I made a decision to quit due to extreme burntout, depression, and retracted the resignation notice due to anxiety about unemployment /u/Orbitron023 CSCQ protests reddit

Thanks a lot for reading btw, I’m not seeking for any specific advice. I’m just a bit lost and don’t know how to make of all this

I graduated about 3 years ago and immediately found a job in a multinational corporation. I guess I got lucky with the job search, they’re not in the software industry but rather in automotive. It was my first job out of university.

I didn’t stay in one role for 3 years though. I was DevOps for about 1.5 years, got promoted to senior, then moved to data engineering for 1.5 years. The second role, I had to deal with a product owner who had zero clue how to manage the whole show and didn’t even understand the tech side that well. The team wasn’t even set up right, so lots of times I was a one-man show. There were lots of conflicts and lots of stress. This led to a period of me having physical panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, my right eye was twitching like crazy at work and I couldn’t concentrate. I was depressed during my uni years, but this time it got amplified. It was horrible. On the flip side, I managed to modernize the project’s ETL infrastructure using apache flink, did my own data modeling, built some pandas internal apps, worked with Databricks Spark, kubernete management, some good MLOps experience… I learned a lot from that experience, so something good I guess.

So around a few weeks ago right after new years, I thought to myself “Fck it, I’ll quit. I have to save myself. I know I don’t have anything lined up yet, but I can make it. I’ve outgrown this role anyway ” Wrote my resignation, sent it, things went smooth. Perhaps the stress impaired my judgment at the time.

Thought that was it, yeah it’s over, I can focus on myself now. But then the anxiety hit – all the sudden realizations came crashing down hard. “Oh god, what the fck have I done? I didn’t have anything lined up, I’ve been applying for DE roles for 3 months and got nothing but rejections, they’re all looking for 3+ years senior. I know people who are unemployed right now after 6+ months. I didn’t even have time to train up my LeetCode, STAR interviews, review system design, etc… I’m going to be unemployed how am I going to pay for XYZ? Unemployment Gap ? It’s so dumb, I should have kept the job and focused on LeetCoding and interviewing on the side.”

The feeling, it’s like being trapped in a cage with lions around you , constant fight or flight, self-doubting. I spent a whole week battling with myself. Questioning every decision I could think of

Then… I retracted it, management was surprisingly understanding with this one, but I had to promise some long term 1 year plan, and next time I resign, I’m out for good, no coming back. I just don’t know if I made the right choice. I couldn’t figure out and still don’t know what move is good at this point, there’s no good move. Maybe I got a chance to rotate to other less crazy projects, since quitting put me out of that horrible one man show, maybe a chance to work on more interesting stack, but I’m worrying about overstaying at my first job and losing my edge. 4+ years at one company ? I’d exchange growth for money security and the same bs. God I made a big mess for everyone, kind of ashamed of myself. I couldn’t even job hop right. I really want to expand further into different data domains, learn enough so I can have good knowledge to eventually transition to ML engineering. That’s the goal. DE is just a stepping stone. Everything is a bit far-fetched at this point, the market, my life, the stress. I’m just having a really hard time

Thanks a lot for reading btw, I’m not seeking for any specific advice. I’m just a bit lost and don’t know how to make of all this

I graduated about 3 years ago and immediately found a job in a multinational corporation. I guess I got lucky with the job search, they’re not in the software industry but rather in automotive. It was my first job out of university.

I didn’t stay in one role for 3 years though. I was DevOps for about 1.5 years, got promoted to senior, then moved to data engineering for 1.5 years. The second role, I had to deal with a product owner who had zero clue how to manage the whole show and didn’t even understand the tech side that well. The team wasn’t even set up right, so lots of times I was a one-man show. There were lots of conflicts and lots of stress. This led to a period of me having physical panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, my right eye was twitching like crazy at work and I couldn’t concentrate. I was depressed during my uni years, but this time it got amplified. It was horrible. On the flip side, I managed to modernize the project’s ETL infrastructure using apache flink, did my own data modeling, built some pandas internal apps, worked with Databricks Spark, kubernete management, some good MLOps experience… I learned a lot from that experience, so something good I guess.

So around a few weeks ago right after new years, I thought to myself “Fck it, I’ll quit. I have to save myself. I know I don’t have anything lined up yet, but I can make it. I’ve outgrown this role anyway ” Wrote my resignation, sent it, things went smooth. Perhaps the stress impaired my judgment at the time.

Thought that was it, yeah it’s over, I can focus on myself now. But then the anxiety hit – all the sudden realizations came crashing down hard. “Oh god, what the fck have I done? I didn’t have anything lined up, I’ve been applying for DE roles for 3 months and got nothing but rejections, they’re all looking for 3+ years senior. I know people who are unemployed right now after 6+ months. I didn’t even have time to train up my LeetCode, STAR interviews, review system design, etc… I’m going to be unemployed how am I going to pay for XYZ? Unemployment Gap ? It’s so dumb, I should have kept the job and focused on LeetCoding and interviewing on the side.”

The feeling, it’s like being trapped in a cage with lions around you , constant fight or flight, self-doubting. I spent a whole week battling with myself. Questioning every decision I could think of

Then… I retracted it, management was surprisingly understanding with this one, but I had to promise some long term 1 year plan, and next time I resign, I’m out for good, no coming back. I just don’t know if I made the right choice. I couldn’t figure out and still don’t know what move is good at this point, there’s no good move. Maybe I got a chance to rotate to other less crazy projects, since quitting put me out of that horrible one man show, maybe a chance to work on more interesting stack, but I’m worrying about overstaying at my first job and losing my edge. 4+ years at one company ? I’d exchange growth for money security and the same bs. God I made a big mess for everyone, kind of ashamed of myself. I couldn’t even job hop right. I really want to expand further into different data domains, learn enough so I can have good knowledge to eventually transition to ML engineering. That’s the goal. DE is just a stepping stone. Everything is a bit far-fetched at this point, the market, my life, the stress. I’m just having a really hard time