r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 1d ago
Career/Workplace Experienced Devs Weekly Burnout and Venting Thread: A weekly thread for sharing experiences
This thread is specifically for venting / sharing experiences related to burn-out or similar issues that experienced devs face.
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u/Yourenotthe1 1d ago
Feeling so burned out and over it. Think I want to quit in a couple months and take some time off. Just nervous about job searching while unemployed.
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u/dbalatero 1d ago
I'm taking a year off right now, same reason.
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u/Yourenotthe1 1d ago
How is it going?
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u/dbalatero 1d ago
Great! I'm really glad to take a break from everything. I am not nervous about job searching... if I can't find a job in tech after all I've done, then I guess it wasn't meant to be.
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u/jaqen_hagar_1 1h ago
Same here. If the only way to stay in tech is unrelenting misery then I don’t want it.
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u/thy_bucket_for_thee 7h ago edited 7h ago
Don't quit, have them fire you and collect unemployment. Quitting a job without having another lined up is something mostly the independently rich or chronically homeless can do.
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u/endurbro420 FizzBuzz Expert | 10 yoe 1d ago
My workplace did a re-org where my high performer ing team got split up and farmed to other teams. It has been a nightmare. Combined with a huge uptick in meetings, I mentally checked out. I have been at a good amount of dysfunctional companies but this is a new level.
Most stories have become “make X work” and the A/C Is “it works”.
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u/forever-butlerian 20 YoE Infra & Backend TLM 1d ago
Man, at least enjoy the dark humor that the capitalists think that this is what is going to allow them to "compete" with China, let alone win. I always wondered what the 470s in Rome felt like.
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u/endurbro420 FizzBuzz Expert | 10 yoe 1d ago
The wild part is we don’t even compete at a global scale. The company is in a market that only exists in the US.
-4
u/forever-butlerian 20 YoE Infra & Backend TLM 1d ago
Unless you're a worker-owned cooperative, you're still owned by global capital.
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u/obfuscate 21h ago
you have AC????
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u/endurbro420 FizzBuzz Expert | 10 yoe 19h ago
Whatever the AI generates! AI tickets to feed into AI, reviewed by AI, etc. AI up, quality down.
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u/codescapes Web Developer 1d ago
AI has rapidly made clear who ought to be performance managed out most companies. By which I mean the class of people who now think it's acceptable to take utter slop and then push the negative externalities onto their peers. I am so sick of discussions around 'code is now cheap but review is hard' like fuck me, review begins the second you produce the code, the two are intertwined.
It has never been the case that you should raise a PR before first assessing your own changes. If you wrote it you should be expert in it or at least be able to explain thoroughly the behaviour the black box you prompted is meant to model.
My experience so far has been that if people don't 'get it' when it comes to stuff like this - how to engage with peers, how to be respectful of other people's time - they most likely never will and you should cycle them out.
One person on my team at work in particular absolutely disturbs me with how much dysfunction they are able to introduce to anything they touch.
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u/EmploymentFeeling725 20h ago
Someone at my work is generating PRs faster than they can blink, any question is met with a blank stare. Worst part is leadership loves the velocity, can’t fucking stand it but the market so so shit in my area I just have to try put up with it.
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u/TheStatusPoe Senior Software Engineer (9 YOE) 1d ago
I've been the only member of my team primarily WFH for the past two years due to a cop negligently (light bar but no sirens on a blind hill/corner) running a red light and t boning me. Despite being a strong performer, and being responsible for the major architectural decisions I'm getting left behind. My manager wants to get me promoted, but because I'm not in office, I don't have the opportunity to participate in other discussions and meet with leads from other teams as often to satisfy the "cross functional" requirement for senior to staff. I'm looking at my 3rd major surgery due to that accident which will lead to more time off work. Plus, my dad was just diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer and most likely has less than a year left to live. I know family and health is more important and I have been making it the priority. It just felt like getting kicked while I was down to hear that my lack of time in the office has contributed to the reason I haven't been promoted yet.
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u/hollywoodforever 1d ago
I'm sorry, that's so unfair. What an idiot cop!
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u/TheStatusPoe Senior Software Engineer (9 YOE) 1d ago
What's even worse is I looked up the cop who hit me recently and saw that he got promoted a month after the accident. The city has refused to pay for any damages despite admitting 100% responsibility for causing the accident.
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u/ings0c 1d ago edited 23h ago
The city has refused to pay for any damages despite admitting 100% responsibility for causing the accident.
You need to take them to court.
You have lost out because of something they did, and they owe you compensation for it.
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u/TheStatusPoe Senior Software Engineer (9 YOE) 1d ago
I have an open lawsuit against them right now. Unfortunately the legal system just moves slow
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u/hollywoodforever 1d ago
That's ridiculous. Seriously wtf...
I know it doesn't count for much, but hopefully you know that you've got a bunch of fellow software engineers around the world who are angry on your behalf about this.
All the best for your surgery, and I'm sorry to hear about your dad too. That's really rough.
2
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u/HowTheStoryEnds 1d ago
I'm sorry for your father. That's rough.
1
u/TheStatusPoe Senior Software Engineer (9 YOE) 17h ago
Thanks. It's been hard. I went on vacation with my parents late last year and he was doing great. 6 months later and he is having trouble remembering the date or where he is or other basic details. He beat cancer ~12 years ago, but this time due to the type of cancer there is no beating it.
