#WorkLifeBalance #MentalHealthMatters #TechBurnout #CareerTransition
Hey everyone! 👋 I’m a 30-year-old woman working as a web developer, and honestly, I’m feeling pretty lost right now. So here’s the thing: I *never* really loved software engineering. I was nudged into it by my parents, and I’ve been struggling ever since. Despite having a master’s degree and three years of experience, my job has made me feel completely overwhelmed. The stress, the long hours, and constant chaos took a heavy toll on my health. I reached a breaking point—burnout hit me hard, leading to chronic pain and even a fibromyalgia diagnosis.
To make matters worse, I come from a developing country where tech jobs often pay poorly and have toxic work cultures. 😩 I recently joined a European company that advertised work-life balance, but shockingly, it’s just as chaotic as before! I’m back to square one with my health issues and burnout. I feel stuck—like there’s no way out of this spiral of stress, panic attacks, and depression.
Here’s why this is happening:
– **High Stress Levels:** The expectations in tech are brutal—long hours and constant pressure lead to burnout.
– **Toxic Work Culture:** A chaotic environment can exacerbate any existing mental health issues.
– **Physical Health Impact:** Chronic conditions like fibromyalgia can flare up under stress, making it more challenging to cope.
– **Limited Career Options:** It feels particularly tough when your degree and experience seem to funnel you back into the same overwhelming situations.
But what can I do? 🤔 I’ve considered:
– **Transitioning Fields:** I’ve looked into UI/UX design, but it seems the work environments are similarly tough.
– **Government Jobs:** Unfortunately, options are limited in my country due to corruption.
– **Slower Pace Opportunities:** I’m searching for jobs that cater to introverts or those with health issues, where I can use my computer science degree without the chaos of my current role.
I’d love to hear from anyone who has faced similar struggles. Have you found a path to a less stressful job? How have you managed burnout or transitioned your career? Please share your experiences or any tips you might have! 💬✨
Thanks for reading—I really appreciate any advice you all can offer!
there is a very intersection between CS and graphic design, have you explored this at all?
>I’m not sure what to do. I feel that working in tech and being a developer is not for me and it makes me have panic attacks and worsens my depression…
I think that just means this particular type of job doesn’t sit well with the things you like to do and find fulfillment from. No job is worth your well-being and if you’re not happy doing the work find what does and pursue that instead. (soldiers: first time?)
Maybe go for positions in management that oversee projects you’re interested in, TPM jobs are harder to come by now-a-days but there are still some roles out there.
If you were in the US. I’d recommend moving to QA. It’s definitely a bit more relaxed in my experience but I think the issue here might be cultural. I would also recommend government jobs, but again this advice might not cross over well. The standards at a lot of government jobs are a lot slower paced, might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Development is a stressful job but your situation sounds worse than what I expect.
Try and move to a UX/UI role or a graphic designer role!!! But since u have experience with software engineering and u have a degree for it, try and get a job in UX/UI
Also try and change to another company
What about teaching CS?
Fibromyalgia is a byproduct of stress that is unresolved; dealt with it myself to the point where I thought might never run again. Take care of your mental health and frustrations through a journal and sleeping well. Bout to run a marathon in a few weeks.
have you considered voice coding? Talon (with mouse and OCR addons) and Cursorless are lifesavers for me, a bit of a learning curve but once you hit your stride you can even get faster than with kb
Only 3 years and you are already burned out? Yeah this isn’t for you.
Most of WLB is on the employee though. You are only stressed and worn out because you let yourself get that way and let employers walk all over you. Being 30 you might not be where you can understand that yet so I suggest you talk to someone and figure that part of your life out first.
My heart goes out for you ❤️🩹
I hope and wish that you really get out of this and live your life to the fullest. Sending you strength and good wishes. You are not alone
Consider working for a company with a large project involving many people. In such an environment, take your time with tasks, always providing estimates that exceed the actual time needed, and stand by your decisions. Avoid unnecessary meetings, and make sure to take your vacation, especially when a release is approaching.
Most development work is stressful, but it’s crucial to find a balance within that stressful atmosphere. While there’s a risk of being fired, it’s better to lose a job than to sacrifice your mental health. If your mental health suffers, you’ll end up spending more on doctors than you earn from the job.
Remember, your job is where people buy your time, not your health.
This isn’t necessarily a work problem. It sounds like an anxiety problem.
