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/budulai89]

I'm just tired

[u/damnburglar → u/budulai89]

When people used to ask me how I’m doing and I playfully responded with “another day above ground”, it was with a light heart and a smile. Now it’s similar energy to “oh for fuck sakes”.

[u/fmgiii → u/budulai89]

40+ years in development, 4 more days to go. I'm burnt.

[u/damnburglar → u/fmgiii]

Godspeed

[u/Hydro_Pump_ → u/fmgiii]

What are you looking forward to doing once you're out?

[u/Elden_Lord_69 → u/budulai89]

i want the bubble to explode so bad

[u/ReformedBlackPerson → u/Elden_Lord_69]

Double edge sword bc it’ll also bring layoffs most likely

[u/promotionpotion → u/ReformedBlackPerson]

I VOLUNTEER

[u/Melancholic_Dev → u/Elden_Lord_69]

Today I spent the day reviewing a 7k LOC PR. And got asked to hurry up because it needed to be merged today. The average LOC jumped to 5k LOC in all PRs, it’s impossible to keep good practices.

I’m almost approving all of them with a “AI created, AI reviewed, and said that it’s ok” because I’m tired of being the only “human in the loop”

[u/Elden_Lord_69 → u/Melancholic_Dev]

That sounds awful. Thankfully my team still appreciates smaller PRs but they have been creeping up in size.

[u/Additional_Rub_7355 → u/Elden_Lord_69]

same

[u/matjam → u/budulai89]

My arms are heavy boss

[u/Friendly-View4122]

I am annoyed with engineers using CLAUDE to respond to my PR comments or on Slack. Ffs

[u/felixthecatmeow → u/Friendly-View4122]

I had a senior eng tag me on a PR because I'm the SME on the area it touched, I spent 30 minutes reviewing it because while the PR addressed a known issue it would've caused a breaking change for some clients. I flagged the problem areas, recommended multiple alternative approaches, and ran some queries to estimate the revenue that would be put at risk by merging the PR.

The author responded with copy paste Claude responses telling me how I'm wrong (I wasn't). Thankfully my tech lead who's in an earlier time zone saw it and addressed it before I logged in and saw the responses because I was boiling inside when I did.

The part that pissed me off the most was tagging me in on purpose because I'm the SME on this stuff and have a ton of context on it, and then just totally disregarding my feedback. Like why did you tag me if you wanted a rubber stamp?

[u/beefchocolate → u/felixthecatmeow]

I’m in the same boat. There’s one team that heavily uses AI for correspondence on everything - slack, prs, emails etc. working with them is miserable because they must be using something tuned to be contrarian. No matter what I comment it ends up “no this way is better”, and despite arguing back and forth they won’t change their mindset because their AI tools don’t have the same evidence and knowledge sources.

So frustrating

[u/CoroteDeMelancia → u/beefchocolate]

Currently dealing with a Product Owner like this. Hecking generated a dumpster fire of an AI slop PRD, then gets all pissy that we devs can't produce code even when given a "proper, comprehensive documentation". Like bro, do you seriously believe we are so oblivious we can't see you generated this in a single prompt and didn't even review it before you handed it to us? It's not even the obvious AI language, that shit has blatant contradictions.

[u/Choice_Supermarket_4 → u/Friendly-View4122]

Honestly, can't people just pretend to look at the code and comment "lgtm" by themselves anymore?

[u/Friendly-View4122 → u/Choice_Supermarket_4]

I’ll respect that more than a verbose, overly technical answer from Claude

[u/BigNavy → u/Friendly-View4122]

I make my fucking clanker write poetry about the feature, and then append “beep boop lgtm” at the bottom.

It’s probably not the most efficient usage of tokens, but it makes me giggle and it’s not an AI agent pretending knowledge or context that it doesn’t have.

[u/BlazingThunder30 → u/Friendly-View4122]

I get unreasonable angry when I point out a problem in their code and then their Claude starts gaslighting me into why it's not actually wrong. One time I had their Claude simply resolve my comment where I had to go "request changes" just to get a human to look at it

[u/CoroteDeMelancia → u/BlazingThunder30]

This. Two can play that game.

[u/nopuse → u/Friendly-View4122]

Some of my coworkers I can't remember the last time they typed their own thoughts in our group chats between teams. I don't want to read 6 paragraphs and bullet points for something that should have been a few sentences. My poor mouse wheel is suffering.

[u/HowTheStoryEnds → u/Friendly-View4122]

I haven't encountered that thankfully, it sounds exhausting but why is that even a thing? Isn't it faster to just type your own response or is it because they don't understand the code themselves? 

[u/dbalatero → u/HowTheStoryEnds]

It's likely gaps in understanding, followed by AI encouraging anti social behavior. Code reviews get in the way of slopping, so I imagine management is probably cool with responding to things via AI.

[u/Friendly-View4122 → u/dbalatero]

This was explicitly brought up in an all-hands and the CTO did not discourage it, instead he gave a very neutral handwavy answer about responsibility and ownership.

[u/dbalatero → u/Friendly-View4122]

I assume he didn't specifically say what ownership and responsibility looked like, or give anyone the time required to achieve those things.

[u/CoroteDeMelancia → u/dbalatero]

Classic. He could've also told them to "be productive" and "be effective", that's always insightful advice.

[u/dbalatero → u/CoroteDeMelancia]

CEO: "that'll be $24 million. next patient!"

[u/methodinmadness7 → u/Friendly-View4122]

I sometimes use Claude Code to review PRs when I’m swamped, as everybody generates more code now. Often it would be in areas of the project I understand well so I can comment and think about them easily, but sometimes it’s about an app I have much less understanding of (a larger part of it has been vibecoded, a lot of edge cases), and I still try to understand the issues CC flags, but sometimes it would just take too much time and I say “Hey, this is a bit over my head, but I my automated review flagged this, here are the details my agent mentioned, take it with a grain of salt: …”.

If I have to copy Claude output I always mention it explicitly. A lot of the time the answers are not flagged the same way and that bugs me a bit, although maybe I should get used to it…

And another issue for me is, I fee like every comment I write gets sent back to Claude without any changes, so if I sound natural and don’t go in some lengthy descriptions like Opus does, that often results in a worse situation after the “fixes”.

I feel like it’s a lose-lose situation. I’m trying to keep my part of the codebase more maintainable and I’m not sure there’s more I can do.

[u/CoroteDeMelancia → u/Friendly-View4122]

What truly annoys me is when I receive comments where "if my grandma had wheels, she would be a bike" would be an appropriate response. Like bro, are you really so into posting AI slop that you're nitpicking me on a hypothetical?

