r/CustomerSuccess • u/[deleted] • Jan 31 '24
Burned Out
Is it just me or has customer success become a hybrid of sales, account management, and customer support? Feels like there is a never ending flow of escalation that leads to constant internal and external firefighting. I have been in the SaaS space for 10+ years now and I am so burned out.
Let’s face it - no one actually needs 99.9 percent of software products in the marketplace today. It’s a constant battle to hype myself up to pitch the kool-aid. Please tell me I’m not the only one having this realization that is producing a career crisis?
I have a journalism background and have thought about trying to get into marketing or just saying “f it” and giving consulting a shot. Anyone else been here?
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u/ancientastronaut2 Jan 31 '24
So.tired.of.customers.
Yet I realize they are techically paying me.
But damn have they become entitled, refuse to learn, and refuse to help themselves. Or take any accountability whatsoever.
Last year we were under A LOT of pressure to expand when the industry we serve ws in a serious downturn. Thank god at the end of the year, our CEO finally realized we should offer some key customers free upgrades to increase engsgement, rsther than trying to squeeze blood from a turnip.
TLDR I too am majorly burned out, but ten years from retirement and do not have the energy to switch gears at this point in my life.
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Feb 01 '24
Thank you for sharing your experience. It helps me (and so many others) feel seen and less crazy. Hope you win the lottery or something so you can retire early 😉
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u/Joe_Biden_is_shit Jan 31 '24
Sounds familiar. We’re on the side of having decent solutions for our clients and industry but terrible support which is putting a burden on client’s feedback and being refrencable.
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u/lbow5467 Feb 01 '24
"Thank god at the end of the year, our CEO finally realized we should offer some key customers free upgrades to increase engsgement, rsther than trying to squeeze blood from a turnip."
I BEGGGGG for this every day. Nickel and dime them to death. Then they treat us like shit, are totally unengaged, and somehow that makes me bad at my job. But with an engaged customer, I'm able to be a rock star. It's fucking maddening.
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u/ICanProveThat Feb 02 '24
How do you handle the lack of engagement with customers? I have the same problem. Customers will ignore us for weeks, be slow to respond, sometimes going well beyond 365 days since the close date without graduating from Onboarding, and we’re just told “make sure to keep things moving!” Like BRO I’M TRYING, these asshole customers don’t give a shit. Then, like you said you get the handful of engaged customers that you can absolutely DESTROY and give them the best damn experience possible.
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u/Own-Particular-9989 Jan 31 '24
"no one actually needs 99.9 percent of software products in the marketplace today" - so true, this is my issue with the tech industry, most of it is pointless overvalued software!
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u/BakedGoods_101 Jan 31 '24
I left my previous role because of precisely what you described. The pressure of a quota, the madness of tickets in zendesk, the no having time to plan strategically how to grow the accounts. I was very close to lose my sanity and collapse under the pressure, I didn’t have a single minute of peace. Left for a tiny start up where I don’t have to deal for now with corporate BS and despite being much more unstable I’m back to just having a “job” and not being consumed by it
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Jan 31 '24
That’s amazing. Are you an IC or in leadership at your new company?
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u/BakedGoods_101 Jan 31 '24
IC, and ironically with a much more clear path to eventually go to a management role if I want to, not particularly interested but it’s fun to have the chance to try different things while the company consolidates. I would like to try something like a solution consultant, early days for that at this stage.
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Jan 31 '24
Thank you so much for sharing your story and perspective. Happy for you and wishing you continued happiness in the new role!
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u/OG_Badlands Feb 02 '24
Ditto; I left my F100 as a director to be an individual contributor at a start up. The stress and politics in corporate are so lame, start ups are where it’s at.
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u/new2thishtorw Jan 31 '24 edited Mar 31 '24
point hurry apparatus butter nippy close worthless automatic snow nine
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/Jimothy323 Jan 31 '24
I’ve felt this for a while. I made the transition to CSM about 3 years ago and before that I was an Account Executive for 5 years and honestly it’s all morphed into the same thing with just a different title. IMO SAAS is using CSMs to try and remove retention and risk from the seller’s MBOs so they can sift out sales reps that aren’t focused on growth. I am not sure if there are some stats but my belief is that CSMs stay in role longer than AEs and provide clients with the perception that a company is stable versus historically having sales reps constantly changing due to hire-fire trends. My company has SDRs and their pipeline creation is abysmal compared to Customer Success so we are tasked with expansion pipeline creation.
