I Left Software. A Cautionary Story About Burnout

burnout is something that is very common in software engineering and while this channel is mainly to inspire people to continue going in their software Journeys I think it makes sense every once in a while to discuss the other side of the coin I'm sharing my own story about burnout and Tech not to be discouraging to anyone going to this field but rather as a simple reflection of my own life and the hope that certain people can find comfort and their own takeways from my experience this is my experience with burnout in Tech I'll start my journey off with a quick story that I mentally reference every once in a while in one of the jobs I had in my life I had a manager probably in his early 40s that was generally a pretty funny guy he was always cracking these jokes all the time but one set of his jokes they always stood out to me he would always be complaining about his kids his wife and his life it was all in good fun but at the same time I feel like I could see the pain behind his eyes and that there was some truth to what he was saying it seemed like he had left his life on cruise control for so long that at this point there was no way out for him and it seemed like he used work as an escape for all of this pain now I have no confirmation that this story is true he could just honestly have been joking about everything but still that thought scared me it scared me to my core the idea that you can just let your life pass you by working in a job you can barely tolerate while only having 2 days maximum for yourself a week keep the story in mind because I'll Circle back to it throughout the video and I promise it will make sense in perspective so in this channel I've talked a lot about the different experiences I've had in my career but just a quick recap I started my career in a tiny startup where I stayed for a little over a year where I learned what it meant to dip your toes in the field of software engineering and then I moved to a much more high-paced sales driven startup where I stayed for about 2 and 1 half years where I learned the true nature of fast-paced software development and where I truly understood the grit it took to be an excellent developer but this is when I began to feel the beginnings of burnout from harsh deadlines to just feeling like a code monkey and so I spent a disgustingly inefficient amount of time studying leode with the hopes of moving to a big company where I thought all of my problems from startups would disappear but after succeeding there in certain ways and working at a big company for almost 2 years I realized I was not that happy there I hated big company politics and I hated that most of the time I was there I didn't truly feel like a software engineer and after that I moved to another startup which was my most recent job and to sum it up this was probably the single greatest job I could have ever asked for in my entire life and ironically while it should have been everything I ever wanted in reality that only made things more clear for me at the moment the work at this startup was great the Tex stack was interesting my co-workers were great the job was remote on paper I should have been at Peak happiness and for a while for the first few months there I was sitting at a high I loved every moment of being there I loved going back to Hands-On coding being able to feel like every day was a new experience and I felt like a software engineer again but as time went on here things became more difficult for me day by day after about 6 months on the job and after the initial excitement wore off my happiness levels slowly began to tail off and I found myself stuck in another one of these software ruts that I run to every once in a while in my career this feeling where it's like I just can't code and I can't effectively do my job and every other time this happened in my career I was always able to force myself to work through one of three strategies the first was just remembering how painful it was searching for my first software job being deeply afraid of being fired and forced back into the deep dark time of searching for a job that was a great motivator to continue working and the second was always telling myself that things were always going to get better in my career I felt like I was always working towards my dream workplace and every job I took before then was like a stepping stone there and the idea that I was always on the uphill trajectory made it more motivating to force myself to work and the third was just through sheer willpower which I think I just had more of in the past but at this time at this job I found myself completely unable to force myself to work in any of these strategies I had applied from previous jobs and overall I had no excuses I had job security I wasn't overly stressed out with deadlines and I was working on technology and things that I really really loved but every day 9 to 5 somehow both felt like it was 100 hours long but the weeks and months started to fly by without me even realizing it and at the same time I started to think about people who were jobs that were less comfy than mine who worked harder that were paid less I felt like I had no right to complain about how I was feeling and this feeling of not being able to do anything it was just laziness or entitlement and so I didn't complain I pushed all these thoughts deep deep down into my brain and I continued moving forward and for a while I tried to offset This Feeling by making sure I was maintaining a good work life balance no more extra work no more late nights no more working weekends no more picking up random bugs just do my tasks and log out at 5:00 p.m. for a while this was sufficient and then two major events occurred one of them minor and one of them slightly more embarrassing but both experiences equally showed me what burnout truly feels like the first was at a company organized business trip it was an extremely nice event that I felt privileged to be a part of the company would fly the remote