[lhnz]

I'm not sure I agree.

You seem to think that extreme stress from your mentality makes it difficult to deal with extreme stress in your job. For many it is the opposite. If you're riding a rollercoaster then another rollercoaster is not so scary. It will hurt but it is expected.

The point when you decide to leave a 'comfortable' existence in BigCorp™ is the point in which you no longer feel comfort there, and at that point you are no longer looking to find comfort in another large company, you're looking to take the high level of stress you have and actually get something out of it. Oh, sure, it's 'risky' but it's nowhere close to as risky as somebody who has never dealt with depression founding a start-up...

Don't assume that life at a company in which you don't have control over what you work on, have no impact, and are beholden to corporate politics is somehow more comforting and safe for depressives.

[vonmoltke]

I would like to add that, speaking from personal experience, your mental state really slides downhill when you pass from just being uncomfortable to feeling trapped. You start thinking less of yourself, your interview performance goes down, and every failure to change your situation notches you down and actually makes your situation worse. Sometimes the only way to break that cycle is to say "Fuck it", quit, and do something on your own. At that point, any level of risk looks better than certainty because the certainty sucks so bad. That is the path I would have taken years ago, were I not stuck in Dallas. Would have been preferable to the 2+ years of hell I went through at my "safe" job until I finally found something else.