I'm not sure if that was "proper" depression, but many times I've felt very low at my jobs. Luckily, I was always making enough to save a lot of money, so I was able to quit and recover every ~2 years. During the recovery period, I followed my various interests, such as exploring programming, ML, computer vision, mathematics, making art, music, games, reading a lot of books. I didn't go deep on many of these, but I gained some understanding of the fields and what it is like to do these things, which I feel made me a much more well-rounded person, compared to someone who has just been working software jobs his whole life.<p>Incidentally, one of the results is that now I see jobs as strictly means to an end - i.e. a way to earn money to be able to do interesting things. I think it makes me more resilient at jobs - whatever the level of suckage I experience in a job, I know that it is only temporary and that this sacrifice is for something. If I was career oriented, the depressing circumstances of many jobs would hit me much much harder (as career-oriented people see career as a huge part of their file, and the realisation that huge part of your life is a failure and makes you miserable surely can lead to massive depression).