Thanks for this writeup. I hope the author recovers soon.
Some of the situations feel familiar to my experience in other companies, so here's some advice to younger folks, which took me some time to grasp:
- Communication with the manager is critical. Better to overcommunicate than undercommunicate. It's a natural tendency for curious folks to do "side quests" and while you were supposed to work on X, you noticed that you can improve Y which in your opinion is more important. At the very least, drop your manager a Slack message like "hey, I was supposed to work on X but I have an idea about Y which can bring more benefit, I will take N hours/days to dig into that if that's ok with you" and see what's their response (also make sure to time constrain it to avoid getting sidetracked for too long). I was definitely burned by this in prev job: I shipped some nice things but I was supposed to work on something else which I didn't do, and each time my manager mentioned this (i.e. N months later in performnace evaluation), I knew it was correct for him to point it out, but it made me feel bad.
- In bigtech the work happens in quarters. If you're unhappy about things you work on currently, take some time to prepare the work items you do want to work on, and seed your manager's mind before next quarter planning about things you DO want to work on, why, how is the impact and so on.
- When feeling overwhelmed with too many things on your plate, talk to your manager to dispatch some responsibilities to other team members. Don't be the messiah who needs to fix everything by yourself silently and burn out.
- For candidates: When doing interviews, you absolutely should do everything to streamline things and avoid distractions. Most likely use JS or Python for coding. Probably avoid TS, definitely avoid C++. It's too easy to get lost fighting the compiler or "reinventing the world" with languages like C/C++. You won't get extra points for going uphill, but you will get minus points for not finishing.
>he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.” I remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple years prior and a taste of how painful it was. Some of my coworkers shared deeper things I’d never heard in a work setting. It was awkward. It was beautiful.
I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.
If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.
Of course I wouldn't say all that to the manager, but 'I'll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
It’s pretty nuts, putting out your dirty laundry in public is a surefire way to self sabotage - especially in a work setting. In American culture, there’s a lot of “positive self help” talk about being open about these things. But the reality is - it actually just provides drama and ammunition to people who might not have your best interests at heart. Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
> Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.
Well, the manager asked only for “10% more vulnerable”. That seems pretty far from “being forced into group therapy” in my perception.
It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.
I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model
10% "more vulnerable" for me in a work setting would amount to something like "the eggs I made this morning were a bit overcooked", because I don't share anything vulnerable about myself at work. Especially not with managers. I have a sneaking suspicion that wouldn't be an acceptable answer in that meeting, however.
I wouldn’t necessarily be worried about them using it against me later, just the fact that they want to force me to open up and be pretend buddies is annoying. It’s a work relationship.
It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.
Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.
I agree and this wasn't the only red flag in the post for me. The reverence for a company that does, in the end, "just" process payments or the part about "a billionaire liked my project"... I feel like there's something rather unhealthy about that kind of mindset.
All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.
what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you?
The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.
All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.
I think the author had unrealistic expectations from working at a large company.
He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.
But things don't work like that.
If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.
So it's better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.
If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
The flip side of that is that if companies make "passion" a hiring criterion, they'll end up hiring people who care about making a difference, which may serve them poorly if the position doesn't actually fit that.
> a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it.
Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own business based on the idea. Otherwise forget it.
What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.
All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.
I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.
Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.
Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.
>What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team.
Also, people skills always trumps technical skills. Being aware of that helped me immensely on my career, much more than anything else I could have done.
This is an extremely important piece of advice. To drive change in a large org, you will need support, which will either come from management, or people on the ground - this is purely people skills. Just writing amazing code and shipping it isn’t enough.
Or sometimes the needles you can move seem unimportant to the org, even if they have objective value. You get a few pats like OP but no real recognition.
Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.
Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?
I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...
Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.
I don’t know if that’s sustainable. We’re all stuck with this work-thing being one third of our life for the foreseeable time, so spending 33% of like, everything I’ll ever experience on something I don’t give a fuck about seems like both a lot of dull time and a bad decision overall.