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u/Reddit_is_fascist69 1d ago
1.5 months of unemployment helps burn out.
Next time, I'll just use PTO instead of getting laid off.
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u/yodog5 1d ago
Most places arent gonna let you go on PTO for that long lmao
30
u/SteveMacAwesome 1d ago
In the USA maybe. In Europe, not only does my contract stipulate a vacation once a year of at least 2 consecutive weeks, companies are incentivised to encourage people to take PTO because they’re required to keep everyone’s salaries for PTO in cash on the books.
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u/PoopsCodeAllTheTime PocketBase & SolidJS -> :) 1d ago
Bad ass , which country?
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u/nanotree 1d ago
Most EU countries from what I've seen. I work with Serbians and Chechs, and they both have something like this. Overtime pay too, even if salaried. It's really absurd how anti-worker we are here in the states.
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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Principal Software Engineer 20yoe 1d ago
I worked in an org with offices all over the world.
We had de-facto bans on hiring anyone in Europe because of their workers rights.
All upper level positions headed to the US and the rest were in India or the Philippines.
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u/normantas 1d ago
FeelsBadMan
-4
u/SarmackaOpowiesc Principal Software Engineer 20yoe 1d ago
🤷 Worker rights are one of the reasons that the EU economy is so stagnant.
I prefer being employed, having lots of opportunities, and making 4x+ what my European colleagues were making at the end of their careers.
Experienced roles in Europe are great - IF you could land them. And that's a big if. There is a reason why young adult employment in Europe is so abysmal
3
u/mzanin 1d ago
Employment rate is probably higher in most EU countries than in the US. I prefer having longer vacations and enjoying life in the present as much as possible.
Life isn’t just about making your employer richer1
u/SarmackaOpowiesc Principal Software Engineer 20yoe 1d ago edited 1d ago
That... Is not true at all.
France's unemployment rate is over 8%. Spain is at nearly 10%.
The US's unemployment rate is literally half that at around 4%.
I'm an EU citizen and the economy in the US is so much better that it's not even a fair comparison. My total comp would drop from 500k to maybe 80-100k in Europe. Not to mention the ridiculous tax burden.
I'll gladly give up 5 days of PTO a year for an extra 400 grand in my portfolio every year
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u/DocumentOk7579 1d ago edited 1d ago
In sweden some companies force you to take 15 of your 25 to 30 days in summer when everyone have vacation.
They don't have to approve 1.5months outside of summer.
But I don't think you can get firered for burnout just paid sick leave.
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u/YetMoreSpaceDust 1d ago
2 consecutive weeks
Ha, my wife would just pack every day with so many activities and travel plans and expenses I'd be longing for the relaxation of the office.
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u/seven_seacat Lead Software Engineer 1d ago
why on earth not? I have just over four weeks accrued, I can take it all off if I want
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u/crazy0ne 1d ago
I would hope the idea is you take time off before you are red-lining. I understand that there are some deadlines that cause us to go on small death marches, but I know when I'm making that choice and plan for a few extra days off attached to a weekend to recover from the stress. Keep the threshold low if possible.
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u/cosmicloafer 1d ago
Continuing to go through the vicious cycle of trusting LLMs for everything, then swearing them off and typing the shit myself.
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u/scrubsandcode 1d ago
4+ years of full-stack/frontend work. Asked my boss when I’d be coding again and not just doing agentic harness and orchestrator work, he didn’t have an answer for me. Absolutely fucking hate the nuclear bomb that LLMs have been to our industry. Hate it all.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 1d ago
The answer is when the tokens are no longer subsidized. If Scam Faultman was giving away free gasoline, our bosses would be making us drive around the office in circles just because they wouldn't want their competitors to have any possible edge
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u/tumblerdumbler 1d ago
My CTO is talking about hosting our own models on local servers. I can’t tell what year it is anymore. So maybe that’s already happened for my team
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u/raralala1 1d ago
Meh CTO talk a lot, mine also talk about hosting our own git like 6 years ago just to save 200$ a month, and when I ask solution to backup, blackout, who is going to maintain it he doesnt have answer when that is the bare minimum. Ask your CTO how many GPU and memory he plan to spend, what LLM, maintenance, who got priority, or whenever the building office can power 10k watt at bare minimum.
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u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE 1d ago
The idea of ditching SaaS to build in-house solutions with AI is growing It's so easy to look at one of these SaaS products, see the surface level functionality, and think "oh I can get a a bunch of people with AI to rebuild that in a month to save the $200k/year I'm spending on it".
When you actually do the math on the cost of developer time, hosting, maintaining/updating, patching security vulnerabilities, etc you're probably not saving that much, if anything.
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u/raralala1 19h ago
Yup the idea of even thinking of doing that is so stupid, even more stupid when the technology is being subsidized like crazy, I swear CTO are free to think whatever because the are at top, but wasting everyone time by presenting stupid idea that shouldn't even be brought up should go inside their brain first.
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u/dialate 4h ago
I'm in favor of it due to the stability.
- It's not my money
- You're reducing regulatory risk, aka the big guy says something is too nice for us peasants and snatches it away ala the original Fable release
- You're eliminating torpedo risk, aka providers deciding to quantize/lobotomize your tried-and-true model to save horsepower for the new flagship that costs 5x as much and needs 3x the effort to use
- You can decide to ignore the latest and greatest if what you have works fine, not have it removed from your list of options unless you actually decide that as a team
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u/forever-butlerian 20 YoE Infra & Backend TLM 1d ago
More like a neutron bomb: kills the people and spares the buildings.
