Category Archives: Salesforce

Reflections

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I’ve settled pretty comfortably into unemployment, so I figured it was way past time for me to make a proper post about my job, quitting, and mental health. Part of my motivation is to document my experience as a cautionary tale for my future self, if/when I return to industry.

Work burnout for me wasn’t a sudden thing… it had been happening gradually over the past few years. I will say though that the current trend toward AI and rapid iteration definitely accelerated it and brought it to a head, for me. Work got to the point where I felt largely ineffectual in my role, spending the majority of my time swinging between rapidly changing priorities and having alignment conversations with other architects and senior management.

I think most engineers can probably relate to the sentiment that the best part of software is shipping, and getting your code (and product) in the hands of real users. You get a real sense of pride and accomplishment from it. Even though I’d gotten senior enough that my main output was no longer code, that still applied… I produced technical overview documents, specs, and other design documents that were consumed by engineers to build products. I felt like I was making a difference. And then, with the AI work, it didn’t feel that way anymore. Things were changing so rapidly — and there were so many asks coming in from so many different areas — that it became impossible to actually generate meaningful technical documents that could be executed on. Driving alignment became my main role, and while it’s definitely important, it didn’t feel impactful.

The other impact of AI was work hours. There were many periods where I would work 12-14 hour days just to keep up. To be clear here, this was not an expectation from management (and my manager actually kept encouraging me to work less and take time off), but I felt a responsibility to my teammates. I literally did not take a vacation (nor any time off that wasn’t “I’m travelling today”) in 2025 until I went on medical leave. I visited my mom for a week and literally woke up at 6 AM to start working and stopped after 7 every night, leaving me exhausted and unable to spend time with her. It was not a healthy situation with regards to work/life balance.

So all of that together kind of caused me to break. Following a few weeks of increasing mental anguish (such as literally crying when asked to decide what kind of tea I wanted, or having insomnia that kept me up until 4 AM every night), I had what I’m calling a mental breakdown (you might call it a severe anxiety attack, even though such a term apparently has no official medical definition) that was a wake-up call to me that I couldn’t keep pushing on and waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. Some points I want to reiterate to myself, for future reference (and hopefully others find this useful too):

  • Doctors are your friends and allies. I went into my doctor’s appointment for medical leave filled with anxiety that she wouldn’t believe me. But it went more than well. Don’t be afraid of doctors.
  • Companies differ on what kind of medical leave they offer. In my case, Salesforce offers a combination of FMLA (federally mandated leave that means you have a job to return to afterward), short-term disability (provides pay while you’re on leave), and medical leave (as far as I can tell, the same as FMLA, except it can run longer, and protects your job), and all three of these ran concurrently for me for three months. However…
  • The requirements for each kind of leave are different. FMLA can be signed off on by many different providers (including my therapist, who is not an MD or DO, but is licensed and has a Masters), while disability pay and medical leave had stricter requirements (I believe has to be an MD or DO). For simplicity, having an MD or DO sign off on everything seems to make it easier, but the distinction between the leaves was not clear to me, and I spent a lot of stressful time (when I didn’t have the mental capacity for it) figuring out who I needed to sign off.
  • Disability pay has to be renewed while you’re on leave (whereas FMLA and medical leave can just be signed off for the entire time with no renewals needed). In my case, renewal was every 15-30 days, and required updates from my therapist sent to the leave company, who would evaluate that I was still unable to return to work. Specifics here probably vary wildly, depending on the leave company.
  • Leave can be retroactive. I didn’t take advantage of this (there’s an entire anxiety spiral I had around starting my leave that I won’t go into here), but if you’re truly in crisis, you can start leave immediately and have your doctor backdate the paperwork to support the leave. (This of course would cause me extra stress around “What if I’m on leave and my doctor doesn’t agree”, so YMMV.)
  • Meds (I was on Lexapro) can take 6+ weeks to have a therapeutic effect. In my case, I found the therapy (CBT) significantly more useful in my recovery than the meds were, although it’s of course hard to say how much the general mood stabilization effect actually mattered in the end. Also, starting a medication can make you feel like you’re seasick for a few days… be warned.
  • Go to therapy. Sooner than I did. Don’t wait for things to spill over and become a crisis.
  • This may vary by company, but Salesforce provides health insurance for the entire month after your last day. So make your last day as close to the beginning of a month as possible, for “free” insurance.

