New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How Do You Get over Worthlessness Feeling After Restructuring?

Ask HN: How Do You Get over Worthlessness Feeling After Restructuring?
4 by tw3999482 | 10 comments on Hacker News.
After 5 years working in a very successful product line, core to the company, the Engineering department decided to restructure the teams to decrease payroll burden and my team got dismantled. It was purely investor pressure to make the company worth more for an eventual sale. I found out I was the only one kept to keep the lights on a particular system. The system still generates lots of money, but C-level wants to invest in other options. It was made very clear that there's no opportunity for me to improve on it or work on my domain area. Now Im stuck in a thankless maintenance role and doing duties outside of my job description. Worst yet, now I have to be always on-call so nothing fails. Im trying to look for a new job, but between raising two small kids and the stress of on-call duty, I dont feel like I have energy or time to interview around. I also found out that I was kept on the payroll just because of my knowledge of this system. Never mind everything else that I created and that other teams now own and get to improve on. How can I get over this feeling of being worthless?