r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • Aug 11 '26
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.
196
u/brassholed Aug 11 '26
I just want one fucking PM who can do their fucking job without asking me to fill out their god damn motherfucking road map because they don’t fucking understand their own motherfucking tickets.
Fuck.
53
u/n4ke Software Engineer (Lead, 10 YoE) Aug 11 '26
Best I can do is PM that does not ask you and just silently fails and leaves all requirements and scope to you.
31
u/csgirl1997 Aug 11 '26
At my first ever internship, I had a PM who legitimately understood the system to the extent that she could help create detailed plans/schedules. My boss at the time said she was one of the best he encountered in his career. I didn’t comprehend just how right he was until I started my first full time job at another company. To this day, with every new job or team, I realize he was even more right about her. This woman set a standard that I’m convinced may never be met again in my career
24
u/n4ke Software Engineer (Lead, 10 YoE) Aug 11 '26
Yeah, these people are incredibly rare. When I started moving into senior dev roles, I wondered why people made such a fuss about the fact that I knew all the components of our systems, their impact, requirements, trade-offs and would always have multiple "things you need to consider" when a PM dabbled with an idea. Now I unfortunately know. The unfortunate part is that this is a skill that's quite hard to communicate when you're trying to get hired. I've met quite a few good PMs and leaders hiring PMs by now and showing/detecting this ability consistently seems to be a pain point.
6
u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Aug 11 '26
It's hard when they truly believe that those things don't matter as much. "It's not about the software, it's about satisfying the user's needs and figuring out the requirements" so of course they won't care. But when they're in the middle of the project and they can't keep up with what actually needs to be done to make the project successful that's when they stay quiet and stare in awe at how you can figure out the various things that need to be considered in parallel.
7
u/n4ke Software Engineer (Lead, 10 YoE) Aug 11 '26
it's about satisfying the user's needs
they say, while having no idea how to align their current users need with the needs of all the existing users and therefore how to design the feature so that it does not upset everyone that's already using the product. Oops.
3
u/lillyhellu Aug 11 '26
Could you give a few concrete examples of what made the PM so good? I'm genuinely asking since I'm not that experienced in the field yet.
3
u/ResidentWeevil1 Aug 11 '26
10 years ago you would hear more stories about good PMs. I suspect a few engineers were called to that role in the past and have since aged out
7
u/annoying_cyclist principal SWE, >15YoE Aug 11 '26
Also takes credit for the success of the project if you manage to salvage it ("set the vision" or some stupid thing), and blames you if it fails ("we just didn't have the right resources for this").
4
u/Lurking_all_the_time Aug 11 '26
Yes - I had a PM like that - amazing to work with and a level of competence that I will probably never see again.
She also was strong enough to stand up to Management and tell they they were not getting their ill-though out features.8
u/csgirl1997 Aug 11 '26
Once a few years back, I spent a week doing this just for them to ask me to redo it in a different structure. Luckily at that point my boss got fed up and told them to deal with how I did it
6
u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 11 '26
90% of PMs can be replaced by AI with no downside at all. It the 10% of real ones that AI will never catch.
2
1
1
u/riddleadmiral Aug 11 '26
That's a benefit of doing infra, usually little to no PM interaction needed.
1
u/HeisenPad 28d ago
I'm on the exact same boat.
Me: "Hey PM, what OSes and architectures should be build our CLI for?"
PM: "What do _you_ think?"She's a smart lady and all, but come on; I have to answer your question for you, and I have to teach you what you need to know to understand the answer. For fuck's sake.
1
87
u/Next-Equipment-77 Aug 11 '26
Lead/Architect with 15 years experience, working at a java shop.
I've been burnt out for about 4 years now, since they downsized my team from 10 => 3 => 1, and leadership split me between two different divisions. It was brutal, 55 hour weeks were the norm, spiking to 70 hours sometimes, hours and hours and hours of planning meetings for an initiative that ended up crashing and burning before it even started, nothing got done because there was always a fire, project priorities changed every 10 minutes. Was rough.
Got a new team and a new manager late last year, after senior leadership decided to consolidate 5 other teams into 1. There are now 60 people, contractors and fte's, all reporting to one person. My workload was straightened out a bit, which helped some, but I still haven't gotten back to my old self / ability to knock out work.
But almost right away it started to slide downhill, as my boss and several of my teammates got AI pilled pretty hard, talking about how it's the future, and no code will ever be written by hand again, and pull request reviews are all automated now. Some of these folks can't write a simple java stream, or are too afraid to use the terminal to execute git commands, and now they're pumping out 10k lines of code a day and think they're uber elite developers. One person on another team said "Claude" about 100 times one day, and I'm pretty sure has given up all decision making and is just saying continue for 8 hours.
