a burnt out 27 yr old software engineer reflecting on her 5 year career at amazon | career chat

welcome back to the channel today I just wanted to sit down with you guys and do a little life update chitchat I feel like this is long overdue the past couple months I've just had a lot of things going on in my life both personal and professionally this is kind of inspired by the fact that I've been talking a lot to my other friends who work in the tech industry and even though we're in different places in our career and we've been in the corporate world for different amount of years we are all going through

very similar experiences and similar feelings in our job so I guess this is kind of going to be a life update slash reflection video because I know a lot of you guys also work in the tech industry or are students but I feel like we all go through very similar struggles because we work in the same industry or are in the same industry I recently hit my five year anniversary working at Amazon and just working in the tech industry in general or even just corporate life Amazon was the first company that I joined after I

graduated college and I can't believe I've been there for 5 years now it's a longer time than high school or college so I just feel super tenured because I recently hit my 5year Mark I kind of wanted to talk to you guys about burnout and feeling stuck in your career career because those are two things that I'm currently going through at this moment so in the past I have talked about burnout but I feel like I haven't really talked in depth about it and talking to my friends recently we're all going through some degree of

burnout and it's really interesting to hear everyone's perspective because I have friends who've been in the industry and corporate life for only one to two years and they're feeling extremely burnt out and there's saying like you've been here for 5 years I can't believe how you're feeling and yeah it's kind of tough going through a burnout and to be honest with you guys I mentioned that I had an extreme burnout period beginning of 2024 and I'm coming to realize that I don't think I ever recovered from that burnout period And I thought just taking a

2E vacation would have been good and I'd be ready to go and tackle the world and my corporate life but that was not the case and that was probably very naive of me to think that okay I feel burnt out I just need to take a vacation and I'll be fine recovering from burnout is not a linear process meaning that just because you feel burnt out for 2 months if you kind of set boundaries and try to recover in 2 months you'll be fine that's not the case at all if anything it's a very nonlinear

process and if you don't recover from your burnout I feel like with everything else going on in your life it just makes it worse and it could probably add more strain to your mental health and recently I've been trying to navigate a new mental health journey of mine I was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety those things I did not think that I would ever have have anxiety or PTSD but once I started to learn about the symptoms of those two it just all made sense because in 2024 I was going through an extreme burnout period

and on top of that I had a lot of like personal traumatic things happened to me it really heightened all of those symptoms of PTSD and anxiety I would say especially anxiety and there were just days where I really couldn't function because my anxiety levels were off the roof and there were days where I just took sick days because I was feeling anxious and that's something I feel like we don't really normalize in the tech industry I know mental health isn't really talked about but I feel like we need to start normalizing taking sick days

for your mental health if anything I feel like we should have mental health days that's separate from like physical illnesses one of the major things that I learned in my 5-year career journey is that you really need to set boundaries early on with work and what you'll be able to tolerate because the more you start tolerating at the beginning of the career it's kind of harder to step back as you progress if that makes sense because you've already been dealing with like certain behaviors or toxicity or logging off super late at work so it's like

you're normalizing those things for yourself and so as you progress in your career it's harder to step back or step away from it or set harder boundaries because you've been doing it forever I can't shake off this feeling that I feel like I'm working so hard and I have been working so hard but it's not really leading up to anything I don't want to sound very privileged cuz I know that I work at a Fang company as an engineer and that's like a big dream of any software engineer is to work in a f company

and I have a good pay good salary good benefit bits and everything and I'm super thankful for that and I also need to recognize that I earned all of this I worked super hard to get to where I am right now but just because things look good on the outside doesn't actually mean it's good on the inside being part of that hustle grind really took a mental toll and I'm still feeling very burnt out and I'm not sure if it's because of my burnout but I just feel so stuck I'm just like what do I

do what do I want I don't think I want to be coding forever I don't think I want to go into the manager space so like what is it that I truly want and I think that's something that I'm trying to navigate myself internally and to be honest I kind of feel very stagnant in my career path right now I've been talking to a lot of my friends and they've been going through the same experience as me I don't really talk about my career as often as I want to but it's so important it's like

one of the biggest part of my life life and I was so proud of myself to have come this far but looking back now I'm just like what was it all for though I kind of have that feeling like what was it all for because at the end of the day even though I worked so hard and I have all of these like glamorous badges attached to my name I just don't feel glamorous and I don't feel fulfilled and I think that's the main thing I don't feel fulfilled right now and I'm trying to navigate

and find out what it is that will truly make me fulfilled because I want to live my life with purpose but I think in the past year a lot of things have shifted for me [Music] and my outtake on life has changed I think my priorities in life have changed and that's completely normal my priorities that I had in my early and mid 20s is so different to what it is now and I'm 27 I recently hit my late 20s and like I feel like my goals are different this is just stuff that I'm struggling

with and I wanted to be very transparent and authentic with you guys because at the end of the day that's what I strive to do we're all kind of going through this journey of navigating our personal life and career so maybe some of you guys have already experience what I'm going through right now or maybe you're at the beginning of this realization yourself or maybe everything is totally fine with you and I'm so happy for you but um yeah that's just something that I'm currently going through now that I shared one of the biggest lessons

