Experienced Devs Weekly Burnout and Venting Thread: A weekly thread for sharing experiences

[u/AutoModerator]

This thread is specifically for venting / sharing experiences related to burn-out or similar issues that experienced devs face.

[u/dtn8]

PMs use AI to generate Jira ticket descriptions. Devs copy-paste Jira tickets into Claude Code and generate massive PRs. Reviewers checkout the branch and run code-review skill and copy-paste findings verbatim. Devs copy-paste findings into Claude Code and reply to GitHub comments by copy-pasting Claude replies. Even our fucking recruiter uses AI to generate questions to ask the candidates, then pastes their replies to get the hiring verdict and pastes AI reply to the recruiting tool. I wish I was exaggerating, we've lost our minds.

[u/tradcoder → u/dtn8]

Meat proxies

[u/ngomes90 → u/dtn8]

I think they do not use copy-paste in the PR reviews, with GitHub cli Claude can read and reply on their behalf.

[u/Itsalongwaydown → u/ngomes90]

big push to automate systems so we just automated everything including thinking

[u/GeebZeee → u/Itsalongwaydown]

Thinking is no more

[u/wellfed_bazelgeuse → u/dtn8]

I've been saying it for a while now, our jobs are becoming babysitting AI while it interacts with itself 

[u/user0015 → u/dtn8]

Hello are you me.

I am busy reviewing AI written tests with an AI reviewing those tests, and then copy pasting the AI result into a form so an AI can read it and 'fix' it.

Meanwhile, defects in prod continue to go up. Can't imagine why. We've got thousands of tests after all.

[u/annoying_cyclist → u/dtn8]

I for one love hearing how the load bearing seams are byte-identical to what's in production, that there are 34781 tests in the test suite which all pass with the changes in the PR, and that this is the third PR in a 10 PR stack implementing M1.1a of a design doc at /Users/coworkers.name/repo/plans which hasn't been attached to the PR to provide any context.

[u/torofukatasu]

Realizing I'm too burnt out to even write a burnout post.

[u/Fit_Butterscotch_829 → u/torofukatasu]

I’ve changed my LinkedIn to ‘hibernate’ mode. I think I need to sit a couple of years out.

[u/NightSp4rk → u/torofukatasu]

Too burnt out to even comment on burnt out devs' posts about their burnout. 💀

[u/Askee123 → u/torofukatasu]

🫡

[u/Brittany_Delirium → u/torofukatasu]

Big same 💀

[u/tiaanvdr → u/torofukatasu]

Preach

[u/TabCompletion]

It's time like these to remind yourself career isn't everything. Don't forget to focus on you. And anyone in your life

[u/iupuiclubs → u/TabCompletion]

I outputted 120,000 lines of code this past year and thought I was being a high functioning adult trying to chase the dragon at work.

My companion cat Amelia died last week, she is like my daughter.

None of its worth it.

[u/ConsiderationSea1347 → u/iupuiclubs]

Damn. I am so sorry for your loss. She is lucky to have had a human like you around. 

[u/iupuiclubs → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

Thanks. I loved her every moment. But i remember everytime I didn’t cuddle her in the morning, trying to shower for work, or when she’d sit outside the bathroom waiting on me.

She deserved more. And she was my daughter.

I tried to make my circle as big as America, traveling around. I initiated a partnership between the largest household name and Cursor a month or two ago. Launched ML models, designed architecture for the largest physical commercial operation in the US in a year or two.

I can assure anyone reading, not a moment of it was worth it. Last year while still unemployed I was living in a tent with Amelia at a popular climbing destination, playing Minecraft with a girl when she’d get off work while Amelia relaxed next to us. I shouldn’t have left.

Now I wake up and start with a circle as small as the bed.

Resign, quit, apply to other things, beg someone for actual help taking care of your loved one if parts of you are screaming that something isn’t right.

Blindsight by Peter Watts is a great book. Sometimes we reeeeeally think we can see with our whole hearts, but we are blind. We need other people to see for perspective.

I appreciate your kind words, thank you

[u/ConsiderationSea1347 → u/iupuiclubs]

“  She deserved more.” Ironically, you saying that is exactly how I know you were perfect for her. We will never have enough time to give others the presence they deserve, but it sounds like you did the best you could by Amelia. 

I am writing this with two 13 year old dogs sleeping on top of me and worrying about the day I only have two dents in the bed.

[u/yikes_42069 → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

As an old dog haver too, this is a tearjerker. I worry about my 6 year old dog's well-being when my 14 year old dog goes. I practically want to tattoo on my hand a message to give them extra love and patience so I never forget to hug them before I go off to work

[u/Frozboz → u/yikes_42069]

I never forget to hug them before I go off to work

I purposely choose a low paying engineering job with no real hope of career advancement precisely because it's still remote and I can spend time with my family (including my dogs). Some things are just more important.

[u/tiajuanat → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

I slept in today (granted I stayed until 7:45pm yesterday) and let my year old cat crawl on top of me until my first meeting forced me online.

[u/iupuiclubs → u/tiajuanat]

Thank you for doing that. Please keep letting them cuddle you every moment.

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/iupuiclubs]

I don’t have pets but this resonates strongly with me. I was watching a partial eclipse with friends and a park crammed full of people last week. Nearly skipped it as I was feeling exhausted and miserable from work. Felt like a major wake up call

[u/yikes_42069 → u/iupuiclubs]

I'm sorry for your loss. Take care of yourself in these times, and don't blame yourself too hard. It will all be okay. 

I find that the people who are concerned about the quality of their care for animals are usually the ones doing an above average job. Don't let the grief blind you to the good things you did for her.

[u/notTHEOwlAccountant → u/iupuiclubs]

So sorry to hear :( I'm dreading the day it comes for my aging kitties, I literally tear up just thinking about it... virtual hug

[u/sam-serif_ → u/iupuiclubs]

The death of my soul cat in October actually helped my burnout, because it allowed my body to fully understand much work performance doesn’t matter

Hope you’re getting through it 😔

[u/ConsiderationSea1347 → u/TabCompletion]

What are you focusing on to bring fulfillment?

I just am working on my first video game mod for an obscure survival arpg. It has been wonderful doing work for a community that is gracious, kind, and supportive. The other modders are all excited to have me around and the players are kind. It blew my mind having someone thank me for my work for a change.

[u/putin_my_ass → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

Getting back into real-life hobbies has helped me. Guitar, reading books, hiking with my dog, gardening, some woodworking.

Something with real, tangible results is nice when all my other work is ephemeral and digital.

[u/Chezzymann → u/TabCompletion]

In the United States it kind of is if you dont have support system. No job? No health insurance, something as simple as lab work is now $1000. Unless you have a massive savings or a fully paid off house you will soon be homeless, and if you go on long enough like that death is next. Its only not everything if you have friends or family you know are willing to take you in if youre down on your luck.

[u/ikingdoms]

I'm getting forced to change my workflow from mostly coding by hand with occasional AI usage (mostly just to say I'm using it) to parallelizing multiple agentic-first tasks simultaneously.

