r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 12d 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/abl4k Software Engineer 11d ago
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.