I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.
I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.
It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.
Yeah this is why I sometimes miss the jobs I had in my early 20s, working at bakeries/ice cream shops/etc. Obviously the pay wasn’t great and the working conditions subpar, but there is a genuine psychological benefit to making a simple thing, giving it to people, then finishing work at the end of the day and being done, without an ongoing to-do list, sprints, daily meetings, and all the other requirements of contemporary white collar jobs.
It’s led me to wonder how one could structure a knowledge work job in a similar way. The tough part conceptually is how to make progress long-term while still only keeping your focus on a day at a time, max.
> finishing work at the end of the day and being done
You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning.
Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.
I couldn't find it after searching, but I remember reading about a company where they just relaxed and got done what they got done. To me, this would be the ideal workplace.
With any form of investor expecting a return I dunno how possible this is, but I’ve worked for one family owned business (non-tech industry but had a small tech team) and it was super relaxed like you mention.
No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.
That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.
People have wrong priorities when working in big corporations. If you want to make an impact you should work towards creating your own business and working in big corporation is just a mean to achieve that. Focus on growing your bank account, good credit history, live lean and in your free time nurture the idea you have, make steps to make it happen.
In some jurisdictions you need to check your employment contract as company may feel entitled to your idea you are developing outside of work hours. Ensure you don't have any such stipulations in the contract.
Great blog, but reading it gave me deep secondhand anxiety and even exhaustion. It’s strikingly clear this person is a people pleaser to potentially unhealthy levels, maybe due to low self-esteem or something else, and it could be contributing to the depression. Legitimately, therapy might be the right call here. But on the positive side, they do seem like a good person who wants to build good things. That’s commendable.
Ways I found that helped me the most dealing with this kind of situation:
- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.
- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.
- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don't like the advice of "slacking and collecting your pay check" (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
These symptoms are a classic sign of burn out. One thing I notice in your writing is you’re very tied up in things having meaning and mattering in some specific way. This itself can lead to burnout because if everything must matter you must be emotionally invested in everything. But you can care without it mattering to you. You can do a good job without being totally invested in everything about it. You can love what you do without it having significance in every detail.
In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.
Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.
Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.
FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.
I’ve seen this pattern repeated so many times that I feel like it can be generalized:
when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.
Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!
Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)
Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)
Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this!
I hope you’ll find your joy again.
> being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid
I have seen many houses of cards that looked liked pyramids built upon the exact opposite of what I'd call mental health. All I want to say is: I don't think it's as straightforward as that.
> The tech I build protects well-being and promotes human flourishing. Tech should never exploit weaknesses no matter how well intentioned.
That's from the "values" section of the website under the "Tech as a tool" subsection. How does working for Stripe fit with this value?
As a mere user of "tech", and a concerned observer of what I perceive to be its negative effects on society around me the last 5-10 years, it feels impossible to deny that the main drivers of the tech space haven't been "protecting well-being" and "promoting human flourishing", rather the opposite, and often rather brutally.
The article leaves the question unanswered of what actually led to the depression, and I'm left wondering if the author explored that question specifically. Perhaps Stripe aren't building technology that promotes human flourishing, and perhaps the author's core values were clashing with the reality of a modern tech company.
Also, this article prompted me to use Ngram for the first time, to compare "camaraderie" and "comradery", which I was amazed and appalled by. The resulting diagram really helped soothe me, so here it is:
Probably the "English is a dual language with lots of words that mean the same thing because half are from French and the other half are Anglo Saxon" thing again. There are loads of words like this, there was an article about it on HN the other week
I think it might help to focus on staying grounded and regulating your emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about Patrick and his success. While it’s natural to admire someone who has built an impressive company and achieved significant financial success, remember that people are often respected for being authentic and secure in who they are, rather than for how much they admire others.
I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.
The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
This is a great post and I'm glad the author was able to share it.
I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.
I don't know if the author is "burnt out" or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.
Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You're a saint for staying any longer.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
> Still more time passed and then came the depression. I found myself increasingly demotivated in all aspects of my life. I could hardly even muster the energy to play video games (my usual haunt). Some evenings I would literally sit and stare at a wall. My sleep went to shit.
I'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.
This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.
I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.
With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.
Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.
I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.
If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful.
Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.
I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.
Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.
Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck
How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.
I don’t know if it’s “we hire at random” more so “we hire based on intelligent guesses/calculated risk”. It’s not completely random because there’s a resume and a rigorous process.
It's not quite random, the goal is to bias the errors towards false negatives (bad rejection) than false positives because bad hires are so expensive to recover from.
Sleep is a definite signal. If you've eliminated diet, medication, and personal relationships (tough one) as causes, you're left with professional obligations.
Note too that "chronic fatigue" is NOT "lack of sleep".
The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant "fight or flight" mode for too long. Psychologically, you've been doing WWI "trench warfare".
I've been in this position a few times now. God is it hard to explain to other people, especially when you know how success is metricized by others and silently judged. But at the same time, the collection of life experiences gained by doing stupid, impulsive things has made me happier than I could have expected in the long run. And has shown me a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise.
The author is way too caught up in his day-to-day work feelings. This may be a gross simplification but the primary purpose of work for me is to extract resources from the outside world, i.e. to make money. Work hard at a job if you want to get a big investment portfolio, provide for your family, upgrade your house, etc.
Burnout happens when your goals aren’t meaningful. So make meaningful goals. Personally I am very happy that I have millions of dollars saved that resulted from working over a decade and saving and reinvesting. I also have a wife, kid, and house supported by my work. Work is actually optional for me but I enjoy it in general and love making more money. Office achievements that everyone would soon forget about don’t compare to that for me. If you do make an impact, at a big company or small, keep it internal if nobody else notices. Stop seeking so much external validation.
I also have a B2C side project that has 160 active paid users paying me a total of $1800 or so per month currently. That pays less than a normal job but the work feels more meaningful than at a big company since it makes a direct impact. Try a project like that - you don’t need permission from anyone to build, just a lot of grit. But nonetheless I still love the money from it the most. I get great satisfaction knowing all these users are paying me money while I can sit around and do whatever else (although tbh I keep upgrading the software). I feel like I’ve won some sort of weird game. Same thing with my 7 figure stock portfolio.
I think this is the feeling when you realize what you’re doing does not matter. No big purpose, just a mere immortal. I think you need a bigger purpose bro, like really. Reach out.
Big companies are great for job security, not so much for meaningful work (unless you’re senior, it seems). I’ve been at a massive company for four years and my work is uninspiring. Can’t wait to get back in the startup life.
Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—"Treating it just as a job", "finding happiness elsewhere", "just get shit done"—but nothing works. For a long while, I only found myself to blame. I felt idiotic for not having the energy to work like everyone else does.
Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.
Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.
I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.
So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
Thanks for this writeup. I hope the author recovers soon.
Some of the situations feel familiar to my experience in other companies, so here's some advice to younger folks, which took me some time to grasp:
- Communication with the manager is critical. Better to overcommunicate than undercommunicate. It's a natural tendency for curious folks to do "side quests" and while you were supposed to work on X, you noticed that you can improve Y which in your opinion is more important. At the very least, drop your manager a Slack message like "hey, I was supposed to work on X but I have an idea about Y which can bring more benefit, I will take N hours/days to dig into that if that's ok with you" and see what's their response (also make sure to time constrain it to avoid getting sidetracked for too long). I was definitely burned by this in prev job: I shipped some nice things but I was supposed to work on something else which I didn't do, and each time my manager mentioned this (i.e. N months later in performnace evaluation), I knew it was correct for him to point it out, but it made me feel bad.
- In bigtech the work happens in quarters. If you're unhappy about things you work on currently, take some time to prepare the work items you do want to work on, and seed your manager's mind before next quarter planning about things you DO want to work on, why, how is the impact and so on.
