full image - Repost: Terrified to tell my boss I'm leaving ... What is it like to quit after burnout? (from Reddit.com, Terrified to tell my boss I'm leaving ... What is it like to quit after burnout?)
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I'm in the process of going full-time freelance and am going to be letting my boss know next month that I'll be leaving soon. I'm planning to give a couple of month's notice for a few reasons, including to give them plenty of time to hire someone I can train and to potentially negotiate to stay on as a contractor. There are a lot of very, very good connections at my current job, and I not only don't want to burn the bridge; I want them to see me as someone worth cooperating with moving forward.In any case, I've been struggling with burnout due to under-utilization for over a year. I know this is a pretty ridiculous problem to have in the grand scheme of things, but my boss is gone a lot of the time, and he's a micromanager. When he's not around, nothing can really move forward, so we all end up just sitting at our desks waiting for him to get back from his trips. He's also highly critical of my work — he has nitpicked even small projects for hours at a time. I generally handle criticism very well, but my coworkers have commented on how rough it must be to work with him directly. It's all extremely demoralizing, and I'm at a point in my career when I really need to be pursuing growth opportunities. All these factors and plenty of others have led to me basically checking out. I've started working on other projects in my downtime (something I was initially extremely adamant about avoiding) just to stave off the boredom. I'm not proposing new ideas much anymore because they always seem to get bogged down by his schedule and abandoned, no matter how hard I champion them. In fact, even a lot of the projects he asks me to do end up falling by the wayside when he doesn't have time to double- and triple- (or quadruple- or quintuple-) check them. Nothing is ever good enough — even on our performance reviews, he never gives anyone above a 3/5, no matter how hard they work. I also can't work anywhere except at my desk unless I have a business meeting — which is infuriating as a graphic designer in 2024.I'm almost out of the company, and I'm really excited about this transition. Networking has resulted in several promising opportunities to work remotely on a contract basis, and I think I've got the finances worked out, even if my boss were to let me go on the spot. My concern is that I know the quality of my ideas, work ethic, etc. has been declining lately. I've still been accomplishing all of my tasks and have gotten good feedback from others in the organization (sometimes even from him), but I'm afraid that he'll see my symptoms of burnout and the fact that I'm getting all my work done quickly as a manipulative strategy to abuse this job for my own gain while I'm still here, rather than a result of the working environment. I'm committed to doing all my work well, and I know I'm meeting (reasonable) expectations, but because he isn't around, he only sees the version of me that feels suppressed and demotivated by his presence: the person who stopped taking initiative because the frustration of getting shot down for the hundredth time — or worse, strung along until he gives up on the project unilaterally — isn't worth the tiny chance that he'll actually value the effort. He's the first person in my career to tell me I'm not taking enough initiative, and my coworkers laughed when I told them about it. Early on, I was always the one bringing new ideas to the table. Now, details are slipping through the cracks more and more...Anyway, sorry for the long rant. My parents used to call me manipulative a lot as a child, which has made it really difficult for me to advocate for my career when it comes to people in authority over me. I always feel like I must be the one in the wrong, and even normal career transitions can be sources of shame. My reputation is also very important to me — I genuinely want to do good work. I feel so guilty for checking out, and I feel like it'll be obvious how frustrated and ambivalent I am about my work at this point when I talk with him. I'm trying to see it from his perspective and not just my own, but he's a very controlling person who seems somewhat aware that he can be an absolute pain to work with, so I just don't know how he'll respond. I'm strengthening my network of others in the company to try to keep my foot in the door for future contract opportunities, but he does wield a good bit of influence, even though people know what he's like ...Do you think I'm thinking about this situation the right way? Or is it just my anxiety getting to me? What was quitting like for you?
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