In any case, as I started transitioning out of work, there were surprisingly many benefits that I started losing, some of which I hadn’t really considered. In no particular order:

  • Health insurance is the most obvious one. Fortunately that can be replaced with insurance through the exchange, although it’ll cost significantly more than what you were paying through work. (You can also of course elect COBRA any time up to 60 days following the termination of benefits, and it’s retroactive to the termination date if you do.)
  • Life insurance. The insurer had the option for me to continue coverage myself, but it didn’t seem worthwhile.
  • Travel insurance. My company provided (limited) international coverage that worked even if I was travelling for pleasure rather than business. It’s something else I have to think about now when planning international trips.
  • EAP and similar. I intentionally chose not to go through my company’s EAP for therapy, but if you tie your recovery to that benefit, you may need to start paying out of pocket to continue, if the benefit is still available at all.
  • Discount programs. I made a few purchases using company discounts while still employed, but if you regularly use an ongoing discount (like a specific rental car company), this can cause sticker shock after you leave.
  • Direct deposit. Many (traditional) banks will waive their account fees if you have direct deposits, and/or offer money for opening an account with direct deposit. Leaving your job means you’ll no longer have direct deposit, and may start incurring account fees.
  • Daily social interactions. Even though it’s work, and you’re talking to people about work (most of the time), it’s still hard to replace that daily dose of human interaction.

In any case, despite all of the above, I have no regrets about leaving. My goal is to take some time for myself to continue my recovery, and also to see where/how AI settles in the tech industry. After that… we’ll see.

Photos and life have been updated (on time), so I’ll end this huge wall of text with a photo that makes me happy: all of my coworkers at my farewell party in San Francisco.

Life is good.

Changes

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Well, a *lot* has happened since my last post, so I suppose it’s time for an update. This was originally going to include some photo stats as well given quite a few phone changes (acquiring of an iPhone 16 Pro, acquiring of a moto g power 5g, and loss of my work iPhone 14), but I’ve fallen behind on photo tagging, so that will have to be a future post.

As to not bury the lede: After almost 18 years at Salesforce, I quit my job in November.

There are a lot of things I could get into about why (and maybe that’ll be a future post), but the TL;DR version is: I burned out in June badly enough that I got three months of medical (mental health) leave from my doctor, went to therapy (with an amazing therapist), and decided that I couldn’t stay in the tech industry for now.

So… freedom!

In lieu of work, I’ve been pursing creative outlets: Baking, writing, and sewing for now, and I also want to take up drawing at some point. I’ve also been scheduling (and executing) a bunch of travel plans, starting with a San Francisco/San Diego/Phoenix trip we just got back from.

One thing I regretted from leaving rather unexpectedly was not getting a chance to really say good bye in person to my teammates, some of whom I’ve worked with for almost all of that 18 years. With my therapist’s blessing, I booked a trip to SF to meet my teammates the first week of December (during release planning). My manager (and his EA) threw me a farewell party during that time, which was amazing and one of the most gratifying experiences of my life.

It was also a good chance to see SF friends for the last time in a while… now that I’m no longer employed by a San Francisco-based company, I’ll have much less reason to travel there in the future.

Afterward, we did the “usual” hop to Phoenix, with a bonus (slightly too) quick trip to San Diego. They were both extremely enjoyable, although they also both just reinforced how much I’m glad we can walk everywhere in Pittsburgh (and don’t need to own a car). Also, having the ability to really enjoy the time without the looming prospect of a return to the usual work week felt really nice.

Photos from all of this will be up on my photos site eventually. Now that I’m home again until the next significant travel plans (early next year), hopefully I’ll actually catch up on all the photo tagging and processing that I’ve been neglecting.

