Now that I am in a (very good) startup, I am incredibly happy, learning and innovating nonstop, meeting new people, in a hyper growth market, building a completely new skillset.

I could never go back to these big companies. Not unless I was reporting directly to a CEO.

I am not getting rich but I am filled with joy.

At my previous job, I was so frustrated and the work was so pointless I was literally throwing things in my house. It made me so angry how stupid and useless a waste of time. We were working on a product which was entirely fake and everyone in the team knew it, but it was generally agreed we would all fake it together.

I would rather suck on a gas pipe than go back. It was damaging my mental health.

Say what you want about desperation: You only have time in your life. They were wasting my only resource, my time.

I started as a creative person, programming. I realized I had to go back to that to be happy. So I typed an email to my cofounders on the spot. Three days later, I was out of there.

I was fortunate to remain good friends with most of my cofounders and key employees. I've had a blast in the succeeding years - making a better income most years and getting to do things I enjoy. Having time for a great wife and kids makes it even better.

It was the best decision I ever made.

The first week after quiting I just spent time questioning my decision. But next couple of weeks I spent time with myself and gained a better perspective about life and career.

Its been 2.5 months now since I quit. I have saved enough to keep me floating. And now I am preparing to get into Amazon. Let's see if I nail it.

It was a rightful decision that I took. One thing I did learn is "How not to run a startup".

First job at IBM - I quit in a heartbeat. Had no idea what to do next. Attended a Startupweekend event and started working on a startup, didn't go anywhere. After a year or so got hired at MSFT as a contractor. Quit that for another startup. Reason - this was just turning into another cushy job, no real focus just some high level strategy etc.

Again quit that startup, without any plan. I was the engineering manager I wanted to try building a startup again. A long time friend had come down so we teamed up. No idea, nothing to go with. We were not in our 20s and had families to support and all that. Tried multiple ideas for a year and we split. I pursued startups for about 5 years got tired and am now a DE at big tech. Like I said, in hindsight all this feels great - but during the journey I felt quite miserable. None of my ideas were taking off, damn frustrating.

If you want to start your own thing, it's best to not look for ideas. My approach is to get to a job where you'll get as close as humanly possible to interact with customers and find out where their pain points are. Are they happy with the current company, what are the issues etc. Try solving those pain points from within the company - and you'll know what it really feels like to run a startup. If you succeed, great the company will support you, you grow and all that. If you figure that the company is unsupportive, quit and start up. By then, you already know the pain points, and you have some idea of how to solve them. You just have to execute.

You can get over all of these, work around them and try and make sure the same mistake doesn't happen twice, but the breaking point is really when you stop trusting your co-founders. At that point there really is no other choice. Since leaving and getting distance, lamenting with others, not having followup matters resolved professionally etc I've seen that it was the best decision I could have made.

I was thinking about quitting for a long time, but didn't do so. I felt loyalty, I was green, I was the developer guy, I didn't really know how businesses are created, yadda, yadda. At the same time I felt that things were not right, we were not going to the right direction.

After some years I decided to quit. Being broke was the last straw. I was also becoming toxic, a hostage, I had to quit to save myself and the start-up.

It was a bit hard to find a corporate job, because I didn't develop any good connections to the industry during my start-up time. Eventually I landed a job in a big company. It wasn't the best of jobs, but got me started in my current career. After two years I got a call from a manager that quit from that company. That's how I got my next corporate job. Then after three years, the same manager called me again and I got my current corporate job. And now I called that manager and some other ex-colleagues to offer job opportunities. You get the picture.

In hindsight quitting was the best decision I ever made. Two years after I left the start-up lost funding and went bust. Steady income improved my life significantly, I paid off debts, started saving, travelled, had real vacations. Almost all the stress and pain in my life was gone.

The only thing I regret is that I didn't quit earlier. I didn't believe in the start-up, but I kept hanging around, I was wasting my time. Since this experience I have made the decision to trust my gut feelings. If I feel something is wrong, I'll trust myself. So far this has served me well. I keep large savings. The idea is that if I ever need to make a jump to the void, then I'm able to do it.

My advice based on my own experiences:

- If you are finished, get out, because you are wasting your time and potentially other people's time.

- To maximize your chances to get a job in a big company look for a good match. When I quit I applied to all sorts of interesting jobs, but never got a reply. I did graphics programming, and unsurprisingly I was eventually hired by a company that desperately needed a graphics programmer.

Let's just say that my mistake was that I was too afraid to hurt my co-founder's feelings. If we parted ways when we should have, I might have actually gotten somewhere. (Then again, I might have gotten nowhere either!)

* If I don't like a situation, I will leave it. After all, the easiest way to change your environment is to escape it.

I feel conflicted with this one. While what you say is true I can't help but feel, when I try to apply to certain situations in life, like I'm quitting... or that I'd beat myself up for "being a quitter who didn't try hard enough to make things better" at a particular job or relationship or something of the sort. There's something to be said about the potential payoff relative to the amount of effort involved in making things better, of course.

Your second point is something I've been personally stuck in for awhile, mostly given the economic downturn and seeing friends go unemployed for quite a long time. Still, I probably have to make that jump sooner or later.

In February 2009, I quit my job to go full time on my startup in anticipation of closing an angel round. The next week, the financing fell through.

For the next six months, I was teetering on the edge of ramen profitable - with very little ramen and very little revenue growth. I seriously considered quitting, and in retrospect, there was really no compelling evidence indicating that I shouldn't quit.

Today, my company is doing quite well - we are 100% bootstrapped, profitable, high seven figures of revenue, 34 employees, and good continued growth prospects.

Looking back on 2009, I still feel like I should have quit at that point; I got lucky by sticking it out. I got lucky because I found it easier to muster the courage to keep trying than muster the courage to walk away.

I almost quit too soon, and every day I feel incredibly lucky that I didn't.

Has anyone been in a situation like this before? If so, what did you decide to do?

More details: Due to my own startup naivete, I agreed to a two year vesting cliff instead of a one year vesting cliff, so there’s not a natural exit point any time soon. In addition, if I were to leave the company after the cliff, but before product-market fit (PMF), it would surely not be very valuable.

The team and idea seem pretty strong, so my guess is this startup has a higher chance of succeeding than the average startup. That being said, I also guess there won’t be a liquidity event for 5-10 years. We are currently pre-PMF and have some seed funding.

Some details changed or left out to preserve anonymity.

I left a startup I co-founded after almost two years of engagement that was becoming increasingly half-hearted -- with symptoms of a mental health problem already showing and just in time to prevent the effects from being devastating. I did learn a lot, but in retrospect the decision to leave was good both for me and for the startup.