needs to do to achieve this. But the focus here is on how it is used:

- It needs to be concise and unambiguous in its use (the documentation should lay out which problem it solves and how it is supposed to be used for that)

- It should make it difficult to make mistakes, e.g. require explicit units in configuration files etc.

- Give expressive negative feedback as soon as possible, when you're programming an API, it is often possible to make things fail at compile time

- Allow the user to pick up where they failed, make a correction and continue, this is a non-issue when you're writing an API or a command-line tool, it's critical when designing a GUI

So I focus on making it intuitive to use, or at least easy to learn. It needs to provide real value (and the documentation should explain that value first and foremost). I focus on errors and how to recover from them (as part of this concern).

Often this breaks the cleanly layered design you had in mind at first, the kind of design a software developer immediately comes up with when they see a problem and consider what needs to happen in order to solve it. This kind of design focuses on the happy path. If you focus on interface and how to handle errors and feedback, you will need access to a lot of information that the whiteboard design would have encapsulated. This is why your software architecture should be interface driven.

One last thing, a warning about stack overflow. Incorrect but simple solutions have a tendency to win on stack overflow when the correct solution is complex and hard to understand. It is also rampant with wrong/dated ideas, such as multiplication is more expensive than addition (it needs more die space, but multiplication and addition both are a single cycle in most modern architectures). Division on the other hand is always expensive, there is just no way around it. That said, you still can find amazing value on SO.


You will hate the following at first because your hormones will be out of wack, but once you do it for a bit you will be much much happier. Also, this comment will work best if you aren't working during this time, but if you need to for financial reasons, adapt and follow the advice anyways (for example: only use the internet for work, the rec league meets evenings. And only work 40 hours.)

1. Get off your computer. Take a break, go outside. Literally. Take a walk. It will increase your attention span and help you in numerous other ways.[1]

2. Get off the Internet. Completely. It is incredibly hard, but it is necessary. The Internet is the place that will only cause you stress during this part of your life. To quote a 2011 article from psychology today[2]: > A growing body of evidence shows that video games and other electronics induce the fight-or-flight syndrome, putting the body in a state of stress. Studies show sustained increases in blood pressure and pulse, even hours after playing a video game. It doesn't have to be a violent game, or even an action game-or even a game at all! Over time, internet surfing and texting will similarly put the brain and body in a state of stress, just from the high level of visual and cognitive stimulation.

3. Learn to pay attention. Start each day by telling yourself you'll do something productive. My suggestion is to read a book, clean up, or any _hands on_ hobby but the important part is - it will be hard - to focus. If you feel yourself getting distracted and wanting to check HN or Reddit or anything else that isn't what you are doing, break it up with something physical. Cleaning up? Do a jumping jack when you want to check reddit. Now go back to cleaning. Reading a book? Stand up for 10 seconds. Then go back to reading. Attention is a survival skill, and once it is mastered it will bring much more happiness than Hacker News. You will actually accomplish things.

4. Pick a sport or something you like to do, and find people in your area who like to do it too. Join a casual ultimate frisbee league, or some other sport of yours. Talk to people. It will be hard just like everything else, because the internet has given you a lack of social skills. But you have to, because otherwise it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy and you'll just communicate even less in person. Once you learn what real in person interaction feels like again, you'll like it way more than the internet too.

5. After you've done the last 4 for a while (a couple months) and you've began to feel the positive effects, then you should begin using the internet and social media in moderation again.

Humans didn't evolve to receive information at the quick pace computers give it to us, and the long hours you work, in addition to the lack of in person interaction you mention, has created the brain fog you experience. Luckily, the brain has also evolved to change itself. (Did you know brain cells are the fastest replicating cells in the body? It's why brain cancer is the most deadly of them all.) A clean break from all this, then a gradual reintegration is the way.

Edit: I will also second the person who said to study philosophy.

1: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201306...

2: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-wealth/201103...


You asked for directions.

In this order:

1. Write a resume and publish a professional profile site. Just you being honest, in your voice, describing the hard work you've put in, the achievements you're most proud of, and what you wish for your career. 95% of networking is putting on a public face and making it public. Last 5% is asking for stuff, like jobs.

2. Talk to your boss. Show him your resume and site. Ask for a raise and less work hours. Tell him you're burning out.

3. Depression will creep on you, and it will happen before burnout. But depression will have you thinking negative thoughts, fog your brain, and drain your energy. Diet, sleep, and exercise will help immediately. Not being lonely also (dating successfully/being in a relationship with someone who is healing). That being said, depression and your life are completely separate. You could be 10x better, richer, better looking, and still be depressed. So try to keep your depression separate from your ego and your professional struggles. Depression is its own problem. Treat it on its own terms.

