What we did have was investor money, a big pre-launch waitlist, a strong design team, and technical problems I was excited to work on, including collaborative realtime rich text editing, offline-first sync, polished UI details, animations, and more.
Our website won multiple design awards. We were also one of the poster children for Flutter. They featured us a few times, and we got a ton of positive buzz around our app.
Initially it really felt like a dream job.
> I still miss many of my coworkers. Some of the best engineers, designers, and managers I have ever worked with are from that company.
## Burning out
Along with other things I won't dive into, one of the problems was that I became one of the go-to data plumber sync garbage men.
It's a janitor's job. If you do your job perfectly, no one notices, _but if you make some mistakes, everyone notices_.
Most of the time, I ended up doing hard bug fixes and feature development around the offline sync and realtime document collaboration. That, of course, meant that I usually did not get the cool, bounded, shiny new projects to demo in the biweekly all-hands meetings.
_Roughly how I felt every time when opening my work laptop. Photo by Sebastian Herrmann on Unsplash._
Doing this for years really got to me. I felt I was burning out or at least very close to burning out most of the time.
In the past, I was always the person who was able to do really high quality complex work very fast, but after 2 years or so in this job, I felt like my dev superpowers were wearing off. I lost my mojo. I was scared that I would never be able to execute on the same level as I used to.
My reptile brain had associated my work laptop with some kind of magic bullshit machine that made me feel sad and stressed out whenever I opened it, so I had to force myself to open my laptop on most days.
> Oftentimes, I went to bed, only to dream about working. And then my nice work dream was interrupted by my alarm clock and I had to wake up, only to start working for real.
## Building a nest egg
Fall 2023, I felt like things are probably not gonna go great.
We had been working on the product for 3 years at that point. It was still in private alpha, and I was not that confident that it would resonate with the ~30k people on our waitlist.
At this point, I was burning out pretty hard. I was worried that if I switched to another job, I would not be able to do good work there, and that I would be fired from there pretty fast. This made me feel like I was stuck in this job, and my only option was to save up for the rainy day.
That way, in the future, I would be able live off from my savings to properly recover between jobs, so that my brain would be fresh and excited for whatever would come next.
### The bug-infested murder apartment
With the fancy-pants Principal Engineer's job title, I was used to living in big apartments that were very nicely designed. Some of them even had a sauna inside the apartment too.
That had to stop, at least for a while, if I were to build any kind of nest egg. I had sold my used Toyota Camry, started cooking food mostly at home, and otherwise downsized my spending. Cutting on rent costs was the next logical thing to do.
In October 2023, I moved to a very cheap 15sqm apartment in an old wooden apartment building. I had to sell most of my stuff to even fit in it.
No sauna either. Truly the darkest chapter of my life.
_The corridor and the front door to the cheapest apartment I have ever lived in._
On the moving day, I talked to one of my new neighbors.
I asked him if the other neighbors are friendly, and how is it to live in the apartment building in general.
> I have lived here for a long time and **aside from having seen someone get killed here**, I have no complaints. It is pretty good, neighbors are nice. You are definitely overpaying in rent though.
My rent was a couple hundred euros per month, and that was like three to four times less I used to pay previously.
_The apartment was pretty charming inside, even though it was tiny. The bugs and me never became friends though._
Eventually, some bugs started crawling on me and waking me up regularly in the middle of the night. I always kept doors and windows shut, but I guess there were some cracks in the walls and floors.
At some point, I had enough of the bugs. I decided to splurge and add a couple hundred more to my monthly rent, which got me an apartment without a bug problem. No people killed there either, at least to my knowledge.
Thanks to the cheaper apartment and other lifestyle adjustments, I was able to save a sizeable portion of my salary between fall 2023 - summer 2025.
## Freedom pizza
At the end of June 2025, on a Wednesday evening after work, I drove to Riga, Latvia, to meet up with my mother who had a vacation with her friends there.
Thursday morning, I was exhausted, laying on the bed, dreading to open my work laptop, and wondering how my dream job I always wanted and used to be really good at, became the thing I dreaded thinking about.
I heard the Slack notification sound from my work laptop.
It was the CEO, posting on the `#general` channel.
> "Hey team, due to reasons X, Y, and Z, we are making a lot of you redundant. I take the full responsibility for this. We'll let you know by DM if you're affected."