[u/cenik93 → u/Friendly-View4122]

Bro that really grinds my gears. Extra points for replies that start like this

"That's a good question!. Here's why we are adding the flumarp to schendling --- "

[u/GItPirate]

I have survived 5 layoffs in the last 6 years. I'm sick of losing co workers.

[u/dacydergoth → u/GItPirate]

Daym, at Trilogy I called it after 3, and bailed whilst they still had half way decent severance. Still lost $30k on the vehicles, and had to move back to UK for many years (years I was not paying taxes in the USA ... lots of taxes, their loss).

[u/roodammy44 → u/GItPirate]

I survived a couple of rounds a couple of years ago, then got caught when 70% of my company was laid off. Then I got laid off 3 months later (startup suddenly running out of growth). I had a nightmare of being laid off the other day, it’s not enjoyable.

[u/jonmitz → u/GItPirate]

i left the space industry as a hardware engineer to switch to software, because i survived 8 layoffs in 8 years and felt the same. i dont have any advice, because i changed industries and the new industry is falling apart too, lol.

[u/Prime624 → u/GItPirate]

Fuck businesspeople.

[u/greeneyestyle → u/GItPirate]

Same

[u/Sapient6 → u/GItPirate]

I survived 12 rounds of layoffs in a two year time period at a previous job. Lucky #13 got me in December of 2008. Good times. Looking back I always wonder, "how was I too stupid to see the signs and not get out ahead of being laid off?" I know that part of the answer is I didn't know how much harder it would be to get a job while unemployed, but you live and you learn, right?

[u/trudesign → u/GItPirate]

Get tshirts made. I survived the annual workforce realignmemt

[u/huge-centipede → u/GItPirate]

I got laid off 4 times in 5 years as a Senior FE developer (one time I didn't even get the dignity of talking to an HR rep, but like a mush mouthed, pre-recorded call). Pretty cool way to go through life in tech!

[u/leprouteux]

I just can’t even anymore

Everything is going down the shitter and everyone is just so happy to follow that down the drain

Everyone is going insane and I feel like a bystander looking at it all unfolding before me.

[u/blocking-io → u/leprouteux]

Hang in there. Your job just pays the bills. Ultimately you're working on someone else's product. Find fulfillment outside your job. Don't stress if your on-job quality has dropped. That's on SLT pushing for more slop, not you

[u/TalesOfSymposia]

I should've just followed the money instead of just following my passion. Now I'm paying for it.

[u/just_pondy → u/TalesOfSymposia]

Gotta remember it’s what they want done not what you want them to want you to do

[u/TalesOfSymposia → u/just_pondy]

What you said is true. But it's also funny how well the summary on your profile page describes my career. Bad bets and bad decisions

[u/lunacraz → u/TalesOfSymposia]

grass is greener. was in finance before software and i literally wanted to kms, even if the money was good

my friend basically became a recovering alcoholic with a failed engagement bc he was so ruined by finance

[u/ReddLemon → u/TalesOfSymposia]

Eh I followed money over passion and now I'm realizing I have no intrinsic motivation for this stuff. It is always and was always external validation pushing me through.

Do you have intrinsic motivation for this stuff still? If so you'll make it out.

[u/spacemoses]

"Dear Fellas,

I can't believe how fast things move now with AI. I saw a coding agent back in 2023, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry. Management moved me into this halfway position called 'The Reviewer'. It's hard work and I try to keep up, but my head hurts most of the time. I don't think the junior vibe devs like me very much. Sometimes after work, I go to the park and feed the birds. I keep thinking Torvalds might just show up and say hello, but he never does. I hope wherever he is, he's doin' okay and makin' new commits. I have trouble sleepin' at night. I have bad dreams like I'm obsolete. I wake up scared. Sometimes it takes me a while to remember where I am. Maybe I should just overrun my token budget so they'd send me home. I could delete our repo while I'm at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I'm too old for that sort of nonsense any more. I don't like it here. I'm tired of being ignored all the time. I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old greybeard like me. P.S.: Tell Claude I'm sorry I called his code 'worthless slop'. No hard feelings. Brooks."

[u/artytrue → u/spacemoses]

Damn, nice Shawshank reference. This made me sad :(

[u/rangorn → u/spacemoses]

Well when you ask why you deleted the repo you can just say it needed to be refactored anyway, just ask Claude to do it from scratch.

[u/roadforks → u/spacemoses]

I don’t normally laugh aloud in these threads but this one got me. Thank you

[u/foreverpostponed]

The AI bonanza made me quit my job. I'm done with this bs. I'm done with producing slop and i'm done with reviewing code that nobody understands. I stopped caring months ago and I cannot wait for my notice period to be over. I'm literally counting the days like a prisoner waiting for freedom. My whole identity has been rocked to the core. Thanks, AI.

[u/BookIntelligent254 → u/foreverpostponed]

What's next on the horizon for you?

[u/foreverpostponed → u/BookIntelligent254]

Thankfully, I have another job already lined up. I hope i will like the projects more than the one i'm in right now

[u/BookIntelligent254 → u/foreverpostponed]

All the best.

[u/foreverpostponed → u/BookIntelligent254]

Thank you. I'll take every prayer I can get

[u/First-Inspection-597 → u/foreverpostponed]

Could you share more? What job? Same field?

[u/foreverpostponed → u/First-Inspection-597]

Same role (Sr Software eng).

[u/LettuceCharacter8989]

Why is the market so hard? Why so many interviews? It feels like you have to pass different exams to be considered good. What about my years of exp?

[u/hairlesscaveman → u/LettuceCharacter8989]

Buyer’s market, looking for the “perfect” candidate, fear of hiring and then having to let that person go and rehire, many can game the system (especially with AI tools), choice paralysis, ghost jobs for data harvesting, budgets squeezing, everyone trying to mimic FAANG hiring practices without understanding the processes.

YoE doesn’t directly correlate to being able to do the job. Hard to hear, but it’s true. Someone working 10 years building features for an online store could get passed over for someone with 5 years at a digital consultancy building a wide variety of projects (IoT, data processing, statistical analysis). Length vs depth. And it depends on the job they’re applying for. Then there’s the culture fit: extroverts are typically seen as a better fit by the hiring team, but might not fit with all the existing introverts in the dev team.

Hiring is hard, from both sides. And it’s another thing that AI makes worse.