Life is good. :)

Lifey Life

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Well, I’ve done the thing again where I don’t update for a long time, despite things happening in my life. I suppose, at this point, it’s the new normal.

life’s stats and photo journal have been updated, on time. My photos site continues to be neglected.

Since the last update, in no particular (and certainly not chronological) order:

  • I had some friends visit and we had a nice time wandering the city
  • My cousin visited and we had a nice time repeating the same city wandering
  • I visited my mom in Phoenix for the first time since before the pandemic
  • I ate indoors at restaurants more times than the previous 4 years combined
  • I went to San Francisco for work, twice, once for the usual team planning and once as an “architect sync”
  • Work became super AI and Agent-y, and generally exploded
  • I bought an iPhone 16 Pro because I was worried about the possible impact of tariffs
  • I was the sickest I’ve been since before the pandemic (and probably for years before that, even), and it wasn’t COVID (which I still haven’t had)
  • I went on two ski trips and didn’t ski at all
  • We had Adventures™ on the second of the trips with the rental car tires: one slowly leaked air, and another popped on the drive home
  • I went to a wedding and an anniversary party, and went on vacation with Keith and his family
  • I threw myself a Sonic-themed birthday party
  • We lost power for 20 hours in the ~90 MPH wind mess of fun
  • I continued to fail at accomplishing any goals or, arguably, anything really meaningful outside of my job

Maybe there will be more bullet points in another 7 months.

Back To “Normal”

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It’s been over a year since I last posted, and a lot has happened this year, especially in the last 6 (or so) months of it.

The biggest thing is maybe that I’ve flown on not one trip but two trips, and have managed to avoid COVID in doing so. (The last flight there might still be pending, since I just got home today.)

This summer we felt like we really needed to start doing something to get back to normal, since the world was clearly moving on without us, we clearly couldn’t go the rest of our lives without ever flying again, and the pandemic situation was clearly never changing significantly from its current state. So we decided that the safest thing to do was to book an international trip to the UK!

It sounds crazy, but it actually makes sense if you assume (like we did) that the riskiest part of travel is the airports (rather than the planes, which circulate air so rapidly and also filter it) and indoor spaces. London Heathrow is one of a single-digit number of international destinations that the Pittsburgh airport directly services so… London hiking trip it was!

Photos are here, here, and here, and ignoring the indoor breakfasts at small B&Bs (with like… two other groups at most) we had only one meal indoors at a restaurant. We also found that Heathrow immigration into the UK is totally automated and takes literally 30 seconds. From deplaning to heading to the train was less than 30 minutes.

The weirdest part of it (after the initial shock of “I haven’t been in an airport in three-and-a-half years”) was how basically no one wears a mask while flying. Like… COVID is still a huge thing? And airplanes and airports are great places to catch things? Maybe wear a mask just for this part?

The second weirdest (or maybe I just never noticed before) is how inconsiderate people are now when they cough. No covering of the mouth (with a hand or otherwise). No mask for people who are very clearly sick with some respiratory disease. Yeah, get on a plane and cough into the air for your neighbors to breathe thanks that’s a great idea we appreciate it.

In any case, despite all of that, the trip as a whole made me comfortable enough to travel in person to my teams’ release planning this past week, for the first time since summer 2019. And this trip really pushed a lot of my comfort zones.

Starting with… an airport transfer, so it wasn’t just the relative quiet of the Pittsburgh airport and the quick exit through SFO. We also had to deal with DFW (and, unexpectedly, ORD on the way back) which are extremely busy and have nary a mask in sight (although SFO seems to be better at this than anywhere else, which is maybe not surprising). Then also sitting in meeting rooms all day with dozens of other people for most of a week. And eating indoors at team dinners. And attending an (indoor) team event with over a hundred people in attendance.

