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by hotgeart 1606 days ago
> Should I tell my boss and/or team? Should I tell them right away, or wait until I know what other steps I want to take? What should I expect their reactions to be?

No there're not your family. You need to talk with a professional and take decision together.

> Should I take time off? How much? Or should I try to work reduced hours?

It's impossible to say. Everyone is different. Some need to work part time, others a month off and others 2y. When I did my burn out at first it's 4 months, after 6 and at the end it's a year. Again decision with a professional. Evaluation every month at first.

Depend also your country/insurance. For me it's easy because I live in EU, so my salary was paid at 80% while i was taking care of myself for a 1y.

> If I continue working, is there something in my working environment I should try to change? Think of senior engineer in a typical DevOps-y SaaS startup.

Again need a professional and long conversations. May be it's the environement or the job itself.

> Is there anything specific to working in tech and burning out that I should know about? I feel like this isn't exactly rare.

Because it's always the same. Managers think when we add or remove features, it's just lego. You re-assign 1 ticket 3 others come.

1 comments

Did I just read that you got 80% of your salary while doing absolutely nothing for a year? Congrats, but we aren't all so incredibly lucky.
He wasn’t doing nothing, he was taking care of his health. Would you react the same if he was treating cancer?

Burnout is real and really, really bad. It is a lot of suffering. Don’t be snarky to people about worst experiences of their lives.

Not OP, but some insurance polices for long term disability could cover major depression or other mental illness. Will depend on the policy, company, etc. and would probably not be a bad idea to consult a lawyer/doctor.
Yes (Belgium ♥)

"Nothing" is not a vacation. Mental health problem is a bitch. In this whole 1y, for 4 months I was in a bad place.