Ask HN: First time in 4 years I lost interest working for startup. What do I do?
I have worked at the same startup for 4 years now. During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore. I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.
I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks. But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.
What do I do? How do you deal with this?
50 comments
[ 2391 ms ] story [ 1938 ms ] threadFeeling the same pain with you right now.
>During a meeting last week I realized: I don't care about our product or it's mission anymore.
Burnout.
>I would rather be watching TV with my girlfriend or literally doing anything else.
Burnout.
>I think I lost my faith. It's not burnout, I work 40hr weeks.
It's burnout.
If you still feel the same, then stop working at a startup and work at some established company.
Good luck!
Why?
You could look at how you viewed the startup when you joined. What excited you, how you felt that you were contributing to the vision. Then look at how and when that changed. Did the management change? Were a couple of unrealistic deadlines missed? After 4 years have you had a salary increase? Is it the still the same product or have there been pivots? Has the market not materialised? How about further investment? In 4 years things have probably changed and maybe you have ignored the signs that are now troubling you subconsciously.
I think you should apply to other jobs, just to see what your options are.
I've reached that stage at 23, after about a year into my first job. Since then, I've been working for the money.
The difference is this: some people use "I'm just working for the money" as an excuse for apathy and doing just enough not to be fired. It doesn't have to be that way, if you reframe your personal mission to do as well as you can at the things that are within your control you'll likely find that the quality of your work and job satisfaction goes up.
If I kept my satisfaction based on my employer's goals I'd still be making 1/10 of what I make today working on a system that is just now getting upgraded to Java 7 and would know nothing about anything else.
The simple truth is that for every greenfield project we get in life, there's probably 30 brownfield projects. A lot of big enterprise developers may never once see a greenfield project. I sure didn't when I was on a product team.
If you want new you may find agency life fun. The downside is that if you love building new and are proud to watch things evolve gracefully you'll feel frustrated that you never get time to 'finish' the code. Also it's fucking chaos 24/7. I loved it. It will destroy you if you can't manage the always under the gun feeling though.
this is one of the pieces of life advice from stoic philosphy.
(i just finished reading A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine, and recommend it)
You can either come to terms with working on problems that motivate you sufficiently or you can hit the road and find your happiness elsewhere.
Once that investment allows you to withdraw 1-2k per month, quit your job.
You will now be paid enough money to fulfill the costs of sitting at home and watching TV with your girlfriend indefinitely.
No need to worry about working, products, bugs, etc :)
Most people will tell you about the 4% rule, which to me roughly means "the percentage of your portfolio that you can withdraw every year without decreasing your portfolio's original value (principal)"
4% is on average what you could roughly expect to make yearly from your portfolio after taxes, inflation, and abnormally bad losses
It's a decent rule, but most people don't have a portfolio that is generating between 12,000 and 24,000 USD per year. You would need to have 300-600k invested!! That's not common for under 30 year olds.
So, you would need to either find a part time online job that you can do while sitting at home or the beach or what have you. Or partake in riskier trading strategies, such as day trading actual stocks or ETFs. This all becomes a bit of a time and happiness sink, so beware :)
1-2k per month in income is actually quite high by the way. There are places all over the county and the world where 1-2k is more than most people make per month, and they live just fine.
All about perspective!
The dirty secret is that most of us are building software that doesn't really need to exist. It's hard to stay super-passionate about it, especially as you get older and more experienced.
... and won't, after some small number of months or years.
If you don't eventually get inspired to do something else, take a long break, possibly quitting, and embrace the emptiness even more. Eventually, something should catch your heart.
Be open to totally new directions.
Also, 4 years is typically the time to start moving on from a company that you are not going to stay for a long, long time.
My advice would be to find a new job that pays well, involves something that you care about, or will require a great deal of learning.
That's really ok.
Now you've figured out what you really do care about (or at least a piece of it) - spending time with the people you love. In many ways that's a far healthier perspective to have on life.
So keep going to work and doing your job because, hey, you've got to pay the rent. If the only reason you're at this particular job is the company's mission, then start looking around for a place that pays more or has a better culture, or where you can learn more interesting things.