I’d purchased an N100 mask specifically for the office, and while I’m sure I looked ridiculous in it, it apparently worked because I have successfully returned home without COVID (although we’ll find out about the return flight in a few days, so hopefully it’s not premature to make that statement). Photos from this trip will be on the photos site at some point. If the last set is any indication (Carnival 2023 photos posted in November) it might be next year. We’ll see.

There are so many other things I should probably write about, like how the elevators in Salesforce Tower in SF are the worst and made me literally 20 minutes late to a meeting waiting for them, or how I amusingly tried to meet my coworker Paul in the UK and couldn’t make it happen but ran into him (repeatedly) in SF during planning, or how I’m amazed that my team at work is now over a hundred people and I don’t know half of them and met a bunch of people I work with daily for the first time in person this trip, or how I’ve been playing a lot of roguelike deckbuilding (computer) games recently and really enjoyed Slay The Spire and Roguebook while not really being a fan of Banners of Ruin, or how I’ve started getting (somewhat) back into coding at work now that I can delegate more of my architect duties, or how we’ve watched through almost all of Picard and how I enjoy the series if you think of it as not being part of the Star Trek universe because the characters are just all completely out of character, or about how I was supposed to be home from the SF trip on Saturday except we hit a flock of birds on takeoff causing us to return to SFO and making us miss our connection and therefore continuing the trend of plane issues that has seemed to plague all our friends recently…

I could write a lot more things, but I think this trip has just made me tired and sad at the state of the “pandemic” (which is so clearly over to everyone else) because it’s just a reminder of how much I’m missing by trying to stay safe when the rest of the world refuses to do its part. So I think I’ll just stop here.

Tee Vee

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Work continues to be a thing. The more senior architect in my area left the company recently, and it feels like I’ve been taking on at least some of his duties in his absence. This has meant that I’m involved in significantly more high-level planning conversations and discussions, leaving even less time for me to spend on actually dealing with coding-level things across my (increasing) teams. I suppose this is technically a good move for me, and it’s actually felt less stressful now than in the past because it has come with an increasing number of strong technical leads across my teams (and the other remaining amazing architects I have the pleasure of working with) that allow me to increasingly delegate team-level duties outward.

It’s weird, and I’m still not sure how much I really like not being an IC anymore, even though that change has been years. But it feels like it’s working. So it goes.

Other than work, life continues. We’ve been taking advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to host cheese parties on our back deck, as well as taking opportunities for outdoor dining while they still exist (because the pandemic is still a thing despite what everyone else seems to think). Oakland trips over the weekend to grab food from various places and eat it out in Schenley Plaza (or similar), followed by bubble tea from Fuku, has also been a thing. So that’s been nice, at least.

I’m fully expecting the election this upcoming week to send me down another depressive spiral of despair, so before then, I figured I should make a post about something less negative.

A large part of my free time lately has been spent watching (old) TV shows. The biggest one recently was Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which was a recommendation from a friend, and it’s also become one of my all-time favorite shows. (How many does that make now? :P) I was immediately drawn to it because it’s a musical series (and Glee, despite its many, many, many flaws, still holds a special place in my heart because of that), and I’d previously seen many of the music videos online. But the show itself is… ridiculously, amazingly, unbelievably good. I feel like it approaches characters and relationships and sexuality and mental disorders in such a responsible and caring way, and it also is ridiculously fun, besides. (It’s also ridiculously cringe at parts, but uses that discomfort as a narrative tool so well that I couldn’t stop wanting more of it all, even the cringe parts.)

The music videos also hit very differently in context, which I don’t think I really appreciated (or thought I would appreciate) until I actually saw the first one I recognized. Not only do they all stand on their own as extremely well-done and entertaining pieces, they also are incredibly well-blended with the plot and episode and characters around them.

The show didn’t quite leave me a sobbing mess in the same way Schitt’s Creek sometimes did, but it deserves to be mentioned in the same breath anyway because it is truly a masterpiece, and I’m so thankful it got its full four-season run, because I think ending at any of the other points would have been an utter travesty given the character arcs and development.

