I left Silicon Valley because tech 'hustle culture' was too much for me to handle (2024)

  • Mayuko Inoue is a full-time content creator and former iOS software engineer at Patreon and Netflix.
  • Inoue started to get panic attacks and learned her anxiety stemmed from overexerting herself at work.
  • This is Mayuko Inoue's story, as told to reporter Jenna Gyimesi.

I left Silicon Valley because tech 'hustle culture' was too much for me to handle (1)

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I left Silicon Valley because tech 'hustle culture' was too much for me to handle (3)

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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Mayuko Inoue, a content creator and former software engineer. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I first entered the tech industry, I felt like I needed to work really hard in order to prove to myself and others that I deserved to belong in the industry.

But as I continued to over-exert myself, I started to lose joy in both my work and non-work things, and a lot of things in my life felt like a chore — even the things that I used to look forward to.

After I graduated in 2014 with my bachelor's in computer science from UC San Diego, I began my journey as an iOS software engineer at Intuit.

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A year and half later, armed with my newfound developer skills, I decided to leave Intuit for Patreon, a creator-focused company that I really admired. I was ecstatic to combine my software engineering expertise with my interest in the creator space to finally find my place and purpose in the tech industry.

At the time, Patreon was really hitting its stride as one of the companies leading the charge in fueling the creator economy. When I joined, the company consisted of an intimate team made up of really talented and high-caliber individuals — folks who came from a wealth of previous startup experience or those who studied at really prestigious institutions and had already made names for themselves.

When I got there, I felt like an imposter.

I felt like I didn't deserve to be there because everyone else had such impressive backgrounds and skills that I couldn't match. I felt like I had to work harder than I had ever worked before to prove myself at my first startup job.

I think this is actually a really common phenomenon for young software engineers. I started to pick up extra work and do everything I could to prove that I deserved the job.

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I worked as an iOS engineer, responsible for building features and making improvements to the iOS app. But in addition to my regular software engineering duties, I took on responsibilities like being the scrum master on every team I was assigned to, to help projects run smoothly.

I tried to keep up with everything that was happening at the company and kept close tabs on my own performance in my one-on-ones with my manager to see what I could be improving on. I was what some people would call "hustling."

To me, hustle culture, at least in the tech industry, is this idea of going 500 mph.

With technologies constantly changing and new companies, products, and services constantly disrupting life as we know it, it forces us — the people building those things — to push way faster than we can keep up with.

"Work hard, play hard" is a mentality that echoes throughout tech offices, and hustle culture seems like this aggressive, masculine personality (though that's probably because the tech industry is very male-dominated).

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I saw that what lures people into hustle culture is the idea of working for financial stability, finding status, or feeling that you're changing the world. It can feel contagious and impossible to escape.

But constantly chasing stability, status, and morality made me feel empty, deflated, and tired — I just didn't enjoy my own life anymore.

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I was definitely proud of my work at Patreon, but I was running so fast through life and work that I could tell it wasn't sustainable.

I'd always been a generally happy person, but I lost that.

I felt so much pressure to create an impact and build things that would change the world and it festered, heightening my anxiety. Work was completely dominating my life.

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At the time, my life had very little balance or room for rest, family, friends, and fun. I was deep into working on my tech YouTube channel on the side, commuting three hours a day, contracting for an early-stage startup, and planning my wedding.

I kept saying yes to everything, and I definitely started to feel the repercussions.

I packed my schedule every day with things that needed my attention, whether it came from external sources (work) or internal ones (my personal goals and motivations). If I wanted to do something fun or spend time doing absolutely nothing, I had to put it in my calendar and make time for it.

It was far from ideal. I knew that something wasn't right when I yearned to be able to bake an apple pie that week just because I wanted to, but my time was all scheduled out.

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It really took a toll on me when I felt like I wasn't doing something productive, as if I was being wasteful with my time and life in general — which is a pretty shitty feeling when what I really needed was rest.

I had my first panic attack my first week of work because I was totally overexerting myself.

During the few minutes of my panic attack, I felt like I was going to die. I actually had no idea that it was a panic attack, and it was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced.

My anxiety showed its ugly face around the same time — it had never been bad enough to get in the way of my life before. Initially, I had no idea how to get better, so I'd wonder if I just needed food or sleep or to just grind through it with work to get over it.

I eventually started therapy, and through many sessions I realized that the anxiety and the panic attack were a result of overexertion and not putting my needs first.

