Ask HN: How do you survive a job you hate which is slowly making you sick?

Never take your primary source of personal worth from a job. Get out of that mindset as soon as you can. In most companies like that you’re fungible in a moment’s notice even if they tell you they value you. As for non delivery, everything we build loses money because it’s built on a guess and doesn’t work properly because it’s designed and built by idiots. Do not listen to the people here doing 90 hour weeks on a startup. That’s insane. I manage about 6 hours a week :)

What they do provide you with is income. Save money so you can afford to lose a job first. Security helps. Find meaning outside work with that income. That is your purpose. And it probably shouldn’t be another let’s just do a side project at home and do another day of work. It should be social in some way.

I would just treat the job as a source of paycheck while looking for something better. There are lots of people working jobs like that in slow-moving organizations, most simply don't care as long as they are paid. It's best to find meaning to life from somewhere outside work, such as hobbies.

Coming from Finland, the #1 in EU unemployment rate, I've slowly learned to be happy of the fact I have a job at all.

If the company pays to do a project where nothing happens for six months and it keeps paying, they are probably okay with a result, otherwise they would listen to your constructive proposals on how to improve the process. Or fired you. Do they say they like what you do there or not? It's important to have a perspective here.

There are two ways to deal with it -- one is reframing it. Sure, it's not the most exciting project, but doing the boring stuff and being persistent at that is a challenge of it's own. Challenge doesn't have to be technical, especially for the product owner.

Second is to give it less time and space in your mind. Physically not being in the same environment, closing the laptop, taking a lunch break and taking a walk. You are not supposed to care about something more than the company owner and your boss anyway, unless you have a direct financial incentive tied to results of the project (which in Sweden your probably not have).

While you give less time and space to the annoying part of the job, find something that displaces it. Vibecode an open source project, learn Arabic, Japanese or whatever, go skuba diving on vacation, do some serious gaming or religion. Something bigger than work.

In fact, the team needs to lead the modernisation effort. It needs updating before the rest of the system can be.

From your explanation it sounds like you expected to find a modern and skilled team maintaining a legacy project. That is not at all so frequent. If the project is legacy, most often is because the team also is outdated.

So, obviously you can just switch jobs. And if you're getting sick from it, then you should by all means leave this job.

But then again, if what you actually want is to make this job work, then my suggestion is to:

1. Get the whole team together and evaluate their situation. Make a list of the skills the team is lacking and the knowledge updates needed. Make them participate in this so that, at the same time, you can evaluate their attitude towards the whole thing.

1.a. If the team does not want to update, then there's no successful path and I would suggest leaving.

1.b. If the team is receptive, then go ahead.

2. Meet with whoever needs to authorise it and get them to commit to providing both time and resources for re-training the team. You will need a plan, a timeline, and achievable goals.

3. Start as soon as you can. Focus first on basic infrastructure. Any tools, processes, skills, that are generic and widely applicable. Then go for more specific ones directly related to the project's technologies.

The team may need some rearranging too, but try to keep this at minimum so that they can be confident that all of this is strictly related to a technology and skill update, and will not imply any sort of job insecurity or competition.

You may have noticed that all of this is mostly people management. If this is not something you'd like to do, then the only option is leaving. The job you're in right now is clearly one of people managing and not so much a technological one -though is still requires knowing and choosing the technological goals to seek, obviously-.

If you do follow, then who knows what will happen. But if things go well, you might expect to see some results in around 6 months or so, depending on how large/small the team and project are.

Leave before burning out. In the meantime, maybe take sick leaves if you can.

Consider many people don't notice they are burning out as well.

Leaving even if you don't yet have another plan could lead to a better outcome even considering that leaving your job creates financial difficulties right now because burnouts can take years to heal, some never manage to fully heal as well.

What to do:

a) First and foremost: make finding your next opportunity your full-time job, above and beyond your present full-time job. And take the time to build your professional footprint for your next opportunity too. Let me explain: do you have an online portfolio of your work? If no, start one right now, and maintain it forever. Do you have a blog where you talk about your market/industry/profession; which existing tools are best of breed, which ones can be improved, and which ones are missing? How AI is affecting your market/industry/profession? Publish white papers and case studies. How's your GitHub?

b) Secondly use this opportunity as a training ground for Life. This is Life at its finest, what will make the difference will be your reactions and responses to these events. Read about the ancient Stoics (Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Cicero), Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Machiavelli (very misunderstood), Jung. Make this the most consequential job of your Life.

c) Related to b) above, tweak your language paying special attention to the language you use. Just from your title, "Survive" and "hate" are problematic words. Read Shane Parrish's works.

I am not saying that it's easy, quite the opposite. Think of this job as a short-term problem and you are building a long-term solution that will take care of this and much more. In order to be successful, you will need to change your worldviews, your belief systems, and imprints.