I recommend checking it out, but if you don’t, you should at least look up some of the music on YouTube because it is glorious in its own right. Highlights for me include (in no particular order): A Diagnosis, I’ve Always Never Believed In You, No One Else Is Singing My Song, I Hate Everything But You, Let’s Generalize About Men, The End Of The Movie, The Moment Is Me, This Is My Movement, Let’s Have Intercourse, Face Your Fears, and I Gave You A UTI. (As I said, responsible and caring about sexuality. :P)

Speaking of music and musicals, I also finished watching through the two seasons of Smash today. I approached it with a small bit of context from seeing a couple of the songs on YouTube previously (primarily Rewrite This Story and Caught In The Storm, via YouTube recommendations after a bunch of Jeremy Jordan videos, but a few of the others as well), and with knowing that critics had largely panned the show and its plot and characters (but without knowing any details of those reviews). And I have to say… I was pleasantly surprised by the entire thing. The songs here also hit differently in context, and are tied in beautifully with the plots and characters. While I would generally say the first season of Glee was better than Smash as a whole, Smash is significantly more cohesive, consistent, and overall better than Glee as a whole (which quickly derailed during its second season and became unwatchable during its third and onward).

The consistency is particularly important to me, and Smash does switchups in a way that feel significantly more natural and believable. For example, in Glee, we always have “new songs” for the big competitions, often justified in the narrative in the flimsiest possible ways (“show up in New York with no songs written and write them, instrument them, and choreograph them the night before!”), while in Smash the “new song” was done in a narratively-consistent way (“hey, experienced songwriters who have been working on this already, you have a few hours to figure it out and finish it, and also stage it as identically to the opening number as possible to make it learnable, and also all the other show songs are ones we’ve seen already”). Not to mention that Smash also does a ton more original numbers, and they connect in-universe with the characters and stories much, much better than any original songs Glee ever did, even though those were supposed to be “from the heart” and “what’s going to win us Regionals”. It just flows better, as a show.

Catching up on the critics’ reviews afterward, I find myself agreeing with a lot of it (yes, I noticed that Katharine McPhee wasn’t the best at emoting, even while watching it myself, and yes, the show does a lot of “telling but not showing”), but actually disagreeing with most of it. No, both actresses were reasonable choices for Marilyn in different ways. No, Katharine McPhee is actually hella talented and can sing really damn well. No, some of the “super cringe” story elements (particularly with regard to Kyle) weren’t actually that bad. No, the “wandering plotlines” in the first season were not out of place because they gave each character a plot point and some focus. No, Dev actually served an important purpose in the first season.

Maybe I just watch TV for fun too much to be quite that critical of it, and can forgive a ton of plot or character issues as long as I’m enjoying myself and it all makes reasonable sense, for some definition of “enjoying myself” and “reasonable sense”.

I’ve also watched through Lower Decks, also at the recommendation of a friend, and also partially because we’re working our way through all of Star Trek (currently on season 7 of Deep Space Nine). It is… not good, which is maybe amusing given the paragraph immediately before this one. Season 1 was okay enough, I suppose, and had a lot of good moments (including one or two where I actually laughed; almost every appearance of the doggo in “Much Ado About Boimler” was gold), but it as a whole just feels too fast-paced and a lot of it feels like it falls flat for me. Season 2 just feels like a lot of really cheap jokes that don’t really land and also feel even more out of place in the Star Trek universe.

Contrast that to Better Off Ted, another comedy series that I think lands every episode and nearly every joke. It has some cringe-worthy moments, but as a whole it’s witty and funny and feels overall well-written. It seems like a huge shame that Better Off Ted only lasted two seasons, while Lower Decks is ongoing (four seasons, now), in the same way that it feels like a huge shame that Smash lasted two seasons while Glee did six.

I’ve also watched some other things that aren’t worth commenting on quite as much, and have purchased a couple more series on DVD that I’ll need to start soon (primarily Warehouse 13 and Community). I suppose that’ll be my entertainment for the next however many months, and what’ll help get me through the mess that is sure to be next week.

Anyway. Happy continued pandemic, everyone. :\