There have been times I look at the work I have to do and just say “ugh.”
You’re struggling with stress with development. Are you worried about the features not working? About someone finding bugs in your code? About the code not being useful? About the project being canceled? It could easily be something else, but see if you can isolate it.
I also read this as you being stressed about being stressed which is a cycle I recognize and took me a while to get out of at the start of my career once I got really stressed about something and it just kept on going. I can’t break the original stress, but one thing that helped break the stress-about-stress is that the original problem will either become something real, or it will fade away to nothing — usually the latter. In either case the other stress wasn’t a factor in failure at all.
You can also work to establish boundaries. If something can’t be handled in 9-5 (or maybe even go over by 30 minutes) then say that you’ll get to that tomorrow. Don’t blow people off, but in an email say “it sounds like we’ll need to refactor the Duplux class. Let’s try that in the morning” and then log off.
Being on-call, though, is something you’ll probably need to accept. You haven’t talked about your home life but aside from not *wanting* to be on-call, is there a problem with being available? It depends on how many people there are in rotation I guess.
In canada, there are jobs in gov and defense that have good life balance but they pay 50% less.
So, maybe you can do SW in these domains in your country.
Both need security clearance though. So those jobs exist.
But back to your situation. It sucks. I want to validate your experience. You are literally harming yourself to please your parents. I do understand the cultural pressure to do so.
Burn out is real. And with your disability itll be even tougher because your part of the world likely doesn’t have accommodation for disabilities. So that sucks hard.
Perhaps its time to sit down with your parents and tell them that you’ve done what they expected and its time for them to let you have your own journey.
Frontend is more creative but competitive. You can also try software sales or move into management.
In canada, graphic designers have a higher unemployment because of AI LVM ie midjourney
Architecture student study for years and few make it to being an architect.
I say this so you know a pivot will also be lot of effort but that shouldn’t stop you if its your calling. Its better to try then regret what could have been.
Another option is teaching. Ie being a college instructor to teach programming at a local college.
Anyways, sorry to hear you’re going through this.
Hey, I don’t really have advice here- I’m a new graduate- but I also have fibromyalgia, and I wanted to just extend that I know the kind of pain you’re in. I hope things can improve soon and you find peace.
Similar age as you. I am in a very horrible place right now, even though I love coding, I am burnt out and I have destroyed my health in multiple ways.
I blame this field, I can’t wake up anymore to attend army-like morning reports that the field calls them daily standup (I have been in the army, daily standups are way worse). I can’t keep doing this.
But, I am here to tell you that only we can save ourselves, no one else. You may have some people in your life that love you and care about you, but they can’t help.
Ignore the people that will tell you “grass is greener”, “at least you are not working outside in the sun!!!”. They don’t get it.
Please, start doing something to fix this. You are running of fumes. Start from somewhere, reduce your work load, overestimate story points, lie to the managers, whatever. The only priority is you right now.
First of all, I’m not sure how related your pain is to your job if you have Fibromyalgia. I’m not a doctor but it took my friend a while to get her Fibro under control. You may want to treat that separately.
Also, if you want to do graphic design, look into UX design. That’s not a super difficult jump from software engineering work.
Your description reminded me of the book “When the body says no” by Gabor Mate M.D.
You need to stabilize your current situation and find a way out.
If therapy is available for you, then you should use that to cope with what you have in hands.
You seem to close out your options just because they are not perfect. Here are some scenarios:
>companies offering relocation anywhere are mostly startups with poor work conditions
You don’t need to work there forever. But companies offering relocation can be your entry ticket to your target country. You could move there, work there for a while (check length requirements for relocation in your contract), then go to another company.
Maybe acknowledging that the more chaotic startup work is temporary and the enabler for moving countries would help eith your mental robustness in tolerating the work environment.
>government work, but there’s no chance to get one where I live due to corruption and I also don’t want to stay here
Well, you don’t know if you don’t try. Worst case you don’t get a job and you stay in the same situation as today. Best case you get a calmer job.
You don’t want to stay there, which is fair, but no one says you need to stay forever. If you get a government job, you could use it to improve your mental health, to figure out what you want to work with and prepare your next steps.
Are there other types of work available for you? Maybe something your family or friends could give a referral on?