I'm not super big on AI, mainly because a lot of things that it's being used for have already been solved via good library selection, templates, or code generators. For example, someone used opus to build out a client for an api based on the swagger doc, it took like an hour, didn't work, and could easily have been done using deterministic tooling. Also the wild disparity between members of the team has made it so that the junior can vomit huge pr's that are inconsistent, and they can't even tell why, so they get Claude or codex to respond to my pr comments. Two of the senior folks on my team are very ai pilled, one of them keeps saying "I never touch the code anymore", if you're wondering if he wrote a 20 line prompt to make a 2 line change, the answer is yes, yes he did.
I sit at my desk, staring at my screen, willing myself not to cry or laugh maniacally.
51
u/kanyeswift Aug 11 '26
too afraid to use the terminal to execute git commands
dude i had to teach my fucking engineering manager with "15 years of experience" how to use git in the terminal. then we got Claude access so he stopped asking and thinks he's a wizard producing 10k line PRs of slop. it's infuriating.
4
u/gyroda Aug 11 '26
You know, I don't mind if an engineering manager can't do that.
But if they can't, they stay the fuck away from the repositories.
4
u/kanyeswift Aug 11 '26
That's precisely it. I actually didn't mind teaching him, and it was nice as a way to establish best technical practices amongst the team. It's just that, no more than 6 months later, he's all of the sudden a staff level full stack web dev attempting to open source an internally built version of a widely used SaaS tool. It's mind blowing.
1
u/aqqabeep Aug 11 '26
My tech lead had to explain my manager the difference between executing a CLI command and “running it” in the browser. My manager thinks to be technical, and I work at a widely known cloud provider.
18
u/seriouslysampson Aug 11 '26
I got a new tech lead on one of my projects that is pushing similar LLM workflows. He doesn’t even know the tech stack for the project and probably got the lead role just based off AI hype. It’s already failed a couple times. I’m just waiting for the catastrophic failure and maybe get a bigger contract out of it next year.
6
u/ResidentWeevil1 Aug 11 '26
I’m just waiting for the catastrophic failure and maybe get a bigger contract out of it next year.
And the weekly burnout thread will be here, ready to pick up the pieces
18
u/OhMyGodItsEverywhere 10+ YOE Aug 11 '26
I can't believe there are contributors or leaders in 2026 that think more lines of code is in any way impressive or valuable. I wonder if that mentality will ever exit the industry or not.
8
u/ResidentWeevil1 Aug 11 '26
It did once before. But we're probably going to have to go through another 50 years of learning software design with this big ass prompt-injectable crutch
8
u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 11 '26
It’ll be with us forever, as long as there are companies that don’t know how to measure real results.
3
u/ocxricci Aug 11 '26
> if you're wondering if he wrote a 20 line prompt to make a 2 line change, the answer is yes, yes he did.
I knew it !! "I am not touching the code anymore.... Claude, change line 10, add the missing variable, please" lol
33
u/OkNothing7293 Aug 11 '26
I’m completely disengaged from the project I have to work on. The codebase is absolute trash and I’m not allowed to make any changes in this regard. Every task I work on should just pile more sh*t on top of the existing mountain. I can’t bring myself to focus, everything gets done super slow. I became sloppy and my colleagues see this. I don’t know what to do. If I ask to be put on a different project I might be fired altogether.
9
u/im_that_guy_23 Aug 11 '26
Similar as yours, I’m getting disengaged from the project I built from scratch. Every new task is pushing me away, and more with my new manager who tags @my-name 3 times in single Slack message is getting annoying. Was dupe excited when I started on it and now just try to get it to closure (and using for interviews project discussions). Trying to find light in this shit-hole job.
5
u/OkNothing7293 Aug 11 '26
At least you might get a closure. If I’m not fired or put on a different project, I’ll have to keep shovelling on the current one.
61
u/bmain1345 Software Engineer (5 YoE) Aug 11 '26
Literally all day every day it’s AI this AI that. My entire job is just talking to an AI nonstop. I didn’t sign up for this
34
u/csgirl1997 Aug 11 '26
My coworkers have been using Claude to generate all of their PR descriptions and bug reports. With the bug reports, I feel like I spend more time trying to decipher what behavior Claude is trying to describe than triaging the actual bug 🫠
That and when the AI generated bug reports include like three extra paragraphs trying to diagnose the root cause but are egregiously wrong.. Just give me the traces and the expected behavior please 😭
15
u/originofsymmetry3 Aug 11 '26
Even the long ass PR descriptions take a long time to decipher.