I wish you a lot more then dumb luck.

Concrete things that helped me:

- Prioritize savings if you haven’t already. Do everything you can to have a cash cushion. Not having a cushion will multiply all other stresses.

- Work your contacts and network, If you don’t have one, start building one. You may be surprised even faint acquaintances can help

- Prioritize self-care. Exercise, eat healthy, don’t fall into alcohol or drug traps. And if you do fall into them, forgive yourself and try again

- De-stress your current job to the extent you are able

- Take time out in your day to do something you perceive as positive

This probably sounds trite and easy, but when you’re in the thick of it it can be very hard. Get the body and savings account in shape, the mind will have a better foundation to heal.

The only way to cope is to only deliver the minimum, and not care too much about it. This is risky as there is a chance that the minimum delivery and no care attitude could filter into other areas of your life.

Luckily for me, I was able to find a job soon after.

* getting buy-in from stakeholders, developers, and testers

* dealing with low performers

* protecting yourself from backstabbing attempts

* deflecting the barrage of scattered requests coming from the top brass

* appeasing customers angered by actions that someone else took

* reacting to big shifts from other parts of the organization

etc etc.

That sort of thing worn me down so much, I had to move sideways to regain some self-respect. Even though I was eventually vindicated by most of the calls I made (which someone else shipped and got credit for, another frustration of the job), I just accepted I am currently not in the right headspace to be a PM/PO in a big company.

So my only suggestion is to keep looking for another job, or even better create your own: with AI getting incredibly good, there has never been a better time for PMs to build their own prototypes, which can then be used to hunt for the job you really want. Otherwise, take the Serenity Prayer to heart and find more meaning away from the job.

What saved me (in no particular order)

1. Sport. I felt I was “burning” my stress and anxiety by doing 1h of sport a day, in nature.

2. Therapy

3. Family and friends, quality time

4. Find another job

5. Stop social media

6. Fixed sleep schedule

No job is worth your health.

Most of the work I have done will be thrown away after 5-10 years (I have written some really nicely optimised software, that worked perfectly and companies have just thrown it in the bin because of management doesn't appreciate this). So I've given up caring.

My diagnosis is that you care too much. The enterprise IT space is kabuki theatre.

So what if it takes 6 months to accomplish what should take 2 weeks? Explain to the customers that their needs are so special and particular that it takes your highly trained and experienced staff 8 months to accomplish the high quality results that you demand. Every line of code is carefully written and rechecked, etc. No AI slop is allowed anywhere near your exacting group. You are delivering Saab fighter jet plane quality software, not some cheap and nasty jeep software from Cuba.

Of course, the real challenge is to say stuff like that with a straight face. If necessary, take improv acting lessons. After all it is all an absurdist theatre production.

... and keep sending out resumes, etc.

No job is worth jeopardising your mental health.

Is there a tech/team lead on the project - what’s their opinion of the progress the team is making?

It sounds like you are taking all the delivery responsibility on your own shoulders.

Is this project really top priority with your management? It sounds like it might not be.

I feel like there are a lot of people nowadays that are just pretending to be devs and ship things to prod using LLMs

So the clients wanted me to do one thing (run operations), my supervisors wanted me to focus less on technical contributions and more on administration and leadership, the PM wanted me to be a junior developer. The PM knew I was a supervisor as nd knew of the client expectations and still wanted me to do something else. He even thought he was my supervisor even though my bosses were meeting with him every two weeks and told him the reality. The dude lied to the clients and withheld client communications until I was fired. I think he is autistic because he perceptions of reality were frequently wrong, his only management style was hazing people, and he confused lots of things between various people and work assignments.

I really miss my team because they were awesome people and I kind of miss the income. I really loathed that I was leaving my people behind in such a toxic environment. I was super relieved to not have to do that job anymore though. I had been considering walking away from it two months prior to termination.

Also, being told to sell a modernization roadmap to customers while the team can't actually ship it isn't really a you problem. That's just a bad setup.

I'm in Slovakia but have a bit of a Swedish connection myself - studied there, speak alright Swedish, even made it to the last round for a PM job in Skövde once (didn't get it). Market's rough right now but your CV sounds solid, that'll turn.

Hope you find something better soon. Lycka till!

Some people don't even want to work at all or work in a successful product or whatever. We created all those silly expectations for ourselves, often they aren't even our expectations but the expectations of others.

Those expectations, our desires often make us very miserable.

For instance, 90%+ of the people in the world would dream of living in Sweden, despite your bad outlook of the job market. It's all about perspective.

Of course, if you can afford, pay a psychologist. They may help you better to deal with your emotions and help you find out what you need.