- When feeling overwhelmed with too many things on your plate, talk to your manager to dispatch some responsibilities to other team members. Don't be the messiah who needs to fix everything by yourself silently and burn out.
- For candidates: When doing interviews, you absolutely should do everything to streamline things and avoid distractions. Most likely use JS or Python for coding. Probably avoid TS, definitely avoid C++. It's too easy to get lost fighting the compiler or "reinventing the world" with languages like C/C++. You won't get extra points for going uphill, but you will get minus points for not finishing.
>he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.” I remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple years prior and a taste of how painful it was. Some of my coworkers shared deeper things I’d never heard in a work setting. It was awkward. It was beautiful.
I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.
If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.
Of course I wouldn't say all that to the manager, but 'I'll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
It’s pretty nuts, putting out your dirty laundry in public is a surefire way to self sabotage - especially in a work setting. In American culture, there’s a lot of “positive self help” talk about being open about these things. But the reality is - it actually just provides drama and ammunition to people who might not have your best interests at heart. Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
> Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.
To be fair, 10% more vulnerable than “I won’t talk about my private live at work,” is still “I won’t talk about my private life at work.”
I find it strange that the same people that ask you “How are you doing?” Without expecting an answer, are so into this kinda fake buddy buddy thing.
Well, the manager asked only for “10% more vulnerable”. That seems pretty far from “being forced into group therapy” in my perception.
It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.
I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model
> Well, the manager asked only for “10% more vulnerable”.
And they have absolutely no right to do that. "Being vulnerable" is not part of any job description.
What does 10% even mean? My food delivery order forgot the fries and it was upsetting?
I'm pretty sure this is not what they are expecting.
10% "more vulnerable" for me in a work setting would amount to something like "the eggs I made this morning were a bit overcooked", because I don't share anything vulnerable about myself at work. Especially not with managers. I have a sneaking suspicion that wouldn't be an acceptable answer in that meeting, however.
This is pure simple abuse. Manager uses position of power to potentially injure his co-workers.
Playing "I am somewhat therapist myself" in the workplace should be sackable offence.
I wouldn’t necessarily be worried about them using it against me later, just the fact that they want to force me to open up and be pretend buddies is annoying. It’s a work relationship.
It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.
Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.
I agree and this wasn't the only red flag in the post for me. The reverence for a company that does, in the end, "just" process payments or the part about "a billionaire liked my project"... I feel like there's something rather unhealthy about that kind of mindset.
All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.
> I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would
I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal.
This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you.
I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.
what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you?
The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.
All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.
I think the author had unrealistic expectations from working at a large company.
He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.
But things don't work like that.
If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.
So it's better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.
If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
The flip side of that is that if companies make "passion" a hiring criterion, they'll end up hiring people who care about making a difference, which may serve them poorly if the position doesn't actually fit that.
> a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it.
Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own business based on the idea. Otherwise forget it.
Never do more than you are asked to do.
What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.
All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.
I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.
Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.
Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.
Good luck!
>What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team.
Also, people skills always trumps technical skills. Being aware of that helped me immensely on my career, much more than anything else I could have done.
This is an extremely important piece of advice. To drive change in a large org, you will need support, which will either come from management, or people on the ground - this is purely people skills. Just writing amazing code and shipping it isn’t enough.
Or sometimes the needles you can move seem unimportant to the org, even if they have objective value. You get a few pats like OP but no real recognition.
Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.
> motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL
Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?
I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...
Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.
I don’t know if that’s sustainable. We’re all stuck with this work-thing being one third of our life for the foreseeable time, so spending 33% of like, everything I’ll ever experience on something I don’t give a fuck about seems like both a lot of dull time and a bad decision overall.
"We're all stuck with this..."
I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.
Work from home exists for a reason
Well, your choices are that or death - no matter whether you give it bare minimum effort or a lot of effort.
If I could pick a comment to explain a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” it would be this one right here.
You still have to give people the impression you do a terrible good job and that you are working your ass out.