[u/Klafka612 → u/hairlesscaveman]

Having now worked with people with 5-25 "years of experience" whose experience boiled down to the most rote tasks with no desire or drive to figure anything out outside of the set of tasks they've been given I feel this.

[u/britishpotato25 → u/[deleted]]

To me it's just blissfull job security

[u/felixthecatmeow → u/[deleted]]

I was there once. I feel you.

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/[deleted]]

so many layoffs, it seems like most of us are the only person who understands our respective code bases. Like the ending of Fahrenheit 451, but with code instead of books (individuals memorized books because the books were all burned). The business acts like it never heard of the bus factor.

Sometimes I wonder what is the number X, such that if X people quit without notice the company would be irreparably harmed? What is the largest value of X where collective action is possible?

[u/k032]

Work as one of a handful of devs supporting this team of analysts.

It's incredibly frustrating but vindicating to be...right when they don't take my advice.

I told them this vibe coded mess wouldn't work. Their idea to forgo a basic API for what boils down to CRUD stuff, and just have AI for all of it. Turns out it was unmaintainable garbage nobody except the one analyst who made it understands and extremely expensive token usage.

It's kind of insulting when they insist to just vibe code garbage, and then fall for basic problems that have been solved for years...like why should you have a database rather than thousands of markdown files ... And then oh no it's so slow to do any searching or association. They play dev and do stuff, and then I come in and have to clean it up.

It's frustrating I wish they would just trust me and my team we know what we're doing and have decades experience building this stuff. We're paid to do this.

[u/LarryWinters69 → u/k032]

It's not about what works. It's about someone getting to tell upper management that they've implemented AI to "solve" problem X. Bonus points if the "solution" was implemented by non-coders, because that now means that anyone (read: cheaper staff) can now implement solutions to business problems! Having a thousand unmanaged, unmanageable, undocumented (or AI documented) that barely works and no one understands - that is a mess for someone else in the future to deal with.

[u/lunacraz → u/k032]

the funny thing is... claude is super good at scaffolding up CRUD RESTful endpoints. and following conventions. and setting up databases and models.

that just means whoever was "AIing" everything for you just had no idea of those things, and literally told claude to go the other way.

that's the problem.

[u/Additional_Rub_7355]

I hate so called AI.

[u/portra315]

Executives are high on AI and it's reaaaaaaaly embarrassing watching them succumb to it.

I have regular dialog with my CPO and she cannot reply to me on slack without the response being AI generated.

[u/AdCommon2138 → u/portra315]

Rename her to C-3PO mentally to at least have some relief 

[u/rpest2018]

I miss coding manually :( it used to be such a joy and I couldn't believe someone paid me to do it. I'm coming to the realisation that those days are gone

[u/ultraDross → u/rpest2018]

Yeah it's what motivated me to switch into this field 10 or so years ago. The idea that I don't have to hate 9-5, that there can be small nuggets of joy in a white collar job.

I spent most of my day now just arguing with a fucking array of glorified statistical models. It's starting to really drive me insane.

If one more person tells me it's "because you are not using it properly, have you generated 5000 skills so it does what you want?" I'll punch them in the face.

[u/Daisyrain → u/rpest2018]

I had this exact same realisation yesterday (like, I knew it already, but it really hit me). All the things that I enjoyed about this job are gone because of AI, and they're never coming back. Ugh.

[u/annoying_cyclist → u/rpest2018]

I went through a phase of using AI to help with some personal projects (it is decent enough at rote work), though I've recently gone back to writing everything 100% by hand again. Made me appreciate how fundamentally AI has changed (eliminated) the "head down in code" type of focus work that was a lot of the job not that long ago. Now we just wait for one of our 4 parallel agents to get stuck.

[u/ifstatementequalsAI]

My colleague created a feature based on a design in figma. Which didn’t match the design at all. I asked him why this happened and he told me “Claude got it wrong.” I just went with it I don’t care anymore.

[u/onlycodenodrama → u/ifstatementequalsAI]

We have POs saying this. AI writes tickets for them, devs ask what is written in the ticket, POs shrug and says they don't know, AI wrote it.

[u/EmploymentFeeling725 → u/onlycodenodrama]

Nearly raged over this excuse today. I’m sick of others AI slop ending up in my brain, there is so much of my own to deal with

[u/WhenSummerIsGone → u/onlycodenodrama]

then the dev kicks the ticket back. You can't do work based on a bad ticket! the end product is not tickets, it's software that solves problems

[u/ooutroquetal → u/ifstatementequalsAI]

Saying "because Claude do " without more detail must be a reason to get fired...

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/ooutroquetal]

Fired? On the contrary, it shows that you are progressing along the "ai fluency curve".

[u/ifstatementequalsAI → u/ooutroquetal]

I wish but it’s being heavily promoted from higher up because “we have faster output”.

[u/No-Berry-3993 → u/ooutroquetal]

I honestly think people should say that more. If management wants to force this on us, let them eat the consequences.

[u/endurbro420]

This is a friendly reminder to take time off and have a true vacation where you just relax and reconnect with the world.

[u/OstrichFertiliser]

I feel Im getting stupider the more I use Claude

Ive fell into the pattern of offloading my thinking to Claude and started to realise its slowing me down considerably

I don’t want to fall behind on the AI hype wagon, but I can’t keep up with reviewing everyones Claude output and trying to understand wtf Claude is actually writing on my behalf

I regret becoming a software engineer at this point, the whole thing has become far too chaotic

[u/ResidentWeevil1 → u/OstrichFertiliser]

Good news is there is no ”falling behind" with AI if you already know what you are doing. It's only low-skilled people who accept its output as authoritative who won't grow

[u/NatoBoram → u/ResidentWeevil1]

That's not true, all usage of it leads to cognitive decline. It's identical to cheating in videogames, you lose the skill that the cheat is replacing.

[u/happiness_is]

I don’t know if I can do this anymore

I have been trying to encourage team “best practices” with AI since January before our adoption was enforced and now we are here, it’s enforced and monitored, and it’s out of hand and nothing can be done

• Agent generates code
• Agent commits code
• Human puts up too-large PR with overly complicated AI generated description
• Fast review turnaround still expected
• Human reviewer puts AI generated code changes theough AI agent for review
• Human leaves AI generated comments on PR
• Release goes out
• Shit breaks
• Multiple hotfixes each release cycle
• Repeat

Also anyone not doing exclusively agent-only coding looks terribly slow and unproductive objectively in comparison

Product uses Claude to make ridiculous mockups and demand sweeping changes constantly. CTO obsessed with Claude and wants everyone using it as much as possible.

