For the first time in my decade long career I'm deeply burned out. I've been feeling this way for at least the past 3 months. The smallest of tasks feel like moving a mountain which leads to procrastination and then no feeling of success when completing a task that my bosses feel is already late. I've never been anything but a top performer before.
I've thought and written about why I feel like this. It's a swirling combination of lack of autonomy or strategic involvement, working on a codebase that requires a lot of effort to wrangle (single digit millions of lines of code), in languages (C++, Python) I don't enjoy or want to master, with really bad tools and long feedback loops, on a team with hardly any camaraderie, and a roadmap that isn't very exciting to me.
The job pays well but all in all I don't feel anything like myself. I once was incredibly confident in my abilities and loved building things and exploring my curiosities. I failed two interviews in the past few months and in hindsight it's obvious why if I'm not feeling confident or like my best self. Now at night, when I should be coding to work towards better interview performance, I have no energy to pursue that or other personal interests. I feel trapped which makes me even more anxious.
My significant other doesn't support me leaving my job without another one lined up, even though we have nearly 2 years of living expenses saved. My work situation is causing me anxiety every Sunday knowing I'll be returning to it the next day and this anxiety sometimes turns into micro meltdowns where I fear I have no way out.
I've never "ran" from a job before but that's what I want to do. I've started therapy once per week. I've tried techniques to get me going on the smallest of things but it isn't helping. How would you get out of this mess?
I've thought and written about why I feel like this. It's a swirling combination of lack of autonomy or strategic involvement, working on a codebase that requires a lot of effort to wrangle (single digit millions of lines of code), in languages (C++, Python) I don't enjoy or want to master, with really bad tools and long feedback loops, on a team with hardly any camaraderie, and a roadmap that isn't very exciting to me.
The job pays well but all in all I don't feel anything like myself. I once was incredibly confident in my abilities and loved building things and exploring my curiosities. I failed two interviews in the past few months and in hindsight it's obvious why if I'm not feeling confident or like my best self. Now at night, when I should be coding to work towards better interview performance, I have no energy to pursue that or other personal interests. I feel trapped which makes me even more anxious.
My significant other doesn't support me leaving my job without another one lined up, even though we have nearly 2 years of living expenses saved. My work situation is causing me anxiety every Sunday knowing I'll be returning to it the next day and this anxiety sometimes turns into micro meltdowns where I fear I have no way out.
I've never "ran" from a job before but that's what I want to do. I've started therapy once per week. I've tried techniques to get me going on the smallest of things but it isn't helping. How would you get out of this mess?