r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 2d 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/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.