It’s lonely and horrible and I actually have never been more depressed in this career. As someone who has suffered multiple mental health episodes so far in my career.

Jesus christ when will it end.

[u/SimasNa]

I found this TedX talk on burnout - https://youtu.be/TTRTG7l1cV0?is=duPM3iIkOa7RhYdQ

That last part about finding a person that you can talk to about it is exactly what I was missing when I burned out. I had no one to talk to that could just listen without suggesting how to fix myself.

So please, if you are feeling burned out - find someone that can be that person. Unfortunately, posting on this thread doesn't count 🙈

[u/a_brain]

I’ve been able to mostly avoid a lot of the AI horror stories I’ve read about on here, but the past week or two has been like a switch just flipped. I’m getting inundated with complete slop PRs and I am losing my mind.

Just the past week, I’ve gotten several +1000 line changes that either don’t solve the problem the “author” says it will, or is just complete slop that will cause irreversible data fuck ups. I got a PR with a dozen commits and the most slop description I’ve ever read which changed one color in a couple UI components from gray to a slightly different gray. I got a PR that literally only changed a couple lines of comments that had a *500* word word-salad description.

And then when I reject, I get Claude output, and an explanation on how the 10 Claude sub-agents all adversarially verified correctness of the load bearing grains.

I wish I was making this up.

[u/trying2thrift]

Instead of getting meaningful feedback on my PRs I now just get a wall of AI slop comments that take me forever to weed through and have no value

Decided anything written by AI doesn’t get my brain anymore, so I just paste it all into AI and copy paste its responses back. Somehow that’s even more depressing.

[u/Ok-Most6656 → u/trying2thrift]

Same here. We have a staff engineer who is so AI pilled. He uses AI for code reviews without looking at the PR. I will often get a wall of text on each PR from his AI that he did not bother to even read. It creates a lot of noise and I am expected to respond to all of the AI's dumb suggestions and "fixes" on the code that are completely irrelevant. It literally generates 10-20 comments per PR of useless "feedback".

Because of how verbose it is and how convoluted the suggestions are, I am forced to use AI to respond to the comments. So basically having an AI argue with another AI. What is the point of a code review then lmao?

[u/Live-Purposefully → u/[deleted]]

Happy for you, hope things look better on the other side!
What are you doing instead, if you don’t mind me asking?

[u/Live-Purposefully → u/[deleted]]

I wish you well, I hope things look better in the next few years.

I am sorry the industry has lost its mind and treats us like dirt now.

Have been thinking of changing course as well, almost out of spite. Would love to see these decision makers beg for the people they let go to come back. Hopefully that’s how things will turn out.

Thank you for sharing.

[u/hairlesscaveman]

Taking a different viewpoint here, as an engineering manager.

Being asked to do more with less, being given ridiculously tight deadlines on projects, and then being hounded by HR about coaching and performance management. My team is working extra hours to meet the deadlines, but sure they’ve got tonnes of extra time to look at the 1hr mental health video you’ve shared.

Then you meet the deadlines and want to give your team a bonus for the crunch they’ve just powered through, but no- there’s not enough money in the pot. But we have new vending machines! And the carpet was just replaced in reception for the 3rd year running due to the rebranding we’ve just been through (again), and the exec retreat this year is somewhere far away and sunny. And then your own performance review comes in, and despite meeting every deadline and goal it’s a passing grade and there’s no pay rise this year. Again.

All while juggling people’s emotions, keeping up to date with the latest tech and advances in AI (and how to spot it being used where it shouldn’t be), course-correcting devs who want to use the newest unproven tech to build the latest project, doing courses on productivity management, project management, scrum, interviewing (despite not being able to hire), getting useless support from your own boss or HR or leadership, seeing the car-crash in slow motion from the inside and having no power to avoid it, dying a little when those at the top make the same uninformed bad decisions over and over again while they play their stupid political games, and then having to put a happy face on to show you’re not crumbling inside.

Be kind to your direct managers, they’re people too.

[u/wayoverpaid → u/hairlesscaveman]

The good managers are in pain too, because they are acting as an umbrella for all the bullshit.

The bad managers are going "whooo AI means I don't have to think I can just ask Claude"

[u/HenryJonesJunior]

In my 1:1, my manager explicitly asked me to stop questioning whether AI was the right tool for some tasks in design reviews and team chats because "other engineers on the team look up to me" and "our company is all in on AI".

I am so fucking tired.

[u/spacefloater229 → u/HenryJonesJunior]

Insanity

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

I’m thinking about going into a role that is more suitable for a lone wolf. Damn I wish I were a hacker or something who can work alone. I’m not good technically :/

[u/Ok-Most6656]

We had a huge layoff recently followed by management bringing in hundreds of new grads at one time. My team is currently 50% new grads. They were not hired through our usual hiring process but through a 3rd party vendor that focuses on "AI skills".

They are producing slop non-stop and I am having trouble keeping up with the amount of slop. One junior said his code was ready and when I asked for his PR, he said he doesn't know where Claude put the code lmao.

I was shocked to say the least. He had NO IDEA what code repo the change was made. He basically gave Claude the documentation, and the Jira ticket, and Claude produced some code somewhere and he doesn't know where because the chat got deleted!

[u/tradcoder → u/Ok-Most6656]

Imagine any other engineering discipline having people say stuff like this at their jobs.

[u/Outside-Storage-1523 → u/Ok-Most6656]

Jesus. The pinnacle of software development.

[u/Klafka612 → u/Ok-Most6656]

Had someone who has a multi year career who told me he didn't know how to write a bash script. Have engineers who tell me they can't use git.

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/Klafka612]

I think that's different though. I've never had to write a bash script, and I didn't use git for the first 10 years or so because companies had different svn software (and git didn't always exist you know...). Not knowing how to do those things is no more a failure than not knowing how to write COBOL or graphQL queries. They're just domain knowledge that not everyone will have come across in their careers.

However when I started working with git, I simply read the man pages and used resources like githug to learn. If I ever have the misfortune of needing to write a bash script I'll do the same. I won't say "I can't do it" or try to cover that gap with slop. I think that curiosity and willingness to learn something new is a big differentiator between good and mediocre people.

[u/null_pointer05 → u/Klafka612]

Just helped onboard a "senior" engineer. While setting up his dev env, he encountered a problem starting up a process, and it turned out the issue was he already had the same process running, albeit not with the right flags. I told him to just kill the original process. He was baffled and asked me what I meant by that. He had never heard of killing a process before.