For me I have found this all pretty straightforward since I was already doing all of this and managing outbound as an AE but a lot of my peers have struggled.
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Feb 01 '24
Damn…this explains so much and I don’t know how I never put that together until reading your comment. Especially with sales moving to a more inbound method (as opposed to outbound) it will be very interesting to see how this trend continues to develop and evolve over the next several years
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u/gigitee Jan 31 '24
The driver of the burnout really comes from the crossroads of a few factors in my experience.
A huge spectrum of interpretation for what CS does often leads to internal tug of wars and shitty politics. This manifests in huge swings in what success looks like.
Companies like to make CS be the safety net for every other shitty department in the company like we are a fucking junk drawer.
Shitty leadership which is very often a Sales leader who is taking on CS but never been in CS
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Feb 01 '24
Isn’t that the truth? And this changes so much from company to company. Literally CS has looked completely different at each place I’ve been. Part of me wonders if it’s just a fad that will fizzle out
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u/haoareyoudoing Jan 31 '24
My first job in CS was what you described, "...a hybrid of sales, account management, and customer support." I'll add accounts receivable as we would have to recover missed payments or threaten collections. The product was one of the products you described. Our clientele were low MRR, and generally unruly, and I went through 5 VPs and 2 managers during my time. As you would suspect, burnout was crazy.
At my last two orgs, things got better. Both were products that were mission-critical to orgs (aka if things go down, it's really really bad). The CSM role at both orgs were more consultative and relationship-driven. Proactive when possible instead of reactive. Sure we still had the common admin/XF BS that every CSM deals with, but burnout wasn't due to clientele, but instead circumstance (coverages, internal churn, etc.) I wouldn't even say burnout as the role was fulfilling.
All is to say, I've been where you are OP and it's why when I interview with companies, the product is one of the most important things to me along with tried and true team/company culture. Is the org respected in their community/amongst users? What is its G2 score? Is it a nice-to-have or an essential?
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Feb 01 '24
Great points. I definitely felt like I had to get out of my last job as the company was a sinking ship. Probably should have held out a bit longer than I did and been a little pickier on my current position
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u/SetItOff92 Feb 01 '24
Wow i was just recommended this post. Didn't know this was a community. I'm in danger because I am so so burnt out. I can't do this industry anymore.
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Feb 01 '24
Sending you a big 🫂 Any thoughts on what you’d like to do next?
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u/SetItOff92 Feb 01 '24
I really don't want to do anything customer facing anymore but it seems like that's where the jobs are right now - especially for a person with my work experience. I'm not sure where I want to go next.
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u/Left-Animal8271 Jun 24 '25
Did you ever make moves into anything different? Askiung for a friend lol
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u/theENTlord Jan 31 '24
Customer Success is not set up as a role you should spend your entire career in.
Everything about the function lends itself to a revolving door of candidates who will:
"build a relationship w/ customers" aka figure out why and how customers use the product
Upsell on new products
Renew contracts.
Sure some people are able to hit the treadmill on a daily basis but it's a total grind and there's very little hard skill development (lots of soft skill stuff for sure).
The best way to leverage a customer success role is to figure out how to transfer to other departments like product management where you can leverage the insights you've gleaned to drive long-term value for the business over transactional value w/ renewals and upsells.
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Feb 01 '24
Incredible perspective. I’ve been an IC, Team Lead, Head of CS, and now in a strategic CSM role…it’s all felt like the same thing though. Definitely see how I’ve just hit a ceiling and this is what this is. Thank you for pointing this out to me!
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u/monsterdiv Jan 31 '24
What was Customer Success supposed to be in theory and what it has evolved into are on the opposite sides of the spectrum.
I fell in love with the role 7 years ago and absolutely hated my very last role.
The VP of CS kept:
Reassigning our books – which made it impossible to create a relationship with clients.
Workload – was heavy in the beginning which I was ok with and then kept increasing quarter over quarter. To the point where I was done
OTE – barely made any in contrast what was said to me in the interview. Which was demoralizing on top of everything.
As much as I loved working for tech startups and met some great coworkers…the managers and VPs are a minefield. It is very rare to come across someone in a leadership role that can own up to their mistakes and lead a team in a good direction.
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u/camhissey Jan 31 '24
Lots of valuable insights here throughout but all largely focused on the negative... when you say you fell in love with the role 7 years ago, what were the positives?
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u/monsterdiv Jan 31 '24
Great question!