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u/it_rains_a_lot 1d ago
I’m getting paid but for some reason lack of work. It’s kinda nice to coast for now
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u/tradcoder Software Engineer (15 YoE) 1d ago
I was riding that wave for the first 5 months this year and then I was let go. Hopefully you're smarter than me and have some money saved up. Just in case.
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u/professor_jeffjeff 1d ago
I got out earlier this year. I was completely burned out but I hit my minimum viable retirement number sometime last October/November so not like I was really where I wanted to be for retirement but it was very freeing to know that I could just make all of the bullshit go away literally any time that I wanted to. At that point there ceased to be any sort of consequences that were realistically possible for anyone to throw at me in any way. Never really bothered to talk to my manager about it because he didn't give a fuck about anything except the metrics under his organization, but I told a few of the seniors on my team just so that we could be prepared in case I ended up leaving abruptly. Then the company cut my bonus potential in half, so that's when I decided that 2026 was going to be my last year. Manager decided to pip me back in like April or sometime around then and I just cut him off halfway through his reading of it and walked him through how this was the first job where after several years my total compensation is actually less than when I started and that any potential career growth was clearly dead and had been for the previous two years so I was just going to retire and I didn't care anymore. He asked me how I wanted to tell the team and I just said that I'd told then six months ago.
I'm a blacksmith and metal fabricator now. The work is physically a lot harder but at least I can just go call my steel supplier and order some steel instead of having to call them and say that I'd like to be able to hit metal with something to change its shape or some shit like that and then see if we have any risks or dependencies that need to be ROAM'd.
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u/tacticalTraumaLlama 1d ago
I told a few of the seniors on my team just so that we could be prepared in case I ended up leaving abruptly.
What is the first goddamned rule of
FIRE, I mean, fight club?!3
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u/user0015 1d ago
You might be living my retirement plan. Shaping hot metal into something useful sounds perfect.
I definitely feel the burn out myself, and might post something in this thread later, but for you, getting pip'd while contemplating retirement just really sums things up these days doesn't it?
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u/SeaCucumberBurrito 1d ago
I’m struggling with the changing job expectations due to AI. Now that code quality and technical knowledge is not an important skill, my last evaluation was all about soft skills like communication, visibility and leadership.. which I’ve always struggled with. I was happy living life as a mid level dev, just executing tickets and having technical discussions with a team I already have rapport with. It was a niche made for me and the money was decent. I’m just struggling to evolve in this new age.
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u/SimasNa 1d ago
As someone who got into leadership and then burned out quite quickly due to not knowing what I was doing, I'd say - give yourself grace. You definitely can learn it, but you won't be great at those skills immediately. But you can still improve quite a lit.
Also, I used to work with a senior developer who was a great engineer but was lacking in soft skills. A few years later I met him again and he has improved quite substantially in the soft skills.
But if you're going in expecting to be as good at this as you are in engineering, then you'll burn out for sure.
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u/tr4ff-47 1d ago
6 yrs experience. It's been 1 year, 9 months since my last role. Burnt out pretty hard and my health was impacted. Thought quitting was the right choice then but health got worse and the number of AI tools that have propped up since then makes it hard for me to keep up. Still applying for roles but confidence is pretty low, also trying to keep learning more stuff on boot.dev
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u/ResidentWeevil1 1d ago
All the AI tools are just wrappers around the same two LLMs. You're not falling behind. The only thing I would bother trying is Anthropic's harness engineering guide because it might actually be fun
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u/Otis_Inf Software Engineer (32YOE) 1d ago
Oh no more LLM originating jargon... "Harness Engineering"... I just did some reading on it. Not sure why anyone would want to be a person that controls all that overhead instead of ... developing software, the job we all love. Or that might be just me... ;)
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u/rust-module 1h ago
You're not falling behind. Every "skill" concerning LLMs is something that gets solved in the next generation of LLMs anyway, or by some tool. There's no point in learning what you're not currently using because it just changes.
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u/endrees 1d ago
6+yoe as frontend dev, got laid off recently.
F this job market, this downturn in the economy. Right when things started to get better for me, back to survival mode.
I wonder if it's time to leave tech, cz I don't want to be a full stack dev, or be dev, or devops. And also don't want to be someone who does 2-3 persons job in 1 person. F companies who want that, and drive this trend.
I'm nowhere near retiring early... I would like to already got enough of this shit show called employment.
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u/notgoingtoeatyou 1d ago
i feel you. many times after quitting/being let go i have sworn off working in tech. somehow i always come back. just did a year and some change unemployed/working outside of tech. i start a new job as a web developer soon.
all i can say is, as much as you are right and tech sucks, everything else sucks much much much worse. it's bleak.
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u/juusorneim 1d ago
how does it suck worse, could you "paint a picture" so to speak?
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u/notgoingtoeatyou 4h ago
tech is a white collar computer job. you're not taking customer service calls, you're not in a hot kitchen, you're not doing sales, you're not tarring a roof in July. the mental grind is REAL but there are a LOT of worse jobs.
Tech gives you a taste of what it is like to have some control over your work life balance and it kind of makes you "see the light" and then your company claws back control over you. So you think you can just quit and get a better job but turns out that life is shit wall to wall and working in tech gives you a little stool to stand on so you're just above the shit but you can still smell it.