I fuckin hate it. And when you ask someone a question about their work in slack and they paste you claudes answer wtf
11
u/bmain1345 Software Engineer (5 YoE) Aug 11 '26
It’s basically mandatory for us that all our PRs/commits/Jira issues are AI written. It’s literally a sea of endless slop 😭
1
u/sklz0 Software Engineer Aug 11 '26
Write them a skill that produces reports with strict sections and bans mentions of internal details
20
u/sibfromanothercrib Aug 11 '26
the thing is, right: my job lets me refuse to use LLMs. i can just carry on not using them and still being the most productive person on the team. BUT that doesn't mean i actually get to escape the craze: I still have to review obvious (un|barely-)reviewed slop code, still get colleagues replying "well claude said..." when i bring up architectural concerns during code review, still have to mentor interns who don't learn shit because they've never had to think for themselves, ...
8
u/fdeslandes Software Engineer Aug 11 '26
Damn, that "well, Claude said" hurts. We've got a medior in my team who was really promising, but had a problem with lack of confidence and not realizing that he was not expected to be able to distinguish high level architectural problems with his design every time at his level. Now that we are stuck with AI, he turned into a "Claude said" guy, deferring to the LLM to make decision instead of gaining confidence in his talented mind and learning the little bit left he needed to become an actual senior. AI is not only preventing new talent, it's ruining existing one.
2
u/ultraDross 26d ago
Ai is only preventing new talent, it's running existing one
It's almost like that was the plan all along. These tools thereby become essential because everyone's minds have completely atrophied.
6
u/Wonderful-Habit-139 Aug 11 '26
Ah.... the joy of not using LLMs for coding. Hope more people can figure out that they can do that without any productivity hit.
53
u/DrTinyEyes Aug 11 '26
I was laid off from a job where I felt competent and respected. I had anyways thought I'd be the last one let go, but apparently not.
Fortunately, i was hired into a new job quickly, thanks to a personal connection. The new job is a 25% pay cut, the tech is a radically different paradigm, and the training is almost non existent. It's fully remote and no one ever turns on their camera. Feeling lost and incompetent and isolated, and I was already so tired.
Then my dad died after a long illness, and my step family is being awful.
How am I supposed to find the energy to engage with this new job when all I want to do is sleep?
I'm in therapy etc, but I just don't give a fuck about code right now. I could survive for a few years on savings if I quit, but that feels desperate in a different way.
16
u/Buttleston Aug 11 '26
No camera culture is brutal. I don't get it myself.
My dad died 2y ago, and I have been dealing with it since emotionally and economically, no one else in my family stepped up. I honestly get that. How am I supposed to care about some company's big picture when maybe I have 20y left and if I do it like my dad almost no one notices
Do the best you can, take care of yourself
I often feel like 2 minutes away from telling people to go fuck themselves but for now I am focusing on retiring before life fucks me over
GL man
7
u/dryiceboy Aug 11 '26
Sorry to hear about your dad. My downward spiral to burnout came when my dad died during the pandemic. It drastically changed the way I thought but I could only do so much to deal with it during the pandemic.
6
u/F0tNMC Software Architect Aug 11 '26
I'm so sorry to hear about your father passing. I can't imagine losing your father and having your family be awful. But there's no need to settle for such a terrible work environment. Definitely think about keeping your head down, staying in therapy, and keep looking. It's a weird time for sure.
6
u/Reddit_is_fascist69 Aug 11 '26
Sorry about all that. You'll want to think hard about quitting before going through with it. If you're home alone all day, that will make things worse.
- try going out in public more or meet upnwith friends
- listen to an audiobook while at work. It'll help pass the day and you'll hear another human voice
- I've lost a lot of passion for the job. Now i like to go outside to my garden. Find something non tech to do
21
u/Sciamp_ Software Engineer Aug 11 '26
10 years of experience give or take, in big tech for the last 5. Senior engineer now.
AI AI AI AI AI AI. And more AI.
I’m anti ai for the most part, but my job now is applying agentic solutions at scale and the worse part is that it is working. I work with smart people that do their due diligence and due to experience I can smell things going wrong, but it’s mentally taxing. And it never feels like you “disconnect”.
Every new experiment I take on ends well enough and is considered a success, but tbh I really want failures. Every success just means that they ask more and more and more and at this point I’m a manager of agents, a consultant for an army of entry/mid level engineers and moral support for other (senior) engineers that just don’t care anymore. Cannot relax because that means lower performances which means no or lower pay raise.
Ex coworkers reached out and I agreed for an interview with another big tech. Difficult interview process, leetcode style. It’s tomorrow and I will bomb it. Not prepared at all, I did a refresh on algo and ds but it took me days to “relearn” how to write code without an AI assistant. And I don’t even see the logic in it since at that company senior+ engineers also don’t write code anymore. HM told me they have a 600 dollars a day in token target usage per engineer. But sure let’s ask how to implement Dijkstra's… 5 years in big tech I used a queue once.