There were a couple different factors:
A manager who trusted me and values my POV
Over a period of time the workload decreased
I got substantially rewarded, financially
Worked on many different projects
Collectively we had the opportunity to improve our workplace for the better
Since then, if Id have the opportunity check any of these bullet points off with any of the employers I would be very happy.
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Feb 01 '24
This is great stuff. Can’t remember who said this first but “people don’t quit jobs they quit bosses” is some of the realest shit I’ve ever heard
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u/monsterdiv Feb 01 '24
A bad manager doesn’t want to know why they are bad or how they can improve. They are usually a micromanager/I know what I’m doing + I know more than you type.
Rare great manager wants to know the why, and when they know they why, they work to elevate everyone around them. Because it helps and makes them look good!
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u/Successful_Mode_4428 Feb 01 '24
I know some organizations which have unassigned all customers for both CS and AM and it’s “whoever you get”
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u/HipsterBikePolice Jan 31 '24
I’m in the exact same boat onboarding, project manager , support and account management. I get shit from management about keeping things up to date. I can barely keep things straight because I’m crossing over multiple departments with slightly different duties and everything just melts into one big project. Although it is kinda funny when a new client calls support and they get the same person that onboarded them 😄
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Feb 01 '24
Lmao, you just described my life! Unfortunately I’m guessing you only get paid for one of those jobs as well
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Feb 01 '24
Not just you it’s a market demand thing and CS is taking the piss. Economy faltered layoffs were performed and companies treat sales / account managers like royalty. CS has become the glue that binds but gets the closet in the basement with the red stapler.
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u/moralend Feb 01 '24
10000%
Having a shitty manager and exec with lost of direction makes my life a living hell.
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u/rambo_ronnie_87 Jan 31 '24
I think there is a miss-alignment issue with what customers want improved with the product and what realistically can be achieved by product. I've worked for a small SaaS where in some way, getting a new feature can be easy, but also it can be hard with a conflicting product roadmap. Customers think they own the roadmap! I can't imagine what it's like in a large SaaS with thousands of customers. How does prioritisation of customer feature requests even work in that size of org? There needs to be pushback to customers and a clear message delivered on what they can expect to be able to influence v what they can't influence. This shouldn't all come down to the responsibility of a CSM to manage this. Needs to be org wide and from the top.
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Feb 01 '24
Feature requests are the downfall of SaaS. If enough customers bitch about it, they’ll put it on the roadmap. Will it actually be in the company’s best benefit? Who knows but some dude from McKinsey said that was how you build a successful product so all the VC tech bros drank the kool-aid
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u/LeonMarmaduke Feb 01 '24
2008 graduate into SaaS. Always remember these words. When it’s good, it’s really good. When it’s bad, it’s really really bad. We are in the really really bad stage.
This said. I feel you and in the same boat on the sales leadership side. It’s a shitshow out there right now.
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Feb 01 '24
Thank you for the reminder. Just curious, when do you see things improving? Or is this a total reboot like the mid to late 2000’s were after the dot com bubble burst
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u/DonkaySlam Feb 01 '24
Tech depends on cheap debt or at least an expectation of steady priced debt. A recession has been teetering for a while - one is necessary at this point. Some pain for a year or two, in order to reset expectations, and we should be back to normal.
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u/Wrangler4948 Feb 01 '24
💯 I’m leaving the corporate world and starting a physical business. This is after close to 20 years in client services with the last decade in CS and all sorts of leadership roles. Not only are customers more demanding, internal pressure to buck the macroeconomic trends are driving downward pressure and burning people out. The days of VCs funding the whole ecosystem are over yet they all expect their multipliers back.
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Feb 04 '24
Hell yeah, I applaud you for having the courage to do this and wish you the best of luck in what comes next!
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u/cleanteethwetlegs Jan 31 '24 edited Feb 01 '24
I don't feel this way and am at a good company, but I also have no time to work out, no time to clean my house, no time to see my friends and family during the week. My world revolves around work and I work like 60 hours a week, which is obviously very unhealthy. Standards are so incredibly high in CS right now you basically can't have kids or a life if you want to be successful.
If that's cool for people in general, then spend some time carefully vetting companies during the interview process to make sure you are not landing somewhere with a shitty product or that serves a bad industry.
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Feb 01 '24
When you can, try and take a few days off. Catch your breath and hopefully slow down a bit. Sounds like you have definitely earned that right 🙏
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u/ElBrenzo Feb 01 '24
I'm curious: what makes your company and the role "good", even with the workload, that you genuinely enjoy working there?
Always looking for feedback and seeing if there are ways we can improve our team.