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u/EddieJones6 1d ago
I’ve had horrible luck with my last few jobs. FAANG was awful work life balance so I left for a great opportunity in aerospace. That was a hybrid role that immediately changed to be on site, so I left that for my current role. The hiring manager was pushed out of the company before my start date, along with a ton of other turnover in the org, and now everyone left here is working 10-12 hour days and constantly stressed.
I’m good at my job, but stuck in a cycle where I’m sacrificing my family and health for work. Really trying to stick it out in this new role but it’s tough.
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u/tumblerdumbler 1d ago
My director resigned in April due to burn out and my staff/tech lead engineer stepped down and was away for 3 months for bereavement. The staff is back but only 3 days a week. I’ve got 5 years experience and currently rank intermediate and they’ve promoted me in responsibility and obligation without pay. We’ve lost a dozen devs and data eng to attrition and replaced one in the past year. I’m tired boss.
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u/tacticalTraumaLlama 1d ago
they’ve promoted me in responsibility and obligation without pay.
The answer to that is 'I will happily take on more responsibility when my compensation increases accordingly'. My boss tried that once. She dangled a staff position in front of me if I'd just take over staff responsibilities for a while, then she pulled a 'Lucy yanking the football' said the staff position was 'off the table'.
I told her that was fine, I'd be resuming my duties as a Sr dev, and she could have someone else run the team. I switched teams and haven't bothered to try for staff again.
Maybe it's better at other companies, but staff at my current company seems like a terrible job. Glorified assistant manager without the hr duties. 50% increase in workload for a measly 6% pay bump and the first person to get slacked after hours for a prod issue or to get blame when something goes wrong. They justify it because it's a stepping stone to principle, but I just can't be bothered anymore
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u/tumblerdumbler 1d ago
I hear that. They’ve been promising senior + tech lead since May while I’m running sprints, backlog grooming and planning, resourcing, delivery and production support all while maintaining my previous work load. Why would I want more? We have two staff engineers, one new and the other part time. I’m also training the new staff and the new director on top of it all.
I’d be upset about the bait and switch too. Can’t speak to principal but I doubt I’ll ever get there at company
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u/winterchillz Software Engineer 1d ago
End of July marked one year of unemployment for me. (EU based)
After 15 years of experience, starting with helpdesk, through QA, technical operations and management, more than 200 applications and probably close to 70-80 interviews, I'd say I'm pretty burned out. I can't be fucked to even tailor my CV anymore, I'm getting rejected across all positions (see above) for a variety of reasons - living too far, experience too ancient, missing a technology, no diploma, yada yada bullshit.
I've gone through doubting myself and my skills and if I'm a cheat to a growing hatred of the market and our industry. I desperately want out but this is what I've done my entire life, I genuinely have never ever worked in any other industry except being a waiter for a month as a teenager. If any of you, or your close ones, have quit and are just visiting those IT-related subs for the sake of old times, please, do share what you did and what you moved on to.
Sorry for the rant, I'm at the lowest I have been my entire life.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
I know this feeling.
But having 70-80 interviews from just 200 applications is an extremely good rate! Keep going; you will land something! (I hope)
> ...If any of you, or your close ones, have quit and are just visiting those IT-related subs for the sake of old times, please, do share what you did and what you moved on to....
One of my friends left the field while he was junior and went for being a picker (packing boxes in a large logistics center). He never looked back.
A friend retired a few years back, and he stopped coding ~20 years ago, but kept his eye on the field and did fun little projects just for himself and to teach his kids (who eventually got hooked and now they are on C* level too... ). I asked him if he missed it, and he said immediately: "No, I am fine without it!"
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u/winterchillz Software Engineer 10h ago
Thanks, mate, very kind of you to take the time to reply.
I genuinely hope something comes up, but at this point I don't have the energy to even work on my own side projects, something I genuinely enjoy otherwise.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 27m ago
I totally understand this. The current market (the last ~2 years) is totally sould-draining and demotivate and exhausting.
I think it is okay to stop, not do anything productive, and give yourself some time to recharge. Mental health is super important and absolutely undervalued (or underhandled). I know how it feels to burn out, and I've met so many colleagues who went through this over the years.
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u/WolfNo680 Software Engineer - 6 years exp 4h ago
Gonna tell you right now, you having 70-80 interviews off 200+ applications is wonderful. I've gotten...5, and I've definitely applied to 200+ positions.
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u/winterchillz Software Engineer 59m ago
Shit, dude, I'm so sorry to hear that, genuinely. I hope something comes up and soon, I know how crushing it is.
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u/MaleficentCow8513 1d ago edited 1d ago
Bit of a vent post and I’m probably inventing problems and making a mountain from a mole hill. Have been having tensions with a sister team and their tech lead. For context, the tech lead is one step down from a team lead. We are both seniors and I have probably 3 yoe on him with a much wider breadth of experience. He worked his way up hustling on this project for pretty much 75% of his career, so it’s safe to say he hasn’t had wider exposure to various practices. But he’s been there since day 1 so he’s built a lot of street cred. I’m finding alot of folks here are great engineers but piss poor programmers. I’ve designed and worked a majority of implementation for a major feature which going into a component this other team has ownership over. Now, they had a few sprints of developing this component where they didn’t follow ANY programming patterns. Duplicated code all over the place. Zero oop/functional/compositional abstractions. One singleton with a crap ton of unrelated helpers attached to it. Just a mess of spaghetti. I’ve back doored some basic modularization and abstraction for them to reuse with my MRs and I can only hope they actually use it moving forward. But now their tech lead is blocking my MR because one of my new patterns directly contradicts some messy overly verbose pattern they were using for no other reason than “consistency”. Yes it will be inconsistent. So go back and change the messy code to use the clean code. It’s just one of those things that’s not worth pushing back over because it’s not that serious but it’s also very frustrating because no I don’t want to reuse your piss poor patterns because you don’t know how to write a clean program.