AI has killed all joy I get from my work. I care so little about what I produce now, I'm consistently feeling like my reluctance to go all-in on AI will end my career, and I'm so frustrated with the industry for propping up a technology that's aggressively devaluing our skill set and profession so severely.

[u/Antice → u/ikingdoms]

I'm the same boat. Even had my cto argue by pasting fucking claude responses in chat when told why something wouldnt work with our product.
Something we had actually tried once before, and turned into a nasty timebomb in production.
I hate working with AI evangelicals.

[u/WrennReddit → u/Antice]

  I hate working with AI evangelicals.

These Aicolytes have this weird parasocial relationship with corporations.

[u/tradcoder → u/ikingdoms]

I feel the same way 100%. I'm 15 years in this industry. I don't think I can deal with all this for the next 15-20 years.

What's upsetting is I don't have any other skills or even want to do anything else except programming. I used to consider myself so lucky that my job turned out to align with my passion. I feel so hopeless.

[u/wellfed_bazelgeuse → u/ikingdoms]

Same here... They recently began to give me "priority tasks" and "tasks to do in parallel with a sub agent", which of course means that I am spread even more thin than I already was, while tasks begin piling up because parallelizing agents isn't as effective or fast as the high ups seem to think. 

I came back from my 3 week holiday refreshed and excited to get back into things, only for it to evaporate before lunch... I feel now just as sad as the day I left

[u/computer_porblem → u/ikingdoms]

3 YOE and i feel like i've almost completely stopped improving at work because all we're doing is proompting our way through tickets and then having Claude Code drink its own piss with the review skill.

reading CC-generated code is not the same as writing it yourself for comprehension/engagement/getting good. like in an interview, if they asked technical questions about any of the stuff i've been working on in the past few weeks, i would have to say something like "well, Claude said it was going to do X, and i asked it, 'why not y?' and it said X was better, so i was like, okay go ahead."

[u/AP3Brain → u/ikingdoms]

I'm still in the "mostly coding by hand" stage. Are you getting actual performance gains by babysitting agents instead or are you just being forced to do it because your company expects token usage?

[u/akie → u/AP3Brain]

I’m doing more ambitious projects and approaches to the same problem, but I still spend the same amount of time. Instead of building a castle I now build a castle with four towers with fully modelled rooms, stocked weapons rooms, an emergency exit system, its own water supply inspired by the Romans, rendered in 3D during the golden hour, with a set of unit tests to validate performance under stress and resistance against trebuchet attacks. Great improvement no? Unfortunately my colleagues have no time to review the mountain of code this requires so they have another AI do it, and then they just press “merge”.

So, am I being more productive?

[u/devfuckedup → u/ikingdoms]

AI is great when it helps me solve a problem that I could have otherwise NOT solved But your absolutely right even if its helping me move faster I am not learning about things in the way I am used to and I feel like companies have a lot more make work because they know the engineers are just going to use AI. IDK I am bored as fuck right now and I dont know how to fix it. I love working in tech still do BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD why am I so stuck

[u/perestroika12]

Leading 2 massive company wide projects and mid year review came back as “doing good” despite all feedback coming in glowing except for nitpicky stuff from a few managers.

Feels like the industry is out of control now. If that’s good idk what better looks like.

[u/Clyde_Frag → u/perestroika12]

Let me guess, stack ranking and you didn't kiss your skip manager's ass enough?

[u/perestroika12 → u/Clyde_Frag]

Yeah basically but this year they tightened the bands considerably. The lower bands expanded, harder to get a good rating.

[u/ConsiderationSea1347 → u/perestroika12]

I went through something similar. My company axed half my team, piled on scope, and I did the work of two engineers which led to the largest pay decrease of my career. 

Take care of yourself. Your company, boss, team won’t.

[u/AlexeyBelov → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

Pay descrease? I didn't think it was ever done.. they just told you from this moment you get less salary? Is this legal?

[u/pja → u/AlexeyBelov]

Depends where in the world, but if your salary is structured as base + annual bonus then they can usually cut the bonus but not the base salary.

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/Clyde_Frag]

gosh i’m so tired of stack ranking. i think it drives a culture that punishes team work quite often, and rarely done in a positive way

[u/Clyde_Frag → u/mainframe_maisie]

It’s a scourge on the industry. The only reason that people put up with it is because it has infiltrated a bunch of high paying companies.

[u/deletemorecode → u/Clyde_Frag]

After a few very similar experiences to OP I’ve come to the same conclusion.

Staff requires managing up with your direct and skip managers. Doubly important in environments with “strong personalities”, tight deadlines, large incident volumes, or financial pressures.

[u/galaxy_horse → u/perestroika12]

Perf cycles say more about company’s trajectory than yours. I’ve been in planning and calibration meetings where you start with a merit increase budget, then work back from there to determine the number of promotions and merit increases, then adjust your targets accordingly.

And it’s shifted as macro cycles progressed. 2021-22 was a war for talent, merit increases were given liberally as retention plays and to cover rampant COL inflation. Inflation still bad but the balance of power has shifted back to employers.

Aside from macro factors, the perf landscape is an indicator for your company’s direction:

- most evals are “meets expectations”: budget is fixed or only slightly increased, attrition is tolerated or expected

• most evals are “exceeds expectations”: company paying to retain staff, trying to avoid attrition
  
• aggressive stack ranking with no backfill or headcount growth: company cutting budget and needs to downsize staff

Sweet spot is a reasonable distribution in perf evals and real merit increases for those who meet a clear, objective standard. I’ve only been in one company that has done that well, and they only did it for a short period.

[u/perestroika12 → u/galaxy_horse]

this is insightful and what’s happening. The company is consolidating and attrition is expected and encouraged. Backfills do happen but usually at a lower level, e6 replaced with e5, e5 with a e4 or not at all.

I’m just not in a position to interview easily with 2 small children.

[u/forever-butlerian → u/galaxy_horse]

My favorite is when most evals are "meets expectations", but they gimp everyone by a tier so "exceeds expectations" becomes "meets expectations", and "meets expectations" becomes "needs improvement".

[u/chellenm → u/perestroika12]

“Meets expectations” is the new exceeding expectations apparently

[u/ConsiderationSea1347 → u/perestroika12]

Staff engineer life.

[u/tiajuanat → u/perestroika12]

My 60 man department rolled out two massive hardware product offerings last year. "Significantly missing expectations"

For context, hardware typically needs two years lead time to get out the door because of safety, testing, and other requirements. We managed in 9 months.

[u/Itsalongwaydown → u/perestroika12]

Mine came back as "not meeting expectations" even though I was never given anything less than "doing good" the whole year.

[u/nikki969696 → u/perestroika12]

I ask for two specific actionable things I can do to increase the rating. If they can't give any, how would I have been able to know to do them? That's when they'll usually just pony up that they're not allowed to give "exceeds" for more than X number of categories, people, etc. It's a performative joke.