Everyone successful in life that I know do all of the above ALL THE TIME.

This is a checklist only the first time you do them. But from there, they need to be routine. Always be searching for jobs, always be negotiating with your boss, and always stay on top of your mind and body and keep them happy also.

That'll provide new constant tailwind, and new direction. And as you keep at it, your site will improve, your relationship with your boss/es will improve, and you'll begin to feel a heck of a lot better about absolutely everything.

One last tip on negative talk. Your post is extremely negative, just based on the word count of sadder, more negative words (stuck, unable, loser, wasted).

A healthy exercise would be to write the same thing without those words.

"I've been working hard for 10 years and am still patiently waiting for a big break. I work extremely hard, and never complain. I work at a startup and have been handling all of their programming from the day I started work."

That's saying the same thing. That's someone struggling all the same.

Now, most realists/literalists can only see the world and write about it one way. Optimism is but a point of view. But here's how to skip this debate entirely with others (like me) and yourself.

Just make it a point to do positive. Make a positive difference.

Let your negative mind speak, but don't act on any negative impulses.

So to go full circle, do something on the list of three things above to make a positive difference each day.

Look for positive, do positive, and be the positive difference. Your words and attitude will follow.


Are you a former CS major? It sounds like you possibly need structured guidance. Although it's not necessary to have a formal education in CS to succeed in this area, it does help a bit.

I felt my most important CS class was learning about design patterns and code reusability in software (eg Gang of Four books). It took a few years for me to understand how to identify which patterns made sense to use vs using some pattern I found in a book because it looked cool. A required upper-level CS class on the Scheme language turned on some kind of mental switch that allowed me to understand how to code Javascript.

Another would be working around people who are smarter than you. If you're the smartest person in the room and you don't feel at the top of your element, then you're definitely going to feel stagnated. You might need to find another place to work at where you can work with people you feel can be good mentors.

Code reviews from other senior developers also help a lot as they may identify areas of improvement that you can learn from, but that requires you work with people who are smarter than you or have an area of expertise you do not.

Many popular OSS projects have articles going into a deep-dive of how their architecture works. For example, there's lots of material on how React.js works under the hood, with some people building a from-the-ground-up version demonstrating the basic features. Read such articles and explore those code samples.

If you're doing webdev, I don't think it's necessarily important to know the insides and outs of algorithms that you probably won't use in your line of work, but it's more about knowing that they exist and the situations in which it can be used for so you can add it to your mental toolbox. You might come across a problem where you recall reading about x technique or y algorithm. You don't remember the specific details, but at least you know it's there that you can then look up the implementation details for when the time comes.

Finally, the hours you are working are not healthy. You already sound burnt-out, and that's affecting your mental well-being, and possibly can have some long term health effects too if not dealt with. You need to find a way to cut your hours or not work if possible so you can reset yourself.

I had major burn-out two years ago where my body literally would not want to do any kind of work, and I ended up with severe health issues such as double vision, that required visits to several doctors and therapists. I had to do zero work for around half a year before I could do work again. My eyes could see text on a computer screen, but my brain would refuse to process it.

Everyone including myself that I've known in this industry suffer from some kind of imposter syndrome. I was in your position around your age, and fortunately was able to work with people smarter than me to learn from. It's never too late to learn to improve and find the right people to improve with, but you really gotta think about your health first and take care of that first.


Stop using labels to define yourself: Loser, Loner. If you do, at least use positive ones: Winner, extrovert and fake it until you make it.

But I would never use labels at all. I have won several times, but it came after lots of work, effort and sacrifice, before winning I lost other things.

You need to have something in your life that it more important than money or status. A mission that is not about you, but about others. In the past people had religion, country, family. We are social animals, we care more about our group than about our isolated selves.

Learn about your limitations, the more you work diminishing returns kick in.

How do you try to work smart when you are using your time as an exchange of money? The people I know that work the smartest are the people that don't have time and HAVE TO work smarter: They have kids, or a music band or love traveling the world so they need to work efficiently or else they will have to abandon their kids or music band, something unacceptable.

Working smart is a skill, and you need to allocate time for learning it. If all you do is direct work you won't be able to learn indirect work. You need to sharpen your saw. Exercise, sleep and eat well.

