Ask HN: Escaping Difficult Employment Situation?

First off, it sounds like you’re going through a lot and human to human I want to acknowledge how hard that is. I’d suggest trying to talk to someone to help you heal and overcome the things that you’ve been coping with. When I’ve worked stressful jobs I’ve found exercise to be really helpful. Lastly, just remember that while you need your job economically you’ve already decided to leave, so as much as possible try to not take any of the actions of others personally. If you can put some mental space between your work and yourself it might help you to keep enough energy to focus on a search for something more fulfilling.

There are great teams out there, it does take a lot of work to find them but it is possible to find something fulfilling. Take care of yourself enough during this time so you have the energy to go find something better. I’d encourage you to get started.

After being in software development for 20+ years, I have concluded that EVERY workplace is dysfunctional - it's just a matter of degree. The only time I wasn't drowning in workplace apathy was the 5 year stint I did as a freelancer. That of course wasn't stress free because you have absolutely no employment guarantee outside of the next 3 weeks.

Ultimately, as with much of life, you have to figure out what you're willing to settle for. You can:

  * Be a software engineering consultant and have complete control, but also high risk
  * Work at a large corp, where you'll have almost no control but also fewer hours and lower risk
  * Join a startup, where you'll have longer hours, and moderate control and risk

Personally at this point in my life, I decide that I can stomach workplace inefficiency and stupidity if it means I can get a decent paycheck and I'm not being overworked.

It sounds like the job is only one part of the crisis you're facing. I echo the other commenters in suggesting professional help - depending on the country you're in this could be free or provided by your health insurance.

The weekend is almost here - try to make a plan with a friend (even if you haven't seen them in years), or go do something you enjoy like going to the beach or a local park. It won't fix things, but it can be a brief respite from the grind.

In terms of the job, I would keep going but start phoning it in. "Quiet quitting" is a real thing, and it will give you the space to look for a new job. If it's super intolerable, see if you can reduce your expenses significantly and just GTFO. I don't know if you have alimony, if so that might be harder. Reach out to your friends (even distant ones) and professional network - that's where all the good jobs are.

Happened to me. Waking up 3am sweating, immediately back to panic mode about my boss, in the middle of the freaking night.

I did quit. No matter how hard it became later, I had enough savings and rather started looking for a new job.

I don't have any proof for you, neither for myself. But I feel I will thank my past self later, and appreciate that I didn't suffer under unnecessary stress when I was younger.

As someone who's "just quit" a few times when life or work situations weren't going well:

Unless you have children to feed with your salary - just quit and get some exercise. It'll be fine. It freaked out the 401k min-maxers around me but I really don't care about every last dollar I could've been making.

Note: These are just my personal opinions.

If I can list out the issues you have mentioned, just to get a picture first:

- Burnout in current job.

- No alternative jobs you want.

- No appetite for job hunting.

- House is gone.

- Wife is gone.

These are big problems - too big for someone to solve alone. First step is to find someone trusted who can support you. Whether it's a friend, family member or a professional. If they aren't available, a local support group. And if that isn't available, find a pro bono service online. You need someone checking in with you and helping you put a plan together over the next few months.

Next step is to prioritise the list. What MUST be fixed right away? Create a plan for each item.

After you have a plan, you potentially need some time to execute. Think about taking extended leave, a break for a few weeks. You need time and space to stop the spiral.

Detach mentally from your job. Do the bare minimum. On the days you work from home, take a 20-30 minute nap at lunchtime.

I advise working on your own business over the weekends, at least a little bit, on something new that the world needs.

Don't consider yourself damaged. Ensure your lifestyle is clean. This means:

1. No smoking or alcohol.

2. Breathe clean air. Use air purifiers.

3. Eat well, including Organic fruits, nuts, vegetables, and whole grains. No sugar.

4. Exercise as often as possible, cardio too.

5. Take all optimal vitamins and mineral supplements.

6. Don't mix food or drink, especially if hot or acidic, with plastic or polystyrene containers.

Fire your therapist. They're not fixing anything for you.

Just start doing less at work. It's very unlikely, even if you're in the US, that you'll be fired quickly, so just reduce your output. Use any time that you're not being directly observed to pull out your phone and look for other jobs. If you can, take a week or two of PTO, and if you can't, call in sick for a few days.