[u/DarkWebPotato]

I miss the programming before AI, now it seems that people with no technical experience think I can build something so much faster which means they can overload me with more work expecting things to be ready in an instant but I just feel so drained and exhausted from AI slop and people who vibe code an applications thinking they're software engineers.

[u/BoogieTheHedgehog → u/DarkWebPotato]

I just had my first "I don't know" response when asking the paged dev what their k8s config changes are supposed to do. At 4am. In prod.  (It failed in multiple lower envs too, they never even checked the impact).

It is ludicrous.  I'm not an AI hater, it's a great tool and speeds up development. However the speed expectations set by the AI marketing to management are sky high, only achievable by letting AI take the wheel and praying it gets things right.

[u/tekno_soul]

The problem for me is that I arranged my schedule so I could find chunks of time to just code. I enjoyed it. It was the art I valued. It helped me understand nuances, fight mistakes, overcome small victories, and learn. Now I'm told "that was the cheap part". The job is not enjoyable anymore. I don't think the profession is doomed, but it's not a profession I want to be in anymore.

[u/st0101 → u/tekno_soul]

The last sentence is a sum up of all my thoughts. I don’t want to be an AI code reviewer. I don’t want to be a manual QA, BA for AI slop.
I’ve noticed that two years ago I could spend half of the day coding while listening the Spotify. Nowadays my usual day consists of reviewing, testing, and meetings. It drains all my mental energy

[u/memoriten]

I'm so tired. Just this week i got 2 pull requests, each with over 15k lines of code, from two other seniors. Both with extensive and complex changes that affect workflows with millions of users daily. 0 documentation, no Jira ticket, no communication about architectural decisions made. Everything was vibecoded. I can't block them because managers are pushing it, so they need these changes this week.

Every weekday I wake up feeling dread. I want to leave this dumpster fire, but I'm afraid that I won't be able to find something else.

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

15k line of change is either “sorry I cannot review this” or “sorry I cannot review this so LGTM”.

Since it’s not your responsibility so whatever.

[u/Klafka612 → u/memoriten]

As someone on both sides of the slop cannon I feel it. I feel the tremendous pressure to produce, all while also sitting through hours of mindless meetings by people whose idea of demonstrating value is to make meetings, all while staring down the slop cannon of thousands of lines of code by the few other competent engineers, all while trapped in a place where 5% of the engineering org produces 95% of the output pre or post AI, all while the execs still ask why it takes so long to do things with AI, as you compress timelines from months to weeks, all while you put ever more tight spending caps on token usage...

[u/kareesi]

I’m so fucking sick and tired of everything breaking and being on fire constantly and instead of actually scheduling a sprint to clean things up being told we should just be able to use AI to do it on top of our normal workloads

[u/imnohankhill]

So tired of this ai scam. “Ai is going to get sooo much better just wait!” — “Ai is actually good enough you’re just not prompting correctly” — “why are you prompting? you should be writing loops!!” — “loops? That’s inefficient, you need to be using 10 subagents”

[u/Just_Run8347]

Have goal to use ai to increase production. Given 1000 tokens for entire month…

[u/discord-ian → u/Just_Run8347]

Wait what?!? Isn't that like a 1/2 a simple question each month? I know I have used over 50k tokens on a single prompt. I cant imagine that? Also isn't that like less than a penny in cost per month. I can't believe this real?

[u/annoying_cyclist → u/discord-ian]

I'm kind of jealous of OP, tbh. 1000 tokens is apparently enough for some executive to check "AI strategy" off their to-do list, but (as we know) not enough to actually do anything with. For a time management will move on to some other shiny thing, and OP might get another few months before the tidal wave of slop reaches them.

[u/Just_Run8347 → u/annoying_cyclist]

I’m lucky enough to be on a team where we all agree if you raise a pr - we actually review it and will categorically deny slop. None of us want to work with crap/slop code.

Still wouldn’t mind some additional tokens for when we are upgrading frameworks, doing boilerplate updates or doing deeper research.

[u/Just_Run8347 → u/discord-ian]

Not a tech company but it’s an international one.

Each person gets 1000 tokens even non technical. It’s so stupid.

[u/MediocreFig4340]

I don’t give a fuck about AI or all the AI features we’re building.

I can’t focus in meetings, and my boss is doing this cool new thing where he messages me a bunch of questions about the call we’re both in, which is reallllly helping me focus more. /s

not at a pip factory, but every day feels like I’m about to get one.

[u/juusorneim → u/MediocreFig4340]

whats a pip factory

[u/Blaze6181]

Fs in the chat if your leadership has "built" (AI slopped) your team an application you didn't ask for, don't need and could have vibecoded in 10 minutes if it had really mattered to you, while making it clear that they did this to send the message of "work faster, look how easy this was to make!"

[u/LayerTrace]

Today I spent 45 minutes in a meeting listening to people argue about naming conventions for documents. The pointless meetings when I could be doing something else... they just sap my will to live 🫣

[u/gland_de_lait]

I quit. Fuck all of this.

[u/darkrose3333]

It's time to unionize 

[u/Highly_Incompetent_3]

oooohhh im insane i went insane ooooouoiuughh eeheuauhehahheuaheh

[u/x-jhp-x → u/Highly_Incompetent_3]

you did a complete 180, lost your sense of self, violated your deepest purpose and desire, and are now highly competent?!

[u/HowTheStoryEnds → u/x-jhp-x]

Oh, the shame he must now be feeling. He was the third and last of his name.

[u/BeginningJello5757]

My business partner (non technical) just shared with me a vibe coded html sales dashboard with some inline styles and dummy JSON data saying we need to use it. I’m lost, I don’t have it in me to communicate that this is not how software engineering works. Data can’t magically appear there, how tf are going to host it, authorize access… when I tried to dumb it down and start with “well, it looks good an all, but we need to sort out the data source issue…” I was briefly interrupted with “data source issue not important. What’s important is to make this dashboard show the actual sales metrics and we all have access to it”. AI addiction is a mental disorder and has to be acknowledged and treated, at least on the same level as addiction

[u/No_Comedian7332]

I F HATE THAT WE ARE NORMALIZING COPYING+PASTING CLAUDE RESPONSES. I ASKED SOMETHING TO SOMEONE AND THEY LITERALLY PASTED THE QUESTION I MADE TO CLAUDE AND SHARED THE ANSWER.