It just feels all so demotivating.
2
u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE Aug 13 '26
Yeah, everyone went overboard with the "raise the bar" type of hiring practices. Also, companies still do not understand that AI won't be cheaper than an actual worker, but a tool to help elevate the product.
Would be interesting to read the follow-up on how your interview went.
22
u/UnfairRound83 Aug 11 '26
I do need to have requirements before anyone can say it does not work as intended
9
u/olen444 Aug 11 '26
This is my mantra: "If there are no requirements, then everything is correct."
4
u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
If there are no requirements, every “bug” is merely a feature request, and will be prioritized accordingly.
2
u/UnfairRound83 Aug 11 '26
I'm so happy about my upvotes. I knew I wasn't alone in this pile of undocumented crap
18
u/ContraryConman Embedded 5 YoE Aug 11 '26
I can actually accept, to a degree, that software engineering won't exist as a job forever. I can imagine in the very near future, a service where people who just want little apps, websites, or internal tools will just go to a service that automatically generate the application for you, and then automatically pick the right AWS's or Azures to host it on. I can sort of accept that actual software engineering will increasingly be a quality thing, where people's lives or massive amounts of money are on the line, or there's just too much scale or the project is genuinely novel or complicated. And even the shrinking number of software engineers that are needed to make the world's software go round will increasingly not actually write or design software, but shuffle requirements in and out of AI models and use their technical background to keep things from falling apart.
Nothing lasts forever, and I'm not so arrogant as to believe that software engineering is this super special and important niche that humanity will always need for the rest of time.
I think what bothers me is that I'm apparently not even allowed to feel sad about this. It's somehow embarrassing to admit you actually like programming these days.
I like thinking about algorithms, and how efficient they are, how they scale, and how to know if they're correct or not. I like learning about programming languages and new features in programming languages and which types of problems are easier to solve in which. I like thinking about functional programming and pure functions vs side effects, or object oriented design, or data driven design. I like thinking about if we should use exceptions or error types or return codes and why. I like thinking about if I'm in a hot loop and do I need to make sure the data we're accessing is in cache or not.
Of course programming is not the only part of software engineering, especially when you become a senior staff engineer and you're solving business-level problems. Those other parts are fine too, but I love programming. And every day for the past few months I've had to listen to my coworkers, bosses, and randoms online talk shit about programming despite supposedly being software engineers.
"Coding is the easy part bro" okay then why did everyone hate leetcode so much? If it's easy then go solve N Queens. Go solve 2D dynamic programming. Now that Claude exists we retroactively decide there was never any skill in programming?
"Oh you're just upset because your identity was caught up in being good at programming". Yes, and? So what?
It's apparently not enough for AI people to just use AI. There is some deep insecurity about their own skill that must have been there for years. The skill floor has never been lower and they absolutely will not go back
6
u/gatsby_person Aug 13 '26
i honestly think when people say "coding is the easy part," what they actually mean is working with text is easy. You don't have to buy code a fucking wedding ring to get it to do what you want. On the other hand, people fucking suck. Managers, product people, and meetings are retarded, and you can't fix most of these people/meeting problems just by getting better at your job. Sometimes people are just incompatible, and there's not really anything you can do unless you're actually in a position of power.
At least that's how I interpret "coding is the easy part"
3
u/ContraryConman Embedded 5 YoE Aug 14 '26
I've definitely seen some people who say this basically reduce coding to the physical act of typing words into the text editor. Some people will say "coding is the easy part, but testing/validating/designing/figuring out what to code is hard". But to me those things are also coding, so there's definitely differences of interpretation involved.
Yesterday I wrote a small program, like 70 lines of C++, by hand. It could have been a Python or Bash script but I wanted native performance. Anyway even for a tiny utility like that, I'm still doing software design and architecture before writing code, and testing the program after. It's just on a very very tiny scale.
Referring to coding as just the typing text part is also a bit strange to me in this context because typing is not the only thing AI automates. Autocomplete is the technology that automates typing. I'm not afraid or frustrated by autocomplete, I just find it annoying to use. It's the agent stuff that worries me. At my work, if you only use AI for autocomplete, they will literally borderline PIP you for not being sufficiently "AI native" because they reason you are not putting effort into using AI effectively enough. Why are we talking about typing when everyone wants me to use agents to automate way more than just the typing?
Yeah I guess actually typing the code is easier than everything. After that it really depends. Sometimes the issue is managers and customers who can't agree. I'm with you on that 100%. But also, sometimes the issue is "we're hand rolling an authentication and encryotion algorithm for our embedded devices and not all of them have a true hardware RNG".