Engineers out to a central location where for about a week we would participate in Tech workshops together and basically work together for an entire week and I felt like this would be an amazing opportunity to recover from all the feelings I had been feeling about not being able to work or function normally you know I was going to see some co-workers I was going to have good social connections and it would be a fun time but while I was there I started to feel worse and worse day by day and I felt like I was deeply ungrateful for not being able to take it full advantage of this event and I remember one specific instance during the week that kind of stuck out to me I was listening to to an engineering presentation something about optimizing performance in parts of our Tech stack and it was an objectively amazing presentation something that Kevin from 2 to 3 years ago would have enjoyed thoroughly and taken copious notes to integrate into my work but suddenly it was like I had an out ofbody experience I had these flashbacks to each previous company that I had worked for I had flashbacks to the exact same presentations that were happening the exact same code reviews the exact same optimizations writing clean code objectoriented design Etc and having the same problems repeat themselves over and over and over again and I flashed forward back to the presentation that I was sitting at and listening to and in that moment I thought to myself wow I really don't care about coding anymore and the second event that occurred was weeks after I got back from that business trip following that I was sick for about 3 weeks every couple couple of days I would get these feverish symptoms where my body would just go into cold chills and it wouldn't go away unless I laid in my bed for like 6 to 8 hours I later realized that this was actually a pretty common symptom of burnout but as usual once I fully healed up I just ignored it and kept going and then one day came a regularly scheduled one-on-one with my manager's manager I forgot what the exact concept text of the conversation was but we were talking something about his experiences wor burnout or something of that nature and I don't remember what he was saying I only remember my reaction which was essentially a complete breakdown something about the conversation something about what he said was just so extremely relatable to me in the moments relatable to things that I've been feeling for months or years even that it just triggered and involuntary and uncontrollable reaction from me that I guess I had been pressing down for all that time and I was just sitting there with like tears streaming down my face and I was so incredibly embarrassed my director didn't really know what to do and I didn't know what to do either but it was in that moment where I realized that wow I need to make some sort of big drastic change in my life before I start to lose my mind completely the last time I left my job I made a video about it it was a cathartic moment where I quit my job at into it without anything else lined up but through an incredible Stroke of Luck I was able to find this new job that I was at within about 3 and 1/2 weeks of leaving my Joba into it and in that time I was able to take time for myself to be able to potentially get back into working shape but I always knew I always felt during that time that something still wasn't quite right at the end of the 3 weeks I still felt like I needed more time to get my head back in the right space but there's no time left I had to gear up and start a new job and pretty much one year after I started that job I realized that I needed to step away fully and give some time to myself to get right and before I made this decision I had a chat with one of my oldest friends from elementary school actually we hadn't talked in a while but he had experienced similar things as I did just probably a couple years in advance he had quit his own job in software about 2 years prior to deal with stress burnout anxiety and I decided to ask him if he had any advice for me and essentially he ran into very very similar circumstances that I did his job was great it wasn't stressful it was remote but there came a time in his career where he just felt like he couldn't do it anymore he couldn't keep pressing on and none of the rewards that that come from a software job were enough for him to keep forcing himself to do what he was doing and every day he told me he pushed himself harder and harder and harder to do the same tasks but the amount of effort required to do them would increase more and more and more he ended up leaving that company for good and spent a good amount of time recovering before he decided what he would do next and he warned me that given the path that I was on it wasn't really a matter of if I would kind of lose my mind at some point but more a matter of when and so that gave me a lot of information that I felt like I needed and if there's any upside to this whole situation it's that in the back of my head I have always been preparing for a moment like this in my life ever since my first job I had always lived below my means and with that I had a good amount of savings from my career to live off of for a while and so in June of 2023 I finally left software I'm asked by everyone what's next but before I address that I feel like it makes sense to talk about what is not next I think what is not next is me screwing up my entire life I don't think there's a universe where I look at this time 10 years from now back to this time in 2023 when I took time off work and think wow this is the year that my life went to shambles and said I think I'll reflect on it as a great learning experience and and one that I'll never forget and now I bring back the story of my old manager the one who seemed like he hated his life a lot of the times I use this perceived Benchmark to see if I'm on the right trajectory in my life if I stayed on this path where I just continue to force myself down the same road down the same path down the