This resonates with me right now. I helped build a unicorn startup over the last 10 years but feel empty and burnt out when I’m working now. I feel like I’m wasting my time in exchange for a paycheck. I recently turned in my notice, I’m going on sabbatical. I’m hoping to find my passion and follow that. Finding that is something I’m struggling with though. Anyways, great article!
My advice would be to keep up with a schedule that still keeps you pretty busy and ideally waking up early at regular hours. Once you hit actual rock bottom burn out, you know sleeping in until noon and scrolling message boards for three hours before you realized you haven't eaten yet all day and the sun is already setting, it feels almost impossible to turn the switch back on when you need to. Even something like folding your clothes starts to feel like a monumental task pretty fast.
As a widower who just sent his kid off to the grandparents to visit for a few days, and is now missing his person, his kid, who relies on him and feeling the effects of missing purpose...
Sure, it could be kids, a partner, a spouse, or a friend or family. But it could also be the rest of the team on the weekly bowling league, the puppies at the shelter who need playtime each week with a volunteer human, the community one serves as a volunteer firefighter, the homeless shelter where one helps serve the weekly dinner, the neighbor who needs help with yard upkeep, or any other parts of the village where one lives that relies on you, and makes you feel included, involved, and fulfilled inside by having that purpose.
Not sure if you're single, but go on some dates. Getting excited about another human being can be a huge boost. You don't need to replace work with other intellectualism (though you certainly can!)
Also resonates with me. I helped my previous company scale and get acquired and then helped scale the new team some more. Then decided I wanted to go into a high-caliber start-up because I was kind of burned-out and after a year I did. I work with brilliant people, building a product that democratizes investing in my small EU country and seeing a company grow again is fun. The problem is we lack excitedness and the feedback loop is bad so my motivation hasn't picked-up. What helped me is a new hire that brought some emotions and excitedness to the team.
I have also been thinking of giving my notice for a while now, but I'm also struggling with finding a purpose so that part also hit me hard. I'm actually scared of leaving my job in case I find out it was the one thing that gave me purpose and I won't be able to find something better.
Congrats on doing it, and please do send a message if you do find something that gives you more purpose, it will greatly help me.
Sometimes it's possible to take an unpaid leave for six months or a year and then come back if you want to. If you perform well at your job, no reason they wouldn't want you back.
For all the yammering in this thread you’ve centered on the real problem no one can admit here.
You burn out creating value for others that you end up either not owning or it not materially contributing to your immediate community.
We evolved to work for ourselves and our tribe again immense satisfaction from that. Cleaning your house, pulling weeds volunteering locally. Etc.
But endlessly serving shareholders (ownership class or not) while giving up way more value then you out in yields a deep sense of happiness because we can’t express the unfairness woven into our life so deeply.
Thanks, I might take you up on that. I’ve mainly been in the work, kids, sleep loop the past decade so I need to find some hobbies and passion projects to work on.
damn bro having a billion dollar company and your own family must be so tough to deal with , happy to take them off your hands if you want to feel the drive to live again ;)
That’s a great point about the frontend complexity. Picking it up now is more difficult overall but at least most of the complexity has been decided on and “stabilized” as much as possible.
Came to post something with a similar sentiment. It's going to have broad market effects when the circle dealing doesn't work out as intended. OpenAI is losing so much money every quarter that they will undoubtedly have to raise prices I would think and people may not be willing to pay them.
Have you thought about starting a company? It’s never been easier to start a company for engineers. Granted you need to have a problem to solve but those can be found.
Unfortunately, I can't find a problem to solve, and believe me, I tried! Everything I come up with has been solved already with a better set of features.
It's a bit of a cliché, but remains true -- the existence of competition just means someone else proved the market exists already. They've done good research for you. You only need a truly novel idea (with a market) if you want to be a unicorn. If you just want to be successful, then jump in. Find ways to differentiate, even if it's just on price.
There are problems to solve all over the place. But you will need to dedicate deep focused thought toward finding them.
I recommend using the concept of a “talent stack” to find areas you are uniquely suited for and uniquely interested in.
Make an ordered list of things you enjoy, things you are motivated toward, things you are talented at. Then brainstorm ways to combine as many of them as you can.
Your particular combination will be rare, this is where you are most likely to be able to find and solve problems.
Since you’re a programmer you are very well suited for that type of analysis.
Once you’ve identified those areas, dedicate deep focused thought toward identifying problems and solving them. Go for long walks or hikes or bike rides while thinking about it.
“What we are taught is that if you want to start a business, you need to come up with something new, something that hasn't been done before. But the reality is that the world will very easily accept three of the same thing, or five of the same thing. And usually it is an advantage to look at something that already exists and say, can another one of those exist? Or can I take what's there and tweak it a little bit? If you are a great cloner, you will be 90% ahead of the rest of humanity.”
Cursor is quite a bit better as well at not adding erroneous code. Was testing a0 and it kept getting stuck in endless loops of errors. I'm sure they'll improve but it's pretty rough right now.
In Key Takeaways the first bullet increments every second for how much faster AI is than traditional navigation. Not sure if you knew that or not. The execution time also never stops incrementing.
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