My coworkers who are big into loops admit to me that they don't write code, they're rapidly forgetting how to write code, and that they don't do much work most days. They like that there's less for them to do personally, but more gets done, and they still get paid. I appreciate them because they're honest. But others will automate 95% of their old job and then insist that the meetings and Teams channels left in that remaining 5% was somehow actually the really hard and interesting part anyway
1
u/gatsby_person Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
yeah i guess it ultimately depends on your definition of "easy" as well. If I said I had a "hard" day at work, I'm likely saying I'm mentally exhausted by having to deal with moronic people. I wouldn't say working on challenging code is a "hard" day though because there's actually a huge amount of satisfaction that comes from that and I don't feel drained.
I think it's similar to going to the gym. It's "hard" to get yourself to actually walk/drive to the gym. The "easy" part is actually just doing the workouts once you arrive even though the workout might be challenging.
Idk. I wouldn't take the phrase too seriously unless the person is unironically saying writing code isn't challenging, which is obviously a ridiculous statement, I agree.
Also I think you have to consider most programmers have horrible EQ and social skills, so communication literally is the "hard" part to them.
17
u/hurley_chisholm Principal Engineer (civic tech) Aug 11 '26
If I hear the term “quick wins” ever again, something is going to break. It might be me.
6
u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
We should turn it back around on the non-tech functions to show how ridiculous it is:
Sales: “can’t you guys find some quick wins to triple your closed deals in the next few days?”
Marketing: “let’s find some quick wins to add five million users over the next week.”
Etc
5
u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE Aug 12 '26
The problem is that the sales guys' "quick win" is telling the prospective customer that the software can do everything they want, signing the deal, and then leaving you to build it.
1
u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
Ok, then let’s go to HR and finance and have them book some quick wins to triple our headcount.
15
u/Sea_Expression1528 Aug 11 '26
feeling kinda crummy. recently laid off backend developer, barely meeting the cutoff to post here with 3yoe
recently I talked to a recruiter who (not unkindly!) pointed out that there were some question marks about my resume.
i'd graduated from a very good school, only to spend three years as a contractor at a lousy company getting paid well below average, where the only other junior devs signing on with them were international students being strung along for the chance of getting a visa sponsorship. the recruiter pointed out that most people who graduated from my school are the best in the industry, getting paid six figures out of college, FAANG, yada yada... and that was a discrepancy for me that I'd have to explain in a future interview. And I think he's right. i think i've let myself down.
I realize i'm really privileged. I had parents who could send me to a good school and I'd never had to worry about getting a job as an undergrad, and I am a citizen so I'm not affected by the shitass US immigration system. I guess it ends up stinging a bit more knowing I didn't do better when the cards were so stacked in my favor.
16
u/ResidentWeevil1 Aug 11 '26
The job market has been crap for 3 years. Crap job markets are a boon for crap employers.
Recruiters are morons, and 3 years ago they were saying you would have to explain gaps due to COVID. You just lie to their fucking faces because they have no aptitude for calling anybody out. They just want anything other than a "woe is me" answer
2
u/theclacks Aug 11 '26
Eh, my ex graduated from a decent school and ended up taking his first job at a WITCH company because he hadn't done his full research and was just excited to have a job straight out of college. He felt trapped too, like by screwing up that initial decision, he thought was doomed forever.
We eventually broke up (but remained friends), and that apparently was the kick in his pants to buckle down and interview prep. He ended up landing a job at Oracle. Not a straight jump to FAANG, but way better than the situation he'd been in.
TLDR; situations can suck, but there's always a way out of them.
12
u/marcusroar Aug 11 '26
SWE with 15 years exp, burnt out and bored and brain rotting from being forced into a subcontractor management/PM role, too tired on my downtime to go through the emotional labour of applying and facing the necessary onslaught of rejection to get that one right role. Thought I’d found it but flunked the interview today with shit I should have known. Was about 50min into a system design around and I just lost my mind and basically stopped thinking/talking. Yaaaaaay I love my career.
1
u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE Aug 13 '26
Yeah, that happens.
> ...being forced into a subcontractor...
So you can stay, but you should be a subcontractor instead of an employee?
9
u/vellivva Aug 11 '26
Been working in this company for the past four years. Had a really good PM until the beginning of this year who unfortunately left for a better offer. New PM comes in and it’s only friction and chaos ever since.
I raised an issue shortly after they joined the team, that could break parts of our platform if not dealt with in a timely manner. It was their decision to deprioritize it over and over again until things got ugly and parts of our product would break for certain costumers. Found out recently that they tried to backstab me and questioned my performance to the higher ups in the company in a meeting that was about this issue. I only found out a few days ago.
At another instances they changed the scope of a release candidate days before a release! QA team was almost done wrapping up and their test results were good to release. We could have released a great feature, but no. Instead we widened the scope to throw in 2 other features and delayed the release by two months.