path that everyone else is going one day I could definitely see me becoming that manager someone who just really hated their life but continued pressing forward for the bigger picture and then 10 20 years in their life go by and their time to take big risks has already passed I think I would regret that far more than taking a chance of myself earlier on in my life and I realized that there's no perfect time to make a decision like this for yourself but right now I feel like this is as close to it as I'm going to get you know I'm 28 I don't have any dependence I don't have any mortgages and I have energy still to pursue other avenues this is as perfect of a time as it's really going to get and with that I think it makes sense to answer you know what is next for me and for now my answer is two things the first is to get back to a state where I feel like I can effectively work and two to help people who feel like they're stuck in positions in their careers or in life where they feel the most alone because I feel like I have experiences and lessons and learnings that can apply Li to those people and contrary to what you might be thinking I don't hate software in fact I still love software it's just more of the deadlines and the stress and the burnout those are things that I needed to step away from but I remember all those times in my life where I felt the most alone where I felt like I had no one to turn to for advice or mentorship you know like when I was searching for my first software job when I was interviewing for my first job when I was depressed about not being able to find a job when I was frustrated with angry managers when I was frustrated about feeling inadequate with my tech skills you know when I was frustrated about doing lead code and all the failures into getting into big Tech and when I felt like I had no friends and no life outside of work all of these things I went through in my career I felt deeply deeply alone while I was in them and I had to figure it out on my own and if I can help it I want to make sure that other people don't have to feel that same level of isolation in their career and in their lives and so what's next for me is resting and taking time to create content to Target people like this and to help people like this not necessarily because I think this can be my full-time job but because I feel a deep sense of purpose and passion in that mission for now I shared the story not because I wanted to complain about how hard my software Journey was it wasn't that hard and I know I don't have a hard life but the fact is that there are some people who are probably feeling the exact same way in their jobs right now and of course I want to tell you about what you can take away from my story this whole experience made me realize just how burnout really manifests and there are ways you can realize it and potentially take action on it before it starts to crumble your life because I always thought that burnout was when people working 100 hours a week and then one day they just crash but there are other ways that people can burn out burnout also happens to people who feel like they aren't getting the correct level of fulfillment in their work I remember reading this story about this sword maker who was like in his 70s he goes to work every day and he makes swords he's pounding away a metal for 8 hours a day and this interviewer asked him like how do you feel about the life you've spent and the sword maker answers he loves his life deeply he gets to do something he's passionate about that he loves and then he goes home and spends time with his family and does it all over again the next day the takeaway is that not all of us fit into the same mold some of us will love a software job to the core but others of us will find it completely demoralizing and because we all live just one life and why live it trying to square peg round hole yourself into a mold that others set out for you burnout also happens when our personal batteries are completely drained every day everything you need to do like errands work side projects Etc all these things drain your battery but certain activities like your hobbies or hanging out with friends these all recharge your battery and once you reach max energy consumption once your battery is at zero any further attempts to push yourself more will come straight out of your mental health and once enough has been chipped away at your mental health that is when burnout sets in people have their own different capacities for how much beatings they can take to their mental health but for me over the past year trying to push on all different Avenues you know trying to do YouTube trying to find ways to do passive income while working my 9 to-5 job balancing my social life these were all things that drain me over time and it could only really be fixed by rest and time my advice for avoiding similar situations is to try and see these signs of when you feel like your energy levels are completely drained but you're still trying to push of course it doesn't mean to quit your job at the first sign of feeling these things but in order to really fix it you have to talk to your friends you have to talk to Specialists you have to talk to other people about how you're feeling and not just hold it deep down I think for some of us we can feel that as software Engineers we already live a good life you know and we have nothing to complain about and sometimes we can feel like our problems are invalid but that's not the case you know your problems matter and if you're feeling it that's a sign that you shouldn't ignore it this channel is a combination of my personal stories in Tech tips on getting a job in the tech market and the current state of the news of the tech Market let me know what kind of videos that you enjoy the most and click here if you want to watch more of my tech stories

Channel: Created By KC

Views: 248,225

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Id: lbjltBT3UPE

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2023