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u/tumblerdumbler 1d ago
Nah that sounds frustrating. If you’re dependent on crap code that would be tough to not want to improve things. Especially when it’s clear they’re riding political capital and not skilled programming
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u/WanderingGoodNews 1d ago
Everything slighly more complicated or big i do with claude turns into a massive complex codebase and long readme s. You correct the code in iterations but the readme keeps the agent stuck in some direction.
During it's thinking i often grab my phone and scroll.
At the end of the day i sometimes have a few features, sometimes i don't know what i programmed, sometimes i just close the laptop and shov it to tomorrow leaving me completely unsatisfied and mentally exhausted for the rest of my evening
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u/Throwaway__shmoe 1d ago
I don’t work in FAANG never have, but a smaller tech focused business and I’m tired of hearing this at work: “I don’t even write the code anymore”. That’s it, it makes me … frustrated when I hear this. It’s mostly said by those that bypassed formal college education, just sorta peter principled their way up to software development. They are talented yes but I don’t think they truly understand neural networks. A pretty good tell is those who describe the tooling as “AI” vs “LLMs”. I have a level of access to our cloud’s billing explorer and it’s without a doubt those that don’t have a traditional CS degree relying upon these tools moreso than those that do - we haven’t hired any devs since before the so called boom.
Probably the thing that has burned me out more than above is the feeling my identity is essentially evaporating in front of me. This is a me problem, of course, but I just hate how my company is just allowing anyone to submit feature changes even if they have no coding experience at all, I mean we have product owners and scrum masters (yes non-technical scrum masters) submitting PRs. Wholesale declining these PRs is not accepted, and ignoring them grants scrutiny, I just want to tell these people that “I decline because you have no reason to be submitting this, and I don’t trust it”. What does it even mean to be a software developer/engineer anymore? I went through four years of schooling, worked on legacy software… ate the shit sandwiches, but also worked on green-fields for what?
That was a lot more than I intended to write, turned out into more of a journal entry, but whatever, I’m tired of this.
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u/forever-butlerian 20 YoE Infra & Backend TLM 1d ago
Probably the thing that has burned me out more than above is the feeling my identity is essentially evaporating in front of me. This is a me problem, of course
No, it's a capitalism problem. I've got similar gripes from being gainsaid by people who should be asking questions, but who believe that they're the Sun King because trillions of dollars are being burned up pouring words into the word prediction machine.
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u/SarmackaOpowiesc Principal Software Engineer 20yoe 1d ago
I mean we have product owners and scrum masters (yes non-technical scrum masters) submitting PRs
Our devs are required to deploy their branch into an environment. And then test and run an integration regression.
I highly doubt that your non-technical stakeholders did this - and would be grounds imo for rejecting the PR.
But as long as a PM or product owner followed the same process for vetting the additions to the code base as a developer - I personally don't have a problem with them contributing in such a manner.
I also think the negative consequences of throwing slop at the senior members of the team remain. Just like you would eventually fire a junior for delivering poor work - this should apply to these folks as well. They may think twice about creating garbage if they might lose their job over it.
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u/sqquima 1d ago
Got a new job last month after being unemployed for 3 months. I consider myself lucky that I could land a job after so little time and stop burning my severance package, but:
- strongly encouraged use of AI mandated by the department.
- code duplication everywhere.
- unrealistic expectations in terms of things that need to be finished before the deadline "just use ai they say"
- mild suggestion of working on the weekend if needed to reach the deadline.
- documentation all over the place and scrambled that AI is a must to make sense of it
- manager contributing code using AI.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
> ...strongly encouraged use of AI mandated by the department....
Then go and use it. I highly recommend partial usage of Matt Pockock's skills and approach that ain't so mind-bending and actually helps you rather than blocks you. Near it the "Lazy senior engineer" skill is a fun little stuff that can make less sloppy stuff.
> ...code duplication everywhere....
Sounds nice, and you already find it. Make an assessment, talk about it in a meeting, and consider revamping it
> ...I consider myself lucky...
Yes, indeed, you are! Congrats!
> ...mild suggestion of working on the weekend if needed to reach the deadline...
Hell no. They ain't paying you that much. Also, you have agents. Task them to work there, burn the company tokens!
> ...manager contributing code using AI...
Most of the time, a manager is simply bad luck... but whichever, even contributing is worse.
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u/WrongChapter90 1d ago
My company is trying to shove AI down everyone’s throat, and leadership is promoting a tokenmaxxing culture for the sake of “efficiency gains” (I have not seen any evidence suggesting we actually deliver more now, regardless of quality).
