What I’m Writing About (and Why)
On burnout, age, working in tech, corporate dysfunction, and chronic health constraints
Welcome to Still Functional
If you’ve spent years in tech and ever felt like you’re still capable and still showing up... but everything has gotten inexplicably harder, this space might feel familiar.
What doesn’t get talked about enough is the version of tech work where you’re experienced, still employed, and quietly operating under constraints no one sees on your calendar, your resume, or in standup updates. Where output is judged as if your capacity is fixed, even when it’s not. Where the baseline expectation isn’t just competence. It’s relentless consistency, no matter what your body or mind is dealing with that week.
My Background
I’ve spent about 25 years in technical roles. That’s long enough to watch tools, management fads, and company cultures come and go in cycles. Long enough to spot when a problem is systemic, even when it’s dressed up as a personal failing.
For much of that time, it felt like getting hit from two sides at once: impossible deadlines on one side, my own health on the other. Burnout didn’t arrive in a dramatic crash. It built gradually over years. The quiet turning point came when I realized, matter-of-factly, that staying home sick might actually be preferable to going in. That wasn’t laziness or low resilience. It was a signal.
Along the way, I’ve also learned what it means to keep working with chronic health constraints: fatigue, brain fog, inflammation, disrupted sleep. These are the invisible things that don’t fit neatly into performance reviews or agile boards.
What This Substack Is About
This newsletter explores the collision between tech’s dominant assumptions (infinite speed, constant availability, endless resilience) and the reality of being human over a long career. Especially as a woman in tech dealing with age, health, and corporate dysfunction.
You’ll find writing on:
Burnout before it turns into full collapse
Difficult managers (the openly toxic ones and the well-meaning ones who still do harm)
Working under leaders who don’t understand your role, your labor, or what it takes just to show up on a good day
Invisible health constraints and the exhausting cost of appearing “fine”
Sustaining a career when capacity fluctuates week to week
Staying clear-headed in environments that reward denial and busyness
Navigating ageism. Not just in hiring, but in endurance: how bodies and energy change, how accumulated experience can coexist with growing limitations, and how tech culture struggles with time and longevity
Occasionally, I’ll skewer corporate dysfunction with some humor (because sometimes the only sane response is to laugh).
What This Substack Is Not
Career coaching or productivity hacks
Medical advice
Hustle culture in gentler packaging
Inspirational quotes about grinding through
This is for people who already know how to do their jobs well but are trying to figure out why it’s become so much harder. And whether the system is the problem, not them.
A Note on Age, Time, and Longevity in Tech
Tech loves deadlines but struggles with years. Bodies change. Energy shifts. Cognitive wear accumulates. The pace that felt sustainable in your 20s or 30s can quietly become damaging later. Even when your skill and judgment are at their best.
Ageism here isn’t just about getting hired (though that’s real). It’s about endurance: reaching a point where you’re too experienced to be “junior,” not flashy enough on every new framework to be “cutting-edge,” and caught in that awkward gap of being simultaneously overqualified and underappreciated.
(That’s exactly where my “YOU ARE HERE” arrow points right now.)
This space will sometimes explore what it means to keep going. Or to consider stepping away. In an industry that treats people as infinitely renewable resources.
On Anonymity and Approach
Some specifics are left out intentionally. Not because they don’t matter, but because the patterns and systems are what count. If parts of this feel eerily familiar, that’s not a coincidence. It’s the point.
How This Will Work
This is a slower, more deliberate Substack by design. Posts will mix practical observations, reflective pieces, naming-what’s-hard-to-say, and the occasional witty takedown of corporate nonsense. Everything assumes you’re thoughtful, capable, paying attention. And probably have a dark sense of humor about it all.
If you’re after loud advice, quick fixes, or constant motivation, this might not be your spot.
But if you’re looking for recognition, steadier footing, and the possibility that work doesn’t have to feel this punishing forever, you’re welcome here. No toxic positivity required.
Does this sound like it’s for you?
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The trouble with fatiguing at work is that the body is very resilient and has ways to keep you going even when your optimal levels are declining.
If you’re also a ‘doer’ and take satisfaction in getting things done, that can all mask your need for r and r.
That line about being sick and staying home.... I can't imagine what it's like to be dealing with an actual chronic condition at the same time....
I've mentally been there a few times, though. I gave in a few times too...
Against better judgement, I went in anyway semi-recently and sort of short-circuited. I ended up doing some writing to save my sanity. What popped out was honestly... A little like a manic version of your piece here... Maybe one of these days I'll work up the courage to publish that 😅