Why SaaS Rewards Overwork - and 4 Ways to Protect Your Career (from a Product SVP)
Ciara Peter spent years sprinting up the Product Management career ladder. Then realized she was running herself into the ground.
Hey 👋 I’m Andrew. Welcome to Delivering Value - the newsletter and podcast where I interview SaaS leaders about the toughest moments of their careers, and explore how they turned them into success stories. You get to learn from their mistakes, without the pain.
My four year old loves the Pixar movie, Cars.
We’ve watched it dozens of times. We have 40-50 “hot wheels with eyes” around the house. And at least once a day, he’s runs through the kitchen shouting “ka-chow!”
The movie seems to be about speed.
Lightning McQueen is obsessed with being the fastest. Winning at all costs. But by the end, he realizes something more important: knowing when to slow down is just as crucial as knowing how to go fast.
That’s what this story is about.
Ciara Peter didn’t know how to slow down either.
For years, she ran full speed ahead - climbing the ranks, pushing harder, sprinting toward the next big milestone. She built her career from scratch, pushed herself harder than anyone else, and sprinted her way from Product Manager to Head of Product.
Until one day, she realized she was running herself into the ground.
The Night Her Mind Wouldn’t Let Her Sleep
At first, it was just another restless night.
Ciara lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying the day over and over in her head. She should have been asleep. She needed to be asleep. But after another 14-hour day at the startup where she was working, her mind wouldn’t shut off.
She had fought for the Head of Product title and sold them on her ability to lead.
But after a few years, she was exhausted from the endless sprint of early-stage startup life. Everything was urgent. Everything needed to be shipped faster. Deadlines constantly changed at the last minute.
And the 2 a.m. Slack messages? They weren’t helping.
The story that kept replaying in her head was brutal:
“If I can’t grow this company into an IPO, I must suck at this.”
There’s an unspoken rule in SaaS (especially VC backed SaaS): if you’re not constantly delivering, driving massive growth, then someone else will eventually take your place. So, she worked longer and pushed harder. To the point of clinical insomnia, because she couldn’t turn off her brain.
“I was in survival mode,” she shared.
“Even when I was with friends or my partner, my mind was still at work. There was always one more thing to do”.
Ciara wasn’t someone who coasted through life.
She didn’t have an Ivy League degree. She didn’t grow up around tech executives. Her parents were professional dancers, and she spent years working jobs that had nothing to do with Silicon Valley - working retail, bartending, and trying to figure out what she wanted.
By the time she landed her first tech job at 28, she felt behind.
While her peers were already climbing the ladder at Google and Facebook, she was just getting started. So she worked harder than anyone else. She built her career from scratch - from Demo Engineer at Salesforce to Head of Product.
And for a while, that drive paid off. Until the work wasn’t fulfilling anymore.
The startup’s constant fire-drills had rewired her brain to treat everything like a crisis
But she had convinced herself that leaving meant failure.
That if she walked away, she was proving she was never cut out for this. Then, one day, she just couldn’t do it anymore. There was no big epiphany. No dramatic realization. Just the growing understanding that this wasn’t sustainable.
Pushing harder wasn’t working.
The work wasn’t fulfilling anymore. And eventually, she made the decision that had been sitting in the back of her mind for months: It was time to go. So she quit.
No next job lined up. No backup plan.
The first month after she left was a blur. Her body was catching up on all the exhaustion she had ignored for years. “I just slept,” she said. At first, she thought quitting would give her space to breathe. But walking away didn’t bring instant relief.
Burnout doesn’t have an off switch.
In interviews, she struggled to find the energy to sell herself the way she used to. Simple questions, ones she usually answered with confidence, felt hard. She could see it in their faces: They knew she was drained.
And then, it hit her.
For years, she had been chasing the big titles, big comp, and the next step up the ladder. But what she really needed was a team she trusted and a job that didn’t make her feel like she was drowning. So she changed her approach.
She stopped focusing on the title and started focusing on the people.
She eventually landed a role at Gainsight, working under a leader she had worked with before, someone she trusted. In the process, she realized that success wasn’t just about pushing harder and climbing higher.
It was about finding the right environment, one that didn’t break you in the process.
How SaaS Rewards Overwork (And How to Break Free)
Unfortunately, Ciara’s story isn’t unique - it’s just the nature of the startup game
Most startups run lean. There’s never enough time, budget, or headcount, which means teams are constantly asked to ‘do more with less.’ Ciara saw it firsthand:
The people who stayed the latest, pushed the hardest, and sacrificed the most weren’t just surviving, they were getting promoted.
Because in SaaS, speed is everything.
Ship fast, learn fast, grow fast. Our industry rewards people who go ‘all in.’ The ones who answer Slack messages on Saturday. The ones who cancel plans, work on vacations, and blur the line between their work and their life.
If this sounds familiar, take this as your wake-up call.
The startup world will take as much as you’re willing to give. And if you don’t set boundaries, no one else will. Burnout isn’t a personal failure. It’s a predictable outcome of a system that rewards overwork like ambition.
You can’t change the system overnight. But you can change how you navigate it. Here’s how:
Treat your career like an investment, not a sunk cost. If you wouldn’t keep throwing money at a failing stock, don’t do it with your job. Take a step back, assess the ROI (and your energy levels) and be willing to pivot.
Redesign your job before it breaks you. If burnout feels inevitable, don’t wait until it takes you out. Set boundaries, delegate more, or start looking for a better environment before you crash.
Use stress as a signal, not a status quo. If you’re constantly anxious, exhausted, or dreading Mondays, don’t just push through - treat it as feedback. What needs to change?
Run your own performance review. Instead of waiting for your boss to tell you how you're doing, ask yourself: Am I growing? Do I feel valued? Am I still excited to be here? If not, start exploring options.
So if you’re at a crossroads, take a breath.
You don’t have to figure it all out today. But don’t ignore what your body, your mind, and your gut are trying to tell you. The right next step isn’t the one that looks good on paper.
It’s the one that lets you finally sleep at night.
Thanks for diving into this topic; it's not talked about nearly enough in VC-backed SaaS, and even less is done to normalize the realization among boards and leadership that this isn't good, and there is another way.