I realized this year that of the three major parts of my day, with 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 working, I'm so miserable that the 1/3 I should have as free time is simply wasted either over working, or coping with stress. And realistically I'm not even getting my 1/3 sleeping time either.
That was my situation up until 5 months ago, and the pay cut I took to get out of it (about 10%) was worth every penny. People have told me since then that I now seem like a completely different person.
In my situation, the mental load got so bad that it actually started hampering my ability to find another position[1]. I started approaching every nibble with desperation and likely underperformed on multiple interviews due to the self-imposed pressure to get them right so I could get out of my miserable situation. I worried about actually having time for interviews with the schedule I was working. My failure to find something else then fed back and made the problems related to the job worse by injecting hopelessness. I finally managed to break that cycle long enough to find a position at a very small local company.
[1] As a bit of background to put this and the following statements in context, I live in Dallas and spent almost 10 years at a major defense contractor here. I also have some issues with explaining my experience in detail, particularly confusion over my "systems engineer" title[2] and not being able to talk about the good stuff I did.
[2] Aerospace/defense systems engineers are not what most of you probably think of when you hear that title: http://www.incose.org/practice/whatissystemseng.aspx
Yesterday I had a really positive interview with a company that I think would be fun, but would represent a 20-30% pay reduction. You know what? I've pretty much settled on the fact that if they like me, I'll probably say yes to it.
I've spent the last 15 years bouncing around between large and small companies, large meaning 30,000, 40,000 and 125,000 employees, and small meaning 15, 6, 4, 30, 16 and 2 employees. I was always moving up in salary and building a career and so never really gave much thought to if I was having fun or not. But looking back, and particularly after that last 3 very stressful years trying to turn around a distressed startup, I would much rather go back to working at the companies I had more fun with, even taking my original salary to do so.
The stress, overwork, aggravation and frustration and sleepless nights is just simply not worth it. I've spent significant portions over the last 3 years ill from problems that are probably stress related. I've gained weight, lost fitness and my work-life balance has gotten terribly out of whack. I just realized earlier in the week that my license expires next week and I literally have so many meetings scheduled that I simply won't be able to make it to the DMV in time. I've even had to cancel my vacation for the later part of this year.
I realized this year that of the three major parts of my day, with 1/3 sleeping and 1/3 working, I'm so miserable that the 1/3 I should have as free time is simply wasted either over working, or coping with stress. And realistically I'm not even getting my 1/3 sleeping time either.
My advice is, if you are happy with where you are at with your career, and can reasonably afford to take a pay hit, there's no amount of pay that can make up for poor health, constant stress, loss of weekends and time with friends and family. I'm fortunate enough to be in a position where I can conceive of a 50-60% delta from my current earning potential to consider a position where I think I might enjoy my time there. I recognize that not everybody is in the same position. But try and be more judicious in what positions you end up in than I've been. And when you work for a place and the fun stops, start to look for the next gig.
+fun defined as a rewarding and challenging job where I'm free to work on interesting problems and focus on the customer. Something I look forward to coming back to day after day and not something I have to will my way through.