|
I burned out for the last time, recently. That is, I'm not sure that I will recover from this one. I am exploring the idea of contracting, but currently I have some sort of PTSD, and I can't think of turning my computer on without physical anxiety. Sigh. Luckily, I saved enough to keep me going unemployed, for a few years. It's a shame, because I have some valuable skills and experiences and could make a huge impact on most products, and I still love the work. While chaos and bad leadership were major factors, and meaninglessness was another factor (as mentioned above), so many things changed in the last decade to make root cause analysis difficult. It more feels like systematic rolling failures. Too much risk-taking, fading ethics and morals, decline in quality standards, increasing greed, too many chiefs, too many people jacked up on Adderall, general organizational confusion, more reaction and less planning, longer hours, too much unnecessary communication... What amazes me is that all of these companies that I have burned out from made a lot of money! I joke now with friends (many who are driven to be entrepreneurs, of course) that even the most average people can now build 100M companies these days. Being able to talk well and know the right people get you most of the way there, and brute force will get you the rest of the way. There's just so much capital out there, it's nuts. |