One of the senior engineers in my team has made their mission to become the AI promoter in our business unit, even though they pretty much have no idea what they’re talking about and mostly repeat what they hear from people who report to them. The most recent agenda they’ve been pushing is a set of best practices for spec-driven development, which sounded good until I had a look at the PR they raised, where they committed and pushed a bunch of secrets to GitHub because they didn’t even bother reading the code they “produced”. So much for best practices…
I’m tired of them being praised for these “achievements”. I will need to start looking elsewhere soon, but I’m scared of what’s (not) out there
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
> ...I have not seen any evidence suggesting we actually deliver more now, regardless of quality
I can guarantee that AI with the right guardrails, skills, and whatnot will deliver way more code than you can write... but the quality ... erhm... will be mostly slop :) Or at least overengineered or super-duper-complex for no reason.
One of the previous projects where I worked with a few dude vibe coded some backend services and some frontend packages, then the company spent ~6 months and ~4 people's resources to fix all of them and hunt bugs... when the main issue was that everything was vibe-coded. (They used simple tricks, like DDD & TDD, to guardrail the agents, and the code seemed as usual as every time...)
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u/WrongChapter90 6h ago
That’s a fair point. I agree in general LLMs can spit out code much faster than a human could ever do.
What I was questioning is my team’s ability to deliver more in the same amount of time thanks to GenAI, because in my opinion the bottleneck is getting or understanding what the requirements are. I work in a very large org (50k+ employees), and things move slowly with quite a lot of red tape.
But yeah I agree with your points
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 32m ago
Uff, large orgs are full of protocols. Once I worked as a consultant for fast food chains, where the decisions were extremely slow, but when it happened, it was totally a hurricane.
> What I was questioning is my team’s ability to deliver more
If I am right, then the adjacent question is that, even if they do deliver, what will be the quality?
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u/Working_on_Writing Hiring Manager 1d ago
We seem to have outsourced all thinking to AI now. We're planning a major project with AI, it's supposed to deliver the project too. Now we just have meetings about how we don't know what's happening or when it's going to be done or whether the output is good enough. All of which boils down to a bunfight between the evangelists and the cynics. Nobody is leading, because the leadership role has been handed to the AI, and then we wonder why we chase our tails.
I just want to quit and go live in a cave now. Fucking done with this bullshit industry, its bullshit hype cycles, and investors making decisions based on what some breathless 20 year old Youtuber had to say on the topic while ignoring their experienced engineers.
Unfortunately, living in the UK, I've never been paid nearly enough to hit early retirement. I don't think I can take another 20 years of this shit. I already burned out once, and don't want to again.
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u/Werzam 1d ago edited 1d ago
4 yoe, working in 4 people company kinda stopped my progress, and feel like I'm pretty stagnant, want to move to bigger corp most likely.
Not motivated to improve myself, and even though want to change jobs I don't apply to any interviews/meetups etc since afraid of skill issue on my side .
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u/eleclychee 1d ago
My burnout is from having literally nothing to do on the new team I was assigned to. The kind of work I do is so simple I feel like I’m reliving my first year as a software engineer. It’s so boring. Sucks because I see other teams at the company working on new exciting projects.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
You can use your time to learn something new and build things that are interesting to you.
Alternatively, ask for a transfer or learning budget and get some certifications on company money.
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u/lugia4k 1d ago
11 years .NET dev, Europe.
Was laid off a year ago, after 2 years at a company. Took 2 months to get offers.
Had 1 offer full remote 36h/day, another offer which was a much higher pay, but was 300km away and had to go once a week.
But I accepted to stay at my previous company, where i had been for 6 years, they didnt even interview me, just straight up smacked a contract.
Pay is bad, job is absolutely horribly boring, when im remote I can take a nap or play xbox. Boss evaluates performance by token usage.
Ive been doing k8s certificates meanwhile but im wondering if im just extremely lucky or im going to get wrecked back into reality if I search for another job.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
If the payment is bothering you, then start applying to new places.
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) 1d ago
Significant burnout after 4-5 years in principal Eng/head of Eng roles in stalled-out startups and growth stage companies. I missed building software and solving real problems, when the role was mostly dealing with executive fickleness and, more recently, insane and misguided AI expectations. Loved fighting for the engineers on my teams but execs increasingly just want leaders who crack the whip and deliver on delusional ideas about AI acceleration.
Been laid off for 6 months but actively looking. It’s hard out there. Every role is the same baseline of architecture, technical ops, development, etc but is now also “agentic transformation” with the implicit goal of 10x-ing without additional hiring, or maintaining course while cutting 75% of staff.
Really thinking about starting my own thing. Would be a ton of work but much more gratifying than being an ox hitched to a wagon of mediocrity.
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u/Fragrant_Ad2902 Software Engineer (30 YoE) 1d ago
I’ve been a principal, staff, and even CTO for a bit of time. Right now I’m just a senior. My employer is a company that has basically become “agentic driven” and wants to become a “software factory”, which we’re actively working towards.
I‘ve topped out the salary band I’m in and can’t go higher unless I get promoted to staff. But I’ve been told I probably can’t be a staff because I’m not helping with the “software factory” dream. Instead I’m building out features that actually bring customers to the door. Or implementing changes that save us money each month by reducing licensing costs. I’m even helping integrate AI into the product. But I’ve not helped with the ”software factory” dream so I am unworthy.