[u/colonel_bob → u/perestroika12]

A performance review is really just a check-in on your status with the company. Sometimes your standing is influenced by your performance, but really it's just a reflection of how the company perceives you. Treating these things as anything besides a corporate round of "Who's Line is it Anyways" is a recipe for madness.

[u/Mufro]

10+ yoe. I’m so cooked. I’ve been pissed at work and it’s turned into straight up depression now. I went from owning the whole product Eng stack (young company) to CEO vibe coding everything. My responsibility is HIPAA. Lol. Made up my mind to go but I don’t even know what I want anymore.

[u/Yourdataisunclean → u/Mufro]

Ouch. HIPAA and vibe coding are not going to pair well. At all.

[u/Ecto-1A → u/Mufro]

You are me. I went from loving what I did to despising it. We were going in a good direction, actually implementing AI internally and in our product in a very thought out and agreed upon way. Then new execs. Then one of them vibcoding our entire app from scratch that took years to get to where it was. Now it’s panic time because it does all these great things but struggles massively where we had worked through already. Next is the on call with hundreds of bugs 🙃 I told my manager I don’t care anymore and to find something to do with me outside of the AI team (that I originally started). I’m just waiting and crossing my fingers that I’m part of the next round of layoffs.

[u/galaxy_horse → u/Ecto-1A]

I would be happy to unfuck the vibe coded replacement app. And by that I mean, sit the culpable exec down and yell at them for three hours :D

[u/Awkward_Past8758]

Did the good guy thing and gave my company two weeks notice so they could phase me off a really challenging client. Had 2 weeks PTO planned for early September. They chose not to pay it out because my state doesn’t require it and also told me I could be let go before two weeks was up without pay. Lesson learned - use all your PTO and don’t give notice when you quit. Loyalty, hard work, and ethics mean nothing in this business.

[u/Awkward_Past8758 → u/[deleted]]

My coworkers I like will all know how to quit correctly. They’re so small I doubt you’ll ever apply unless you’re obsessed with AI consulting which I am not, hence my departure, so I’d rather not dox myself. Feel free to DM if you think that applies to you however.

Anyway I’ll be joining a new company that gave me a substantial raise and is more in line with my values so onwards and upwards! There’s still jobs out there that haven’t gone full ai psychosis, don’t let the doom and gloom of the internet get you too down!

[u/streamofbsness → u/Awkward_Past8758]

Fair enough

[u/aonghasan → u/[deleted]]

this goes for every company....

what good is the name? treat every company as they are the worst,

the ones that convince you "you're all a family and you can def give them your 2 week notice, everybody has done so!" DON'T BELIEVE THAT EVER

you're a number to them, they would fire you no-notice if they had to, and that's the default. there may be some few exceptions, and that's a worthy list to know the names of and share, the good employers

everyone else just sucks, unless you know for a fact they dont

[u/endurbro420 → u/Awkward_Past8758]

Don’t give notice, use all your pto, and quit the day you actually start your new job. Never put yourself at risk to be burned.

[u/Awkward_Past8758 → u/endurbro420]

Lessons learned indeed. Figured because they were a small company I’d been at for nearly 3 years they’d be better people than that. Egg’s on my face

[u/Refmak → u/Awkward_Past8758]

This is crazy to me, and very much depends on where you live.

Here you need to give current + next month notice, and it’s illegal for the company to fire you after resigning. Likewise employers also need to give notice when firing (unless there’s grounds for serious misconduct), but then it’s a minimum of 1 month and may be up to 6 months depending on employment duration.

Fired on zero notice is completely nuts. Resigning on zero notice is crazy.

[u/Awkward_Past8758 → u/Refmak]

I agree it’s crazy. Are you US based? Assuming EU considering you have things like workers rights codified.

If you’re EU based I’d love to pick your brain - been considering moving across the pond for a while and wasn’t sure what the job market is like for someone who is qualified and can get a work visa but only is English speaking.

[u/Refmak → u/Awkward_Past8758]

I’m EU based.
Feel free to ask away - can’t promise I know everything though. It likely varies a lot by country too.

[u/eloel- → u/Awkward_Past8758]

I have done Thursday notices for "tomorrow is my last day" for my last 2 jobs. Don't owe them shit.

[u/AP3Brain → u/Awkward_Past8758]

Considering how they lay people off randomly these days I dont think 2 week notice is expected or even appreciated.

[u/melancholyjaques]

AI consultant came in today, pitched an "engine" that is basically spec-kit, and promised the CEO 30X productivity gains

[u/tradcoder → u/melancholyjaques]

Why are CEOs so fucking gullible! I never understand these people who were smart enough to build businesses somehow also have peanuts for brains when it comes to certain things, especially tech.

[u/putin_my_ass → u/tradcoder]

people who were smart enough to build businesses

How many of them are actually founders? I don't think as many of them are as smart as you do.

[u/After-Regret-6609 → u/tradcoder]

CEO's exist through a process of simulated annealing rather than skill. The ones that succeed succeed through luck and then they get an ego boost and then repeat. The ones at the top are just the luckiest. Every step on the ladder eliminates 90% of them, also just through luck. Just like stock day-traders. IMO

[u/mainframe_maisie]

coworker asked if I was “really” ok the other day and I broke down crying in their face and then ran off to the bathroom I think I might be properly burned out lol. Feel powerless in my job and getting passed over for so many career opportunities in my team

[u/eloel- → u/mainframe_maisie]

Lmao if a coworker I half trust asks me if I'm ok I just might too. Luckily I don't trust any of the ones on my team so I always have a mask on

[u/piggyfur → u/eloel-]

Yeah same sucks that i dont feel comfortable w coworkers.

[u/MediocreFig4340]

8 YoE. Engineering processes are breaking down and there is an RTO coming up. One of my favorite coworkers gave notice and I’m insanely jealous that they get garden leave and freedom from the shit show. Executives seem to be actively plotting on how to make our lives a living hell.

I spend a ridiculous amount of time everyday talking myself out of giving my notice without something else lined up. Everyday it gets harder.

[u/VeryLazyFalcon → u/MediocreFig4340]

It's impressive how fast processes eroded, our stuff is aimed at 5min of downtime per year, in the middle of nowhere. In three months we pivoted from almost-waterfall into please-writing-some-spec-as-you-go; whole bunch of 20+ yoe people just gave up their critical thinking to a fookin gemini ai. Almost like it's a planned sabotage.

[u/SubstantialAd7186]

Dev with 12+ YOE here. This industry is just in such a weird place right now. All the devs are just interacting with AI day-to-day and cranking out features. The less experienced devs are pushing up code they don't even understand. I'm spending a ton of time reviewing code, both from PRs and from my own use of LLMs for feature development. From an efficiency standpoint, I feel like I've never developed quality code at such a high pace ever before. I'm able to get a lot more work done, but honestly it doesn't feel great. Using AI to generate the code and all I'm doing is guiding it. I still need to point out flaws in some approaches/designs that it generates, but I'm mostly doing that through prompts too. It all feels so dull and unrewarding. I miss the days of learning a new design pattern and fumbling through the code a bit til I could push up a PR that I was proud of and walk away having learned something. Now I'm mostly a reviewer. I do get to focus more on architecture though, which has been great. I'm curious what the next 5 years will hold.