While reading the long Slack message, I got a DM.
> "Hey Iiro, unfortunately..."
YES! GOD YES!
Felt like an entire mountain was lifted off of my shoulders. I had been dreaming of taking some time off for years at this point, but I would've never resigned myself.
I closed my work laptop, had a little celebration dance, and went to have a pizza and a beer in a great pizza place in next to my AirBnb in Riga that I really like.
_The freedom pizza. Well, it's the same place in Riga, but a different occasion. Sadly I don't have a photo of the real freedom pizza so this will do._
The sun was shining and it was very hot outside. I was sitting on the terrace of the pizza place, smiling like an idiot. Life was good.
Little did this smiling idiot know that life was about to get even better. While having my beer and pizza, I got a push notification on my personal phone.
It was from LHV, my Estonian bank's mobile app.
> "The amount of XX,XXX.XX ? has been transferred to your account".
Turns out I got a golden handshake that was the equivalent of ~3.5 months salary on top of my existing nest egg!
_My Estonian bank, LHV, giving me some good news._
I met up with my mother and her friends in Riga and told them what had just happened. They were really sorry for me, and it was quite hard to explain to them that I was really happy about the situation.
I went to X and in a pretty cringy tweet, very proudly announced that I'm going to build my own SAAS and make it on my own in a year, and how I will be sharing the journey with everyone.
I've been quite silent here, but that's going to change.
I was just laid off, along with most of my coworkers, in a company-wide cut...
A lot of different companies contacted me.
I told all them a variation of _"I'm not at my 100% right now, and it wouldn't be fair to me or you if I joined your company. But here's one of my colleagues I can vouch for"_.
## One year later
I did build my own SaaS, and it is already covering the rent of my old bug-infested murder apartment, in case I ever want to move back there (I don't).
But no, I did not become some indie hacker god and retire in some tropical country just yet.
What did happen is that my savings allowed me to just take it easy, say no to job offers, and do whatever I wanted for a while.
### Burnout recovery
I started unfucking my life, and I feel like a normal human being again.
I'm not afraid to open my laptop anymore. In fact, I look toward doing it! Feels like I'm slowly getting my superpowers and mojo back.
I don't do alcohol or coffee anymore. Both were having a really bad effect on me.
I have better eating habits and make more food at home than I used to. I still sometimes eat like an 8-year-old with an unlimited credit card, but at least it is not every single day anymore.
_Some home-cooked Spaghetti Bolognese I made a month ago. No, I did not drain the pasta, even though there's a sieve in the background. Yes, I use Snapchat, sue me._
### Relationships
At the worst point of my burnout, **I almost broke up** with my very supportive girlfriend, who I met at the time when I was living at the bug infested murder apartment.
That would've been a big mistake. Looking back, I didn't want to leave the relationship, but I was just exhausted and didn't have mental energy for anything else than being miserable.
Now, I'm way more chill of a person and I'm not constantly stressed and tired and angry all the time.
Around the 9 month mark after me being laid off, my girlfriend's sisters' soon-to-be husband said to my girlfriend:
> Iiro is glowing and looks so happy and like he's doing well in life. I'm really happy to see him so happy.
I met this guy first time in 2024, so he met with the most tired, stressed out, tired, and burnt out Iiro possible. That grumpy Iiro was the only Iiro he knew up until then.
### Travel
I always wanted to visit Bali to see what it is about, and January this year, I did, for 5 weeks.
I also went to Greece, Prague, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finnish Lapland, along other places.
_Somewhere in Northern Spain. Don't actually remember where exactly._
### An accidental startup
I started to work on my side projects, and I made some pocket money from them quite fast.
I met up with a friend I hadn't seen for some time, and told her about these little apps.
> "Since you're making all these apps, maybe you could solve a problem I have?"
I decided to go for it, and 10 months later, I am still doing it. But I am solving it for others too. I am almost able to pay my current rent with the monthly revenue, which feels amazing!
## Future
Being laid off with a sizeable nest egg and a golden handshake bought me time to recover and do my own thing for a while.
I'm gonna see if my startup takes off and could fully support me. If not, I'm more than ready for another job next year. I also want to start writing again on this blog.
For the first time in years, I am waking up excited to open my laptop. On the days when I'm not that excited, I can still just open it.
My Macbook does not feel like the magic bullshit sadness stress machine it felt before.