Ask HN: Burning Out
Founders are very please, but getting poor feedback from team lead. Team lead has hindered more than helped, gives conflicting advice, blows hot and cold, has created a toxic environment etc. Admittedly some minor things have slipped through the cracks, but much of this comes from my team lead playing politics, creating silos and conflicts etc.
My team lead is grinding me down with their constant nitpicking and I really just want to go and do something else, anything else, work in a bar or something. Considered going to the founders with the issue, but I can’t see how this can be resolved beyond creating a new role or transferring out of my area of expertise. I did a sanity check and have reached out to others. Lots of others have take issue with my team lead as well, so its not just me.
I’m pretty burnout, and definitely in need to some time out before moving on. I don’t think I’d come across very well (or as sharp as I usually) in interviews at the moment without a break.
Anyone been through anything similar? Anyone have any advice?
163 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadBut is this team worth that effort? If you have been working at this for "a few years", and the company is still early stage, that is a bad sign. If the founders and team lead cannot solve the problems, that is a bad sign. If you created a solution that can make millions, but it isn't doing so, then the team doesn't know what to do with it. Another bad sign.
But those bad signs could also be poor interpretations of events, distorted by your own burnout.
My advice is to really think about whether you respect this team enough to work through problems with them. Are your complaints really about them, or just reflections of your own frustrations?
And then, depending on that answer, either sit down and tell them your frustrations and ask them to figure out a path to a healthier working relationship.... or walk out.
If you are an early startup stage employee, surely you would have an established relationship with the founders. If so, then you should simply bring them up to date with what is "really happening". If you have been sidelined a long-time ago, then you have too look at how and why. Is there anything that you can do to transcend the more recently hired "management".
If in your assessment your solution can make millions, then you have to ask why hasn't it yet? Are you overvaluing your contribution or are the various problems the stumbling blocks?
As for stock options, etc. At the end of the day you have to consider dilution, etc. They often end up being worth a lot less than you might think.
BTW: Yes, I think you are suffering from acute burnout. Might be a very good idea to get professional health support before the stress impacts your physical health.
Going to the founders should solve your problem, but be prepared to deal with the guilt if the team lead is fired.
Usually the founders have no idea what's going on until you tell them. We had a project manager who used to lie to their team, which caused the team to protest. But we didn't know they were protesting because of the project manager.
Lie to their team about what?
There were lots of constant little lies like that.
This is to give you some perspective and time to decompress from the day to day pressures at work & regular home life.
Your burnout is going to be clouding your view and judgement of the situation at work. The time off will help you look at the situation with some fresh eyes hopefully.
If the idea is worth millions, what sort of stock options do you have? How vested you are is a consideration. Also can you afford to exercise those options? Would you be financially better offer continuing to work and vesting options to exercise later (assuming you're in the USA under their style of share plans). If you don't have stock options (or something equivalent) well then jumping ship to another job is probably the best course of action (maybe).
What are your motivations for working in this job? Is there the potential of a large pay day if the company has successful liquidity event under favorable terms? Get to build X and have your name on it? Understanding those will help you work out what you want to do and why you want to do it.
You need to talk to your boss as well. Why is the feedback bad? What are actionable things you can do to improve the feedback? Are you not working well with others now that the team is growing?
Talking to the founders about some struggles you're having may help, but how good is your relationship with them? How understanding of the work you have done are they? If they're not across the detail of what you have delivered this may backfire depending on their personality types etc.
I keep these two comments bookmarked and will even share them with members of my team from time to time when I think maybe we're starting to push too hard, just so we don't lost perspective:
This is why I don't work very hard. Not entirely kidding. What'll make or break the company isn't me grinding away churning out incremental features and fixing tiny bugs. What'll make the difference is whether someone spots the game-changing opportunity, whether it's a product innovation, a business model or a particular partnership. To spot that kind of thing you have to give yourself some space and not have your head down all the time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16231526
Probably because consistently busting your ass in the civilian realm is a deep mistake. In a combat mindframe, it's utterly necessary in order to prevent the deaths of people you care about. But in a civilian frame, that level of effort is sometimes rewarded with promotion, but even more often is rewarded with more work and a stubborn refusal to even grant increases in pay, since every farmer loves a hard-working mule, but not if the mule demands more from them. That would just cut into profits from the farm.