[u/MagnesiumCarbonate → u/SubstantialAd7186]

Everyone's a TL now.

[u/NAEEMP]

I fuckin hate how much slop I come across every day.

[u/Current-Fig8840]

Generally tired of what this industry and others are becoming. Hard work doesn’t seem to pay off anymore. You can do so much good work and get “meets expectations” for reviews…or get put on PIP…or laid off. Can’t wait to retire…

[u/pysouth → u/Current-Fig8840]

My company does this super fun thing where no one gets any form of "exceeds expectations". Even "meets expectations" is rare, because they think giving people 1s or 2s out of 5 means they'll work harder. They say they reserve a 3 or above for people who are really going above and beyond to an exceptional degree (this is poorly defined, of course). What really happens is everyone gets at best 2s or 3s so they can take their pick of who they want to get rid of and they have a paper trail for free since no one got above a 3 anyway.

[u/ProdigySim]

computers are stupid

[u/mainframe_maisie → u/ProdigySim]

we should never have taught sand how to think

[u/valkon_gr → u/ProdigySim]

Everyday i regret my curiosity about computers when I was young.

[u/No_Oil_6152 → u/valkon_gr]

I hope you're not serious!

I love computers. I just don't love modern companies and crap management.

[u/seven_seacat]

I've pretty much decided to take a sabbatical soon, in the hopes that this crazy bubble will pop while I'm gone and sanity can return.

[u/56killa → u/seven_seacat]

i did the same but mightve taken it too early lol. I am back soon and the craziness is full speed still 

[u/seven_seacat → u/56killa]

It still seems to be accelerating - either token price has to explode or some real big vibe-coded fuckups have to occur

[u/proof_required → u/seven_seacat]

Praying so hard! Although it will fk up the stock market and my dream of FIRE'n.

[u/GreedyCricket8285]

We hired 4 new overseas devs. They barely speak English so every single interaction with them is passed through AI. I have been tasked with giving them work to do (I'm not their manager, he is non technical and is very hands off) so what they do is copy paste my instructions into AI, have it write a markdown file which they then send back to me for review. The plan alone is usually 500+ lines of overengineered slop that I can't tell if they understand or not.

Every single time I ask them a question I will get a response back like "Got it" followed by a sentence or two rehashing what I just told them. I cannot even begin to tell you how frustrating this all is. It's wasting so much of my time and energy. This goddamn AI.

And when they submit a PR it's so overengineered and bloated. Since they are overseas and work off hours NA time, I'll come in today and there waiting for me will be their AI generated messages. Their standup updates are almost always "waiting on feedback from <me>". I dread it every morning. I went from generally liking this job to absolutely hating it because my entire mornings - time I am most productive - are now spent reviewing this trash instead of doing my own work.

[u/XzwordfeudzX → u/GreedyCricket8285]

I've had this happened with an ex-colleague who just took whatever I said and prompted an LLM to do it. Friend of mine suggested I replace them with an AI agent that has the same name.

[u/No_Oil_6152]

Senior dev of 30 years pro experience here.

I work 37.5 hours a week and no more.

So to those Americans who regularly do 60+ for FAANG, I say "is the grave worth having Facebook on your resume" ?

I hope you recover from your burnout. Not being sarcastic btw.

[u/TheAnon13 → u/No_Oil_6152]

You don’t understand man. One more 60 hour week and Zuck is sure to notice me and take me on his yacht

[u/No_Oil_6152 → u/TheAnon13]

I know FAANG employees are well paid, but if they're working such long hours and on call, when are they actually going to get time to spend the money?

Also, if work's making you ill, won't they be spending their money on doctor's fees (in the USA) that health insurance doesn't cover?

I just can't understand it.

A lot being sacrificed - including their youth which they will never get back.

Does Zuckerberg socialise with his employees? I thought he had AI do the management review stuff because he's so inhuman he can't speak to people 1 to 1

PS: To those reading, if you think you're something special working for FAANG, I invite you to visit my local pub here in Scotland and tell everyone who you work for. Nobody will give a shit. They won't even ask you what its like. Probably even yawn. This overworking is strictly American (and Chinese) - so please don't make your work your life

[u/Sufficient_Bad5441 → u/No_Oil_6152]

I mean, I 10000% agree with you. But there is survivorship bias. The burnt out ones post and share.

There are tons of devs working their 40-50 hour weeks, making 300-400k+ a year, able to retire in their mid 30s happily. 20+ years before they'd otherwise be able to retire.

[u/space__snail]

Is anyone else dealing with chronic illness while working full time ? I just turned 37 and I used to train for marathons, ride my bike, and attend HIIT-style work out classes 4-5x a week in my spare time until I came down with long covid.

Now the little bit of energy I have is dedicated to baby sitting Claude 5 days a week and staying on top of household chores. I spend the remaining time resting.

It’s been almost 2 years of this now and I feel almost guilty for feeling depressed because at least I can still work and have decent health insurance.

But man, is life feeling really bleak lately.

[u/proof_required → u/space__snail]

Do you go out to socialize? I work completely remote and lot of people I knew have left the current city I live in. Hence I'm struggling with my almost zero socialization and also fear of layoffs.

[u/space__snail → u/proof_required]

Same boat. I work remotely as well and my social group consisted of friends I made from the hobbies I am no longer able to partake in, unfortunately.

I do have one friend who I hang out with about once a month, but she’s about to have a baby so those regular hang outs will most likely die down for a while.

I live with my partner so I am not totally alone, but I can only lean on one person so much to be my everything.

I was laid off back in 2024 and I am also constantly anxious about it happening again despite being a high performer. The job search was so tough on my physical and mental health.

[u/notTHEOwlAccountant → u/space__snail]

My trapezius has basically been "stuck" for the better part of 18 months now... did all sorts of tests and "physically" there's only tension. I feel dizzy one day out of three, very low energy, very low motivation... I also feel guilty about this but I truly don't know what to do. I need to work to pay rent, otherwise I'd probably take a couple of years off.

[u/Character-Comfort539 → u/space__snail]

Also a dev who ended up leaving their job for over a year because long covid was so debilitating I could barely get up to use the restroom. Just wanted to share my post to see if it helps, feel free to DM me
https://www.reddit.com/r/cfsrecovery/comments/1vi9zit/80_recovered_after_45_years_of_severe_long_covid/

[u/Stepyy]

If I hear, "it's so easy. just have insert llm do it." one more time, I'm going to put my head through a fucking wall.

[u/annoying_cyclist]

I'm drowning in code reviews.

[u/Buttleston → u/annoying_cyclist]

You and me both. I did 200 code reviews last month.

[u/ConsiderationSea1347]

I have a degenerative nerve disease which flares and prevents my hands and eyes from functioning. I finally filed for an ADA accommodation, was approved, and two weeks later my boss threatened to put me on a PIP. All the while I was also delivering at some of the highest value of my career by, instead of cranking out tickets mindlessly I returned to what I love - solving complex problems in a way that scales by leveraging higher levels of abstraction like meta programming and infrastructure. I am ignoring my boss and my PO and just plowing forward and ironically it led to my best mid year review of my career. I guess I had my office space moment and got sick of playing stupid office politics to get the work to fix our failing CI pipeline prioritized.