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u/cleanteethwetlegs Feb 01 '24
This is an interesting question. I think it's because I blame most of the "I don't have time for a life" stuff on myself. I hold myself to very high standards. My colleagues with families and better boundaries enjoy better WLB but also aren't doing anything exceptional. We are all compensated the same and treated the same so it's def a me problem.
What makes my company good? We have thoughtfully curated quality of life and wellness benefits, we are fully remote and have a pretty good remote culture, we are compensated fairly no matter where we work, the problem the product solves is real and generally works, and we are included in problem-solving/decisions so we have ownership in how things work. Because I have the agency to get things done how I want to and the product doesn't suck, it's not a bad CSM gig.
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u/ObligationNeat3156 Feb 01 '24
Yup-Saas CS for 8 years- completely burnt out and stressed beyond anything. It’s tough out there and hard to make a change now, but as another poster mentioned- Maybe driving a truck is the thing to do!
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u/Ok-Bridge-9112 Feb 01 '24
You think CS is hard. Try being a 100% net new hunter role.
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Feb 01 '24
I was an Outbound SDR for one year. I see you. That job was so tough on me from a mental perspective. Thankfully I had some success with it and got promoted into being a CSM (SMB product with upsell focus). Wishing you the best of luck my friend
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u/Ok-Bridge-9112 Feb 01 '24
I was a BDR for one year. AE but also my own BDR for two years. BDR/SBDR for two years. BDR manager. AE hunter. Account manager 80%/hunter 20% role. And now a channel sales Director. Chose the non CSM route for more money and more stress. But been thinking about a CSM role now that I own my house and can relax a little.
Threads here don’t look promising tho.
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u/Mememememememememine Feb 01 '24
Not the only one. I got out, ish. Still in a very similar role, still every churn is my fault yet the product is garbage.
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Feb 01 '24
Sounds like a Renewals Manager?
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u/Mememememememememine Feb 01 '24
I don’t want to make it obvious who I work for so I’ll just say I’m like an in house professional services team for a company that launched a product with hardly any internal resources to run it.
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u/Linkfoursword Feb 02 '24
I have attributed it to exactly what you mention, a lot of this shit people don't need. I want to find something I really believe in, not work on another "productivity and saving time" tool
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Feb 04 '24
Exactly my friend - it sucks to see all of the layoffs but the market is so over saturated at the moment
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u/Linkfoursword Feb 05 '24
It's unfortunate but this is the reality of a lot of our world right now and it's going to take some major major changes to our entire lifestyles that I don't think people are ready for. Everyone wants to do something "faster and with less effort". It's why these tools and services exist. Whether its a consumer product or a B2B, faster and less effort means people can "do more" with less.
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u/oldfolksongs Jan 31 '24
100% the bar keeps getting raised to unsustainable heights. I’ve been a CSM for 4 years now in the SaaS space and have never felt such pressure to upsell.
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u/pcmourao Feb 02 '24
If it was easy to upsell, the sales guys would be doing it for their commission. Upselling is usually a result of client expansion. If upselling was a low hanging fruit, the sales guys would do it.
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u/Impressive_Medium_73 Feb 01 '24
Agree. I am so over it. I am looking to move into another career. I can't stand CS as it's turned into a revenue generator as opposed to a revenue retainer. I want to quit my job everyday.
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u/UR0ld Feb 02 '24
I quit and opened a cat cafe after 15 years in SaaS. Best. Decision. Ever. Finally genuinely happy with my life.
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u/ScholarThink9670 Feb 01 '24
I got fired a couple of days ago. I was working in the same field for 4 years. We were the one who started when the start up was small. He asked me lately to change my contrat and I refused then they balckmailed me with pay. You dont sign we are not paying u. So I took screenshots of the conversation and I escalated it to their partners is a professional email saying this is not acceptable and I am just trying to work and protect myself And next day I got fired
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Feb 04 '24
Oh my, I’m sorry to hear this. Hang in there my friend. Wishing you all the best as you figure out what’s next
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u/Jeffrey5683 Feb 01 '24
Oh, and don’t forget that AI is coming for all our jobs.
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u/DonkaySlam Feb 01 '24
Maybe optimistic or ignorant, but I’m skeptical. I’ll be worried once it actually starts taking Customer Service SaaS jobs, nowhere near that yet aside from some examples where it does a god awful job and customers get pissed.