If you work like three men, then promoting you means replacing you with three people, or trying to find the rare bird who works like you do. The practical result is that they keep you in your place, and promote a lazy schmoozer over you, one who will drink the Koolaid by the gallon, and has the wits to push the papers around, no more.
https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2ibw59/til_a_...
Yes.
It is natural to be sucked into the moment.
I'm at the age where all organizations are flaming PITAs; the more interesting question is: "Are the people around me making the overall PITA tolerable?"
If you can't enjoy the colleagues, then no amount of raw technical joy from accomplishing the task or fat piles of compen$ation will make the PITA worthwhile.
If you're not being given power to to lead and money to compensate you for saving the company, try to get it. Don't waste energy working within a bad system.
If you can't get what you need to stay, then go; if you're paid under market, you can trade up easily. If you see the people who have taken over your work mismanaging it, your equity won't be worth anything; it's a sunk cost, ditch.
Only caveat -- wherever you go you'll take a step down in authority. Right now you have a direct line to the top and are the domain expert in the company's whole business. That won't be true somewhere else.
Exception: If you truly single-handedly found the solution to an industry problem, they likely don't understand the space nearly as well as you do. Your knowledge is more valuable than the business that employs you and that's a huge advantage.
If you can't get what you need to stay, consider if you want to go into this industry in business for yourself. Find someone else in the industry who isn't invested in your startup to invest in you.
https://www.nemil.com/on-software-engineering/beware-burnout...
Each burnout situation is different, and happy to chat (my contact info is in my profile). One recommendation: don’t make any decisions without taking some time to get yourself back into a good headspace. I was terrible with making decisions when I was burnt out.
Keep a documentation trail and a running summary of what you've accomplished and the value of it.
I was an early employee in a start-up, I worked hard and got caught in all the startup distortion field/changing the world/impact kind of bs. The CEO kept saying for years that next year they will go IPO. Eventually I left no one gave a s..t , the company never went IPO.
The only positive thing was that I learned a lot of things because I had the chance to work on a lot of projects.
So make yourself a favor, stick around only for as long as it benefits you and your resume. But don't stay a minute longer founders won't give a s..t when you leave and you will never become rich anyway.
I later joined a big public company, amazing work-life balance, higher base salary , stocks, bonus, amazing 401k.
Bottom line, startups is overall bs. Don't buy the hype and if you do always keep in mind your own interests.
>Founders are very please[d], but getting poor feedback from team lead.
>Lots of others have take issue with my team lead as well, so its not just me.
It's almost certainly the case that if you quit, the founders would be surprised and wish they had known this. Seems like it would be pretty reasonable to share this with them, and say, "I don't expect you to fix this, but I wanted to give you the opportunity. Perhaps there is some way to replace the team lead."
It's that easy.
> I really just want to go and do something else
It sounds to me like you’ve already decided. It might be time for a change anyway? If you have some equity (and don’t gave terms that make it difficult to retain it after you leave) then why not try something else?
Taking time out is harder, depending on location. Sometimes being out of work makes it difficult to find work. I certainly recommend taking a holiday before applying for work.
Personally don’t recommend taking your issues to management. I’ve rarely seen that not have negative consequences.
A perfect summary of startup life. Thanks for this wonderful comment
The insidious thing about burnout is you can’t think clearly when you’re burned out. I’ve been heavily burned out twice and I can relate to just wanting to work in a bar or something but after a couple weeks off you’ll be able to think clearly again. Worst case it’s 2 weeks of paid leave before you quit, best case you come back grateful for the opportunity and recharged.
Your team lead sounds like a pain in the ass, the founders would probably get rid of them instead of you if you gave them an ultimatum but my advice would be to take time out before you do anything rash.
Good luck!
I’ve had an employee tell me they’re exhausted and need time out and I definitely didn’t “propagate need to my network” about them. That would be a serious breach of trust. I’ve also hired an engineer who told me they just came off a burnout and they were great.
This fear of vulnerability is part of the problem - it’s ok to be burned out and need a bit of a rest.
1) Take a sabbatical. Explain the situation to the founders, and go fuck off to wherever you want for 3-6 months. It would be unpaid, but you'd have something to return to and re-evaluate. If they don't seem accommodating, then fuck them, quit and work in a bar.
2) Quit and go work in a bar or go back to school. It only takes one burnout to realize most stuff isn't really that interesting anyway. Find some people to hang with and re-evaluate your social life if it sucks.