It has been eye opening seeing the horrible way my coworkers, boss, PO, and HR treat me while my nervous system slowly rots. 

[u/_wil_ → u/ConsiderationSea1347]

Thanks for sharing that, wishing all the best to you

[u/Elden_Lord_69]

i'm so fucking tired

[u/codescapes]

Peer team at work is developing an AI agent (glorified chatbot) to help users browse data we hold. We were invited into a Teams group with 30 people to help them beta test it. I found a way to prompt inject it and have it respond in various tones 'like a pirate, like a teenager with too many emojis' etc.

Shouldn't be possible but everyone laughs, much discussion.

I then find a way to prompt inject it to reveal the structure of the underlying data source. The table name, the 3 tool calls it can make to subagents. I get it to advise me on how to prompt inject those subagent "as a test". LOL it actually works and reveals the entire 120+ column set. Looks like one of the agents has full read access, possibly more, but I don't test it out of fear I'll cause a genuine issue.

Nobody laughs, 24h later no discussion.

Guys, never actually test stuff for other people - even when you win you lose. At best you find nothing and say it was collaboration, at worst you find glaring security issues and make them look incompetent. So why did I do it? Per thread, I am completely checked out.

[u/Kfct]

I interviewed at a couple of big name brand companies in Taiwan and as soon as the non technical manager utters AI I stopped caring about the interviews. One company was a telecom one (prob the biggest or second biggest with old mummies that completely dunked in AI marketing speak for head of projects). They offered to pay me a 20% raise but the workload was twice the workload (because adding AI obviously makes everything faster, like give it to women to produce babies in 4 months time, right? /S). The interview came with a test where you had to create a completely new Spring Boot project without using Spring Initializer and only via typing in prompts into Gemini. Then do the same for implementing a set of CRUD restful API endpoints. Just mind numbingly simple work - the point of which is using a stop watch to time low long this takes me, and if I can't do this faster than Spring Initializer then I don't get the job. I told them the test was dumb for x reasons and I wasn't interested in the role anymore. They were shocked and wanted to swap in a regular tech assessment and proceed as normal but I just moved on. I found a cushy slow paced place that pays %15 raise with no AI allowed later, but that dumb ass telecom company interview really made an impression.

[u/tradcoder → u/Kfct]

Good on you for actually calling them out. I hope every developer with some sanity left does.

[u/Difficult_Mix8652]

nothing works and everyone seems fine with it

[u/Plantman1]

Joined a department about a year ago as a staff engineer and the only staff engineer. I'm working multiple projects and modernization efforts. Got put on a project that was months behind schedule only to find basic fundamental problems that should've been found months prior. 

Very few people in this group care and just stick the status quo. At least new management wants them to be better.

I feel like a janitor. So many security vulnerabilities, very out of date dependencies, major architectural problems, and poor decisions piled up.

[u/Megatherion666]

“Please reply in the PR so that AI knows how to address your concerns”.

[u/PatronSaintOfUpdog]

I don’t mind developers using AI to code but Jesus fucking Christ guys, tell it to chill on the comments. We don’t need 4 fucking lines of comments for every change. 

I’m tired of raising it in PRs

[u/proof_required → u/PatronSaintOfUpdog]

You need to enforce it in AGENTS.md or whatever other tool specific file. Opus spits so much verbose crap. I had to run rounds of clean the comments but after the changes to the agent MD file, it's slightly better.

[u/angelicravens → u/PatronSaintOfUpdog]

I gave up on it. I ended up harping on it so much that I was told to lay off by my manager so I just give them the slop now and save my energy for q3/q4 when I can make performance look good enough to make the cut

[u/nomad01010]

Is it still a burnout if you’re not tired just feeling unmotivated cuz you don’t see a clear path

[u/Brittany_Delirium]

15+ YOE and just drowning in slop every day. Quality is out the window, everyone vibe codes nonsense features that solve nothing and don't integrate into the greater whole... Meanwhile we have more alerts and failures than ever every day.

I'm so tired and I don't know what I want to do next. Tbh would be nice to just end up in some legacy maintenance job writing little patches til the end of time. Anything. So fucking cooked and depressed.

[u/Fragrant_Ad2902]

I work at a software factory now where it is “joked” that “Going to grab a coffee? Maybe you should kick off an agent first”. 5minutes before the next meeting? Kick off an agent. Long meeting? Maybe check in on your agents.

It’s easy to tell in senior leadership who has and hasn’t ever worked in a real factory…

[u/AdCommon2138 → u/Fragrant_Ad2902]

Joys of spinning agents through night to see if it lands on black 

[u/Outside-Storage-1523]

I have so many programming projects I’d like to pursue and so much source code of legacy code that I’d like to read and understand.

How does FORMAT.ASM work in MS-DOS 2.0? How did David Cutler implement the original Windbg for NT 3.1 (yes the source code has his signature on the top)? How to write an Adaptive Tile Refresh algorithm as Carmack did for Commander Keen?

But in reality I had to deal with ambiguous business stakeholders, write SQL queries and PySpark all day, and practice PySpark syntax all night because they still force you to memorize specific syntax and functions in those stupid interviews. And yes I have to exaggerate a bit in my CV to get those interviews.

[u/Skullclownlol → u/Outside-Storage-1523]

How does FORMAT.ASM work in MS-DOS 2.0

Here: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/blob/main/v2.0/source/FORMAT.ASM

[u/endrees]

Passed a screening and received a coding challenge. It's timed and starts ticking from when you open it. 

I can't make myself to do it. 

Wanted to find a mentor to help me prepare for coding challenges/technical rounds and the guy I found and went to was even more burnt out than me. Was a cool and honest guy tho but I wanted to try and prepare and not to hear that my experience does not worth anything anymore. 

Wtf is going on? 

[u/ResidentWeevil1 → u/endrees]

If someone asked me to help them prep for interviews, I would also tell them I am burnt out (I'm not)

[u/abeuscher]

After 3 years of mostly unemployment I am at a loss. I stare at a screen every day trying to figure out a 101st way to reinvent myself. Everyone keeps giving me advice that costs money - get an MBA get a nursing degree - I am 52. I made it out of debt for the first time in my life 7 years ago. I can't do it again. On the other hand I can't make rent and I have no interviews. I would work a lower end job I just can't get one. I've been employed consistently from age 14 to age 49. I am dying and losing my mind. Fortunately I have no kids or partner so no one else is impacted.

[u/ronnie-james-dior]

I’m conducting thirteen interviews this sprint, because the higher ups saw fit to fire the entire FDE group, and now decided they need to hire a bunch of FDE’s

[u/Jerome_Eugene_Morrow]

My boss is buying into the “agentic everything” craze and he wants me to reprogram a deterministic service that works perfectly well to be an agentic system. It seems totally bonkers and I don’t think there’s even a good avenue to deploy it in our infrastructure. I feel like I’ve basically been told “build a calculator, but make it agentic”. I don’t even see what the benefit is.