That's the tricky part
I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.
It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.
Yeah this is why I sometimes miss the jobs I had in my early 20s, working at bakeries/ice cream shops/etc. Obviously the pay wasn’t great and the working conditions subpar, but there is a genuine psychological benefit to making a simple thing, giving it to people, then finishing work at the end of the day and being done, without an ongoing to-do list, sprints, daily meetings, and all the other requirements of contemporary white collar jobs.
It’s led me to wonder how one could structure a knowledge work job in a similar way. The tough part conceptually is how to make progress long-term while still only keeping your focus on a day at a time, max.
> finishing work at the end of the day and being done
You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.
I couldn't find it after searching, but I remember reading about a company where they just relaxed and got done what they got done. To me, this would be the ideal workplace.
I’ve heard similar stories, but I think they tend to have some runaway hit cash cow in their rearview enabling it.
Companies that can kind of do anything and it’s fine. Like Google with AdWords. Whatever they do, AdWords goes to work every day and pays the bills.
Other companies get high on their own supply and invent things like “Holocracy” and claim it is responsible for their success.
With any form of investor expecting a return I dunno how possible this is, but I’ve worked for one family owned business (non-tech industry but had a small tech team) and it was super relaxed like you mention.
No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.
That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.
People have wrong priorities when working in big corporations. If you want to make an impact you should work towards creating your own business and working in big corporation is just a mean to achieve that. Focus on growing your bank account, good credit history, live lean and in your free time nurture the idea you have, make steps to make it happen.
In some jurisdictions you need to check your employment contract as company may feel entitled to your idea you are developing outside of work hours. Ensure you don't have any such stipulations in the contract.
It’s taking me a long time to learn these lessons - thanks for the tip
Great blog, but reading it gave me deep secondhand anxiety and even exhaustion. It’s strikingly clear this person is a people pleaser to potentially unhealthy levels, maybe due to low self-esteem or something else, and it could be contributing to the depression. Legitimately, therapy might be the right call here. But on the positive side, they do seem like a good person who wants to build good things. That’s commendable.
Ways I found that helped me the most dealing with this kind of situation:
- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.
- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.
- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don't like the advice of "slacking and collecting your pay check" (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
These symptoms are a classic sign of burn out. One thing I notice in your writing is you’re very tied up in things having meaning and mattering in some specific way. This itself can lead to burnout because if everything must matter you must be emotionally invested in everything. But you can care without it mattering to you. You can do a good job without being totally invested in everything about it. You can love what you do without it having significance in every detail.
In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.
Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.
Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.
FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.
It gets better.
Commenting to save this for myself.
Of the many many hours I've spent on this website, this comment probably made me feel more relaxed than anything else.
Please continue your kind and helpful words on the internet:)
Very good write-up, thanks!
I’ve seen this pattern repeated so many times that I feel like it can be generalized:
when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.
Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!
Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)
Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)
Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this! I hope you’ll find your joy again.
> being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid
I have seen many houses of cards that looked liked pyramids built upon the exact opposite of what I'd call mental health. All I want to say is: I don't think it's as straightforward as that.
> The tech I build protects well-being and promotes human flourishing. Tech should never exploit weaknesses no matter how well intentioned.
That's from the "values" section of the website under the "Tech as a tool" subsection. How does working for Stripe fit with this value?
As a mere user of "tech", and a concerned observer of what I perceive to be its negative effects on society around me the last 5-10 years, it feels impossible to deny that the main drivers of the tech space haven't been "protecting well-being" and "promoting human flourishing", rather the opposite, and often rather brutally.
The article leaves the question unanswered of what actually led to the depression, and I'm left wondering if the author explored that question specifically. Perhaps Stripe aren't building technology that promotes human flourishing, and perhaps the author's core values were clashing with the reality of a modern tech company.
Also, this article prompted me to use Ngram for the first time, to compare "camaraderie" and "comradery", which I was amazed and appalled by. The resulting diagram really helped soothe me, so here it is:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=camaraderie%2C...