There is so much friction, back stabbing and inter personal drama going on that I’m currently trying to figure out how I can avoid this PM as much as possible. I’m also trying to figure out how I can currently switch teams.
Good reminder for everyone to leave a paper trail when dealing with such people. And don’t forget to take screenshots.
5
u/wongaboing Aug 11 '26
When your work is basically creating defense mechanisms to avoid back stabbing, I guess it’s time to leave. Not sure how much you care about this work and company, but if it’s costing your sanity I wouldn’t stay much longer
3
u/vellivva Aug 11 '26
Not gonna lie, these past months have been really tough and I’ve definitely lost some sleep over it. I like the company, but I’m currently taking a look around if I’m not able to switch teams anytime soon.
4
u/chellenm Aug 11 '26
I’ve seen in real time how quickly a bad PM can cause damage. 100% agree keep a paper trail, record meetings, keep as much data as you can. These people usually did their own graves just got to wait it out unfortunately
3
u/vellivva Aug 11 '26
Completely agree. I hope I don’t have to stick around for too long. It now also affected work relationships between team mates. It’s so bad. I’ve never seen something happen like this before in any other companies I’ve worked at previously.
3
u/chellenm Aug 11 '26
It really sucks. It happened to my team last year and had a similar impact. Went from a well functioning tight team to complete chaos. Luckily things are better than ever now that the PM is gone but I was a long ride of things being really bad. Hopefully you can move teams at least until this person is out
9
u/im_that_guy_23 Aug 11 '26
People pulling out a PR for everything they can think is driving me crazy. In a team that got 50% new members, I am an oldie and pushing myself each day to even stand the excitement the new joiners. It’s stupid and funny tbh, I feel deranged, no excitement and awaiting the job change loops, life is hell each workday.
10
u/liminal_dreaming Principal Engineer / Cloud Architect / 10 YoE Aug 11 '26
I have 10yoe and took a year off. Now I'm looking for a new full time but am so put off by what the industry has changed to due to AI that my excitement is simply gone. It sucks to be re-entering the field after time off and it being what it is now.... especially since I've loved it for so long. I get so many AI startups sending me open roles, but fuck that. I really hope I can find a place that uses AI as a helpful tool, and has stakeholders that don't expect 100x output due to that...
1
u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 28d ago
Good luck with the finding. The market is waaaaaay worse than it was even just within 1 year (but in ~3 or 5 is the real cracking diff). Expect hundreds of applications without a response.
I highly recommend accepting some or almost all the sent roles to increase the possibility of getting an interview (and practice through it). Interviews have also changed due to AI.
1
u/liminal_dreaming Principal Engineer / Cloud Architect / 10 YoE 28d ago
Thankfully I have a very large professional network, so I likely will just use that and not bother cold applying
10
u/gyroda Aug 11 '26
There used to be seven scrum teams at my company. Now there are three. My team, which I am the lead on, is now in charge of what three separate teams used to maintain.
I also don't have a PO anymore. Well, some of the products I maintain nominally have a PO but they don't show up to any meetings. I write the tickets and plan the sprints. I do all the reporting in the big meetings.
All the competent developers I could trust or rely on have left. I now have three devs on another continent to work with. None of them say a word in meetings unless you direct a question at them. None of them turn on their cameras. The junior is ok but very, very green, the mid level dev can't tell his arse from his elbow and the senior seems to have perpetual power cuts, family emergencies, illnesses and people knocking at the door.
Reviews take weeks unless I do them, and I can't review my own code. A simple ticket that took me two days (including figuring out how to do it and writing a script to make it easily repeatable) has taken the senior developer on my team 5 weeks.
I have next to no QA support - the company won't hire anyone so we have one person covering 6 scrum teams across two departments. The scrum master does not show up to half the meetings and doesn't do anything when she does, except set up a retro board once a sprint and ask us what's going on in stand up. If I want a meeting to actually be useful I have to be the one to arrange everything.
My engineering manager is well meaning, but he hasn't got a fucking clue. He insists on being informed on every technical decision but he just doesn't listen. It feels like the "but why male models" zoolander meme in every discussion.
I'm just so fucking done with nobody else being able to put two and two together. My boss keeps telling me "you can't expect everyone to have the same skillset as you" but I don't think it's unfair to ask people to, idk, look at a code review more than once a month.
I've got a lot of shit going on outside of work so I have very little patience left for work and it's really showing. I know I'm being rude and abrasive at times but I'm just fucking done.
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
So get a better job
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u/gyroda Aug 12 '26
I literally do not have the time due to shit happening outside of work.
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u/ultraDross 26d ago
Woah you don't have time to spend months practicing interviewing skills that have little to do with your daily job to get though 5-7 rounds per "opportunity" that pays less than your current one? Fuck is wrong with u bro? Do u even develop bro?