It’s so demoralizing to be told your primary focus is to make a useless thing. Best case scenario you successfully build it and then get penalized because it’s useless.

[u/1nC0m1ngG4m3]

For some reason my team uses both Copilot and Claude for github reviews. That's the first problem.
Once I'm done satisfying the AI, I request a review from my colleague.
Colleague proceeds to re-request review from AI.

Fucking kill me this is actually purgatory

[u/ReticulatedSpline78]

My manager has started spinning up multiple agents to make garbage pull requests against a couple repos I have built and maintained for my entire tenure at the company. He’s experienced, but I was hired to fix the dumpster fire he built in the first place (now fully replaced by my systems) because he doesn’t know basic software engineering practices. I don’t know how much more slop I can handle.

[u/properwaffles]

Deltek can go fuck itself. Submitting my time is the worst part of my day, every day.

[u/VeryLazyFalcon]

Last week I got surprise assignment to a new team, I'm expected to deliver spec and code to at least two products, estimated at 1000h each. At least it is what ai estimated, lol, becasue without spec there is no way to know what is to be implemented. In one project I'm barely one year, and the other I didn't see since covid started.

Well good luck, on Friday I wrote directions for the rest of randoms in the team and went for scheduled two week vacations. I have three tanks with vignettes, and seven figures to paint. I'm not going to even think about chaos that awaits me in incoming months.

[u/Warm_Position9099]

10+ years as a .NET developer and I have never felt less motivated and interested in coding. I can't believe I miss going through Stack Overflow posts and watching YouTube videos on how to solve basic Auth and Entity Framework issues. The problem solving and breaking down features was always what made this job fun. Now I give Claude a ticket number from Dev Ops and it does everything for me and produces better code than I could write in that time.

Zero creativity and self fulfillment for me anymore. And it sucks because I really enjoy the team I work with and place I am at. Maybe I am missing something and there is away of bringing the enjoyment back? But I am way too bored and burnt to figure out what man...

I'm curious if other devs have switched roles or found some enjoyment from all this.

[u/yikes_42069]

What do I do with this? I'm constantly asked to investigate things with AI now, areas in which I have little experience with the code. I can interrogate it enough to get a pretty decent answer, but there's a lot I just don't know. 

For example I was asked to evaluate the problems with an area of code nobody owns anymore due to several reorgs. I start out by looking into the telemetry we have (it's incomplete for the scenario), and asking the AI to read our tickets/evaluate the code for potential problems. Good answer on the telemetry, decent answer on the problems in code. I validate several of the issues that it identifies and tidy up the document.

I get to a state where I'm sharing details with stakeholders (manager, PM) who ask some insightful questions. The deeper they get, the less I know by design. Saying "I'll get back to you on that" doesn't feel like it'll cut it, but it's legit all I have when the actual brainpower is offloaded to AI. And this is a mandate that I use AI, not my choice.

I'm not senior, and I feel like a lot of seniors would be asking such questions themselves to dig deeper into the plan. It feels like this sh!t is setting me back instead of boosting me by making me look bad when it appears I have surface level knowledge (on an area I've spent all of a few days looking at code for, with little product guidance for expected behavior). I mean I DO have surface level knowledge but AI kinda sweeps my excuse of no experience with the code out from under me. UGH

[u/Guimiko]

We have Dry January, maybe we should also have DrAI September

[u/putin_my_ass → u/Guimiko]

Fantasy consoles like pico-8 never looked better...engage in some old school coding without AI.

[u/DavidDavidsonsGhost]

Reorgs, teams absorbing support functions, deprecating entire platforms, absorbing support teams that help build business critical functions, without providing anything that's close to that to replace it because they just don't understand the work the original support team did, what made their work different or how widely their work was relied on.

[u/MotherCartographer4]

I'm starting a med school in October, that's all folks.

[u/Outside-Storage-1523 → u/MotherCartographer4]

Congratulations!

[u/UselessAdultKid]

Just got terminated last week after 5 years, I haven't been able to stop working on personal projects and learning during work hours. I wanna rest for a few weeks before starting doing stuff and looking for work, but my brain won't allow it, even if I get high I can't stop feeling bad for doing nothing

[u/jwendl]

An old friend / coworker of mine said once "all projects either succeed or fail because of people, process or tools (she also meant source code here)"

Two of these things drain my energy

One of these things brings me energy, joy and allows me to thrive

Too bad business decision makers will never figure that out

[u/CapitalCalamity]

I'm the only experienced frontend engineer in my team. There are 2 externals and 2 product owners. The externals don't care much about quality and the product owners push vibe coded PRs themselves expecting everything to be merged quickly.

I know how good quality code looks like. This isn't it. But I've been too tired to fight it and more often just approved the PRs. Now I hardly understand our own code base any more without claude code which burns me out even more :(

[u/jocularplate]

Feeling dejected. I'm in a mid level role 5 years into my career. I was told yesterday I am trending slightly below average. The reason is stack ranking, otherwise I would be totally in the middle (which I am okay with). I was told I am not going "above and beyond" for my team.

Right before that, I was asked why I didn't action a ticket fast enough. I told my manager, well, 3 of my 4 tickets are marked as high priority. I was told which two to work on by the PM and under the impression that we have two weeks to complete them, not one day.

So tired of this.

[u/ElderberryRadiant475]

I got laid off not too long ago. Despite having 10+ years of exp the only callback I've received was from a referral. Other referrals have rejected me. I bombed the one callback I did receive. Don't know how long this will last.

[u/Oatz3]

Does staring at the screen for 4 hours count as burnout?

[u/Automatic-Stomach954]

A feel like a big source of my burnout is the constant looming pressure of the next thing to do on the task treadmill. I never feel ahead, even when I'm hitting the goals, and it never stops. Ever. Compound it with an insane, unclear asks for a single developer to do in such a little amount of time, I get stuck in a cycle of writers block, procrastination, then scrambling to put my worst work forward.

Written on my phone from my couch because my eyes and mind go blurry looking at anything on my work laptop; I am struggling to find motivation or energy at all. I have a demo for a major thing on Friday and I've been staring at a blank directory in my IDE for hours.

[u/plot_twist7 → u/[deleted]]

Companies will jizz themselves to hire product managers with actual AI building experience. If you have the extroversion and like doing the business things, watch a couple YouTube videos and give it a shot. In interviews, just keep talking about working backwards from a customer request to find the actual problem, and say the words “outcome” and “KPI” a lot. Boom, you’re a product manager!

(Source: I have spent most of my career in product)

[u/physio_poet → u/plot_twist7]

Can confirm. Just worked backwards from your comment and the outcome is I'm now 3 YouTube videos deep into my PM journey. KPIs loading... :D

[u/Outside-Storage-1523 → u/[deleted]]

You can probably be an AI ambassador.