Probably the "English is a dual language with lots of words that mean the same thing because half are from French and the other half are Anglo Saxon" thing again. There are loads of words like this, there was an article about it on HN the other week
I think it might help to focus on staying grounded and regulating your emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about Patrick and his success. While it’s natural to admire someone who has built an impressive company and achieved significant financial success, remember that people are often respected for being authentic and secure in who they are, rather than for how much they admire others.
I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.
The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
This is a great post and I'm glad the author was able to share it.
I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.
I don't know if the author is "burnt out" or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
Well written.
The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.
Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You're a saint for staying any longer.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
> Still more time passed and then came the depression. I found myself increasingly demotivated in all aspects of my life. I could hardly even muster the energy to play video games (my usual haunt). Some evenings I would literally sit and stare at a wall. My sleep went to shit.
I'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.
Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.
> Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.
This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.
I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.
With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.
Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.
Amen. As much as it sucks in this culture atm, give yourself, at the very least, quarterly goalposts.
>motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL
I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.
If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful.
Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.
I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.
Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.
Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck
How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.
I don’t know if it’s “we hire at random” more so “we hire based on intelligent guesses/calculated risk”. It’s not completely random because there’s a resume and a rigorous process.
It's not quite random, the goal is to bias the errors towards false negatives (bad rejection) than false positives because bad hires are so expensive to recover from.
Corporate environments tend to destroy the human souls. More so with “dream companies”.
Sure, job is a big part of our life, but it’s better to leave as “just job”, and not focus on it too much.
Wishing the best to the author!
Sleep is a definite signal. If you've eliminated diet, medication, and personal relationships (tough one) as causes, you're left with professional obligations.
Note too that "chronic fatigue" is NOT "lack of sleep".
The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant "fight or flight" mode for too long. Psychologically, you've been doing WWI "trench warfare".
I've been in this position a few times now. God is it hard to explain to other people, especially when you know how success is metricized by others and silently judged. But at the same time, the collection of life experiences gained by doing stupid, impulsive things has made me happier than I could have expected in the long run. And has shown me a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise.
The author is way too caught up in his day-to-day work feelings. This may be a gross simplification but the primary purpose of work for me is to extract resources from the outside world, i.e. to make money. Work hard at a job if you want to get a big investment portfolio, provide for your family, upgrade your house, etc.
Burnout happens when your goals aren’t meaningful. So make meaningful goals. Personally I am very happy that I have millions of dollars saved that resulted from working over a decade and saving and reinvesting. I also have a wife, kid, and house supported by my work. Work is actually optional for me but I enjoy it in general and love making more money. Office achievements that everyone would soon forget about don’t compare to that for me. If you do make an impact, at a big company or small, keep it internal if nobody else notices. Stop seeking so much external validation.
I also have a B2C side project that has 160 active paid users paying me a total of $1800 or so per month currently. That pays less than a normal job but the work feels more meaningful than at a big company since it makes a direct impact. Try a project like that - you don’t need permission from anyone to build, just a lot of grit. But nonetheless I still love the money from it the most. I get great satisfaction knowing all these users are paying me money while I can sit around and do whatever else (although tbh I keep upgrading the software). I feel like I’ve won some sort of weird game. Same thing with my 7 figure stock portfolio.
I think this is the feeling when you realize what you’re doing does not matter. No big purpose, just a mere immortal. I think you need a bigger purpose bro, like really. Reach out.
Big companies are great for job security, not so much for meaningful work (unless you’re senior, it seems). I’ve been at a massive company for four years and my work is uninspiring. Can’t wait to get back in the startup life.
Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—"Treating it just as a job", "finding happiness elsewhere", "just get shit done"—but nothing works. For a long while, I only found myself to blame. I felt idiotic for not having the energy to work like everyone else does.
Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.
Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.
I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.
So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...
Sounds like you are burnt out. You did the right thing.
Time for PG to, with chainsaw & pernach, remind Patrick about founder mode?