Ksenia works at an IT company in Central Europe. She’s a highly sought-after professional with recruiters constantly reaching out. Yet often, she struggles just to get out of bed.
Arseny remains grateful to a well-known outsourcing company in Belarus for its supportive approach during his acute phase of depression.
Ksenia works at an IT company in Central Europe. She’s a highly sought-after professional with recruiters constantly reaching out. Yet often, she struggles just to get out of bed.
Arseny remains grateful to a well-known outsourcing company in Belarus for its supportive approach during his acute phase of depression.
Two stories about living and working with depression.
— Once, one of my developers disappeared for a week. The client raised the alarm: «He’s not tracking his time at all.» People started calling him, but he didn’t pick up. Later, he finally responded: «I couldn’t do anything, I felt terrible,» he wrote. I felt that I was the only one who could understand what was happening with him, and more importantly — I knew all too well what it’s like to be in deep depression.
I was diagnosed in 2017. The illness manifested after moving to another country and struggling to find work. If I forgot to take my antidepressant, I couldn’t get out of bed the next day.
With depression, it’s hard to even exist — let alone work. My IT colleagues run half-marathons after work, while all my energy goes into just getting home, taking off my clothes, and remembering to feed my cats. Sometimes I didn’t have the strength to cook. There were open packs of crackers and nuts all over my apartment. If it weren’t for the good salaries in IT, I couldn’t imagine how I could afford this lifestyle — with daily food delivery.
Getting to the office is like flying into space. But somehow you need to work, because you can’t live without money.
I currently live in Central Europe — here it’s normal to take sick leave for mental health reasons. Of course, employers don’t love it — sometimes people go on leave for six months, and it’s impossible to fill the position during that time. But managers are more tolerant: both of mine (one from Ireland, another from the Czech Republic) accepted without issue that I needed eight weeks of sick leave to switch from one medication to another — switching medication comes with severe side effects: extreme fatigue, panic, suicidal thoughts.
In Belarus, however, they didn’t offer me sick leave, even though I was diagnosed with moderate depressive disorder and ADHD. Doctors would say: «Start small. Today brush your teeth or take a shower, and tomorrow go to the office and send two emails.» But my employer doesn’t need me to send two emails — they need me to complete tasks.
At every job, I try to negotiate special conditions: for example, at one company employees arrived at the office at 9:00 a.m. — while I had unofficial permission to show up after 11:00 a.m.
If I need to report what I’ve accomplished during the day, that’s also not for me. There are days when I have absolutely nothing to write. During these times, I live with an enormous sense of guilt that for a day, a week, or even a month I haven’t been working effectively — and basically haven’t been doing anything at all.
It’s very important to me that a company sees me as a person along with my «vulnerabilities.» And yes, I usually tell management about my illness, because it’s impossible to pretend each time that this latest «slip-up» is just a coincidence.
The reactions to my disclosure vary.
Once I had a conflict with a resource manager who monitored working hours — in his eyes, I was «lazy» and a «slacker.» I tried to explain everything to him, but he considered me a malingerer. Then I went to the company’s head, and he said: «You’re both adults. If you can’t come to an agreement, then don’t talk to each other—just do your jobs.» From that day on, the manager would greet everyone in the office except me.
Currently, I work for a very large company: just in my city, the office has several thousand people — and even more in other countries, almost like Google or Revolut.
We don’t have strict monitoring — I always clarify such things during interviews. Each manager has over 30 people reporting to them. They can’t keep track of everyone, and that seems to be the only thing that saves me.If, during a bad week, I only worked five to ten hours, nobody notices. I can drag myself to the office at 6:00 PM, tap my access card — and the system will record that I showed up for work.
I work at each company for about a year before moving on. Sometimes it’s because of guilt that I’m not as effective as everyone around me would like. Other times I want a fresh start.
When the latest dark period in my life ends, I hope things will be different. I tell myself I’ll try to stay at the new place longer and be more productive. I want to believe that another company will care more about people, that no one will make cutting remarks about my absence from a call (and yes, I wasn’t there because I spent the whole morning fighting suicidal thoughts).
As a result, I have a decent LinkedIn profile, and recruiters from Germany, Austria, and Ireland often reach out. I excel at interviews and receive offers — both my technical and soft skills are top-notch (and at my best, I’m an outstanding specialist).
I say I want to grow and work on more serious projects — and recruiters believe me. Changing teams every year looks perfectly logical on my CV; to them, I just seem ambitious.
But in reality, my goal is to stay with a company for three to four years, then move to a competitor and earn even more.
I listened to a podcast that gave advice on how to grow in a corporation: first work at 20% of your potential for a long time, then start working at 50%, and then at 80%. It’s like saying: «Look how great I am, how I’ve evolved — promote me or give me another role. So sometimes I tell myself: «I’m working at 20% now — but just wait until I show what I can do!»
Arseny* says he’s had depressive episodes since he was 15, «difficult times alternating with periods of clarity.»
— Once I had to be hospitalized because the situation became critical.
My supervisor and manager took it calmly — and did everything they could to support me. When I had to return to work sometime later, my productivity was naturally not great.
I even decided that my management didn’t need me «like this.» After the hospital, I went for an interview at another company and returned to my current one with an offer. But they told me: «You’re important to us. Just stay on the bench for now.»
For about six months, both my supervisor and manager overlooked the drop in my performance, though I could see things weren’t good. I was working maybe four hours a day. There were days when I didn’t even want to get out of bed, but there were also brighter moments — and that’s how I balanced things.
By the way, if you want to know how to work with clinical depression, my answer is: it’s better not to work at all — take an extended break. I spent three weeks in the hospital — and then rested for another month. Things got better after that: about six months later, the acute depressive phase ended, and my productivity normalized.
But I made a mistake when I started feeling better. I began immersing myself more in work and burned myself out in just a couple of months. So my advice to people in this state — understand that your resources are finite. Set aside (roughly) 4 hours for work, then gradually add more. When I started working according to my plan but without pushing myself too hard, I was able to gradually increase my productivity again.
One more thing: I’d like everyone to know that I was working at IsSoft during that time. I’m very grateful to this company for treating me like a human being.
* The speakers’ names have been changed at their request.