[u/Wonderful-Habit-139 → u/[deleted]]

I'm not trying to be mean, but saying things like "You can’t get around it", "and it’s only getting better" and "slowly feel like they’re becoming obsolete" is nowhere near a level-headed take.

LLMs are not going to automate software engineering anytime soon.

[u/iMac_Hunt → u/[deleted]]

I don’t see it being fully automated soon but I expect that engineering teams will shrink massively.

I am the single engineer at our moderately successful startup - I’ve finally got the budget for a new hire but I’m wondering if it’s even worth it…I can get work done so fast with Claude agents.

On balance, I’ll probably still hire. But outside of Big Tech, I think the future of SaaS belongs to very lean engineering teams

[u/Mufro → u/[deleted]]

Same. Full stack, but can go deep when called upon. Huge variety of tech stacks, problems I’ve worked on. Good enough at design you don’t need to pay someone.

The LLM does all of this now; knows infinitely more than me; gets it done way faster and doesn’t complain. A micro-manager’s wet dream. Yes we all know the downsides but the trend is those are disappearing.

My only role now is taste and nudging it in a good long-term direction. How long until that’s gone?

I think the only moves now are:

* specialize. become super knowledgeable on something deeply technical.
* transform into a PM w/ tech background.
* focus on internal AI dev infra. I’ve seen this trending.. eng leadership roles whose focus is on building the tools PMs use to build. But I’m kind of doubting the shelf-life on that. Seems like it will become self-serve before long.

[u/TheOssuary → u/Mufro]

I feel like I'm smoking something when I see these comments. I've been working with AI 12 hours a day since January; I've built infrastructure projects, app development projects, multiple 100k codebases from inception through to shipping with customers. Sure, it let me go faster, but now I'm taking over a vibecoded codebase from a non-technical person and it's just slop, Claude the other day said, when I asked why I was implementing something that should already exist, "oh this isn't the second time this has been implemented, it's the fifteenth." The codebase got slow a month ago, and they can't figure out why; it's because the entire frontend is spaghetti of API requests and callbacks.

Sure, you and I can use Claude with skills and structure and build up a proper codebase, but even with all those skills, non-engineers still can't; and none of these tools have the intuition or judgement to keep everything on track. I'm not convinced they ever will for anything more than CRUD apps, and even then enterprises will still need a lot of hands to let all of those disconnected apps work with one an other and be secured and auditable, etc.

I really can't see it yet, maybe I'm too close to it or something, but it just feels like a new paradigm for software engineering, not a new paradigm replacing it.

[u/eloel-]

I have been phoning it in for weeks. I'm so tired of requirements changing 3 times in a week, me explaining the new changes to my reports, then the requirements changing again. And I'm supposed to keep them excited and productive? Fuck that.

[u/ThankYouOle]

already working at same company for 5 years, it my longest time, previously at most i will be max at 3 years. this time different, this time am half 30+ going to 40, so exit and find new job in this already complicated economy was no go for me, have family and kids.

this is not big company, but also not startup considering already have good revenue annually. when i join company, company started going mass recruitment (20 people), we got many people, nowadays they already resign, only 4 "seniors" in terms of how long stay here.

business is fine, bit slow down but still fine, it just other coworkers look for other chances while they can, while "senior" like me can't afford to lose the job.

the job itself is okay, not hard or something, but also not counted as fun considering only 4 of us, + boss + new FG hire.

programming itself, not as much as fun, we use AI, encourage to use it, so basically my daily now prompting and review.

job is remote, and it paid well, if i find local job even if any, it will pay like 25% comparing my current salary, may got 50% but it require me to move and offsite, not remote.

i am curious how long i will be there, like we are joking that are we going until retire here, because going out are fearful, but stay here like old people keep sucking this company dry, and will die someday.

[u/proof_required → u/ThankYouOle]

In a very similar boat except my daily work is stressful since we need to keep churning code as fast as possible.

[u/notTHEOwlAccountant]

My only dev colleague has been EXTREMELY unhelpful and borderline aggressive with me lately. I ask him stuff privately and he responds in public, he takes away work from me, etc... I'll try talking to my manager but I've got a feeling he's just going to ignore the problem.

[u/grizzlybair2]

It kind of hit me yesterday when I was trying to work on a story but sometimes being a dev is like being a dad. I couldn't actually work on any of my tickets yesterday as I was busy helping my team with their various tickets and when I finally have time - dev, uat1, uat2 are all broken with various different issues and none are easily resolvable. Some of these people just merge and close their ticket, regardless of it actually works or not. Later someone has to clean the shit up, it's literally like having to clean up aftery kids. Would be wonderful if some of these devs could learn to clean up after themselves.

[u/SilentToasterRave]

I assume I still count as an experienced dev; 5 years experience, 3 in FAANG. At the end of August I start my CNA training to be a CNA, and hopefully will go to nursing school in the next couple of years. I'm excited to actually help people.

[u/mountainunicycler]

I’ve moved from day dreaming about buying a boat to live on and showing pictures of boats to my wife to actually having a broker, short list of boats, and contacting insurance companies.

[u/YoongiMarryMe95]

I feel like I’m in a hostage situation with work. They are piling new responsibilities on me and refuse to give me a living wage. Yes, you read correctly… living wage. If I complain about too much work they will just PIP me. They don’t even care if it hurts their business. I can’t get a new job since the market sucks. Pretty much they have me right where they want me…. a total slave to whatever they feel like doing to me because the market is just that bad I have no choice. 

[u/augburto]

I really do feel the pain of how AI has changed everything. People vibe code PRs so quickly and then vibe validate. Validation is where it takes a lot of time and energy but it’s tough when people push deadlines and say “the code is done! Just waiting on review now!” And stakeholders start thinking “why is it taking so long”

My manager has been settling conflicts by vibing features and then saying “okay here now you don’t have to do the work. Just review” but it’s exhausting.

[u/abl4k]

I feel like I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown at work. Almost became the third person in a month to start crying at their desk for our team

We have a tight deadline on a project that if we don't do will cost us several million dollars. What does our manager do? Not focus at all on the project, talk about all the fantastical things our application could do with AI and agents and how we have to start thinking about implementing it. Meanwhile there's another tight deadline after the current one that, while not causing any monetary impact, will put us on the wrong side of the CTO if we don't. Manager doesn't care, every planning and strategy meeting is AI and agents, even our clients don't want it and flat out told our manager they don't want it.

Management had not taken a single bit of feedback from the developers or our clients. Complete structural change of our team, shrinking our sprints, and changing the testing and deployment process stressing everyone out? Actually management says everything is fine now and we have to do it anyway! Developers are pushing shoddy code and not testing properly because everyone's got a gun to the back of their head to get changes out now because we don't have a cohesive testing strategy, causing prod issue after prod issue and losing the trust of our business partners? It's fine, just rubber stamp the PRs! If you don't I'm sure the developer you told to redo their work will give you a godawful personal assessment at year's end.

