Things I Shouldn't Say While Job Searching: I'm Burnt Out

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Things I Shouldn't Say While Job Searching: I'm Burnt Out

Tony Albanese<br>Aug 10, 2026

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Last week I turned 40 and became the cautionary tale I was warned about. Overweight, not married, no kids and, gasp, unemployed. Laid off after the three most intense years of my career. Always-on, late nights, impossible deadlines, false urgency, then a celebratory launch only to be followed by… nothing. Only two weeks later, a good chunk of us were gone. If there had been balloons, they’d still have been floating by the time we were kicked out of the party.<br>Thanks for reading SeedZero! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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The advice millennials received was to work hard and things would fall into place. So I went to university and double-majored. Then I went to graduate school and got my Master’s. I wasn’t even 23, and I was loaded with credentials. But the economy at that time was shit, and so I worked minimum wage as a VIP Tour Guide and Guest Services Representative at Universal Studios Parks & Resorts. (That’s a story for another day.) I allowed jobs to dictate my path. I moved across the country, then to different countries, to advance my career. First to Los Angeles, then San Francisco, back to Los Angeles, then Sweden, then the U.K. But all of this chasing was tiring. It left me exhausted and really without established roots. I did whatever it took to build a portfolio that was not only strong, but unique. Leadership experience. Global experience. Tech experience. Pioneering industries in digital transformation, AI, and blockchain. And for what?<br>I’ve noticed that many of my peers, other burnt-out millennials, are hanging up their career accolades, trading in the hustle for less income and jobs with less homework. Whether that’s going back into retail, administrative work or similar. It seems many of us gave up on the promises — we did the work, we ended up alone and less financially secure than our effort would make you believe. Even those of us who had good salaries were left unable to buy property in the cities we actually lived in. Sure, we could move, but there would be no jobs in cheaper places. We saved for years only to be left living in small one-bedroom apartments on the outskirts of the cities.<br>Being made redundant hit different this time. At first, I thought it would be an opportunity to use my days to work on a project. Maybe write that book I’ve been thinking about for years — the one whose 60,000-word brain dump is rotting on an old flash drive somewhere. Instead, after three months, I’ve been sleeping. Getting out of bed at 1:00 PM or even 2:00 PM. I still haven’t recovered from the always-on, 24/7 expectation. The late calls, the weekend messages. The demanding founder. I am still ruminating. Perhaps I need a therapist.<br>Though I think it’s something different. Having worked from home, I am still in the same location where I spent all my working hours. The desk, the laptop, even the company swag I wear to bed still engulf me. And during the few interviews that do come along, I still have to talk about my “accomplishments.” The buzzing of our job-seeker support group. The income has shut off, the meetings have stopped, but the distance hasn’t grown — and so the burnout remains.<br>It’s cliché to complain about the constant hits my generation faced at the worst times. Graduating into the financial crisis delayed our start. All the workplace training programs were gone, and we had to figure it out for ourselves. The playbook we were promised disappeared without replacement. We were expected to be ready from day one without any real world experience. After years of hustling and finally catching up, the pandemic hit. And the most successful of us — working in software, a field our families never understood, just weird internet jobs — are now being massively reduced thanks to new advanced automation tools (cough, AI). And we don’t have the skills to join a trade; our only plumbing experience is jumping on Koopas.<br>We are tired of being resilient.<br>Where is the new zest for life, or the opportunities that come from a cleared calendar? Partly, I think it’s because this is the first time a generation has gone from always-on to off without a transition. For many of us there was little separation between life and work. I’d be sitting in the cinema on a Saturday afternoon, answering erratic text messages from particularly anxious team members about a pending launch during the previews. Or advising them how to respond to a tactless senior leader without boundaries. The missing job has left a bigger void than usual. And other aspects of our lives are not filling that hole with fresh fertilizer. The numerous layoffs and false starts have rotted away our “hustle.” The hustle came from the belief that we could trade a part of ourselves for success, “short-term pain for long-term gain.” But...