Put a limit on your working time and enforce it: Never work over 40 hours. Use the rest for learning, improving yourself, making friends, making love to women, the usual things that make people feel happy.

In order to work much smarter I recommend you learn about making the computer help you. Learn about a very important concept in computing: Bootstrapping.

If you have not, read and write Lisp, with the "Land of Lisp" or whatever, then read Graham "On lisp", and "Structure and interpretation of computer programs". There are lectures on the Internet.

Learn about compilers: https://buildyourownlisp.com/ https://craftinginterpreters.com/

Those tools will help you make the computer do most of your work, with things like designing Domain Specific Languages. But it takes years to master and you need to allocate time for them.

Read: How to make friends and influence people. Very important, the oldest edition is the best one, as the authors' descendancy decided they knew better.

You should also learn to delegate in other people If you want to earn a lot of money it is a good idea paying someone to make it so they give you time. Things like doing the laundry could be outsourced much cheaper that it taking hours of your precious time.

I really hate the term "networking" applied to personal relationships. I make friends and lovers, I care about them and they care about me. Stop considering people just like things that will help you in your "career".

Who gives a damn about you if you only care about yourself? You want to become rich and isolated, attracting gold diggers that will bankrupt you without the skills to make genuine friends and lovers?

Putin is paying soldiers from poor places in Russia USD5000 a month to go to war and die. It is more than what they earn in an entire year. You are already way richer that most people in this world.

Start caring about others, about your customers and people around you and you will be "successful". Start caring about the value you provide and you will get money in exchange. Focusing on money, money goes away, because you focus on yourself, me me me.

I am helping you right now. I am expending my time writing this and will not receive(or expect) anything in return. There is a small probability that you will apply something I wrote and then it will be worth it, by itself. Indians called it "Karma", in Silicon Valley "paying it forward".

The people I helped in the past had surprised me and helped me a lot, but there is really pleasure in giving.


let's talk


....


Stop working so much. Apply to a fortune 500 company that won't work you to the bone. Insurance companies, like Travelers is a great example. Everything else will fall in line if you take that first step and stop killing yourself for peanuts.

It sounds like you are the 'rockstar' on your team honestly.


Watch the nootropic video from the YouTube channel "What I've Learned"


[flagged]


This is good advice. In the past this has been frown upon and has been seen as weakness but it is something that should be regarded like seeing the dentist.


> I'm a loser, burnt-out, directionless but want to turn it around.

Have you considered going into politics?


> I've already wasted my entire teens and 20s, current 28 years old, working as a software engineer (Full-Stack) at a startup for ~4 years.

I think you would benefit a lot from cognitive behavioral techniques to shift your mindset, so you have a more realistic and helpful perspective on the direction of your life.

Nothing too crazy. There are plenty of resources out there if you search for them. So much of what you feel is, in my experience, because of the stories and words we tell ourselves, which over time, create these impressions that aren't always true.

And even though he gets a lot of flak, I highly recommend Jordan Peterson's Self-Authoring course. It's basically a series of questions you write and explore to define what you want and gain some clarity. It's very helpful to everyone I recommend it to.


1. Take a high quality multi-vitamin every day. 2. Take one day off every week without fail. 3. Spend 10 minutes every day writing down what you are thankful for. 4. Spend 10 minutes every day reading the Bible starting with the New Testament, reading a version that you can understand. Write down any questions you have and at the end of 6 months find someone who can answer your questions.

Do this for 6 months and this will lead you to a better place than you are now.


Rose. Don't be so down on yourself. Maybe you're just on the brink of blossoming.

You just need to do it! It's not the models and theories of phase change— it's the phase change. And perhaps you shouldn't be pursuing all the things you think you lack. Do you feel the work you have done is meaningful? It's not yet having the impact you'd like??

Abraham attracted many followers but they were not all inheritors of his mantle and his mission. They were not all loyal to the mission he passed down. Does that mean that he was not successful? Of course not, he's the most successful of the patriarchs because his success includes Yitzchak's and Yaakov's success.

Your post does not seem to consider the creation of money which is a contemporary issue: cuz #crypto.

Maybe you should be making money. Literally creating money instead of trying to "make money".

If you're familiar with the process of titration and the cornucopia of similar processes it must build up and up until the process reaches the point of phase change — and then: the titrating step.

It's obvious why people give up along the way.

But for those who stay and do not sway: night can turn to day.

EDIT: maybe the key is to intensify, like when striking a match— to light a fire. Intensify into a spark, you have ample kindling!




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