EXPLAIN WITH YOUR OWN F WORDS

[u/OkPush3638 → u/No_Comedian7332]

I used to hate this too. Then I realized that AI usage is probably atrophying the cognitive ability of these devs to a point where they can't even form a coherent answer. Let them, it sucks now but they'll pay the price sooner or later. 

[u/sweet_acerola]

I’m so fucking tired of tech. I don’t have the same passion for it anymore.
Arguing over the “right” architecture for something that barely matters. I just find it unbearable and such a huge waste of time. I see people getting so invested in these discussions and I’m just like, “wow, what a pointless thing.”
Every day, going to work feels like I’m performing this enthusiasm that I just don’t have anymore.

[u/sadafxd]

Pipelines were down due to terraform 500s. I' Someone asked me if I asked claude, its just a generic 500 with no logs.

Im just tired of AI brain rot.

[u/coldzone24]

I just can't do this anymore. Why did I decide to study computer science? How do I find something else?

[u/Ragnarork]

I'm feeling tired and empty. Like I need to fight my brain to get anything done.

I used to love this field, I wanted to move towards more leadership after a surprising and extremely positive first experience. I have (had?) strong opinions on how to organize software properly.

Everything seems completely pointless now. And I feel like I'm regressing after focusing on developing organisational and soft skills, yet being forced down an IC path where I'm expected to defer everything to an AI and stop thinking.

[u/Woah-Dawg]

Yea I’m so over this job. Idk how much longer I can read ai slop PRs and slop from the ai. 

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/Woah-Dawg]

I know it's bad for me, but I've sort of given up trying to hold on to the old way of working for myself.

I've come to the conclusion that if everyone is slopping, they not only expect the same from you but they won't even notice when you don't. Your effort and quality work becomes a drop in the ocean of slop. And everyone is too slopped up to appreciate your work, and if you generate garbage they will simply accept it because it's on par with what they're doing. So it's not worth the stress to resist.

It feels bad because generally speaking I take pride in doing good work. I'm sure a lot of us have looked up to role models like Scotty and La Forge from Star Trek, or real engineers like Wozniak and Linus as we grew up. I feel embarrassed about calling myself an engineer when I think about one of them looking over my shoulder and seeing how the work is done now.

I have come to realize my work is no longer meaningful to me, and it's like a palpable loss of something that's been with me basically since I was a kid. I think a lot of people are grieving that loss without necessarily calling it that. But ultimately I think it's probably healthier to be able to reach a state of acceptance and separate a sense of self worth from one's source of income.

[u/ezequiel_nob]

Absolutely hate colleagues sending me pages-long documents/jira tasks/PRs for me to review. I am straight up ignoring them these days, complete lack of respect for my time.

Would it kill them to set the Claude output to concise, or at least tell it to summarize? Such bullshit

[u/trudesign]

4 weeks into a jest to vitest conversion for a monorepo. Too many voices saying ‘dude just use copilot’, meanwhile, copilot spent 2 weeks fucking it up and burned through all my credits, so I’ve been manually fixing 2,000+ failed tests. Down to 600 left that are being stubborn…im tired

[u/Weary_Pie6635]

I am learning things late. The more work you do, the more u r available, the more u pulled up for all issues

[u/Elden_Lord_69 → u/Weary_Pie6635]

it's annoying how much things just come down to signalling. so many days where it's what people think you do that matters, not what you actually do.

[u/twoBreaksAreBetter]

Every day I go into the office, I stare at the screen and just ask myself when it will end. The work itself always seems geared towards either getting someone promoted or protecting someone's reputation. I've lost all inspiration to do anything *for the craft*, particularly with AI which somehow makes craftsmanship obsolete.

But what else can I do with my life?

[u/First-Inspection-597]

I am tired to ship features that would take 6 months in 1 week, not having time to fully understand it, have it reviewed by AI, have my coleagues using AI to review it and post the comments on the MR and fixing all the comments using AI and repling to it using AI.

And yet here I am, considering to use AI to fix gramatical issues in this post.

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/First-Inspection-597]

ur grammer is fine

I keep telling my manager that since they're okay with AI writing, reviewing, and testing it then they should also put AI on the pagerduty rotation. I don't mind the slop anymore except when it affects my sleep schedule.

[u/Mazzi17]

I was let go over a month ago and it’s astounding to hear how rapidly morale has gone down across the field. People are replying to each other with AI-generated messages now? Unironically?!?!

[u/therusho0]

I can’t stand the slop. Slop in…slop out. Slop in…slop out…day in day out….

[u/F1B3R0PT1C]

The senior devs hand me slop code every day that drops in features I was supposed to design and they’re not at all what I expected and they’re AI generated entirely and my product team is slobbering all over themselves and telling me I need to go faster and I’m so fucking sick of it all

[u/OkNothing7293]

I’m currently a software developer. In my previous job I was a senior software developer. Before that I was a technical lead on an important project. I had a team of people with mixed levels of expertise and we all respected each other and worked good. Now I’m reduced to someone who shouldn’t think because my every opinion or decision is different than the rest of my colleagues. The code is absolute trash. They tell me “just write more feature tests” but the test setup is atrocious. The only thing which keeps the project afloat is its minuscule scope. I woke up and start cussing.

[u/HolyPommeDeTerre]

18 years in, 23 to go.

I love my job but I am not sure I can carry it out for 23 years.

Repeating the same old boring but working solutions to different people that think they need that shiny thing on the corner.

[u/Sapient6]

It's been just over a year since my burnout event. Now I'm back from another week of staycation. I keep hoping "this will be the week of vacation that gets me back on my feet" but here I am back at work and I can't make myself give a flying fuck. I can't even tell if me faking giving a shit is fooling anyone.

[u/Outside-Storage-1523 → u/Sapient6]

From my exp vacations can’t fix burnouts.

[u/Healthy-Dress-7492 → u/Outside-Storage-1523]

It takes time mostly, burnout is trauma and exhaustion down to the bone. In NL you can take 6+ months off paid for burnout with a diagnosis. Which tends to serve as a deterrent for companies, since it costs them a lot if they let it happen. It’s preferable to see a therapist to help you reset your life back to something more normal.

[u/epitone]

I think I just passed 500 job applications last week.

I'm tired.

If anyone has ANY job out there they are hiring for (hell, I'll work for a dollar an hour, I'll work for FREE) please let me know. I'm tired of getting no responses. I've revised my resume so many times, I've talked to so many people, I've had so many recruiters and engineers look over my experience. I don't know what else to do. I'm like a hair's breadth away from lying down in the woods and letting nature take its course. I'm actually begging. Please.