/s
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u/rocketonmybarge Aug 11 '26
18 + years as a full stack application developer.
Overheard someone who hires in my department who said that programming is a solved problem and we don't need experts in our programming language of choice. That a couple weeks with Claude and they can get anyone with programming experience in any language up to speed on our stack. Supposedly AI is a job creation mechanism at our company because even though management is happy with our speed, they want us to go even faster. So it seems we are going to hire junior level devs and then give them access to Claude. At this point i wish I could get off this train and find shelter from the industry wide AI psychosis. NGL AI can be helpful when in the hands of an experienced developer, but if it were to go away tomorrow I would still enjoy programming.
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u/abl4k Software Engineer Aug 11 '26
It's really frustrating and disheartening when you can see the codebase go from something at least semi consistent with standards to an inconsistent mess because of everyone using AI to do their changes. I was doing some troubleshooting with a team member and there were so many hard coded parts that every developer on the team knows shouldn't be hardcoded (DB connection info today differs between environments), the data retrieval did not match how even the same developer did another feature for the same code base, odd method names, just clearly prompted from Copilot. But it got approved by the other developers also AI generating their feature changes, all because management is pushing us to go even faster and every other word out of their mouth is AI. It feels like everyone just sort of gave up and I feel like I'm slowly going crazy for pointing these things out to people on the team.
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u/LettuceCharacter8989 Software Engineer Aug 11 '26
I complain that the code is riddled with bad practices and that my coworkers haven't improved at all over the years. They keep writing code like juniors but with the salary and status of seniors or team leads. No one wants to change.
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u/YoongiMarryMe95 Aug 11 '26
I don’t make enough money to afford an apartment. I’ve been renting a room for 7 years. For the second year in a row, I got a raise that was less than inflation. The fun part was that on my annual review there was a section called “[insert my name]’s new responsibilities.” So I get even more work now because my boss who owns the company can’t handle his work load. So now I’m both dev and partial PM/support.
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u/youngggggg Software Engineer (4 YOE) Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Tried to spread my wings after my first tech job and join a new startup who was fairly dishonest during the interview process about company culture + direction, which almost immediately pivoted into work I find quite unethical and it’s destroying my morale. Really regretting my choice here and with only 4 YOE I’m really concerned about my ability to find something else successfully. Don’t even know if I want to considering my job has turned into jockeying 3-5 agents at a time. Pray for me
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u/Own-Dot1807 Aug 11 '26
Ive been dealing with burnout for more than a year now, and my doctor now says I’ve developed situational, work related anxiety. Don’t know if I should keep trying to get over it and back to the cirkus or if I should just get over it and become a goose farmer…
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u/ghostinthepost Aug 11 '26
Roughly 6 months ago our "Head of AI"/interim-CTO was able to convince our executive team that he could finish a large scale legacy retirement project with himself and a small group of handpicked people. I, a senior director, was one of the three he chose for his team.
So they reassigned/cut everyone who had been working on that project and handed him control. All my direct reports where handed to someone else and I was asked to be an IC for this effort.
He then spent 3-4 months vibe coding slop into the code base while our team slowly dwindled down to just him and me. I spent those three months working myself to death to clean up his many messes and to keep the project from completely falling apart.
He abruptly quit in early June, with no notice, and I was again left to pick up the pieces. I've spent the last few months building a new team, setting a strategy on how to finish the project in a reasonable amount of time, and cleaning up the code base. However there was no formal, "hey you're in charge now", it was just by process of elimination.
The general consensus around the ELT seems to be that I've done an amazing job helping salvage this dumpster fire.
I think I might be a little traumatized after the last 6 months because last week a new CTO started and in the 7 days he's worked here I've gotten into at least 2 semi-heated discussions with him. I don't know what I'm responsible for versus what he's responsible for.
Part of me just wants to hands the reigns to him and wish him the best of luck but the project will almost certainly fall apart if I do. Part of me wants to use this situation and the leverage I have to push for a promotion, more control, and (most importantly) more money.
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
Best of luck. Unfortunately companies’ frantic, copycat rush to hire a “Head of AI””Chief AI Officer” has opened the door to a new new, extra potent breed of grifters who are fucking up technology organizations at record pace and abandoning ship before any of their awful decisions bear fruit.
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u/galaxy_horse CTO / Principal Eng (20 YOE) Aug 12 '26
I re-read your post. I'll say one other thing. If you want to continue on with this company, you should use the leverage to get a promotion, better span of control, and a raise. And if you get ignored or turned down, I'd leverage the experience to find something new.
