Hi everyone,
Long time lurker but just felt compelled to join and contribute what I can to this thread.
I lived through exactly what you're going through as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. I literally worked repeated 100 hour weeks, not less than 70 EVER and I probably averaged 75-80. I worked some 40 hour "days" (e.g. 6a.m. Friday to 9 PM Saturday without sleep) and had exactly TWO days off in two years, (two Christmases). I am not exaggerating. My 20 something "boss" had pretty much what you'd expect in terms of reality testing, scheduling, interpersonal relationship skills etc etc. I was the least technically experienced, they dumped on me the most technically demanding and uncertain part of the product and I delivered. At one point, the CEO and CTO had put the company's first VC round at risk by buying new computers the Friday before the Monday demonstration and nothing worked anymore and they didn't know why. They went home Friday and I stayed, effectively saving the company from near certain oblivion- what words are you going to speak to VCs to get around the fact your program can't be run? Worst of all, the CTO and CEO knew each other and were friends and essentially treated me like the son of a lesser god.
At one point I was standing in the empty office yet another Sunday and I picked up a stapler and hurtled it into the wall as hard as I could and screamed at the top of my lungs. I was more or less eating myself live with stress hormones and all for so little money it wasn't even legal to pay me that amount.
I have absolutely lived what you're going through. What you're in has a name- it's called the golden handcuffs. The motivation is so high that you'll just about gnaw your own leg off before you quit. What you're working for is called "fuck you money", that is, an amount of money sufficient to let you say "fuck you" to anyone or any job for any reason for the rest of your life. You can do what you want, do your own start up, work, not work, invest in others' work, whatever. No one can hurt you again. I was vesting- never mind options- to 20,000 shares a month.
Here is my advice. First what's at risk is your ability - never mind "willingness" to continue to work at all. Burn out is a very very real thing ; I am *quite* sure it has biological underpinnings that can't just be willed away. You can't permit yourself to go into burn out, whatever you decide to do, because nothing but a long time away from work- not an option for you- can cure it.
OK, so, first even having the opportunity to have the opportunity to not have to work again is a rare thing. Since you're at the point at which you're considering walking away from this rare thing, why not do something just short of that- stop caring in the way you do. The fact that you're so stressed out means you're a conscientious personality. You take it all to heart and would not consider slacking or not really caring at anything you're assigned. This has to stop. It's actually where your stress is coming from. It's the unconscious terror that work is not going to get done, or done right, maybe there's fear it will be your fault, you'll fail, you'll let others down and "it", broadly considered, will all come down - because of you.
Remember, you're willing to walk away, you're thinking about it, so instead of doing that, play a game of sorts, an internal game with your perceptions and attitudes, a game that no one will know you're playing. Let's call this game "Pfffft".
Another late night phone call bringing in another red hot emergency? Pffft. Whatever. Yeah, I'm on my way. Yawn. Yep, you're right, Mr Co-Worker, sure looks like this might be the one, the big bad event that ruins everything, gets me fired, makes me look like an imbecile yadda yadda. It's already a given that the whole thing is going to blow the fuck up, so let's watch this baby blow. Thaaat's right, it IS ALL my fault. And? And? And therefore what exactly?
I am telling you to pre-accept failure, pre-processes it in your imagination and let its consequences fully bloom in your imagination in all their horrific implications, accept them as the most likely outcome , even the certain one, then just get on and "go through the motions" at work. You're already dead, so what do you care? It's like the Eagle's song "Already Gone". You're already gone. You're The Walking Dead. You find your metaphor.
Because the reality is, just you "going through the motions" is likely MORE than sufficient to get the job done and done well. For every single problem you have to deal with take the attitude that THIS is the big one, it's all over now. In that "space" there's peace. There's a willingness to keep trying in a soulless, faithless, half-hearted, sort of way because, pfffft, it's all going to be toastitos in a few hours here anyway. So whatever. So pfffft to the next crisis level of work they somehow think you're going to deliver. Plod plod plod- in your mind- plod plod plod.
You're thinking about leaving, but before you do, at least let that impulse give you space to try and find a place where you just stop caring so much. Your job doesn't require that you care or react or jump or panic, it requires that you apply the special skills you have. You can do that very effectively while being a zombie, you just THINK that the internal drama is the fire you need to power the engine to keep going It's not. You can dead walk through this and if that's just to dark for you then develop a internal dark humor about it, expecting at every moment to be blown the fuck up.
Currently I am dealing with A Hard Problem With No Certainty There's A Solution Maximum FUD built right into it. It's enough to say that finding a solution is mandatory for any kind of success. To make it worse, a part of it involves mastering Other People's Infinitely Crappy Code . It's really just hopeless. I expect as I encounter every new problem, I mean literally every single time I sit down to the computer, that this THIS will be the one I can't solve because, in reality, there is no solution. Sifting through the undocumented spaghetti code is hours and hours pure, totally profitless drudgery. But there is no other way. Other people would quit. Fact. Yesterday in the middle of this I considered that I am essentially acting as (have been reduced to the role of) some kind of archeologist, sifting pebble by pebble, sand grain by fucking sand grain through some vast ruins (of code) that stretches out farther than the eye can see in all directions. So I started singing (work from home, wife was only one present) "I'm an ar-che-ol-o-gist, mostly stuck , always pissed, I'm an ar-che-ol-o-gist wand'ring 'round, lost in mist...Will there be any end to this, don't you wish? Don't you wish ! I'm an ar-che-ol-o-gist ,that is all I am !" on and on like that making it up as I go along.
You can't stay motivated, proud, happy, solving right sized problems one after another , feeling good, in the light. You have t have a demotivated , held in check , curb your enthusiasm, removed, maybe bemused and perhaps cynical place you can retreat to. A self you can be, you can inhabit, that has the power to relieve you of the stress you bring by trying to be bright ! and good ! and effective! and agreeable ! and just a super achiever!!!!! yet STILL lets you trudge onwards, even though it's all an absurdist comedy.
I am NOT saying own up to this to people at work or outwardly express it. I am saying , should a bit of it leak out perceptibly and anyone asks if anything is wrong, lie. I am saying move there in stealth mode and remember, the alternative .... is quitting.
You have a rare opportunity. If you can rework your internal perception of the GRAVITY !!!! :) of your situation, then you can still grab this rare chance life handing you.
Everything is due tomorrow? Pffft.
Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation- Aldous Huxley.
p.s.
One more thing about % and probabilities . It drives me crazy when people assign probabilities to one off events like this company is going to succeed . All such utterances are completely without merit. Completely. There is no way to assign a meaningful probability to a one-off historical event - in this case, the fate of this start up, which is not one of a largish number of equi-probable events in a known distribution of such events. There is not an 80% chance the company will succeed even if 8 of the last 10 companies this CEO headed up went bananas.
It doesn't matter anyways. The fact is, you're in a situation where there IS affirmatively a pathway to a huge upside for you- unlike most jobs- and you should try nearly everything to hang on to it. That's all that matters.
