while simultaneously losing my mind

Software Engineer

while simultaneously losing my mind- Grapevine

Want to get some perspective here because I think it’d be valuable to hear about other people’s experiences.
This job at Google has completely destroyed my confidence and I feel so paranoid about shipping anything now.
I have made some mistakes but I have always caught them in staging or working drafts.

Here is what my manager has said to me:
- I lack attention to detail.
- I do not have drive.
- I do not have any ambition.

And the reason I have been told this is because:
I messed up a flow that the Lead PM had come up with in the first place. Then the Lead PM flips back on me and says that it would be "an embarrassment" to ship this.

I find myself immersed in a constant cycle of spending hours each day reviewing work, gripped by the fear of facing criticism or even the prospect of being fired. Despite investing significant time and effort, it seems that the only feedback I receive is overwhelmingly negative. It has reached a point where I question myself and wonder if I should have not been here at all. This toxic work environment is undeniably draining, and I'm left grappling with insane anxiety. Has anyone else faced this?

Am I bad at My Job Or Do I Just Work With Unstable Coworkers?

Product Manager

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Hi Guys, I'm an SDE and I have this weird problem where I stress too much when some work is given to me which I don't understand.

Basically I'm not scared of high workload, as long as I know how to do it. Because then I know IT WILL BE DONE, I just have to work to finish it.

But when I get stuck on a problem, I DONT KNOW IF IT WILL BE DONE, I just keep thinking about it even if I close my laptop. The more I think, the more scary the problem becomes and then I start thinking if it continues and I'm not able to deliver more work, I might get fired and then during background verification for the next company, they will see I was fired and then no one will hire me. Basically my thoughts spiral out of control and make my life miserable to the point where I don't feel hungry.

If I'm confident I'm very confident, I feel like i can do any problem but when I see myself failing multiple times, i lose my mental strength

I need help and I want to improve this nature, not get stressed when things go south. Do you guys feel the same or know how to handle it

Any books or words of wisdom or thought process that you follow which helps you deal with job related work stress will be extremely helpful.

Strange work anxiety

My mind😥

Wasting time
Feeling acting weak
Not enough productivity

Even if actions
Not enough output on competitive level
Losing every single day

A turning point
Where the shell broke
A greater being was achieved
For he knew
The actions were the same always
It was himself that he changed

I have lost everything till now
And I am the only one who can get everything back from the shadows
But how
How to work 20 hours of work in 10 hours
How to  work despite being slow, sleepy, low health
How to achieve even after facing a mountain


Everyone are the best around
It was I who was the weak
For the regret was not the action
The regret was the shell not broken

The turning point of a life.

At the risk of sounding weak, this has become more and more rampant with me.

It feels as if I am living someone's elses life.

Somedays I just feel like living a life thats pointless. These are the days when I feel very prone to these emotional impulses of sudden "lonlinesss" (despite having few of the most amazing people in my life) or "emptiness" or "anti-gratitude/self-destruction". So much mental lethargy behing these useless chain of thoughts.

Am I the only one? Have I lost it? Am I sensitive? Is it a bad thing? Am I overworked? Am I too critical about my thoughts? 

Man this is so confounding.

How to control sudden outbursts of emotional anxiety ?

Data engineer

I’m a very private person and I was a bit confused whether I should write here or not, but anyway.

So, day before yesterday I was sitting on my chair after dinner and was thinking about my life and what the hell am I doing.

I realised that,
Saala bachpan se aaj tak race me hi bhaag raha hun. Pehle school me 1st, 2nd, 3rd aane ki race me. Then acche college milne ki race me. Then uske baad acchi job milne ki race me. Then uske baad agar ladki chahiye toh uske liye bhi ek race hai (Don’t have a gf, plz don’t take me wrong, it was a realisation)

My current daily routine is like this:
Wakeup everyday, write code, go gym, dinner, and then sleep and repeat this cycle everyday.

School ke dost peeche chhoot gaye, college ke dost apni life me busy ho gaye, colleagues se main zyada baat nhi karta and main akela padh gaya.

Feels like life is not intriguing anymore, it has no spark left. Its so painful to live everyday.

I feel like I don’t want to live any more, I want to die but I can’t cuz of 2 reasons.
1. I’m the only son of my parents.
2. If I die like this, then I won’t be able to come out from the birth cycle.

That’s it
🙏🏼

This week’s introspection

Software Developer

I turned 30 last month and I still feel i am a 20 year old. I lost the last 4 years of my life working from home and have started to go to office recently. I never worked together in a team, never been out for team lunches/dinners, never presented my work to the seniors/leadership. I have 4.5 years experience on the paper and my interaction with colleagues in person has been almost zero .

