This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience
The most toxic job I ever had didn't break me.
I've had only one job that fit all the definitions of a toxic place. Inexperienced management, competing deadlines, scope creep... To cope with the 9-5, I hung out with coworkers, worked out, and engaged in hobbies. That kept me sane. But it wasn't the job that burned me out. It taught me enough lessons for a book.
The way to the exit door was clear.
Lesson: When the pain is real. So is the urge to leave.
The job that burned me out
A few years later, I landed my best job.
I was working from home, learning new subjects, and making a good salary. It wasn't Silicon Valley, but it was where most coders wanted to be. It turned out more painful than my "worst" job.
Everything was good until the honeymoon ended. Another project doing the same tasks. No new roles for me. All seats were already taken. Same grind, same story.
This time, the way out wasn't that clear. Updating a CV to play the hiring game made staying seem tolerable. "The pay is good." "I don't work overtime." "I'll wait until I finish this project." Meanwhile, hiring trends were tougher and tougher each year.
The next thing I knew, I was rushing to the bathroom. It wasn't to throw up, but I'll spare the details.
My job became a burden. I rushed to finish my daily tasks and skipped my meals. Painful mistake! That brought stomach issues. (Eating when stressed out isn't a good idea) When I least expected it, I was sick and burned out. The way down was slow. But the way up was more painful and slower.
Lesson: If it makes you sick, you don't need more signs to leave.
My most painful and expensive career mistake
Not having a career plan was my biggest, most painful, and expensive mistake.
I didn't stop to think what I wanted out of my career. Money, title, connections, challenges? Maybe my only plan was to gain experience and make some money. Whatever that meant for my past self.
Lesson: Choose wisely. Or wait to leave when sick, bored, fired, or burned out.
A plan or intention would have made me move out and saved me a lot of pain. But like a frog in a pot, the water wasn't boiling, it was slowly heating up. By the time I noticed the exit sign, the damage was already done.
Update (Mar 30th, 2026): Here, briefly I touched the idea of an intention. After some comments, I expanded on the need for a career intention in a separate post.
Top comments (38)
This is painful to even read. And it's not really your fault either, because I don't know a single developer who had a perfect plan from the start.
I call plans "documented dreams." They can guide you, in a way, sure, but they don't guarantee anything, and sometimes they don't even hold up. Our work is just too complex for that. It's more like building something while simultaneously figuring out what you actually want to build.
Thanks for sharing such a personal experience.
I've learned to call them "intentions" but your documented dreams sound better.
That’s white interesting! I agree that Intentions feel likely more grounded while “documented dreams” captures the ambition behind them.
Thanks for sharing this anyway!
Oh, dear. I'm sorry to read that your stress turned into physical symptoms. It's interesting, though, how we can rationalize something ("the pay is good", etc.), and then feel something completely different.
It was awful. But that was my wake up call. That forced me to act.
Recently, I learned therapists/psychologists called that being out of "congruence:" What we think, say, and do are different to each other.
what got me is how clean it sounds right before it breaks good salary remote learning stuff nothing feels wrong then suddenly bathroom skipping meals and your body is just done like wait what
This really resonates with me. When your health starts to suffer, that’s already more than enough reason to change your job. Or at least change something.
At the end of the day, no one is going to cry over us at work… (okay, to be fair, I once had a boss who actually did when I told him I was leaving — but he pulled himself together after five minutes 😄)
If the worst happen, they will mourn for a day (max two) and open a vacancy right after that. :/
the golden handcuffs burnout is underrated as a career risk. toxic jobs are visible - you know you need to leave. but the comfortable job where you're stagnating? that one sneaks up on you. I had a similar stretch where everything was objectively fine - good pay, good people, no drama - but I stopped learning and stopped caring. by the time I noticed, I'd lost two years. the lesson I took was to treat learning velocity as a leading indicator, not just pay
Great point about learning as indicator. That's my case too.
yeah it becomes invisible until you try to switch jobs and realize your resume stopped growing. the pay kept going up so it felt fine. I started tracking "did I learn something new this week" as a yes/no. simple but it makes the stagnation obvious before it costs you two years
What strikes me reading this thread is how much pressure we put on individuals to “have a career plan,” when the truth is far less tidy.
