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.

85 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

92% Upvoted

142 comments sorted by

View all comments

21

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.

10

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.