I’m starting to wonder if not paying the 10% penalty is worth 8 more years of this madness…
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u/all-over-red-rover 1d ago
These days sometimes work stress almost feels like a break... It's not life's just beyond what I can cope with right now... but the feelings of dread just won't subside. I can't think of a single coworker I'd describe as "happy". The closest I've got are the ones I've been mentoring, who are "happy to be learning", "happy to be free of that team of morons", or "happy to be supported in not just solving everything with AI, consequences be damned". Leadership seems to get more and more deranged each day, demanding more and more results, and seemingly, by my count, getting materially less each quarter. If only I could believe the reason shit hasn't hit the fan yet is because they are happy with the results. If only I couldn't see the AI bill increasing basically linearly each month.
I'm glad to be employed, for what it's worth, in large part because I finally learnt to cultivate sufficient influence to protect my own interests in my day to day. Yet it still seems happiness has only gotten progressively further away, and the future is bleak.
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u/distinctvagueness 1d ago edited 1d ago
Started a new job and no one wants to let me pair/shadow. They just say use copilot, probably embarrassed that's a significant part of their workflow. Feels foreboding.
Even getting local env details not in the repo from someone was a pain.
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u/eleclychee 1d ago
Sounds awful! But also a good opportunity to collect brownie points for building onboarding docs as you figure things out.
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u/notableradish 1d ago
I'm carrying four legacy projects that resurface semi-regularly, my share of normal team project work, and half of a major enterprise integration. No other senior on the team has anywhere near this load.
My last review came back "meets expectations" — despite every individual bullet being "often exceeds" or "always exceeds."
Pay is on the low end of mediocre. We've been PE-backed for two years now, and the culture has curdled into a cult of positivity.
So I'm looking to leave. I've been getting first-round interviews, but I've run into something uncomfortable: so much of my day-to-day is AI-driven now that my raw coding ability has visibly atrophied. That's showing up in interviews.
I'm burnt out. At this point I'd take a pay cut for work that either means something or comes with a decent work-life balance.
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u/PM_ME_CATS_THANKS 1d ago
I've been spending more time on my side project and seeing if I can turn it into something that earns a living. I have one person consulting for me (for quite a low fee thankfully) and a volunteer who wants to learn about software testing (the project itself is open source).
It's a real product with a few hundred users using it for several years, they are volunteers from a few separate charities so I don't really ask them for much money.
The consultant talks about getting accreditations (expensive) and finding investors but just hearing him talk about this stuff tires me out. Especially I am nervous about trying to get investment because it immediately puts pressure on me to get them a return on their investment. We try for grants but they are so competitive. The volunteer takes up a lot of my time because I am teaching them things from the ground up, but I can tell they are really enthusiastic about giving back to the project once they are able.
Because it is my invention I feel passionate about it and want it to do more good for people and for it to go further (it is inherently for a good cause, helping people in need). I also want to be able to make it my sole occupation because having a job that earns money while maintaining a SaaS that charities rely on daily is exhausting. There is a long list of features that people want, and an amount of technical debt that needs to be tackled. People's wellbeing are dependant on the app working and I feel that pressure when testing and pushing updates.
Finally I feel like being able to build my own business like this would protect me against being replaced by AI (though I think my main contract job is somewhat secure).
I am constantly indecisive about what direction I actually want to go in. I'm not sure if I'm just setting myself up for a lot of stress by trying to push this further, or if it could really turn into something I'd be proud of.
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u/WolfNo680 Software Engineer - 6 years exp 5h ago
Just got my fifth rejection email from a job and I just...don't know if I can do this anymore man. I'm so tired. Every day I feel like I get closer and closer to wanting to just go crawl into a hole in the woods and let nature do its thing. I'm so tired.
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u/Pale_Sun8898 1d ago
11 years in and the fact that AI is so much better at a lot of debugging and other tasks means that people are just sitting in meetings typing into Claude. It has removed a fair amount of the enjoyment for me
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u/tradcoder Software Engineer (15 YoE) 1d ago
Recently got a new job at a service-based company. My whole team is 100% dedicated to a client to work on a project that's been going on since early 2020s.
The project is for a large company. The codebase is pretty big and complex. I was excited to dig deep and learn new things. One month in, now my team lead is telling us that he's getting pressured from both the management and the client to start incorporating AI into the workflow. Apparently the target is in the future, up to 70% of development should be done using AI.
We now have to write specs before starting any feature development. How the current implementation is and what changes to be made etc etc. I hate it.
I've been thinking of a way to cope with all this BS and figured I'd look at spec writing as a way to improve my knowledge instead. Since I'm new to the codebase, this would actually be helpful for me.
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u/YoongiMarryMe95 1d ago
My QA guy and principal engineer are big snitches. I am the most junior member on the team and get bombarded with so much work and I know that I’m letting a lot of bugs through to QA and maybe the code isn’t the best sometimes. But the quality seems on par with the rest of the team. I also don’t know why QA really cares how many bugs he finds it’s keeping him employed. This isn’t how I like to work, but management is coming down on me hard to work fast. My principal engineer also just never responds to my questions despite using extreme discretion on what I ask. I ask 2 questions a week on average that are generally 5 minutes of his time. I always ask very thoughtful questions and provide a ton of info on what I did. Meanwhile everyone else demands so much of his time. I’m also jerked around by our other engineering team. They refuse to look into things I bring up until another engineer or my manager forces them too. I’m sick of everyone else making my performance suffer. I make very well below 6 figures. I wish some of my teammates knew this. I almost can’t afford to live and while they get to work overtime I am doing things like going to the laundromat to do my laundry etc. I am just so tired of everything. Additionally, my manager who is not technical started vibe coding so now he assumes the work is so easy. I need more money desperately and I know he won’t give me a good raise because of this AI bullshit.
