Recovering from burnout or time to move on?

[Virgoschild]

I would love your thoughts on my work position…

I’ve always been very career focused and generally a driven person. For years I was a top performer.

I went on maternity leave (now have 2 young children) and my work were pretty rotten. Honestly, amongst other things they prevented a pay rise and promotion and said that it was because I’d just go and have another kid (yeah I know!).

So when I came back from maternity leave I worked even harder than before in order to ‘prove myself’. Ended up, naturally, absolutely burning myself out - lots of working late nights and weekends and lots of stress. Looking back, these efforts were not even appreciated.

Decided not to give a shit anymore and wind my efforts back, thinking I’ll get a new job in due course. I’m now in a position where the pressure is fairly low, I’ve got lots of flexibility and I got that pay rise and promotion.

The negative is that I feel like my spark has completely gone. I don’t enjoy work like I used to, the quality of the work I get is reduced and I have no drive whatsoever. I actually feel like my skills are deteriorating staying where I am.

Any job move is likely to impact flexibility and be more stressful, and I’m scared of being back in that burn out hole.

What would you do? Get a new job or stay at the current place?

If your kids are still young, I would carry on as you are - especially as you've achieved the flexibility and payrise you needed. I'd give this a couple of years and then see if you'd like to take on something more challenging career wise. Good luck!

With 2 young kids, a flexible, low stress, well paying job is worth it's weight in gold. Better the devil you know.

Can you find ways to make the day to day more interesting? Any projects you can take on, mentoring people, new initiatives.etc etc. Or can you just detach from it, and get that intellectual spark from a new hobby or something outside work.

The only risk is getting deskilled, as once the kids are a bit older and more independent, you'll still have many years of career ahead of you. So try to find ways to upskill, stay up to date and take any training opportunities possible. You can do that in work time.

I don’t want to state the obvious but can’t you talk to your manager and say you’re a bit bored and need some more challenging work to keep you motivated?

Why not take on some study if you feel like you're deskilling and negotiate with work to take half a day study time, if you can prove the benefits to the business. Then move on when your children are older.

There's a lot to be said for a well paid role you can do well, without blood, sweat and tears.

I was in a similar position to you OP. I worked very long hours in my last role and my manager was a misogynist (I was the only female left in the team as the others left within a year of him starting) so I was given all the rubbish projects and work despite being the most highly qualified within the team.

The flexibility kept me there - I was able to drop off and collect DC from village school whereby I needed a car to get there so impossible for parents, who don’t drive. No public transport either.

Anyway I clung on in there, no life outside of work due to the long hours and felt exhausted all of the time. I was bored, undervalued and lost confidence.

As soon as DC went to senior school and could travel by train, I started looking elsewhere. I’ve been with my new company since June 2025 and it is a breath of fresh air. I often think if only I’d done this earlier. That said, I am lucky with the role and employer that I now have and wish I’d known about them year ago!

Good luck with whatever you decide.

unfortunately although I have spoken to them a couple of times, nothing has changed.

Because my work differs somewhat from what my manager does, I think he’s just not interested