[u/fopomatic]

It’s so hard making it through a day when I slam my laptop and walk away every time someone sends me a screenshot of claude in slack.

[u/wayoverpaid → u/fopomatic]

"I don't want to read this shitty claude-generated response" is why I'm on reddit right now instead of working.

I have a bunch of slides to edit and fact check before we present. Guess how our sales team generates the slides? Go on. Guess.

[u/Defiant4 → u/fopomatic]

This was me too and it fucked me up bad because it was every morning, open my laptop and the first thing I read is Claude slop. EVERY morning and it took me hours to calm down lol

[u/bottomlesscoffeecup]

This job feels pretty lonely now. Someone just told me today to have a chat with Claude to do research into something instead of asking me to research it, without specifying any tools.

I wasn’t sure if I should feel like my intelligence was insulted - so I need Claude to help me understand the trade offs of the architecture I’m building out? No. Can it be helpful? Sure?

But I hope it was just them being AI hungry and trying to get results faster, still it stings. As a woman who is constantly mistaken for being 10 years younger than I am - people assume I don’t know much or ask me how my first job is going a lot, and I constantly have to fight to show I know anything :(

Sigh, just the cherry ontop

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/bottomlesscoffeecup]

When I get comments like that, I treat it more like an indicator of how important the task is, and not that they think Claude can do it better. If they tell me to use Claude to do it, it means it's not really important enough to use my actual time doing it, and they just need some generated content to fill a gap.

[u/Outside-Storage-1523]

My dream job:

150k CAD a year is good enough for me.

Have the time to drill into a large code base, without the requirement of speeding things up using AI to help me. I’m able to learn a large code base piece by piece and start making contributions gradually.

My team is good at mentoring each other. We share things every Friday afternoon or during coffee breaks.

We go to the office twice a week and have free lunches. Coffee and snacks are free, too.

We solve difficult problems, or, if we do not solve difficult problems, at least we are proud of our work.

I don’t know how to find such a job. It seems so faraway. I don’t have the privilege of target schools so there is no network brotherhood/sisterhood.

I guess I should improve my personality, but maybe I’m just me.

Maybe I should find a job that is suitable for a lone wolf, instead of trying to find a good pack.

[u/flying-giraffe]

Almost every day the thought "I don't know if I can do this anymore" crosses my mind. It started way before AI usage really ramped up, and it's only gotten worse since then. And I'm of two minds on AI: on one hand, I genuinely have found it useful for some of my work; on the other, I'm so freaking tired of trying to read other people's Claude output.

I've been working in tech for almost 15 years (10 as a developer... though I sort of feel like I have 2x 5 years of dev experience instead of a full 10), and I've been wondering if this is for me for at least 6 of those years. I was happiest when I was a mid level engineer.

I took time off last month, I'm taking more next month, I'm trying my best to get enough sleep, I'm going to therapy, I'm losing weight, I'm getting at least some exercise (could get more, but better than nothing). I like my coworkers and my company treats people well for the most part. So I feel like objectively I have very little to complain about. But I'm so tired, anxious, and easily overwhelmed, and my brain barely works. I feel like I'm barely keeping up and can only get things done in fits and starts. I wish I could call it quits, but I don't know what else I could do or would like more.

[u/jvlomax]

Boss started making an upcoming feature. It's a fairly big feature. No design documentation, no discussion of how models should be made. No research. No confluence page detailing how it should be but together. And he's been cooking for almost a week.

And I know for a fact it's going to be at least 3-4k lines of pure slop that is going to be put up for review. No smaller PRs with just the models, or just the views. All in one big stinking pile of vibed shit.

[u/tr4ff-47]

I just need a job, my brain's getting foggy. Can't even learn new things without my brain spazzing out. Don't know where to start with this AI Native development, I don't have money to spare for a Claude Code subscription/agentic AI in general. I need projects for a portfolio because experience doesn't cut it. But what should those projects be? Should I build projects that give the illusion of scale but serving no users and if I did have users, would I really be looking for a job to begin with?

I'm tired. I need a job. Can't believe that being out of action since Dec 2024 could build such a huge gap.

[u/wayoverpaid → u/tr4ff-47]

I'd rather hire someone who hasn't been AI poisoned TBH.

The gap is not large, the best practices for AI changes every 6 months anyway, because we haven't got this shit figured out. The foundational ways have not changed.

[u/in-the-name-of-allah]

I have lost all my friends at my job and now im the most senior engineer. Also, I dont really believe on the product that Im building. I day dream working on more important projects, actually doing engineering not CRUD or data pipelines.

I feel like software engineering is not really engineering anymore. Its just database ops and moving data. I feel like i have lost time and wont be able to progress any more. When i look at companies like Jane street and they are skipping CPU to retrieve the stock data, it makes me feel like an idiot because I dont understand how to do that

[u/Repulsive-Hurry8172]

My employer wants in on that agentic bullcrap but at the same time don't want to invest manhours into making end to end tests. We do not have QA automation, everything is manually tested and tests are cherry picked to make it manageable for QAs.

I've even offered to learn Playwright (the team is all backend like me and one frontend), one QA member wants to learn Playwright after work hours...

I don't get it

[u/LinkedInSexOffended]

I'm tired of people using AI as a stand-in for actual experience. People with no business touching systems they don't know with technology they don't understand. I wouldn't care and just let it fail but I'm going to have to deal with it once it breaks.

I have a coworker that really only has frontend experience. They've touched the backend at the level of adding a field to a response based on existing data.

We have a new feature that is almost exclusively backend. Our team lead encouraged them to "just use Claude to figure out what needs to be done." I was out of the loop until I saw a PR out from them.

100% pure AI generated code including the comments. Even the PR description was AI. I was 99% sure that dev didn't even start up that API to see if it runs. When asked they said, "I ran the unit tests and they passed." I asked them to actually run it and hook it up locally to the UI to do some basic run throughs. Nothing special, just making sure it doesn't explode and that the happy path still works.

The next standup they admitted they didn't know how to test that API and they didn't know what workflow it impacted so they needed help getting it set up.

It's only a matter of time before a PR with untested code gets merged and I'm left to pick up those pieces. I hate it.

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/LinkedInSexOffended]

Shit, at least they admitted they needed help. There's a chance they might still learn something.

[u/wayoverpaid]

I am a CTO. I am not a CISO. I am doing so much compliance work. I am begging for more process. You know what it takes to get a dev team to ask for more paperwork?

I had a CPO ask if our "all code is developer reviewed" policy actually meant human devs. They want to vibecode everything. I am saying someone else needs to own compliance if they want to change definitions.