I don’t know how to do my taxes, can’t do basic servicing of my bike, extremely indiscipline’s, rarely track my expenses, can’t say ‘No’, haven’t upskill we and hence stuck in TCS, can’t stick to a hobby or interest, pathetic in managing my time, have no sense of punctuality, socially awakened, overweight with a pot belly and hence have confidence issues, can’t take care of myself in terms of self grooming, couldn’t maintain friendships as I used  to get offended when someone made fun of me or mocked me- my inflated ego is just useless. 

I can’t control my emotions, I sometimes get emotional and have tears in my eyes, I show emotions easily on my face, not smart when it comes to dealing with others, don’t know how much to talk to whom, whom to talk to, how to talk to and when to talk.

I’ve been told I’m pessimistic and highly negative about myself but I’m just saying things the way it is.
I have no responsibilities on life. I’ll be getting married the next year and I know I can take up the responsibility. But I still have the fear of putting my fiancé down. I love her a lot and I never even  would do anything to put her down.

My bad time management skills, inability to focus, getting distracted badly, being a slow learner, not networking, not having idea on making switches regularly, being too lazy and impatient to learn new things, not being updated in terms of on demand skills, tools , technologies, reluctance to learn something new and hence staying in comfort zone has screwed up my career.

I feel stuck and lost in life.
I honestly don’t know what to do.

Being a man child at the age of 30

Product Designer

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

I earn a decent living ~32LPA as a Software Engineer. I really enjoy my work and it is always a joy working with smart people around you. 

I sometimes wonder if I didn't exist would it matter in the world. At work, I come up with great ideas and insights which my peers appreciate and support, but there hasn't been one thing that they took seriously and moved ahead with. 

My peers around me constantly belittle me, some unprofessional jokes about my competence and intellect, even though I am actually good at what I do and more. 

The backhanded compliments and sarcastic replies in front of other people in my company makes me sad beyond belief. It is almost like I give so much of time to this company and although everyone cares about the work I do but no one cares about me. 

My colleagues constantly try to one-up themselves by bullying juniors and laughing in their glass-walled conference walls. 

Incidents like these make me want to give up on work. I think the mix of giving all of myself at work(intensity and long hours), constant berating on my competence and the time I spend away from my family and "real" friends(not these fake work colleagues) makes me depressed as fuck. 

I am now understanding that you can never be happy in life because you can never have all that you want. You will give up something for the other. You think making more money will make you happier but you will just end up losing your sanity.

You can never be happy

Data scientist

The obsession I regret the most in my life is the all or nothing behavior.

Where, 
- I'll apply for a job only after knowing everything there is to know for a role.  This is why I used to see people with half my knowledge applying and getting jobs and moving ahead in life. I used think it's so unfair that they achieve in all aspects of their life and I in none...
- I'll date someone only when I know I am the perfect version that I envision for myself 
- I'll only take photos when I am in my perfect shape. If I don't have 8 abs, I don't deserve photos!
- I'll stop questioning whether I am good enough only when I achieve everything else I am a loser

I just was very cruel to myself for my own imperfections!
This instilled a fear in me that shattered my spirit, self confidence and self worth.  I ended up being afraid to pick anything up. 

If I couldn't stay course in something and for some reason I wasn't able to do something for a day or 2, my perfectionism mindset said, that's it, I am a failure and I thought, nothing can be done now and gave up

This resulted in I procrastinating in things. 
Why to work hard, I am never gonna make it...
I have 100 things to do in life else I am failure but I don't have time to do all that in this lifetime. Perfectionism results in not doing anything!

After meeting people, self introspection and podcasts from people, I realised its okay to mess up, its okay to fall down. I should dust myself off and continue! 
It is so hard now to change yourself after years of disappointment. You need so much positivity and letting go of perfectionism. You need self love and kindness... 

TLDR -
Don't be like an OCD person obsessing over things to go exactly the way they want!
Don't reject yourself due to failures/setbacks. Dust yourself off and move ahead!
It's okay to be imperfect as long as you promise to be consistent!

[Controversial Opinion] Don't chase perfectionism chase consistency. Period!

Consultant

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

I have been an introvert all my childhood, pretty shy, with a very small group of friends, and I thought I was the only one who felt lonely sometimes. Since joining college, I realised there are so manyyyy people out there(especially in the dev community) who feel lonely a lot of times. 
I wanna build an app to connect devs. Relationships are what makes our lives fulfilling right. I have the whole idea ready in my mind, and I talked to a couple peeps about my app idea too and they loved it

I wanna cure loneliness

Welcome to Product Managers's Private Community

Hey all,

I am a recent MBA passout from one of the top 6 IIMs. After working for an year at a big ecommerce company, I wanted to work on more challenging problems and joined a startup at ideation stage as a PM. Its been a couple of months and now I’m not fully sure about the direction this startup is going towards. It will be a few more months before we exhaust funds and I doubt we will be able to raise more funds. Because of these thoughts, I’m unable to focus on current work as well and feeling anxious all the time. 

