u/Final_Vegetable_5092

I recently bought an Omron because my mother in law thought the blood pressure recorded on my iHealth machine was incorrect and overstating her readings. When I first got the Omron, her readings were higher on the iHealth and lower on the Omron. My readings were about the same on both machines. The Omron is apparently the gold standard and is more expensive.

These past 2 weeks have changed for me now. The newer Omron machine reads lower for me than on the iHealth. I have no idea which one to trust. The Omron is newer and I have changed batteries on both devices.

I would like to connect with about 2 people in Customer Success who are introverts and might be interested in getting involved in a startup with me. To clarify, I’m in CS myself. I’m not looking to build a CS team. I’m looking to build a startup with introverts in CS. Must be US-based for now as it makes it easier to connect.

The idea is still in its early stages, but I believe it addresses two meaningful challenges that affect introverts and help a large number of other people. I do not have the time to take this on entirely by myself due to a full-time career and a toddler at home, so I am looking for a small group of like-minded people who would be interested in building something together.

To be clear, I am not looking for investors, employees, or advisors. I am looking for people who genuinely enjoy entrepreneurship and would like to be involved in building and growing something from the ground up. Ideally, you have at least 3 years of Customer Success experience, think strategically, enjoy solving problems, and are willing to contribute ideas and effort.

I am a legitimate professional, not trying to sell anything, and would be happy to connect on LinkedIn before discussing the concept further. To be transparent, I do not think this idea is going to make anyone a millionaire. What I do think is that if everything goes well, it could potentially create a meaningful source of additional income that can possibly match a Customer Success salary over time. My interest is in building something useful, having fun with the process, and seeing where it leads.

If you have ever wanted to be part of a startup without immediately quitting your job, I would love to hear from you. Send me a message with a little information about your background and what interests you about building something from scratch. If you don’t like my idea, that’s fine, but would like to know any ideas that you have in mind as well.

I have been in CS and relationship management roles for about 7 years now. I have joined a bigger SaaS company 6 months ago where I have to hold 30 QBRs per quarter in order to meet my objectives. I’m great at my job, but this is draining. Additionally, all of my meetings have to be recorded, so my manager picks out a few on a regular basis to give us feedback.

I’m used to working in startups where the relationships that I’ve had with customers were more informal and closer. This role requires me to do more formal presentations with a bigger audience. My previous jobs were more difficult because I had to be more analytical and solve real problems. I had to be a subject matter expert, but mentally, I feel more exhausted with this new role.

Again, I’m performing better than most of my peers, but no one would think that I’m an introvert and how exhausting this is for me. I’ve started using beta blockers to make it through these meetings lol. How are other introverts holding up?

My wife has been watching a lot of videos about the “soft girl era” and feminine energy lately, and I feel like it’s starting to damage our relationship. Last night, I jokingly said that the next time she wants me to go to a movie I’m not interested in, I’m going to pass. That comment came after she told me she had no interest in watching the new Age of Disclosure documentary with me.

She immediately told me that I have feminine energy and that it’s probably because I was raised in a household with mostly women. For some background, I’m a first-generation Latino male. My father worked in auto body repair and occasionally did landscaping and concrete work. From the time I was about five years old through my teenage years, he would sometimes take me to work with him. I helped sand cars and worked on various labor-intensive projects. Despite that, he constantly emphasized education. He told me he didn’t want me making a living doing the kind of physical work he did and that life would be easier if I focused on school. He said to hire someone to do these things and don’t break your back.

That’s exactly what I did. I worked desk jobs while attending school, built a career in tech, and eventually earned a master’s degree in my 30s. The issue is that my wife seems genuinely turned off by the fact that I’m not particularly handy. If something breaks and it requires some type of specialty trade, my first instinct is to hire someone who knows what they’re doing. She wants me to handle plumbing repairs, cut down trees in our yard with a chainsaw, and take on more manual projects because, in her view, those things are what make a man.

What frustrates me is the double standard. She expects me to fit a traditional masculine role, yet she doesn’t seem concerned with fitting traditional feminine roles herself. For example, she never cooks and we order takeout most of the time. We’ve been together for nine years, and this was never an issue until now.

My job is already stressful, and my income covers roughly 70% of our household expenses. Most nights I’m bathing and feeding our toddler while she takes super long showers. During those showers, I can hear TikToks, YouTube videos, and relationship content playing in the background. She also listens to romance novels that seem to promote highly idealized and unrealistic relationship dynamics. The men in those stories increasingly feel like the standard she’s comparing me against.

What bothers me most is that I feel like the life I’ve built is being discounted. My father worked hard and raised me, so I could have opportunities he never had. I followed the path he encouraged, earned an advanced degree, built a career, help support my family financially, and stay actively involved as a father. None of that seemed to be a problem until these ideas about masculine and feminine energy started becoming a major influence.

I honestly don’t know how to get her to see that this content is affecting the way she views me and our marriage. Has anyone else dealt with a partner who became heavily influenced by social media relationship trends?

In 2025, I experienced two layoffs. The first happened when my company implemented an RTO mandate. I lived roughly three hours away from the office, so there was no realistic way to comply. The second happened when the company eliminated the Customer Success function altogether and absorbed those responsibilities into Account Management.

