I’d quit tomorrow if my company offered a decent severance package. I’m super burned out and with attrition and hiring freezes, I’m stuck with double the workload. I wake up in the middle of the night stressing and full of anxiety about going to work. I despise going to work on Mondays due to the slog of meetings all day long. Writing software used to be fun and I’d do it after hours as a hobby. Now, I can’t stand the thought and just hope I can get 3-5 more years in the industry before I bail out for good.
I’m struggling with a similar situation where I’m at. I’ve experienced significant growth opportunities over the last 5 years, the company I work for is good and growing quickly. I work with friendly and nice folks. I have great benefits, awesome work life balance, and I have basically free autonomy to steer and do what I want.
There is just something missing. I feel like I’ve reached a peak and am not actively learning and growing. However, the last thing I want to do is go to a toxic environment that expects long hours and treats employees terribly.
Hi btown, thanks for the Spreedly plug!! I’m Director of Engineering at Spreedly and helped to launch routing capabilities as a engineer and leader. If the OP already has an existing relationship with a gateway(s), we definitely make it easy to integrate with a single API to multiple payment gateways. I’d highly recommend they look at a solution like ours or another provider to work reduce risk in the future.
I've been working remotely for 18 months, married with a toddler and 10 year old daughter. I classify myself as an introvert, but vary widely from needing to be outgoing to extremely isolating myself. The previous job I left required me to be at the peak of personal extroversion professionally as a director of engineering. I worked with my team, business dev, and IT. I was also involved with sales calls and on-boarding customers. It pushed my boundaries but it forced me to grow. I started to enjoy being more extroverted.
I went from that position to working remotely for a start-up that had only 3 remote team members. At first I enjoyed the break from interactions with others but still had lots of communication with at least one other remote team member. About a year ago, I was moved to a different team, one with 2 local team members and myself. It has been a real struggle as I have gone days without interacting with team members or anyone besides my wife and son. I do leave the house daily to take my son to day care, but that is the extent of daily interaction outside the home with the exception of the grocery store on the weekends.
Limited social interactions has been and is becoming more of a problem for me working remote. Working in the office I developed friendships existed outside of the office as well. Those relationships are hard to maintain, and the same level of social life no longer exists when working remotely. We've instituted daily standup video calls and it helps a little.
I didn't have a huge social life before but it is now two extremes - either I crave the need to chit chat and interact with others or I withdraw completely from social situations. For example, I try to go to the coffee at least once a week just to be around other people. However, when I travel to the office quarterly, I cannot make it through the week of dinners and other events without leaving early to be alone.
Going days without meaningful technical and social interactions has caused me to be depressed and I've already considered leaving my current employer for a remote team that has more deliberate communication. Overall I'm glad with going 100% remote, but I have to work hard to not completely isolate myself.
@alex-yo Your post is almost a mirror of my situation - senior generalist dev with 15 years experience Ruby/Java/SQL and numerous other languages and frameworks too many to list, looking for something more challenging and unable to relocate due to family situation.
I've tried unsuccessfully to apply via the main remote work channels and rarely get a response back. The one time I did, the position was cancelled by the company after I made it to the 2nd round.
Hope you have better luck than me and a commenter can unlock the secret. There are lots of great people like us not able to work in the office.
I've been programming for 15 years, since I was 21. It used to be my passion, work, and hobby. Over the last 3 years I've gradually shifted from development to managing projects and product development, and recently moved to the team leader/manager.
Right now I really like the product and management side of the work, but the technical / programmer side I am very burned out on. I used to spend my free time consulting, coding, researching, and had dreams of starting my own company. Now I want to go home and relax, work with my hands out in the yard/garden.
I've been at the same company for 7 years now, we typically have enough freedom and project variation to learn new skills and keep from being bored. There are simply to many frameworks/languages to keep up with to stay relevant. I don't see myself finding another development job after this one, at least not without time off/a break. The money is great, and I've been fortunate to save well, and we live will below our means.
Honestly, I'm working on a plan to be out of the industry by the time my daughter graduates high school and I'm 45.
I've been researching and looking into Elixir & Phoenix a lot lately. What are your thoughts having done this side project? I'm coming from a java, ruby perspective with experience in several other languages.
If she is special than nothing is more important than the her, fix the underlying issues - find a new job, remove the stress, etc - should have done this previously.
Having been through a divorce and remarried, I hate to say this but a real partner does not leave, they stay by your side and help you through the tough times. It hurts but you may be better off by fixing the stresses and finding another mate.
I don't advocate any of her financial mistakes, but having reached my mid 30's, I realize
1) Old age and life aren't guaranteed.
2) If you wait until retirement to start 'living', you may be unable or unwilling to take risks, travel and have adventures.
Saving all the money in the world means nothing if you are dead or too old to enjoy it. I've found there is a delicate balance of saving and exploring the world and life will I'm young enough to be able to.
I've approached my boss several times about this, and any changes are temporary - it's a management issue (same management at both places). I have a need to be on high profile high performing projects (I've lead development on the last several at our company) but then there are low activity periods where management does not provide direction. I can work on my own but it's hard to gain traction (technology company that's doesn't understand technology).
Thanks - I did not the advice negatively. I've gone down that route and plan to pursue in the future. A lot of it is perception that I'm not good enough.