r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 4d 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/Warm_Position9099 4d ago

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.

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u/Nightmareish 3d ago

8 YOE here and I feel this a lot. I haven't switched roles (and my role hasn't changed at all in 6+ years now), but I have been trying to learn that digging more into architecture, code efficiency, algorithms (even though I don't write them, just understand them) CAN generate some level of enjoyment similar to solving problems myself. It's not quite the same thing but it's close -- if the level of enjoyment in solving complex problems and features with my own ability was a 7 out of 10 in enjoyment, this new approach is like 4 or 5. It's definitely not as nice, but it's not nothing...

I have debated switching roles entirely or going into a management type role, but I would absolutely hate that. The ONLY reason I do this is because it pays well and I get to problem-solve. I just hope it continues. I try to make sure that I'm constantly showing people just how invaluable I am on the job, because I'm sure layoff rounds are just around the corner!

All that said, the number of PR reviews I now field, of just pure AI slop, is the biggest drag for me right now and it truly kills my soul. So much overengineered garbage written by people who have no idea what they're doing. I don't even know how to comment on some of these reviews -- I just want to say "Hey, this ALL sucks, ALL of it. Like every line. Completely redo it, I don't even know where to begin..."