Having dealt with burnout in the past, a mistake I wouldn't make again is immediately quitting. If your company burned you out, they should make you whole again; you shouldn't be paying for therapy out of your own pocket. COBRA is an absolute disaster; if the insurance company ever actually approves you, you eat through your runway too quickly. It's like paying for a second apartment!
How to actually execute this, I'm not completely sure. You don't want to ramp down to the "performance improvement plan" level, because that will just ruin your mental health. If you can ramp down from "strongly exceeds" to "meets expectations" maybe that will help, but if burned out it's probably too late for something like that.
I'm not sure that medical leave is that helpful. I did this once, but was diagnosed with depression when the real problem was that I didn't have a good relationship with my manager. (The straw that broke the camel's back in that case was that I was on vacation the first few days after medical leave, the HR system lost the vacation, and HR started calling my immediate family with the implication that I was presumed dead. Nope, just in Yellowstone without good cell service. I didn't go back to work after that debacle.)
The second time I was burned out, I knew there was no way the company could help me (tiny startup, and the CEO was burning me out), so I just instantly quit. I took about a year off and that was great, I totally recovered. But it was very expensive. It annoys me that companies know they're burning out their employees, and do absolutely nothing to help. So much is lost when people leave. "Take 3 months off" is totally normal if you have a kid, for both parents now; we should do the same for burnout. "I didn't have a kid but I'm going through some shit." leave.
Edit: also, sorry for making this comment about me. I read the entire article and it just frustrates me to no end. You did such a good job making a great spec; the foundation for a better web for billions of people, and the foundation for many interesting startups. All while single-handedly being the glue needed to keep a challenging project making progress. That's truly amazing. Google owes you nothing short of a parade in your honor and a promotion :) Instead, you're left footing the bill to recover from the brain damage caused by continuous stress. I'm so sorry you had to go through this, and thank you for writing this up. It's something we all face in this industry, and speaking up is going to help a lot of people.
It's wild the job can burn you out then externalize the cost of care back to you if you quit. To be clear: even high earners at $BigCo benefit from universal health care.
Yeah I think quitting early is a mistake, you want to figure out a way to ramp down for sure. Not certain what the trick is there, and doing it wrong can probably make stress worse.
At one past employer where crunch was a problem, some of the leads had an unofficial policy that after launch everyone could just quietly show up to work and not do anything for a few weeks to decompress. It helped a lot, but it kind of made me wonder why everyone was pretending there wasn't a problem.
How to actually execute this, I'm not completely sure. You don't want to ramp down to the "performance improvement plan" level, because that will just ruin your mental health. If you can ramp down from "strongly exceeds" to "meets expectations" maybe that will help, but if burned out it's probably too late for something like that.
I'm not sure that medical leave is that helpful. I did this once, but was diagnosed with depression when the real problem was that I didn't have a good relationship with my manager. (The straw that broke the camel's back in that case was that I was on vacation the first few days after medical leave, the HR system lost the vacation, and HR started calling my immediate family with the implication that I was presumed dead. Nope, just in Yellowstone without good cell service. I didn't go back to work after that debacle.)
The second time I was burned out, I knew there was no way the company could help me (tiny startup, and the CEO was burning me out), so I just instantly quit. I took about a year off and that was great, I totally recovered. But it was very expensive. It annoys me that companies know they're burning out their employees, and do absolutely nothing to help. So much is lost when people leave. "Take 3 months off" is totally normal if you have a kid, for both parents now; we should do the same for burnout. "I didn't have a kid but I'm going through some shit." leave.
Edit: also, sorry for making this comment about me. I read the entire article and it just frustrates me to no end. You did such a good job making a great spec; the foundation for a better web for billions of people, and the foundation for many interesting startups. All while single-handedly being the glue needed to keep a challenging project making progress. That's truly amazing. Google owes you nothing short of a parade in your honor and a promotion :) Instead, you're left footing the bill to recover from the brain damage caused by continuous stress. I'm so sorry you had to go through this, and thank you for writing this up. It's something we all face in this industry, and speaking up is going to help a lot of people.