None of this makes it easy to leave, but short of just leaving the job and taking a few weeks to recover, which I assume you're not in a financial position to do, it's the only realistic way.

Ohh I feel you. I also struggle with having a garbage job, needing it, and letting it ruin my mental state.

The usual advice is to emotionally distance yourself from bad interactions. No idea how to do that though.

What kind of works for me is to offset the bad stuff with the good. Play video games with friends, in person, sitting on a couch, as it should be. Start a side project that nobody needs but you, purely for the sensation of making a thing that you like.

And at the earliest opportunity, get out of there. Corpos are the enemy.

If you're not married and you don't have a house, and don't love doing this kind of work anymore, quit and switch to something different.

You didn't say anything about physical disabilities so you can always take a labor job. If you can show up reliably there are tons of low experience/no experience construction/manufacturing jobs out there. They won't pay as well as programming/IT work, but should be a lot easier on your mental state.

How much savings do you have? You could take 30k USD and live for a year in a low COL place just recovering, being bored out of your mind, working out and eating healthy. Ideally you’d also make some human connection.

After that time, you should recover the will and the strength to fight for your place in the world and start looking for work again.

Take a break from work (even unpaid time off) so you could digest what you're going through. You could build yourself up and decide to work somewhere else, think of it as an escape. But as others suggested, you need to find some support amongst your close ones, you definitely need not be alone going through this.

I am sure it is hard to be in that situation but remember everything is temporary, soon good things will happen. I am not the fittest person, but exercising changed my life for good. It does something to your head and it takes away the negativity. Cleansing body and mind helps great over the time.

First of all: get professional help.

Talking about „rather dying“ is not a good sign - these days it may be words written on some forum, but who knows what may push you over the edge.

The next steps will then be taken, one by one, one after the other.

But, to repeat: seek a professionals help!

Been there, done that. My granddad had a saying: "the best time to look for a new workplace is while you are at the workplace". My advise is just to keep looking and try to tolerate your job while you are looking for a new one or you might end up having a worse job(I've done that as well).

Now, trust me, I know that feeling of waking up and thinking "oh crap, I have to deal with this shit again". This was my exact thought at my old job every single morning. I was lied to about what I would be doing and worse still, I was put in a team with the top 3 most repugnant people I've ever met. I was simply winging it the entire time without feeling much guilt since I got lied to and ended up doing something which was way off what I was promised. I am a workaholic - I'm more than happy to work overtime, on holidays or weekends and I often do. But at my old job I was never in a hurry to start and was out the nanosecond I could. When I stumbled upon my current job, I found out that a friend was working here and I called him and asked him one question and one question alone: "what are the people like". Turns out some of the coolest people I've worked with. And this is my advise - push through as much as you can while actively looking for a new job without rushing it and pick your choices. There's always gonna be trade offs. In my case, I'm prioritizing people I have to work with over comfort. From what I gather, you should focus on the same.

I've been where you are, once about four months ago and once six years ago. Both times I stayed longer than I should have. Both times I hit the same burn out symptoms you describe: hating my daily grind, barely limping through the day. Both times I ended up quitting and eventually landing on my feet at a new job. It can be really hard to walk away, but the damage you do to yourself can really hard to walk back if you let it go too long.

It can be hard to find a fulfilling/challenging/engaging job and it's equally hard to find companies with a culture that doesn't slowly eat away at your sanity. If you can find the latter, it makes a menial/less interesting job better. It's a great deal if you can find both, but it seems like a cultural fit is more likely to help you through what sounds like a very tough personal stretch.

Getting some advice/support is always a solid option in circumstances like this. It might be a former co-worker, a former boss, a family member; whatever works to give you a positive nudge in the right direction.

Another thing I'd recommend: try to find some solace in hobbies or personal interests. If it's a physical engaging activity, so much the better: hiking, climbing, biking, lifting weights etc...It has served me very well over the years and helped me through some rough patches in my own life.

Good luck out there fellow traveler.

Honestly it seems like the job is the least of your problems! I think you need to think hard about what you want your life to ultimately look like and try to map out what steps need to happen to get there. Do you need to stay in that location first of all? Maybe a move would open up new opportunities and be a fresh start.