And in the meantime, keep doing a good job simply because you take pride in your work, and most hiring managers outside the weird "have to be passionate" startup scene will be glad to hire you.
That's just code for willing to take less pay.
Do they allow open source? If they do you could always start something that benefits them but under your own git account. It benefits you in terms of marketing yourself and your skills.
> But lately I just don't give a shit about bugs or features we're building.
Welcome to the world of adults.
We work to live, we don't live to work ;)
It's alright, you can have a job in the day and be with your girlfriend the rest of the time.
Not to knock TV, but it is an escape. I know someone who used to get jealous of rocks(they get to just lay there). If you heal the burnout, you should start to feel your passions and motivations come back.
I'm wary against a physical solution (take a vacation) without advice on mental and emotional components that will need addressed over time. I believe a person will get into a cycle if they only use physical solutions to something which isn't that clear cut.
Taking a vacation isn't bad advice, but I'd be wary about doing so without the explicit goal to figure the situation out and not hoping it just happens
What this gives you is a fresh perspective when you get back. If it's time to move on, you'll be dreading coming back to work, thinking how stupid your project is or how much you hate your coworkers. Maybe you'll realize you're incredibly excited about something else.
Some people really need to journal to think their way through these things, but others just don't. Again, the process is totally individual. But I think you'll be surprised how much perspective you get removing yourself from the situation.
Reflecting on why I first got into software development (SaaS for me). Am I still achieving those things? If not, I probably won't enjoy what I'm doing.
I have seen teams become more disengaged when everything comes top down, even if the top is a team lead. I have found success in empowering myself and others to look for things that they believe are important and work that into their schedule. I would never hold this against anyone as long as they don't go totally rouge.
Tldr; Reflect on yourself, your goals, and where you want to be. Are you there or not? If not, it doesn't mean your job is necessarily at fault. Sometimes the only person who will get you out of a rut is you.
If being fully engaged at work is something you need to be happy, then maybe a change is in order. Otherwise, as you said you're not doing insane amounts of overtime, simply having a job that you don't hate and pays the bills might be enough. Ultimately you have to ask yourself what you want from your job.
When I was younger, I couldn't really push hard and work really hard unless I believed in the mission. I had to have that passion fuel to do it. It's fun, it feels good when it's there, it's like being in love in a way. And I'd do 'heroic' stuff because of it. I've found, personally, that that passion fuel is more like adrenaline than actual fuel though. It tends to dry up after a while; I think this is do to life changes, if you're in a relationship or having a child or something like that, those things just dramatically outweigh "building some app" or learning some new tech. At this point in my life (married with a couple kids) I get buzzed about startup opportunities and stuff, but I don't think there is any code that will come close to what my family brings me in terms of that passion. You've made it 4 years so I'd guess you're not running on passion alone.
For a while, I tried to be really unemotional about work, I just wanted to be a professional and do that job. Honestly, I can do this, I know some people cannot. I enjoy making software, regardless of the project I can usually find aspects to enjoy and just enjoy the craft. You really don't need to give a shit to fix some bugs, at least I don't, they pay me and I do the work. That too tends to result in my relative unhappiness after a while; I feel like certain creative aspects aren't being honored if I'm just doing the job; also when the rest of my life is in disorder it's more difficult to find any satisfaction in just being a professional.
It's going to sound cliche but it's really all about balance, at least for me it is. I try to place the passion more directly in the craft and technology. I'm passionate about building great teams. I'm passionate about working with those teams as a team, I really love seeing others grow. I like my current company's mission and it's something I can get really passionate about but I try not to get too bent about the details and specifics. Something else which in ways feels bad to say and it took me a while to really admit it: I'm kind of passionate about financial successes, my company is making money and that cures a lot of the little things for me. I've worked on my priorities a lot and I know that I'd rather be part of something that we build in to success rather than having my product vision completely realized and fail. Boot strapping a start up can be remarkably emotional, you work close with people, you get close, product passions rather than craft passions can make it really difficult. You want some passion and you want to be a pro at the same time and you want to balance those things and it's probably a life long learning exercise to continually tweak them.
Take a real vacation, turn off your phones and devices, spend some time away from it all and then look at it again.