Ask HN: I need help finding a job that fits my current mental situation
The pandemic has taken a massive toll on my mental health. Not only because I can't socialize like I did before, but also because I had to stop practicing my sport. My sport was one of the main things that kept me sane. I work out at home now, but it's nowhere near the same thing as going to practice 3-4 times a week.
On top of that, my wife left me in January before the pandemic hit. We're now going through the legal stuff, which is pretty stressful.
And I'm potentially dealing with some health issues. Still waiting for an appointment with my primary care provider.
I'm doing therapy. It's been keeping me barely sane. My weekly therapy session is the thing I look forward to the most during the week.
I'm a senior engineer at a large tech company. I'm paid a very handsome salary and quite a lot in RSUs to care about some of their systems. Given my position as senior, I'm expected to make big, important decisions, and to mentor people in the team.
I can't do any of that right now. I've been feeling like I'm scamming the company, because there have been entire weeks where I literally didn't work. And it's not because I don't want to, but I sit in front of my laptop and feel totally overwhelmed by everything and completely blocked mentally. My manager is actually aware of that and has been very understanding, but I still feel really bad about it.
I don't want to quit to take time off though. I feel like that'd be worse, and I'd probably just spend my days in bed not doing anything. I can still code - I do my own coding in the evenings, and that's been going quite well (nothing that will make me money though). I just can't be expected to care about stuff and to be involved as if my life depended on the services we build. There's no space in my head for that.
If I could get a job where I'm basically assigned tasks to code things to spec, done, next, that'd be perfect.
Does that even exist though?
25 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 70.2 ms ] threadOne thing you should talk to your doctor about is temporary leave of absence. I took 3 months off although it wasn't nearly enough it was enough to get my shit straight. I quit shortly after because corporate America is a toxic shithole especially for people like us with mental health issues.
Even if you quit and worked part time, the only real option out there is upwork. Pay is crap and you're competing with India.
I would say find a way to stay where you are until this pandemic nonsense is over.
Problem is, we don't know when that's gonna happen. I've seen reports ranging from 6 months to 10 years. Not to be a downer, but its probably not a good idea to rely on the pandemic ending any time soon
Then COVID and I got to do the same from home. I missed my coworkers because the people I worked with were great, but considering the work I was actually doing it was better being at home. I could toggle the mouse while holding long conversations with the wife or do more entertaining things on my personal computer at the same time.
This left a lot of insecurity and depression about the employment. I never became a software developer for the money, but because I like to build things. I wasn’t doing anything enjoyable and felt the roof could cave in at any minute.
Now I am away on a military deployment where I am often very busy. I have a team to manage and a great many things to produce. I am away from the family for many months but this change of environment is so great for the mental health. I can directly and measurably see the results of my teams productivity.
Am I concerned though. Military deployments are temporary. I will have to go back to that which was so depressing. I have been building a side project. I am thinking of turning this into a business when I return, which is scary. I am a developer, not a business person.
This definitely plays into why I'm feeling overwhelmed. I get these big projects assigned to me with zero clarity on what exactly needs to be built. I reach out to the people who'll use it and not even they know what they want, they just want "something." It's very hard for me to make progress on things because all our infra is managed by an operations team, so anything I want to explore needs to be done by "human proxy".
Communication is a huge issue for me as I'm in the spectrum. How I wish neurodiversity was as recognized and catered to as gender and racial diversity! There is virtually zero empathy for those of us that are quite challenged when it comes to dealing with other people who are not immediate team members who we've gotten used to.
Are you in the US armed forces? I have considered enlisting and not trying to move up the ranks as a way to basically give up my life for a bit and be ordered around without having to make big decisions.
As for communication spend some time with your QA people. In my past employment the people who really mastered precision are always the QA. The clarity and detail they dive into with their written word is nothing short of astonishing compared to what many developers produce.
If you want to depth of detail that goes into communicating a well written plan spend some time with a good PMP certified project manager.
To produce better communication about product direction/features you need a huge level of empathy for your users. The end user generally knows what they want intuitively but often cannot communicate that into a feature request. You need to watch how they use your product see where they struggle and repeat steps. Again this is far different than what many developers communicate. Many developers communicate what makes things easier for themselves, the developer, without ever considering the impact to the user and is then completely inept at communicating the difference, which is incredibly frustrating.
Good luck. Honestly
> I have zero interest in anyone who changes jobs regularly.
I've been on this job for several years. I don't change jobs frequently.
> Grow up, focus on your life
Considering I was married and raised a kid, I think that covers the growing up part. The therapy part covers focusing on my life.
> The first thing you should do is work extra hours to make up for the slacking
That'll just be extra hours of not doing anything productive. I've tried it multiple times over the past months.
> A proper diet and exercise is extremely important.
Check and check. Already taken care of. Not making a difference. Sleep is also fine.
> After that, get a wholesome hobby you can pour yourself into.
That used to be my sport. I've picked up a few things that interest me and they're fine. They don't make a difference wrt job situation.
The main issue right now is that my life is falling apart around me (there's even more to what I wrote in my post but I don't feel like sharing everything) and I have a job that demands that I care too much about things. It's very hard to care about a handful of online services that bear no impact on my life, when almost everything else is falling to pieces.