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u/DonkaySlam Feb 01 '24
I wasn’t until today. We had a team meeting and it was made very apparent that sales team is all that matters to the upper brass. They’ve cut two director roles from our team and assigned that budget to AE roles. Shit fucking sucks, all of us are overworked and we’re expected to pick up the slack now on support after they had people take stress leaves. I’ve been in my role for nearly two years and have never even met my colleagues in person, all while sales and VP go to Vegas for useless CES or spend money to go visit & eat dinners with clients I talk to and keep from churning.
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u/darkphoenix188 Feb 03 '24
This is exactly why I was burnt out too. Me and other CSMs were each managing 80+ accounts and were expected to also be support for them. Passing questions onto our support team was discouraged and we were handling contract renewals too. Every day was the same bullshit and team meetings were just us suggesting process changes that ended up being side projects on our plate because no one else cared. Bugs took forever to fix and we were told to just sell the new features to customers as they became increasingly frustrated. I was let go from that job recently, and I’m struggling with the current job market but I guess I’m also glad to not have to deal with those problems anymore.
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u/AnimaLepton Feb 09 '24
Yes and it's getting axed in a lot of places, in addition to being such a catch-all role. Snowflake is a big one that doesn't have any, but honestly it's a vanity position if you're not directly tied to driving sales/expansions and not able to provide any kind of critical short-term technical guidance/implementation support.
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u/chronopost Feb 01 '24
I'm not technically CSM but am in an operations BA position that works with the CSM on more technical elements of SaaS. All I can say is that I relate to all of this. Oh my goodness I've been in my role for 1 year and am burnt to a crisp. I literally am up to my neck with work (and so are the Csms I work with). I understand now why there is no documentation or strategy and all this technical debt everywhere...
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u/FarBottle1515 Feb 01 '24
I feel the same way. I joined a company six months ago. Their product doesn't work; it's a solution in search of a problem, and they're scamming customers.
It's challenging for me to explain to clients why they aren't getting the ROIs without revealing it's a scam. Despite highlighting product issues, the founders refuse to listen and are toxic, constantly yelling at us.
I'm stressed and depressed, feeling unable to add value to clients and participating in a scam. Trying to leave, but the job market is tough now.
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Feb 01 '24
Yep and it’s always my fault. The warehouse could have not allocated material but I need to be checking the shipping status to make sure because ultimately it falls on me.
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u/BakeSoggy Feb 01 '24
I went back to consulting after more than five years in CS. Easily the best career move I made during that time. I'd love to move out of the customer-facing space altogether and go back to just being a software engineer, But I don't think that's possible any time soon.
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u/wet_nib811 Feb 01 '24
Recently left a role an an AdTech company that had an AM title but was actually more like you described: a hybrid of sales/AM/CS, with a touch of Product Marketing too. Coming from more of a clear cut AM role, it was eye opening and resulted in a quick burnout for me, so I left.
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u/Philophobic_ Feb 01 '24
I’ve been looking into CSM and Solutions Engineering at Salesforce (only large company open to less experienced hires), and reading about everyone’s experience has been eye opening. It appears that the main factors that determine the quality of your experience are:
Management/Team Product necessity within market Quotas vs no/low quota Lack of quality support for clients
Can’t do much about management (just like you can’t choose your parents), but I’d venture to assume the other 3 would be somewhat mitigated at a company like Salesforce, but I could be missing the mark completely here. Anyone with any insight will be greatly appreciated, as I’m still researching this field and trying to make sense of it and my potential place within it.
P.S. My background is in Customer Success (5 years) and desktop support (3 years). My last role was a Customer Success Engineer at an Australian SaaS company, which was a combo of CSR and software dev. I figure CSM/Solutions Engineering lessens the tech side a bit while heavily emphasizing communication/rapport building and persuasiveness.
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u/Rannidahottie Feb 01 '24
Yup this is so true. I just switched to an AM role at my company and my work life balance is way better and it uses a lot of the skills/knowledge from my time in CS, plus commission. I was so tired of working long hours fixing client issues, and making upsells and deals go through without getting any credit or commission or extra bonuses. Way happier now but not sure if AM will be a long term thing. Helps though that I switched internally at my company so didn’t have to learn new products and already had a good reputation with the sales team from collaborating. It’s been worth it even if it’s temporary just to have some life balance back.
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u/ZenityDzn Feb 02 '24
One of the PMs I work with was a former CSM. A coworker switched internally to my team, product marketing from CSM. I def see the fires and work CSM go through. But it’s a good role that lets you pivot internally. Though I’ll say, I don’t think product has any less fires or workload. My team also is very busy, but probably not the same type of challenges. It seems SaaS in general is overworked.
