June 10, 2020
Burnout is a real problem within tech circles. Much of what drives it is the industry, of course. The rockstar developers, the 10x engineers, all these mythical beasts that startups crave are also unattainable goals that so many engineers have burnt themselves to a crisp over.
A lot of that rests on the shoulders of the type of people who wind up in software, though. We’re a very needy bunch. We crave the feeling of success that comes with solving problems, and while this is, yes, easy to capitalize on, it’s also easy to get addicted to. You wind up with tracked-out veins, living from project to project and hating every minute of it, every bit of yourself.
Thus you, promising work and yourself that you would take two weeks off over the holidays as an attempt to reset yourself and get more on track with their expectations.
Yes, and thus work, upon those two weeks’ completion, wondering why I hadn’t gotten more done over the break.
And you bought into it.
I bought into it hard. Why hadn’t I gotten more accomplished over the break? Why hadn’t I been the 10x engineer that they wanted for the role? Wasn’t that what I did? Wasn’t that what I was for?
Apparently not.
Right.
I’d never been fired, and while I think that the record still stands, it does so only on technicalities. My contract was up on February seventh, and both work and I agreed that we would not be renewing it. I hated working there, and they hated having an engineer that hated working for them.