I need a less demanding job for my present situation. One that doesn't require emotional involvement in what I do. Something task-oriented: do it, call it a day, do the next thing, call it a day... collect paycheck. Repeat. I'm just not in a position to decide what's the best tech out of five options to build our next service AND mentor two junior devs AND review code from seven different people making sure it's all coherent with the existing code base. Too much going on in life to care that much about things at work.
I don't know if a job like that exists but take care of yourself. Take care of yourself, aggressively, like you are worth being taken care of, because you are.
Don't be too hard on yourself. A lot lf people are going through this. Some people are really struggling with wfh, others have multiple kids at home and can only work at 20% because they just have no time or energy left. Others study with mental health problems. And finally, others have experienced serious strains with their SOs due to being locked in together for so long (which might be worse than actually splitting). My point is, this is the reality for now, we are all aware of this, and I'm guessing your boss is banking on you being able to go back to normal after the pandemic is over.
Beyond that, what helped me is to think of the people that depend on you. Whoever you are or should be mentoring is an actual human being that depends in one way or another on you. Same for your coworkers and boss (although. "coworkers" is such a vague word in a big corp). So don't do it for the salary, do it for them. Keep doing therapy, keep going on ine day at a time , there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
ps: what was the sport? rock climbing, swimming, soccer?(just curious about what hobbies can i take once this is over)
On a coping note: prioritize reducing your stress/anxiety in whatever (healthy) you can even if you feel guilty for not getting enough work done. For myself, I've had to do things like force myself to go for a walk every afternoon even if I hadn't completed all my tasks for the day yet, shut my computer off at a certain time, visit family over the weekend even if I feel like I need to stay at home and "catch up" on work, etc.
I would think seriously about taking some sick leave. Work a bit on your evening projects during the day. Get plenty of sleep and exercise in fresh air. Switch off the news and listen to classical music instead. Maybe this sounds lame but I did this when I was going through a rough patch and my mental health rebounded.
Good luck!
I work for a large company in the US. We have both unpaid FMLA and unpaid time off. The difference is that with FMLA the company still subsidizes health insurance to some degree. If you are in the US, your company has the FMLA option.
One of my coworkers (a very senior manager) is in Germany and has a serious family issue. He has been working part time for a while at a reduced salary.
How many years do you have in career? 10 years or more? If you take 6 months off, will that matter in the long run? Won't it be better if you don't have work stress on top of everything else?
>If I could get a job where I'm basically assigned tasks to code things to spec, done, next, that'd be perfect.
There's no guarantee that a job that starts like that will stay like that. All it takes is one manager to decide that you will get more responsibility and you are back to what you were trying to avoid.
Also, investigate these today:
* Short-term and long-term disability benefits you may have.
* Unpaid FMLA leave you can take.
* Ask therapist about potential options.
* Ask therapist about increasing therapy sessions to > 1x/week.
* Walk outside. Several times a day, if you want.
When a heterosexual couple divorce, the wife typically takes a big hit financially and the husband typically takes a big hit emotionally and socially. I am hearing that the combination of divorce and pandemic has really nuked your social and emotional life and you have no idea how to rebuild it.
I think you look forward to therapy because it's someone to talk with about personal stuff and it's your only outlet currently for that.
Let me also suggest that you may need to work on cleaning your house. If your wife was primarily the person who did the housework and you are now working from home and not really cleaning it, that could account for your health issues to some degree and your inability to focus.
Clean your house. Get some social outlets. Put off a decision about your job until you have a handle on those two things.
I had no idea it was that common. Always thought the husband took a big financial hit. But yeah, our situation ended up being exactly as you described (she gets to keep the house but has to pay me my share of it).
> I think you look forward to therapy because it's someone to talk with about personal stuff and it's your only outlet currently for that.
Therapy is definitely my social moment of the week, and I think you're right that that's why I look forward to it. I thought I had made friends at work over the years (considering how much we did outside of work), but they pretty much seem to have reverted to being just coworkers, despite me repeatedly reaching out for 2-3 months at the start of the pandemic (just to chat, not to do stuff outside - we're all pretty freaked out). I eventually gave up.
> Let me also suggest that you may need to work on cleaning your house.
I don't think that part is a problem. I really dislike messy places, so I keep my place clean and tidy at all times. And I'm a minimalist, so there's not much to clean to begin with.
I definitely need some form of social thing.
Best of luck.
Our next meeting is on cookies/tracking, and the one after that is on “what is intelligence?” It’s a chill environment- jump in anytime (or anyone else reading this post :))
-Jane
1) Be explicit about what you can and can't do and tell your manager and team if you're comfortable doing so. I found this helpful for a few reasons. First I felt less bad for ignoring or failing at certain things because I knew I was still delivering in other areas. Second it made it easier for my manager to work around as they knew what I could handle and what they needed to pull in help for. Lastly, and most importantly, when I focused on the tasks I knew I could do I felt far more in control and my anxiety levels would go down significantly.
2) Take time off if you can. I'm fortunate in that I get a lot of sick leave and my manager encouraged me to take it. Quitting comes with a lot of stress but just having a week or two off can really help.
3) Read Feeling Good by David Burns and work through the exercises. It's a book explaining Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and I've personally found it really helpful so far.