I learned in my 5-year career journey I want to share with you guys my biggest regret and my biggest regret is not taking enough breaks not taking that holiday not taking that vacation not taking a break just for my own well-being and all of that is a consequence that I'm currently going through right now for the past 5 years even post graduation I never gave myself a full relaxing break it was just always constantly go go go go go and to be honest like I think that is the norm in our society and I'm sure

I'm not the only one that feels that way but if I like sit back and think about it I've never given myself a proper break even in my 5-year career Journey the longest that I've been away from work is 10 business days days and if you think about it 10 business days is not a lot it's just like it's nothing in the grand scheme of things and on top of all of that sometimes I will fall into the comparison trap where I compare my life with people who may have a similar career path and personal

life and I just think to myself like oh why can't I be more Carefree or why can't I be more playful like that person I am kind of a serious person and I feel like I had to grow up very quickly as a child so I'm not Carefree but I wish I was Carefree I just feel like I have so many responsibilities and so many things to do that it's really hard for me to just switch it off if that makes sense the stress that I've been kind of accumulating over the years especially the past

year really got to me because I actually broke out in body rashes I'm not sure what it was the dermatologist doesn't even know what it was but it could be just stress induced and leading up to that experience having rashes just break out all over my body I was feeling very stressed and I was kind of like in my head overthinking everything and really just stressed out even about the most trivial things so I feel like maybe I induced it myself but that's why I'm like really realizing how important rest and Recovery is and it's

not always about like achieving the next goal or like achieving something and being super ambitious like you really need to slow down sometimes and um I'm still trying to like tell myself it's okay to slow down but that's like a work in progress given who I am and the type of person I am I feel like I always need to be productive so kind of slowing down right now I'm not even slowing down to be honest I'm kind of working a lot even though I'm supposed to be resting hopefully this doesn't just seem like a

random ramble but this is basically like my life update one of the main things that I really want to work on this year is creating something or developing something for myself because working in the tech industry for that long and being able to build something from Ground Zero I've come to realize I I want to build something for myself like I want to find a product or build something that I'm super passionate about and I could actually apply my software development skill set to building it and seeing it come alive and that's something that I

really want to work towards I think that's why I loved the tech industry so much and why I was so gravitated towards it was because you're building something from Ground Zero you're developing something that is super useful to the world like no one goes on with their day without using any sort of software so it's just really interesting because even in my day-to-day I will think about how things work in the back end you know I'll be like using an app or like using something and I'll be like oh so I wonder how the infrastructure

in the back end is working for us to be able to use this feature and I think that's probably just a habit that we have as software Engineers is you tend to think about how the world is built um but coming to that I kind of just realized not only do I want to like adopt a hobby that I could be creative and passionate about offscreen but I also want to find something that I want to build for myself and like cure it and just come see it be alive that's why I've actually started to

create my own personal website was because I feel like that's something that I always wanted to do is just like create a website for myself a landing page and about page whatever it could be super simple but um I never had or it's not that I never had I never gave myself the time to do that and creating my own personal website even though it's a very simple version for now it was just sparking so much joy in myself like wow I'm doing something for myself I'm building something for myself so that's something I just

want to work towards and I'm excited to show you guys more of that and how I could improve as a developer for my own personal use maybe that's just something that we need to do more of I don't want to normalize working all the time but I don't know if they're super into software engineering and design and or uiux maybe it's just something that we could do as a side project that really replenishes us and fulfills us fulfillment that's the word I'm probably looking for um I felt very fulfilled doing something for myself so that's

just something that I want to work towards anyway I think I've been rambling on for like 30 40 minutes I'm not sure how much of this is going to go on the final clip so yeah that is my life update that's what's been going on in my head that's my little reflection of working in the tech industry for 5 years I feel very stuck but it's just something that I'm navigating through right now and hopefully in the future I could tell tell you guys more about it and how I kind of broke out of this

cycle of feeling stuck and the cycle of burnout but yeah as always I really really appreciate all of your guys' support here we recently hit 70k which is amazing like I can't believe there's 70,000 of you guys just watching me navigate through my personal and professional life so I really appreciate everyone's supporting here I will end my little chitchat session here thank you guys for listening and we'll talk soon bye-bye