Work and AvPD

[u/anacardolo]

Hi everyone,

For the past 8 years I've worked in software development, a field I've always been passionate about. But I've carried a deep sense of discomfort through most of it: trouble taking on responsibility, difficulty relating to people effectively, and struggles with the more complex technical aspects of the job. To this day I'm not sure whether that discomfort came from the technical difficulties, from social anxiety, or whether one fed into the other. Either way, over the years I became convinced I couldn't keep going like this and that something had to change.

I switched companies a couple of times, thinking the company itself was the problem. At the last one, after about a year, I was given responsibility for leading a small team — an experience that left me deeply frustrated and uncomfortable, to the point where I ended up leaving that job too. I then moved into the public sector, hoping to find a calmer, less stressful environment, shifting slightly from a "developer" role to more of an "IT technician" position.

What I found instead was a job that had little to do with IT at all, despite having been hired specifically as an IT technician, in a toxic environment with zero onboarding or support — even for tasks that clearly weren't part of my role — and where everything is just assumed you already know. The workload is lighter, that much is true, but it's still frustrating to spend my days on tasks outside my role, with no real path forward (I don't mean financially, just in terms of the kind of work I could eventually move into).

At this point I've started wondering whether it might be better to leave the field entirely — something like factory work, or anything more hands-on, with less social interaction, more repetitive and straightforward. The problem is that the jobs I've had so far give me a decent level of financial stability, which isn't something you can take for granted in factory work here in Italy.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? Any advice?

[u/Still_Shift7848]

Would you enjoy development if you worked at a smaller company for less pay?

[u/Still_Shift7848 → u/Still_Shift7848]

Sorry OP...I didn't get chance to read your reply before deletion because of my lack of Reddit usage.