Architecture is about the closest I’ve seen to SWE in terms of soul sucking in college and beyond. Except no leetcode or OA or 10 rounds of interviews. But it doesn’t pay well unless you work your tail off to get licensed fast and you went to the right schools and right companies etc. WLB is also highly dependent on company. My family members lucked out here and avoided galley ship hours but some firms are outright awful.
Graphics design doesn’t pay period.
Source: SWE for nearly 5 decades, two architects in the family.
Sounds like you should quit.
in my country with a cs degree you can teach in schools computer science, can you do the same check if there are positions for this, it’s way less stressful than where you are now. please don’t give a shit about job performance in such toxic places of work. Accept that you’re going to underperform for a while at least until you recover and that’s ok. do you take medication for anxiety, have you consider checking a psychiatrist.
It sound serious. You need go to see a psychologist for professional help.
Quit
Realize that everyone benefits if you don’t burn out.
* The company gets to keep their investment in you.
* You’ll be more productive
* Need positive mood so you have the energy to move away from the field if you want to
* Noone else precisely knows how long any particular tasks can take since each task is unique, if it takes you 50% longer to do it at a sustainable pace, no one can really tell the difference anyway if you were trying to work crazy hard, particularly if your team is a chaotic mess (which toxic cultures often suggest ).
You have to learn to not care too much (over caring). The way you can do that is to think “if im burned out, I’m going to not be productive and get fired anyway, so I may as well not think too hard.”
I’d learn some meditation, relaxation exercises.
I find what helps too is to get good at prioritizing, and picking out what is the one thing that is most important, and let other stuff go. Break stuff down into microsteps, down even to whatever might take you 1 minute to complete. It helps you think through it and focus, and helps to even finding what questions you need to ask someone. Then it might feel phony but try to give yourself a “good job” to yourself every time you mark a microtask complete, it helps avoid burnout. Even better is if you write down everything you’ve figured out along the way in a document that you can share with your team to help everyone out.
Learn the Pomodoro technique, which is basically 25 minutes of thinking and deliberate 5 minutes break. That way you take a break before your brain gets too tired and helps prevent frustration.
Get some sort of daily exercise so you have a chance to relief stress, something like 30 minutes walk after work is a start. I feel like crap if I don’t exercise for many days.
You can use your left arm and hand ( or whatever is your non dominate hand). Sure it might be slower, but at least it wont hurt. And often your bottle neck is not your typing speed, but how fast you can think. I had to do that for a while when I start having wrist pain. You can get a wrist support too.
Just switch jobs until you end up in one which is low pressure with good coworkers. I have been in two jobs were there is barely any work and being even semi competent makes you a rockstar. Big boring companies with internal software dev are good targets.
You can either change the way you work by setting hard limits for yourself to force wlb (no overtime, no on call, not allowing yourself to be pressured into violating those boundaries)… or you can find a different job/field.
I think this will probably always be an issue for you in software or any field that tracks your tasks as “tickets” with assigned point values, unless you learn how to push back. You’ll always be over extending yourself to complete the number of points that were assigned to you.
I think your issue is two fold – managing stress and anxiety and finding a better job. It could be in programming and you just have to find it, or you could try something else. You have a degree, just find some angle to say why your degree and current exp. will help you in this new path you’re applying to. Have you looked at product owner or project management roles? Just an idea. Best of luck 🤞
I cannot stress this enough but having a sedentary job means you HAVE TO FORCE yourself to exercise. You should try to hit the gym atleast twice a week at minimum and do both cardio/strength training with focus on arms, shoulders, and neck. You will be better mentally and physically from it and I can guarantee you that it will.
Also, switch jobs. No job is worth mental stress. I work a chill job myself.
Sorry to hear about your struggles. I’ve worked in software for over 30 years and have definitely had my share, maybe more than my share, of high stress jobs and situations.
But they are not all like that. Some jobs are actually quite boring. There are jobs where most people don’t work a full day, which is kind of demoralizing in a way but definitely not stressful.
It sounds like you’ve gone from one stressful job to another, my advice is to simply keep looking and find jobs that are not stressful. Large corporations, government contractors and kind of bureaucratic companies tend to be pretty mellow.
How about UX? Or front end?
Get physical therapy and talk to a mental health expert.
Both should be covered by insurance.
Tech is not always a career but the first of many careers. You can always choose something different. In fact, we need.pepple to choose different things as the industry is already too saturated.
Quit and do what you want to do with your life.
Don’t over complicate it.