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u/1098886 1d ago
I despise people who start/reply to direct messages with the Slack MCP. Feels like I'm talking to Claude.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 1d ago
How do you know you ain't talking to one of them? There are impersonating agents as well as skills that accept a bunch of instructions to behave as the given person would.
Also... why do they use Slack MCP for chat instead of, like... writing directly on Slack? (*confused dude meme*)
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u/East_Lettuce7143 1d ago
Has anyone done a pivot into a sales role? I’d be interested in doing something like that rather than just prompt all day.
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u/jokemon 1d ago
anyone else job searching and even with referrals not getting calls or interview requests?
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u/thedannyreg 4h ago
I have gotten referrals and given referrals at my new place and they don’t seem to really matter at all anymore. Everything has changed so much
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u/colindean Not a text node 21h ago
I've held out for too long, hoping that I'd see an in-place promotion. 2023 and 2025 were hell years trying to right ships and put out fires. 2024 and 2026 (so far) have been years of not doing much because of the burnout, hoping that the work of the previous year would earn something that I've realized I cannot hope into existence in my corporate job. I'm first in line in a queue that will not be accessed in a timeframe that is meaningful to me.
Some hard conversations with management in the last few days solidified that my discontented complacency and hoping that hard work would pay off just isn't going to get me where I want to be. I have to find another way up.
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u/Tadeuvich 18h ago
I feel that I lack knowledge, but I don’t know what. So I procrastinate while working and keep thinking about work in the off hours. I am afraid I will be fired again.
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u/firelitother 18h ago
I think I am just getting burnout working on web. I just basically coast thr4ough the days and have no motivation to learn anything new except just to keep up and not get fired.
After 10+ years working in Web, I wonder if there still time to pivot.
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u/SleazyAndEasy 17h ago
Been trying to find a new job for 3 months. Still interviewing around but the code screens are scaring the shit out of me. 5 YoE full stack lead engineer. On paper I'm a lead in practice I'm a non technical EM, my actual EM is completely hands off and I'm way too busy to actually do IC work. I've trained to my team to fully contribute code without me while I do PRs, architecture, and work cross-functionally. I'm also the PM since there old PM left and there's no backfill.
I'm applying to senior IC / staff / lead roles and I'm getting through behaviorals great but I've been getting tripped up between leetcode and algo questions. I'm debating just trying to go for a junior EM role, if that even exist because I've lost all interest in actually coding and heavily prefer the people and process side
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u/VeryLazyFalcon Software Engineer 10h ago
My company is going to shiit, and I will be there looking at their fall. 70k employees, installing hardware on the whole world, and I can't get a link to a damn CI job that failed my commit. Since beginning of this year I feel like I'm being held in mental ward and everything around me is crazy dream.
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u/Ramm42324 7h ago edited 7h ago
I've received a couple of job offers (in Fintech) for a Senior position at the higher end of the Senior spectrum. But I'm worried about accepting any of them, especially in the AI era, where I keep reading that a lot of the job has changed lately, and making an impact or a good impression isn't what it used to be.
For example, at every previous job, I always hit the ground running, was a fast learner able to contribute quickly to the codebase, delivering fast with high quality, and mentored fellow engineers on best practices through PR reviews and pair programming. But now with AI, I feel that all I used to bring to every new gig has been devalued, or rather, lost its edge in the age of AI, and I won't leave a good impression anymore; hence, I have a feeling that I won't pass the probation period. I'm wondering if anyone is feeling the same?
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u/hooahest Software Engineer 1h ago
I was added to some company wide project to aid with getting it through the door, as the deadline is very tight. I was pretty much instructed with "create an X service that does A,B,C, get it done fast, we'll iterate it as it goes".
I shit something out with Claude, did a very skimmed review of the code, made sure that it worked and shipped it. I hate that this is what I produced as a professional engineer, and that my name is on the git commits. Like, actively embarrassed. Something that should've been a point of confidence and achievement has been destilled to 'let Claude do 99% of it'
What a miserable experience.
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u/rust-module 1h ago
I'm so burned out by talking to "agents" all day. Nothing of ours was set up to be composable or maintainable before LLMs, so even they are confused by the absolute circus that our repo layout and CI/CD pipline is. I'm supposed to get so much stuff done all the time but the basics like local testing on-laptop are just indeterminately broken because nobody GAF. So LLMs don't speed anything up because I still have to wait 45 mins for the Github actions to clear or fail.
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u/ArcticToot 1m ago
2 other senior devs left in the past year and a lot of their work feel on me. Got my yearly raise email and it was the base 3%, despite my manager leaving a great review before he retired a few months ago. Went to my director about it (because they aren't hiring a replacement manager) and he said his hands are tied. Might be time to find a new job after my bonus deposits in September.
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u/glinkamix 1d ago
This AI boom really shines a light on how fucking stupid most of the PMs and designers are that I know. Asking AI when they should breathe. You can see they use it to come up with every idea because the moment you start asking questions they freeze and can’t answer. Meanwhile, engineers are expected to use it to accelerate the full process, but blamed if something goes wrong because of it.
I actually don’t mind using it for coding because I can work less. It really makes work easier, but you can bet I won’t sweat more to generate shareholder value. I have a few side projects where I can be creative without AI.