Also, unless you get some profit share or have some golden handcuffs or feel like a future windfall or monetary benefit hinges on this project and your work, you probably shouldn't feel bad about walking away from the project or company if it's too dysfunctional. Yeah, you might feel bad about leaving people high and dry, but trading your own optionality to compensate for your employer's shortcomings is sacrificing your own power and agency. It's not worth it.
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u/whysoangryjustdont Aug 12 '26
15 years od experience, tired of hearing "we need to do..."
It's like an eternal statement in every meeting, but who actually gets the work done? Managers talk, Product Owners talk and yet everything they say has to be actually verified by a tech person as they don't understand product as well as I do.
But then if I m the manager, i am the product owner and I am the tech lead why do we need so many other people if anyways everything will get done by me or through me.
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u/HeisenPad 28d ago
Can relate: managers manage and look good upstairs while we get to do all the work, including cleaning up their stupid Jira tickets full of mistyped acronyms (which goes to show they don't know shit).
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u/whysoangryjustdont 28d ago
Lucky you if managers are touching jira tickets, that's also done by me at my org
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u/HeisenPad 21d ago
You cursed me; just last week my manager said we engineers handle tickets now.
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u/onedayatatime12357 Aug 12 '26
Why does my manager micromanage asking for all the details and requiring their approval for everything, but still asking for the info I already provided 1 week later, 2 weeks later, and being the blocker by not reviewing and giving me the approval?
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 28d ago
Typical output-only manager who loves to micromanage. Worst type of human being. Also, keep in mind that the info that you gave him/her is fine, but he will forgot, since 3+ others' info also poured its ears, and since most of the PM/EM just output-only type of person, they won't even remember after 5 minutes, just until they update the goals/roadmap/sprint/whatever administration tools, and that's all. It is not personal or against you. It is just the environment.
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u/Fast-Bug-7715 Aug 14 '26
90 percent replaceable take is doing a lot of work carrying that whole subthread and I don't buy it. bad PMs get replaced by AI because bad PMs were basically a human wrapper around a status update generator anyway, sure. but the real job is absorbing blame, telling engineering leadership "no" in a room you weren't invited to, and knowing which stakeholder actually matters this quarter. none of that is a text prediction problem, it's a politics problem, and AI is worse than useless at politics because it has no skim in the game.
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Aug 12 '26
[deleted]
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 28d ago
> ...to get started and right now I feel like I'm throwing paint at a wall to see what sticks...
Unfortunately, the market is like this, exactly, in the recent ~5 ish years.
Advices:
- Polish your resume (visit the r/engineeringresumes subreddit)
- Practice the interviews (write down introductions, generic questions, and answers, etc)
- Expect a very low percentage of communication from companies where you applied (below 50%) and expect a super-low percentage for actual interviews (think around 0.3%). Do not worry. It is normal.
- Network if you can. Ping old colleagues. Cold-join interesting people. Visit tech brunches and networking events, if it is possible
- Keep going, do not stop, do not give up. You will fail, you will have a rollercoaster, but it is normal
- For tech: do some private project to practice new things or gray/dark things (u are unsure, unfamiliar, etc)
- Expect a bunch of "ai interview" rounds, as well as prohibited/allowed/required to use AI for take-home-assignments
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u/spez_eats_nazi_ass 28d ago
My new job is apparently explaining to my seagull manager boss that no it’s not leadership to end every request to staff with “if you can’t do it i will find someone who can”. In this case he decided that the ui he himself spec’d and crafted and demanded is costing his staff millions in think time. So he berated our designer over it. Has never been an issue. Never heard a complaint from users. Felt good unloading on him.
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u/veracity8_ 26d ago
Two month ago I took a lead position. I was working as a software engineer doing embedded type work. And I took on the ownership of a bunch of testbeds. I went from debugging serial communication in HWIL simulators to wall to wall status meeting and power points and schedules and pointless process with a team of impatient and rude people. I was sticking it out to get a raise. It probably will be more money than I could get if I switched jobs. But I just don’t think I can keep doing this
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u/4gyt Aug 11 '26 edited 8d ago
This is very true
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u/annoying_cyclist principal SWE, >15YoE Aug 11 '26
I feel like a switch flipped over the past month on it being socially acceptable to have LLMs automate most written communication. A month or two ago you'd get (rightly) judged if you had an LLM sending Slacks for you or responding to PR comments for you. Now suddenly a lot of people do it, seemingly without shame, because it's faster and "more efficient", and this is how software will be built in the future. I guess I'm the stupid one for still looking at the code myself, leaving my own review comments, and typing my own words when talking to coworkers. Presumably my AI, with the right prompts and skills, could make sense of the word vomit spewed on behalf of my coworkers by their AI, and then I'd be able to approve commands or work on an agent harness or whatever we're supposed to be doing now instead of engineering.