If you're really that good at executing, you can become a founder yourself and trade one set of problems for another. Maybe take a sabbatical and build something you care about.
Whatever you do, don't carry a victim mentality to your next interview.
A couple things:
1. Everyone here is right, talk to the founders. You're already considering bailing so you've got nothing to lose. Tell them how you feel. Their response to your concerns will tell you all you need to know about sticking around or not.
2. Burnout is real. It's as concrete as muscles failing on a final rep. Except it's a lot more insidious.
Instead of refusing to lift any more weight, your brain will start to suggest anti-patterns, rewrites and other harmful paths in an attempt to keep going.
Take some time off. Drop the hobby projects. Travel, go camping, etc., whatever, but get out of your current routine.
After a while you'll start to get the urge to write code just for the sake of it. Take it slow but see how you're doing. Pick up a hobby project again and see it how it goes. If you need more time, take it.
Last time this happened it probably took me 6 months to fully recover, but I had pushed myself way too far. I don't think it's normally that extreme. Depending on where you're at, a couple weeks on the beach might be enough for a reset.
Team lead is playing politics. He would be happy to see you gone. His strategy is to grind you down till you run out of energy and motivation.
Do not tolerate this. Do not let someone else take the victory lap for your hard work.
The bad news: This is going to happen in your career often. If you are good at what you do, you become a target. Get used to dealing with it.
The good news: his playbook is well known. Heres what you do: Go to amazon and buy ten books on office politics. Then take a week of and read them, and mark out the behaviors you see. Finally schedule a meeting with the founders, and explain to them what you are seeing.
Then everytime he behaves like an a-hole, call him out. Put in email and send it to the co-founders. Sunlight is a good disinfectant. These people are usually cowards and they FEAR the truth being known by the key stakeholders - that they are not good at what they do so they compensate by messing with the people are good, and they have a lot of experience doing it.
Stop being nice to team lead. You are at war with him. He wants you out. Your rational response is to get him fired as soon as possible. Its either him or you. Or demand that they make you a team lead too. Make a huge fuss about this.
But PLEASE, if you go down, go down fighting. Don't let this MF win.
Being loud and blustery won't make anyone happy with you, and playing politics well is all about having powerful allies. The lead has probably been slandering you to the founders for the last several months. Go talk to them, but think about whether they are more likely to listen to someone who sounds happy and interested in making a couple changes, or to someone angrily ranting.
Honestly, your manager controls what the founders will hear about you, so unless everyone on the team is having problems with him, you just don't have much control over your situation here. So reduce your work output, take time off, gently bring up the issues with the founders, wait a few weeks, and then quit.
Similarly to what others have said. Set up a meeting with the founders and also have your team lead involved. The fact that you are considering quitting means you have gotten to a stage where the answer to what you should do next is VERY important. So you need to communicate this so the company also has a fair chance of solving your issues to keep you around because they might be unaware of where you are psychologically.
Something to keep in mind your with your team lead. He/She might not be aware of their negative impact. Managers see multiple sides of an organization and it is not to the benefit of the organization for all sides to have access to all the information about other sides of the organization. To deal with this, managers play politics. Not because they are stupid and evil, but in their minds to keep the peace for the greater good but sometimes it impacts people like you and demoralizes them. Knowing this, you should not go into your meeting pointing fingers, read everyone's actions up to that point as well-intended as possible and use the meeting as a discovery session where you acknowledge what they are trying to do, but these are the negatives of their actions and outline how this can be made better, so you can work better. The way they handle this meeting should be all the answer you need to know if you should stay or not.
I left.
Another colleague shortly left thereafter, same reason.
Founders were informed of the decision, did nothing.
Company did its thing.
The upside, said “boss” was declined funding based on feedback of his management style and title puffery.
Here's what I did:
1. I went on a week long vacation. No work, no screens. Just read a book.
2. I started waking up early and working out every day. I was skipping my workouts frequently because I was too tired after work. A regular workout, especially when the sun is out, has been a HUGE mood booster.
3. I deleted all "wasteful" screen time. Like going on Reddit, watching YouTube videos, or even HN. Instead of opening a new tab after working for 1-2 hours, I just walk around my office, do a few stretches.
4. Made a conscious effort to hang out with friends and NOT talk about work. This has also been massive.