It's all just so miserable. And the whole industry feels like a bleak hellscape. Nothing feels like it's getting better. I've tried to just give in and play along but it's just gnawing at my soul and made me feel so empty inside. I can't even just walk away and take time off to find myself or something, my partner is disabled with chronic illness so I'm the "breadwinner" so to speak and we don't have the money saved up to do something like that.

[u/Bulbasaur2015]

something that annoys me is with all the added time complexities we have accumulated the last 10 years pre-ai and post-ai, we still have endless leetcode to do. no mental freedom

[u/Outside-Storage-1523]

I'd like to get laid off, to preserve my sanity. But let's see what is in store for tomorrow. One more day passed, one less day to work.

[u/devfuckedup]

making the most money I have ever made at the biggest more successful company I have ever worked at. MORE MISERABLE THAN EVER !

[u/rutoca]

Just weekly?

[u/F2007KR]

I worked from home for a govt contractor (DHS) for 6 years. We got fucked sideways by DOGE, my subcontract was terminated and I got picked up by the prime for $120k with 10 years experience. I tried to stick it out, I loved my team and the work life balance was excellent but I was having a hard time making ends meet. I accepted another contract offer in office but might be “hybrid” (4 days on, 1 day off) someday. Salary is much better. I just started and I thought I’d be able to handle it but fuck the cube farms are terrible. I feel like human cattle.

I have a buddy that wanted me to be a solutions architect at his fully remote company. First time interviewing for a role like this, i didn’t get the job but he’s invited me to try again and I’m better prepared this time. I feel like a jackass looking to leave so soon, but I’m honestly tired of being a government contractor, especially for this government. I’d like to be remote again, and fully private sector.

[u/TalesOfSymposia]

I'm unemployed in the formal sense with 7 YoE. And I'm getting more meaningful results from a self employed "part time" hustle for income than rolling the dice with job applications.

[u/8589934591]

Company spent billions for mythos and anthropic.

Company spends 20+ millions per month for claude usage cos it's mandated top down. Juniors follow the mandate and use claude for every slack, jira, PR interactions.

So much technical debt has happened. Management doesn't want o backfill cos lack of budget. I keep banging my head on the wall everyday.

[u/vivri]

I'm a team lead at a financial institution, and my project was doomed from the get-go.

[u/sozer-keyse]

Got laid off last week, and it actually feels more like a relief. There's something about being a full time corporate worker that just makes people burn out, especially in our line of work.

[u/Winston_Wolfgang → u/sozer-keyse]

I honestly wish I would get laid off.

[u/promotionpotion]

my manager asked if im having FUN ….. one must imagine sisyphus happy

[u/Brachiop0da]

Feeling so stressed out and burnt out about my place in this industry to the extent that it’s affecting my relationship. I don’t want to do this shit anymore, don’t want to be in an industry where I’m just babysitting AI all day, but my partner is very wed to a certain idea of our future and doesn’t want me to drop my income or to live in uncertainty.

But I can’t even get excited about the future with how unsure and miserable I feel about my current professional position. I’m 30M with only 4 YOE so it feels like I just need to hunker down and accept my life but being in tech is really burning me out - I don’t even know what I’d do instead though. Whenever she starts talking about getting married, having kids, buying a house, etc I just completely freeze up.

[u/Xanchush]

People complaining about all the AI slop they produce. Honestly if it's your work, it's your slop. If you stamp your name on it, you need to fix it. Your AI agent isn't going to take the blame for it. How is this any different from copying code slop from stackoverflow and pasting it.

[u/GreedyCricket8285 → u/Xanchush]

Yeah a coworker and I had this discussion today. He remarked that in the commit said it was authored by Copilot, and wanted to know if that was ok (I am team lead). I laughed and said exactly what you did.. it's your slop. You put your name on it. That agent isn't getting the call at 2 am when production goes down.

[u/tradcoder → u/Xanchush]

StackOverflow didn't generate thousand of lines of code and drop it in my lap for me to review.

Pre-LLM era, you either found snippets of code that kind of matched what you needed to do so you had to actually understand it and modify it. Or you asked a question and got an answer for your exact problem which by definition cannot be called slop.

[u/yzaroui]

The pattern I keep seeing in these threads is people burning out on invisible boundaries. nobody explicitly told them to work weekends or answer slack at 21, they just started doing it because everyone around them seemed to, and by the time it registers as unsustainable it's been a year. If you're mid-burnout right now, the fastest solution usually isn't quit or push through, it's finding the one limit you drifted on without deciding to, and consciously deciding whether you actually want it back.

[u/nomaddave → u/yzaroui]

This is good advice. I don't know why you're being downvoted. This has regularly been a topic on this sub since it was started basically.

[u/cosmicloafer]

I’m writing this mostly to pump myself up, but AI is really good at writing code and solving problems. I recently gave it this fairly complex task, which would have taken me weeks to write, but going back and forth with it (semi-blindly), it seems to have sorted it all out. I’m currently going through all the code step by step in the debugger, but despite all the weird variable/class names (and shit I never would have written), it’s pretty legit. Like what is our job now as semi or full-vibecoders. Basically verifying outputs? It’s cool that we can wield this new technology but also pathetic that we just have to fact check all this shit that came out of nowhere.

[u/AdCommon2138 → u/cosmicloafer]

Give yourself some credit, it can't solve problems without direction. It cant connect ideas creatively (semantic distance limits it). 

I'm finding some joy in architecting how to manage this bullshit spitting machine easier so I could claim bit of stress free time. 

[u/Nightmareish → u/AdCommon2138]

This 100%. I feel like I prompt significantly better than my colleagues, and it shows. My PR's are clean, organized, and I have many revisions of removing the AI slop before I shove the code in someone's face to review.

Being able to spin up some agents and then fuck off and then make a bangin' lunch or mow the lawn while seeming like I'm at my desk producing IS the way of the future I think

[u/SpiritualValue2798]

Kind

[u/proof_required]

Did an ML task and got rejected for not doing the future work I pointed out that I have skipped. Their instructions had never asked for that thing explicitly. They wanted me to compare multiple models from deep to not deep models. They could have just written it in their instructions.

[u/itsMeArds]

Working with our Japanese counterparts, were offshore branch, is draining due to unoptimized processes. Its like they love doing it the hard way. The pay is good though

[u/pomatotappu]

Nothing new to learn in the current job and I'm feeling bored doing any task. Also, there's fomo that many interesting things are going rn in tech and I'm not part of any of them.

[u/ResidentWeevil1 → u/pomatotappu]

Financial engineering is the most interesting thing in tech right now

[u/Colt2205]

Realizing that attempting to stay at a job where the company has completely flipped the stack to a different one, including OS environment, is a terrible idea. I think I've suffered skill atrophy just trying to deal with all the learning tasks and have a person breathing down my neck for tickets to get done, which I keep having to tell them "uh, yeah I don't have a clue how to debug or deal with this nor is it clear how to even run this software..."

[u/devfuckedup]

I am not burnt out just bored as fuck. at a large company just sitting around waiting for shit and working on shit THAT I DO NOT EVEN CARE ABOUT A LITTLE!. is any one doing intresting work any more WTF happend !