Any suggestions on what I can do?

Not sure what to do

Welcome to Confessions's Private Community

I always think of studying or building that one project over the weekend or complete that one chore which is pending from past 2 years!
But fail everytime, I don't even move on weekends i don't like going anywhere I don't even like house full of people I just want quite time in weekends but unfortunately don't get it so I feel like I have not relaxed properly and this makes me think I deserve to be lazy all because of this have not studied from a long time so much so that I am almost back to being a noob on my skills its so freakin heart breaking where I have landed myself and I repeatedly do this every week! I can't even focus on one thing. Even if I quit social media and get serious it's just for 2-3 days max after that I am back to the procrastination den.

Please guide, seriously need advice and steps that can be helpful to overcome this.

Need advice on procrastination. Please pitch in.

Welcome to Business Roles's Private Community

I have a total of about 7 years of work experience, 2 years before MBA and 5 years after. The chunk of my experience is with an ecommerce startup. I've had at least three different role changes here and 10+ manager changes. I've worked my ass off in every role but with a constant feeling that it wasn't enough. I suspect a part of this is the imposters syndrome and the other part is the hustle culture that the company promotes. You're expected to be always on the go and irrespective of the pace you're at, it's never enough. 

I have been with this company for over 4 years and my ESOPs are 100% vested. I have been sitting on this very strong need of wanting to move on from here. The constant uncertainty + the layoffs I've seen is an added motivation. The company is changing its strategy every quarter and no one seems to know what they're doing. At this point people are only working for the optics and because losing a job in this market could mean months of unemployment. I want to move out but feel confused about what my skill set is. In a startup you end up doing just about everything. You become a generalist and that's making me feel like I lack depth. I'm low on confidence, the job market is unforgiving and I feel absolutely stuck right now. I'm unrepaid compared to my peers and that's a constant thought in my head. I'm currently unmarried with no dependents so the money is not an issue from sufficiency pov, it's more about being paid per the market standards. 

I'm not sure how to get out of this limbo and it's eating at me every second.

Confused and exhausted

Growth and strategy

How do you guys sophisticatedly explain to team and and your manager in standup that yesterday you did nothing ?

Hate standups

I don't know if this post would make sense, but does anyone ever wish they were less? Less competent, less "bright", less "smart"? I'm not being braggy but I am pretty smart (not book smart but smart smart) and while objectively I am doing pretty good, I just constantly feel like I'm not living up to my fullest potential!

Should I be on the lookout for a better job (the present one is fine) or preparing to study more or, I don't know, to scale and scale? It feels like everyone has such high expectations of me and I hate making mistakes, even if it is a typo in a document

The anxiety that I'll never live up to my potential becomes so crippling, it becomes counter productive and like Dr. Strange, I forseen like a 100 different possible outcomes of every decision because I can't seem to turn my brain off! Ignorance is bliss and I so wish I could be ignorant

Does anyone ever wish they were... Less?

Lawyer

For the last 2 months I have been trying to go to the gym and take care of my health but every week something or the other comes up and I'm working more than 14+ hrs sometimes. 12 hrs is average.


Every time something is going on in my mind around my work or performance or layoffs and a lot of things.  

I'm frustrated. Can somebody tell me what should be the best way to handle this?

Because of this I have high anxiety and also not getting proper time for personal life. 

I also feel a lot demotivated sometimes , thinking that why I'm working till 2am and for what?

Frustrated and Stressed: Mind Fog

These past 6 months my performance at work has been dwindling and one primary reason I attribute is memory loss. I find it difficult to recall key points of mails, design reviews, MoMs etc. and often end up missing out things at assigned tasks. What's scarier is that it not only applies to new concepts, I often find myself forgetting even formerly familiar things. During morning updates and discussions I find myself giving uncertain inputs and asking shaky questions because I find it hard to remember key terms, figures etc. I sometimes even forget to pick up some assigned tasks altogether. Random brain freezes have become everyday affair.
.
Sleep-wise it has been little medium-poor but not so bad that could explain such drastic changes. I'm 30 yr old, male, unmarried and don't have any major health issues (except some stress / anxiety and accompanying Irritable Bowel Syndrome condition).
.
If anyone else experienced this, how have you dealt with it?

while simultaneously losing my mind

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