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My career had become the center of my world and overpowered my identity and who I was — it demanded all of my time and energy and I lost sight of other things that were important to me.

I realized that it wasn't sustainable.

During this time at work, we were moving so fast with building new features that timelines were slipping. Really punishing bugs and design flaws in the code would come back and bite us only months later.

The engineering leadership at Patreon knew this wasn't sustainable for us, the company, or the creators that we served, and they started stressing the importance of building things to last versus quickly shipping things that wouldn't.

We needed to slow down and take the time to carefully plan and design our code, as well as invest the time to level up our own skills to create elegant and sturdy solutions.

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And I took this message to heart, both professionally and personally, that it's okay to slow down and take the time and care.

I learned over time, from this lesson and many others, that it's challenging to be a contributing member of something without helping yourself first. It requires slowing down and being intentional about what your needs are, what you want, and where you want to go.

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It might even feel selfish to put yourself first, so it definitely takes courage to take that first step. My Japanese cultural background tells me to always put others ahead of myself, but in order to help others live the life that I want, I realized that I have to work on and prioritizing myself first.

This doesn't happen overnight by the way — all of it takes practice, like everything else.

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That's when I started to step back and plan my exit from hustle culture.

When I looked around at my peers and colleagues, it seemed like everyone was working so hard, and I questioned if escaping hustle culture would even be possible while staying relevant in the industry.

Would scaling back make me less valuable as an employee to the company and to the industry at large? It was terrifying to think about my own worth, so I talked about it with my friends, my therapist, and my manager to get some more perspective.

Here are the six big steps I took to escape from hustle culture and do life on my own terms. The process took me about eight months, by the way.

1. I scaled back on creating YouTube videos and freelancing. With YouTube, was pretty good at it, and it was fulfilling work for me. But I was spending 10-20 hours a week editing videos and planning content, and I needed my time back. When I pulled back on freelancing, I definitely lost out on some equity from an early-stage startup that could have amounted to something. But I needed my energy and time back from that, too.

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2. I talked to my manager about how I was feeling. I told him how deflated and exhausted I was feeling at work and in life. It also served the purpose of checking in how I'm performing, to see if scaling back a little would hurt my performance or job status. He said I was in the clear. After the project I was working on was done, I moved on to fixing bugs and making improvements that weren't as urgent. I was really lucky that I had an incredibly understanding manager. We both knew that I would bounce back eventually, but that I needed to slow down for a while. I slowed down for about a month before I gradually felt better again.

3. I asked my manager for some time off, so that I could travel to Japan and see my family, whom I hadn't seen in a while. Being able to view my life from 3,000 miles away gave me a lot of clarity on what was going on.

4. I went to therapy, not for answers but to help me process. This was the best decision I could've made. Therapy sessions give me perspective about my situation and help me evaluate what I really want for myself — all with the kind and gentle guidance of a licensed professional. My therapist also taught me coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety and panic and how to set healthy boundaries between myself and work. I've been going to therapy now for four years, and it's helped immensely.

5. I eventually switched jobs. I left Patreon and went to Netflix for a change of scenery. This was a strategic decision: given that Patreon is a startup and Netflix is an established company, I felt I could take more time to complete projects and do my work.

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6. I realized that through talking to my peers, we're all going through the same thing. Especially when talking to my colleagues who've been in the industry for longer than I have, I found out that some have even taken years off of work to figure out what they want from their careers and what works for them. Taking a backseat on projects, taking time off to travel, having frank and candid conversations about burnout with managers and teammates, and changing companies to help fit our individual needs wasn't rude or unusual. I found out that it's a common thing that happens all the time, across the industry.

I went back to creating content regularly on Youtube once I was afforded some more time and energy to my own projects.

I also got married, and my wedding was everything I wanted.

And after a year at Netflix, I left software engineering to pursue content creation full time, after finding that it aligned better with how I want to live my life.

As a content creator, I get to rest when I need to, spend my time how I want to, and help people at the same time. I'm truly glad to do this work.

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And now that I've been through all of it, I wish I could tell my past self that things get better.

With proper time, care, and prioritization, burnout can be addressed. With therapy, time to reflect, and lots of experience, you can start to find what working style fits who you are. The tech industry is not just about hustling.

If you'd like to talk about your experience with hustle culture within the tech industry, email Jenna Gyimesi at jgyimesi@businessinsider.com.

I left Silicon Valley because tech 'hustle culture' was too much for me to handle (2024)
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