One thing that you could do now is stop caring about trying too hard at your current role. Unemployment is rough, and you might be able to coast a while at your current role while you plan your next steps. It also might improve the situation.

That sounds rough. One of my friends is in a similar situation: hates his job, but can’t fathom a job hunt. Also, his job keeps him so busy and burnt out that he has zero energy to fill out job applications, whenever he does feel the motivation to do so!

Next week he’s taking a few days off just to apply to a bunch of jobs. I think it’s the right move. Sometimes the only way out is through.

If your job is awful and it can’t be helped, you’re just never going to be happy there. No amount of mental gymnastics is going to fix it. So if you can, maybe take a few days off and just crush a ton of jobs apps? If you get some traction, maybe you’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it’ll be easier to keep applying and making progress.

Also: give yourself some credit! Being stuck in a shitty job doesn’t mean you’re in 50 foot hole wreck of a career. As much as people bemoan the job market (which of course can be tough), SWE’s are very much in demand. And there are a whole lot of companies don’t do leetcode-style BS interviews! My last job hunt only had one leetcode-ish interview, and I just threw that job app in the trash lol.

If you’re that miserable, you could even look at jobs that would be a downgrade in salary, if you can afford it.

Hello mister! I feel with you, mister. Quit the job before they fire you. It's a part of healing. But before, mister please check which direction would be interesting to work? It can be something really different. Something totally new. I wish you the best, mister!

Been in your situation many times. In my case, I'm just restless by nature - I've had a number of jobs most people would love to have and I love having them until I don't and I go into a spiral of anxiety and depression. I find I have to pull the ripcord before I start self-destucting.

In my (extensive) experience, I find that there IS a way out and it is rarely found in encouraging message board platitudes. Here is how I extract myself from work situations, good, bad, and otherwise.

- Form a plan. Well, duh. But the truth is that every "I hate my job" situation is born of decisions you made and can be solved by decisions you get to make. In your case it sounds like the reasons you took the job are now gone. That's GREAT news! You no longer have to satisfy those things and can start doing what's best for you.

The next part of the plan is having a plan. If my cases (as with most), the only thing keeping me in the job was the financial commitments I had in life. I have a wife, an ex-wife, child support, houses, health insurance, etc. It addds up so simply quitting is never an option. I find that the way to return my fire, my energy after work (and even before work) when my job has taken away my will to live is to build something new. I don't know what you do for work but it doesn't matter: everyone has SOMETHING they can teach, share, do perform to make more money than they make at work. Everyone. For me it's consulting (fractional CRO) and writing (blogs, case studies, whitepapers, ebooks). In the age of AI any skill you have can be polished up and marketed with a $20 ChatGPT subscription, a WebFlow site (skip WordPress because Matt is a baby) and a weekend of focus. Uber driver, dog walker, fence painter, driveway pressure-washer, there is so much money out there for people willing to TRY that it isn't funny. "I can't replace my income" is a myth and those of us not scared to try live in a different world than the rest of you.

Next, and this is crucial, you need a Burn the Boats deadline. Without a deadline you will never leave your job. Absent any other forcing function, you HAVE to put a date on the calendar and tell yourself constantly "I am quitting on this day." You'd be surprised how much a deadline will enforce behavior.

Now, every day when you wake up WRITE DOWN with pen and paper, not on your iphone or as a mental note, the ONE thing you are going to do today that has the highest amount of leverage in executing your plan. Every day, weekends included. There is no time to waste. Even if you feel you don't know exactly what to do, pick what you THINK is the most important thing and do that.

Finaly, draft your resignation letter and keep it in your pocket, make it the screensaver on your phone, tape it to the bathroom mirror.

good luck, you can do it and you'll be thankful you did. Because once you've done it once you know you can do it again...and you'll never ever go to work at a job you hate another day in your life.

I'm sorry man. I know what you're feeling and it's fucking brutal. It can get better, but it won't be today and won't be tomorrow. Hang in there.

You need to spend lots of time around good people. You need a job that gives you daily positive social connection. You need to actively look for that.

Your life will improve. I'm rooting for you.