Maybe try building something... if you want, hit me up, see my profile. But maybe first try to chill down and enjoy life a bit.

I was laid off from a very well paying job and to support my family I had to take up a worse paying job with similar problems to the one you described.

Yes. Ive had dark thoughts sometimes. I dont know the answer. It helps to distance oneself and treat the dark thoughts passively, as in if I wasnt in this situation these ideas would not be coming to me, or something like - these are just thoughts and I acknowledge them and let them pass.

Few of my friends did not have good results with medication.

I am also detached from my job, its only purpose is to make enough money to no longer need doing the job. Today I work to live and see tomorrow and the same thing tomorrow again.

I suggest talking to someone elder and with a more positive outlook on life, not from work. Preferably retired.

In summation- You are not your job friend. Not should it give meaning to your life. Live to fight another day. It helps to detach oneself.

You outlined the root cause: “our development team simply does not have experience with building, testing, shipping, and maintaining APIs, which has made my job as a PO/PM considerably more difficult.”

Do you have any authority or influence to change this, either through training, bringing in consultants (be very careful with this one), or worst case via hiring/firing?

It can also take steadfastly trying dozens+ of antidepressants to find one that works best with least side-effects. Don't have anything important to do when changing medications because some side-effects are difficult. It can take around days to a week to stabilize to titrate on and about the same off, depending on the medication.

I don’t understand why you haven’t just let an AI agent do all the tasks your incompetent coworkers take months to do.

This needs addressing sooner rather than later, either by fixing the problem(s), managing to care less, or getting out of dodge. It sounds like you want option 3 but are having trouble finding somewhere to go to.

For fixing the problem: make sure that you definitely understand the problem. This sounds odd (surely you know what is going on in your own head?) but it is often difficult to see the rotten needle of wood amongst the treestack. Are there other problems with the job, and this is the final straw or the squeaky wheel?

> the slow and low quality outputs

> it may be that the only way to fix is to address the inputs

Yes, you may be looking too much at the symptoms of the problem - the slow and low quality outputs, and the only way to fix those is likely to be to address the inputs by taking time out to try to retrain the team for the working patterns needed. That will mean more delay short term, because that training/practice will impact on time available for work, but could pay dividends in the medium/long term. It is worth a shot pushing that option while you are still unable to find work elsewhere: if you can't find the job/team you want, then try to mould this job/team into something better! If either the team or the management above you resist this, then there might be little you can do, but it does seem to be the way forward for the company (if they can't accept that then the company may fail, and you'll no longer have the stay/go decision to make - if management resist then make it clear that you see this as the risk of inaction).

If you can't fix it, and can't find better work elsewhere, then you might have to think about a drastic move to something else entirely, at least temporarily. This may well entail a pay/benefits cut though, so not something you can do unless quite financially secure. Very drastic, but you only have one mental health, and it can be very difficult to repair if things go to far. Your mind isn't a server that you can just pave and restore from backups!

What other people say about “trying to care less” is correct, especially trying to stop thinking about it in your personal time, but if you are anything like me then not caring feels wrong so it is very hard to turn that off (or down much).

Reference: I was suffering burn-out a couple of years ago due to a mix of work issues, personal responsibilities/stresses (ill parents, nearly lost both of them, have essentially lost one due to dementia, a lost cat (lymphoma, poor lass), and so forth), and my own mental issues (I'm “more than a tad bipolar”). Dropping to a four-day week has helped a lot, giving me more time to sort my self out or just to relax, and I've been doing that for two years. It turns out though (this is my personal “wood hidden by the trees” thing) is that I don't cope well with remote working long term, being alone with my own thoughts and no other real company (the cats help if I'm working from home, but I can't talk to them about work matters!) is not good for me. Mid/late 2020 is when I really started going down hill (though I didn't quite see it at the time). Even now I'm in the office four days a week and so are some other people, most of the people I'm working more directly with usually aren't, so I'm still effectively remote. I was starting to get a proper handle on all this when AI hoved into view, and I really don't want that for a list of reasons to long to rant about here. At some point very soon the combination of not getting on with remote and not wanting to get on with AI doing my job are going to be too much and I'll go. I'm lucky though: mortgage paid, no partner nor kids, some savings - which means I can afford to take the cut needed to just go when I need to. Heck, I might end up waiting tables or being a hospital porter, there isn't a lot that I'm qualified for that isn't going to be both remote and increasingly steeped in AI… The thought that I can do that is actually helping with the current situation, reducing the feeling that I need to do that, so keeping muddling on, doing the job while I can and putting the money safely away, is more palatable, giving me more time to research future options (or see if the balance changes much when the big AI firms start trying to recoup all that investment (https://isaiprofitable.com/) and AI-driven work looks less inexpensive).