Most careers aren’t the result of a plan.
They’re the result of contact with reality.
A plan assumes:
But that’s not the world most of us actually live in.
What looks like a “plan” in hindsight is usually:
The people who say “I followed my plan” often lived in stable conditions long enough for the story to make sense afterward.
The people who didn’t?
They still built careers—just not ones that fit into a neat narrative.
And now we’re entering a decade where even the illusion of stability is disappearing.
Anthropic’s new “Observed Exposure” study shows:
That means the old model—“pick a path, climb the ladder, stay the course”—is breaking down for reasons that have nothing to do with personal discipline or planning.
So maybe the real lesson isn’t:
“Have a career plan.”
Maybe it’s:
Build the ability to adapt when the environment shifts—because it will.
Some people learn that through toxic jobs.
Some through burnout.
Some through layoffs.
Some through life events that force a complete reset.
Some through the changing nature of work itself.
But the through‑line is the same:
Careers aren’t linear. They’re iterative.
And the skill that matters most isn’t planning—it’s resilience.
That’s the part we don’t talk about enough.
"A sound plan makes us all heroes, the absence of a plan, idiots." Chess Grand Master Kotov, quoting a mysterious chess sage (taken from the book "How to Reassess your chess" by Jeremy Silman).
The point of a plan is not that it works out exactly the way you planned. The point of a plan is to not run on autopilot, but make decisions with intention and purpose behind them. That's why I fully agree with having a plan. Even more than having steps outlined to follow, the real point of a plan for me is understanding the purpose of the steps, the why behind them. If you know what your endgame is, you can adapt any plan as needed to keep you pointed at the endgame. It's like in chess: If you have a clear target in mind, and your opponent plays an unexpected move, you can still adapt your plan to go after your target.
Also, I think plans don't have to be like either you plan your whole career or you plan nothing. There can be plans only for certain phases of your life. Right now I live alone and want to learn in my job from using coding agents to do my daily work, thus positioning me well for an agentic future. And I want to spend time online, reading about other people's experience, learning from them and sharing my own experience.
That is my plan for this phase of my life. But if I meet the right person this phase of my life might transition into a relationship phase, and then my plans might have to change (probably would have to change quite a bit). So it's good to recognize that life moves in phases, and sometimes it's enough to have a plan for the phase you're in currently.
Thanks for your article, it really helped me think more clearly about my own plans at the moment.
Exactly! Even if the plan goes sideways (most likely since we don't control everything), it gives us direction. I think I briefly eluded the idea of "intention" instead of plan in my post. Working on a follow-up post for next week.
Love this idea.
You're welcome. Glad my words could help!
This one hits a bit too close… sometimes the jobs we love the most are the ones that teach us the hardest lessons.
You don’t really see it while you’re in it, but later it all makes sense in a different way.
Definitely one of those reads that stays with you.
Yes, I only connected the dots after recovering.
Thanks. Glad you like it :)
The "frog in a pot" analogy for a good job hits the hardest. When a place is toxic, the anger gives you the energy to leave. But when it's "comfortable enough"—good pay, remote, no overtime—it acts like a sedative. You stop auditing your growth because there’s no immediate fire, and that’s when the stagnation starts rotting your health.
It’s a paradox: the lack of pain is often more dangerous long-term because it kills the urgency to evolve. No career "plan" is worth a permanent stomach ulcer. Glad you're prioritizing your health now—the company will have your job posting up before your obituary is even printed.
Sad, harsh, but true.
It’s a tough realization, but honestly, it’s not a failure. It is something many of us only understand much later, if at all.
You were moving with the information and awareness you had at the time. That’s not a mistake, that’s being human.Marcus Aurelius wrote that we act according to what we believe is right in the moment. Growth just changes what “right” looks like over time.
What stands out here is not the pain tho... it’s the clarity you have now. Thanks for sharing that clarity.
Great lines!
Sometimes, we need to hit a wall to get clarity.
The toxic job taught you lessons. The good job burned you out. That paradox is so real and so undertalked about. Comfort is its own kind of trap it removes the urgency to grow, and by the time you feel the damage, you've already paid the price. The frog doesn't jump because the water never feels like it's boiling.
Yes, it's the worst.
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