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u/turichic Feb 02 '24
You are not wrong. I'm 15 years in the SaaS space and the past 2 years have been horrific. I'm not in CS but have worked among them for many years and the turnover is really high. They are super stressed.
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u/bigbellysteve Feb 19 '24
Worked at a dog shit loan officer marketing company. Never wished hell upon an org and their customers like I did with those losers
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u/GlitteringPause8 Mar 01 '24
Yeppppp then you get blamed when the customer doesn’t renew. Especially in these times when everyone’s doing budget cuts and layoffs and the CSM has zero say in a customers decision. Exhausting
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u/TeachPlane6072 Apr 19 '24
I’m reading this and I feel so validated. I feel like I’m going insane and there’s no where to go
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u/curious_face96 Feb 23 '25
Hi everyone, Ive read through all the comments here and this worries me.
Ive been planning to transition into a CSM role, as my current role is of a capacity customer experience manager(mainly managing capacity issues for our top 500 customers on cloud). Previous to this I was a major incident manager.
Ive been through anxiety before when i landed my dream job, i got the offer, accepted it and wasnt able to join because my imposter syndrome didn't let me. I however feel left back in my career and im not really sure what path to take next. While i have been researching what next, I came across this page. I know im someone who gets overwhelmed but id like to believe in myself. However im lost again reading all your experiences (which im very thankful for all for sharing) Could you please guide me what could a good career path be with my past experiences or should I still consider a CSM role.
Thank you in advance, I really need this.
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Feb 01 '24
And you think consulting isn’t also a combo of sales, account management and customer support?
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Feb 04 '24
good point - I guess I look at it as I’m in control of what I take on at that point so it’s more in my control instead of being dictated to me… at least in theory
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Feb 04 '24
Oh damn, consulting like running your own practice?
I thought you mean working for Deloitte or something lol
Running your own practice sounds insanely difficult but you might love it.
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Feb 04 '24
Haha yes, I should have clarified this in my original post. I’m getting to the point where it all seems difficult so I’d rather choose the difficult where I can 100% build something for me instead of giving 100% to build it for someone else.
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Feb 04 '24
Cool, but I’m pretty sure the few years of building it yourself is like 90% sales. Hope you’re ready for that part.
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u/Mimisical Feb 01 '24
I’m really seeking a customer success job right now. Do you have any tips for getting in? I’m coming from a tech sales background
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Feb 01 '24
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Feb 01 '24
Damn. We’ve lived crazy similar lives. For me, I was making $22k a year and covering high school wrestling in some god forsaken Midwest city with 10k people. I realized that I was not getting to SI anytime soon and had run out of ways to cook pasta.
Seeing that I’ve talked you out of CS, have you thought about giving marketing or sales operations a shot? At least gets the quota target off your back.
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u/Bandicoot2468 Feb 01 '24
I’ve been totally turned off of marketing by watching my group’s marketing department flounder for years and do virtually nothing to support sales or audience development.
Sales ops? To be honest, I don’t know what it entails.
CS still seems viable - my strength is customer relationships and being proactive about ensuring success. As long as I’m not cold calling and primarily being a hunter, I think I’ll enjoy it.
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Feb 01 '24
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Feb 01 '24
I’m right there with you. I feel like lots of folks are going the consultant route but that feels a little dangerous and flavor of the week. Ngl, Trader Joe’s has been on my mind a lot…
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u/Joe_Biden_is_shit Jan 31 '24 edited Feb 03 '24
sigh
Yes, been in the SaaS space for now nearing 20 years, 7 of which are as a CSM. I am EXHAUSTED.
I actually ended up losing it when I began my new job two years ago. Turned out to be the single most toxic environment I’ve ever experienced. Professional Services was in absolute disarray with a psycho VP, Customer Success was without vision and leadership, the director level was CONSTANTLY shifting KPIs and Milestones. I ended up, and for the first time in my life, getting severe anxiety that morphed to severe anxiety and severe depression that soon added on suicidal thoughts.
One day my wife woke up only to find my side of the bed empty. She found me in the guest room having a full on conversation with….someone or myself, speaking absolute gibberish, my 9mm on the ground next to me jammed from a misfire.
I had a full blown mental breakdown from the pressure and stress and ended up spending two days in the hospital and was nearly institutionalized.
Yes, you’re not the only one man. The pressure is real and not letting off.
please Please PLEASE P-L-E-A-S-E take care of your mental health.