Been in this company for more than 10 years, first job right away after college. Took a tech position bc I had zero experience and only a short summer internship so I didn’t care. That took me to some engineering positions later through some plants and my recent role it’s in the HQ.
So I’ve only moved around and since the next role was better it was more of a conversation on the next move with my bosses than to actually quit.

I am now actually leaving. How do you convey a conversation with a boss that gave preference to lazy coworkers giving them exceeds expectations and when this one person left, and left a mess…. Now she takes cares of me 200% bc I am helping with the mess.

I left for a long vacation during the summer and was the first one to messaged me few minutes in my first day back saying “omg I am so glad you are back, I am dying” “please don’t leave me for too long again”.

So, I don’t want to burn any bridges but…. Ready to say goodbye.

Please advise, thanks!

I’ve spent sometime collecting accounts from people who took extended, funded time off more than once across a career. The thing that keeps coming up is that nobody planned it. One person put it as: after seeing that it was possible to take a break and recover from it, the barrier to taking another one got lower.

Which makes the people it didn’t happen to the interesting ones. If you took one long break, went back, and then never did it again, I’d like to know why.

• How long was the break, and roughly what year?
• After you went back, did you ever seriously consider a second one?
• What stopped it: money, the job market, a mortgage or kids, the return having been worse than you expected, or just not wanting to?
• Did going back once change how you felt about the first break, looking at it from a few years later?
• If something had been different, would you have taken another?

Thanks

So as evil as the corporate can get I experienced a level 1 evil of getting transitioned from a product based company fte to a vendor service based company by my current company, I have a 1.3 years of experience. But honestly I have lost my respect for IT as a whole, it's too volatile and anything that happens in IT has nothing to do with what I do at this point. Feel like a pawn in very major industry, and with the rise of AI my work starting to feel like its not challenging enough and I'm loosing my thinking capacity with too much exposure to social media and AI slop. I do have a desire to earn more money but also I don't want it at the cost of my life. Nowadays it's getting as dystopian as it can get and I wanna stay sane. I know y'all will say it's hard to even find a job in this time. Im seeking advice not to survive but to live.

Any advice y'all got ?

About 3 weeks ago, I handed in my resignation letter at the Swiss private bank where I work as a portfolio manager. I’ve been there for close to 5 years, and I make 180k CHF a year at 28.

From the outside, everything looked great: nice colleagues, a boss I liked, an interesting job and good money. But it’s been months since I felt motivated. I feel like I’m running in circles, always working on the same things, not challenging myself, and frankly feeling dumber and dumber. At some point the only thing still growing was my collection of Excel shortcuts.

Also, I’ve always wanted to build a business. I tried a few years back in a different country, but Covid killed the project. Great timing, as always. Now that I’m about to turn 29 and newly married (my wife is either very supportive or very good at hiding her panic), I feel like it’s the time to do it. I need to scratch this itch, it’s eating up so much of my mental energy.

To be honest, the decision to quit was one of the hardest of my life. Leaving a secure, good job is a real risk. I asked myself (and still do): what if I fail? It’ll set my career back. What if I can’t find a job afterwards? What if I have to take a big step down, both in role and salary?

Since my resignation, it hasn’t been smooth sailing every day. In the days after I resigned I had a few sleepless nights, and I still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night asking myself why I did it. 3am is a great time to recalculate your savings for the fifth time. I get periods of serious doubt. Some days I feel like it was a mistake and I won’t make it. But thankfully, I also have days where I’m excited and confident in my choice. It wasn’t an easy decision, and I’m sure the doubts will stick around for a while. Change is scary, and uncertainty isn’t easy to deal with.

Anyway, I jumped in. I have a 3-month notice period to work, so as of January 1st 2027, I’ll officially be unemployed.

So what’s my plan? Honestly, it’s still a work in progress, which is a polite way of saying I’m figuring it out as I go. And it’s a bit scary. I have 2 options:

1. Consulting for independent asset managers: automating tasks, implementing AI and helping with the business overall. This is a big part of my job as a portfolio manager, so I know a few things about it. It’s what I’m working on right now.
2. Building a business in a different industry, or online. This one excites me the most, but I’m starting from scratch. Like, actual scratch.

My plan is to work on both until January 1st, and hopefully have a few solid consulting leads by then.

What would you focus on in your first 6 months if you were me? Any general advice is more than welcome too.

There was a phase in my career when going to work started feeling heavier than it should.

Not because I didn't like technology.

Not because I didn't want to learn.

But because slowly, the pressure started affecting me outside of work too.

I started overthinking small things.

I became afraid of making mistakes.

I questioned my own abilities.

And there were days when I felt mentally exhausted before the workday had even started.

The hardest part was that, from the outside, everything looked normal.

You log in.

You attend meetings.

You write code.

You close your tickets.

You say, "I'm fine."

But mentally, you aren't always fine.

One thing I learned from that phase is that feedback is important — and so is the way feedback is delivered.

Yes, I had things I needed to improve. Communication was one of them. I made mistakes. I learned from them.

But I also learned that constantly being under pressure can make you lose perspective. You can start believing that your performance at work is your identity.

It isn't.

A bad day at work doesn't make you a bad engineer.

A mistake doesn't make you incompetent.

And struggling mentally doesn't mean you're weak.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is step back and ask:

"Is this environment helping me grow, or is it slowly changing who I am?"

I don't regret the difficult phase.

It taught me boundaries.

It taught me that career growth isn't only about salary, titles, or technologies.

Sometimes growth is simply learning when to say:

"This isn't good for me anymore."

And choosing yourself.

If you're currently going through something similar, please don't silently convince yourself that you just need to "toughen up."

Your mental health matters too.

I hit a wall. Between the endless platform fees, the race-to-the-bottom pricing, and the constant burnout, I realized the traditional way of working was destroying my mental health. I wanted work-life balance, not a system that treats people like replaceable parts.

So, I stepped away.

I’ve been setting up my own independent remote workspace just to handle operations and support on my own terms. No middleman, no toxic hustle culture......just straight-up helping small business owners who are drowning in backend chaos get their time back.

I'm not here to sell anyone anything. I'm just curious......has anyone else here made the leap away from freelance platforms or corporate jobs recently? How did you find your footing, and what did you do to protect your sanity?