I landed another role afterward, and on paper everything is going well. Good company, good manager, and good performance. Yet I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from those layoffs.

Every time I get a direct message from my manager, my stomach drops for a second. Every unexpected calendar invite creates a moment of anxiety. My brain immediately goes to, “Is this it?”

What surprises me most is how much it has changed my attitude toward work. Earlier in my career, I was incredibly ambitious. I spent more than five years as a CSM chasing growth opportunities. I worked hard, became a subject matter expert, learned whatever was needed, and eventually earned a promotion to Senior CSM.

Even then, I often felt like I was capable of more than the roles I was being given. Today, I feel completely different. I still care about doing a great job. I still want to deliver results and be someone my team can rely on. The difference is that I no longer feel emotionally invested in climbing the ladder.

When my manager asks about my long-term career aspirations, I honestly don’t know what to say anymore other than, “I just want to be good at my job.” The version of me that spent years thinking about promotions, leadership paths, and long-term career plans feels like a different person.

Now I mostly want to do good work, collect my paycheck, and protect my peace of mind. Part of me wonders whether this is personal burnout. Another part of me thinks it is a natural response to what happened across tech over the last few years.

For me, company culture lost a lot of its meaning once mass layoffs became normalized. It became harder to fully buy into messages about loyalty, career development, and long-term growth when so many high-performing people were let go through no fault of their own.

I’m curious whether anyone else in Customer Success or tech feels this way. Have layoffs changed how you think about your career? Did you eventually regain your ambition, or did your relationship with work permanently change?

I often shop at Home Depot and PetSmart, which are in the list of participating stores for Earn. If I swipe my card at the store, will it trigger Acorns Earn?

Do you have hands on access to the software/platform you support? If not, how are you finding job enrichment within your role? How are you still enjoying the role or feeling effective as a CSM without that deeper product involvement?

I recently joined the largest company and largest CS organization of my career after spending years in startup environments where I had direct access to the product, could become deeply knowledgeable in the platform, and could build trust with customers through actual product expertise and problem solving.

In my previous roles, I still focused heavily on understanding customer goals, desired outcomes, pain points, and business objectives, but those conversations were tied directly to hands on knowledge of the platform itself. I could actually get into the software, understand workflows, identify inefficiencies, and connect customer goals back to tangible product usage and solutions.

In my current role, a large portion of the focus feels centered around presenting marketing materials, encouraging attendance at company events and webinars, building customer community engagement, and facilitating higher level conversations around customer objectives. Without meaningful access to the software itself, it has been harder for me to feel like a true trusted advisor in the way I was in previous environments.

At times, it honestly feels more like a pageant show than Customer Success. I find myself chasing attendance for webinars, company events, and community initiatives. I believe these types of KPIs should really sit within Marketing. Personally, I always viewed Customer Success as being more connected to product adoption, solving pain points, improving usage, and helping customers accomplish measurable goals through the platform itself.

Right now, I feel disconnected from that side of the role, so I am genuinely curious how others navigate this dynamic in larger organizations.

I went through a layoff last year that didn't fully make sense to me at the time. Looking back, I think I understand why it happened.

My company eliminated the Customer Success Manager role and folded those responsibilities into a new Strategic Account Management function within Sales. At first, I thought it was simply a cost-cutting measure. With the rise of AI, I believe this may be where much of the SaaS industry is headed.

In many SaaS organizations there are too many people involved in managing the same customer:

- Account Executives
- Account Managers
- Customer Success Managers
- Support Teams
- Solution Engineers
- Product Specialists

From the customer's perspective, this can be confusing. Multiple people are reaching out with overlapping responsibilities and mixed messages.

When you strip Customer Success down to its core, the role is about understanding the customer's objectives, helping them realize value, and identifying growth opportunities. In theory, Account Managers should already be doing this. The challenge is that many have historically focused more on renewals and upsells than on deeply understanding the customer's business.

That gap led to the creation of Customer Success as a separate function.

AI is changing that equation with tools that can summarize meetings, analyze product usage, identify adoption gaps, and surface expansion opportunities, Account Managers can become far more strategic and productive. If they are given a smaller book of business, they can spend more time understanding each customer's goals and grow accounts in a way that aligns with real business outcomes.

In this model, Customer Success does not disappear entirely. Its responsibilities become embedded within a more consultative Account Management role.

I believe this could be beneficial for everyone:

- Customers deal with fewer points of contact.
- Companies reduce organizational complexity.
- Account Managers become more strategic and less stressed with a smaller book of business.
- Former Customer Success professionals can move into higher-compensation roles.
- Growth opportunities are identified in a way that are aligned with customer objectives rather than quota-driven.

To be clear, I am not saying all Customer Success jobs will disappear overnight. I do believe the standalone CSM role will become less common, especially in organizations where AI can augment discovery, planning, and account analysis.

The future may involve a smaller number of highly strategic account managers supported by AI, rather than multiple overlapping roles all trying to manage the same relationship.

Curious if others are seeing the same trend.