Getting fired would be the best thing that could happen to me, I would be smiling like a kid on Christmas morning feeling pure happiness and relief. I hate the job, I hate the pressure, I hate the environment. The pay is very good, but I have many years of living expenses saved up, so the pay is not a factor anymore.

Why am I not quitting? I was hired to be a tech lead/manager a bit more than a year ago and a lot of people rely on me, it would suck immensely to have a boss that everyone likes quit on you after just one year. I have been on the other side and I know how bad it would feel. People love me, as I turned around a heavily burned out team, unfortunately severely burning myself out in the process…

But realistically, I’ll most likely quit soon regardless, I am on the edge and one little crisis from here (production outage, argument with my director, …) will push me over. Some of my direct reports have been telling me: “I see you are burning out, let me know anything I can do to help, it would be awful if you were to quit and we were to report back to the old management”.

I am in an insanely stressful hedge fund, the quintessential definition of pressure cooker. 70-80h a week of distress and brutal oncall, including weekends. It’s tough for individual contributors who have to deliver work, but for (technical) managers is hell on earth.