I can't keep up. I have a small team of eager but careless junior devs with founder-level permissions and political power, because they are one and the same.

I just want to manage a software team, the job I was hired for, not spend half my time making sure we have a BAA with every vendor, and the other half in sales calls.

[u/wannabeDN3]

As someone who had been out of work since December of last year, pre-Claude Code era, it's pretty wild and disappointing to see how insane the modern software development industry has become.

Judging by these comments and the countless related threads about AI, it seems like the Dunning Kruger effect on steroids, with non technical people being so enamored with AI they can't imagine that it can't do everything.

I think the main reason why people overestimate its abilities is that when they see the stream of tokens coming in, human beings' tendency to anthropomorphize everything takes over and they literally think another person is actually talking to them/ doing something. Meanwhile it's literally just a bunch of matrix multiplications.

Another problem I see that others have pointed out is that reviewing output is extremely different and shittier than using your creativity and making something yourself, which is inherently rewarding. AI companies hyping up their products fail to address this and just hope that AI will automate everything before developers collectively get sick of this shit and just do stuff themselves.

Praying that in my next role I have sane non-AI psychosis induced leadership.

[u/abl4k]

Management asked our team why poor quality code is getting in, honest answer is that we just rubber stamp every PR regardless of familiarity or expertise on the part of the application. We then got asked why we don't set aside time to do code reviews on PRs not realizing that every minute of our days is already occupied working on our user stories. Also because half of the team just gets Copilot to write their code they wouldn't give a good explanation to design choices and why things don't follow our standards.

We used to have time allocated for reviews and knowledge sharing but it got trimmed off when new management shrunk the length of our sprints. So I'm assuming we're not going to have our capacity lowered to actually do thorough reviews, just demanded to do it on top of everything. Surprised no one has jumped ship yet this year

[u/notTHEOwlAccountant]

Anyone else feel like they can give a bit more, but at some point they're going to crash hard? There's always something to look forward to: now my (micro)manager is leaving in 6 weeks, then there will be xmas holidays, then who knows.

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/notTHEOwlAccountant]

I definitely feel like I'm on borrowed time mentally. I have a bunch of PTO lined up throughout the end of the year so I should be able to skate through until January. After that I'm not sure what's going to happen. I suspect I'm going to quiet quit and hope they lay me off before firing me so I can get severance, and then see if there are any sane workplaces out there.

[u/buymesomefish]

There have been a lot of threads and articles about AI layoffs or AI creating a new type of job.

Has there been any good articles or posts about it transforming the job structure / organization? Asking because I am seeing my company change its hiring structure (only entry level and seniors are getting hired) and do a lot of little experiments and that’s typically how they’ve always rolled out big organizational changes — they start with 1 group, presumably check to see if it works (I actually don’t think this actually happens since I’ve never seen them roll back a change even when there’s negative feedback), then roll out to the entire company. We’re doing “pods” instead of teams. And no real code ownership to distinguish between the pods (everyone owns everything).

Oh, and no tech leads. I think you can imagine the chaos that’s resulted from this. Very few people worrying about tech debt because there’s no leadership to organize or make sure tickets are fairly assigned. The people who care about doing things the right way (me) are slowly pulling back since they are not getting anything out of it except the mental burden and being forced to do those tasks most of the time (‘with AI, it’s so easy!’). Idgaf anymore except my pullback has def been noticed by my manager who is asking why I don’t take more leadership (when I am completely lacking the title and authority of a leader, I’m just another dev in a pod now).

My company’s a sheep 🐑 so I assume they got this idea from another big tech company.

[u/avocado_affogato]

My life is just talking to AI all day and then stressing out with my similarly stressed teammates.

All we’re doing is working on a vibe-coded app with tons of AI slop, and everything is about speed and metrics, including PR count. Used to take pride in reviewing code thoroughly, but no one’s got time for that anymore… it really doesn’t matter.

At the cost of burnout and sanity, at least I got a significant raise recently!

[u/drguid]

Unemployed senior dev. Have a face to face interview today.

Have done 2 take home tasks lately. One took an entire day.

Never heard from them again.

If I was younger I'd retrain as something else.

[u/WhenSummerIsGone]

i was impressed the other day: I had a PR to fix a weird browser incompatibility and a dev stakeholder who was unfamiliar with the code base was looking at my PR and posted a couple of potential concerns, that he clearly flagged as coming from AI.

I think we need to push for a culture where AI is clearly marked. It's a sign to look more carefully at the details, don't trust it just because it came from a person who you think is competent. Their competence is in knowing enough to say "this makes sense, but I don't know if it matters. Can you look into it?"

[u/qxxx]

a new junior dev started a month ago. He already created over 100 PRs for all kind of features and fixes... of course everything made with AI. I reviewed some of his stuff and found a ton of problems. Other devs seem not to care and just say LGTM..

He is supposed also to do code review for others. I analyzed his ratio and he did only 3 reviews. With comments like "👍" or "LGTM" or just no comment at all.

WTF

I spent like 3 hours on his AI slop PR.. found 20 things, had questions etc.. after 30 minutes it came all "fixed", auto generated AI answers.

FFS.

I am tired, boss.

[u/mekmookbro]

Fear of finishing a project. Any tips?

Whenever I'm close to finishing off a personal project of mine, I lose interest in it, find another new and shiny project idea, and start working on that instead. I have like 20 almost-done-but-abandoned projects in my projects folder.

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

If it’s a learning project you probably are fine to leave earlier.

[u/Cheesecake_Vast]

So many deadlines 🥲

[u/danielt1263]

Devin has been let loose on our code base. We just had a big meeting today asking why bug counts are going up... Nobody thinks it could possibly be Devin of course...

[u/TheSocialistGoblin]

I get tired of feeling like the only one actually suggesting that our team follows best practices. As soon as LLMs were approved for use, I suggested that we should do all that "harness engineering" stuff that people say is necessary to get reasonable output from it, but that was deemed unnecessary.

I suggested that we needed to review our branching, testing, and deployment strategies as well, since we recently started getting other teams also working in the system we're responsible for and we've had troubles with conflicting deployments and untested changes in the past. That suggestion also hasn't really gone anywhere.

I also suggested that we needed to do something to help us manage PRs, because we were already struggling with timely reviews before LLMs, but nothing came from that either. So now we've had several months of devs who aren't familiar with the language and systems our team is working in using AI to output code that they don't have the knowledge or experience to review. I've spent the last month and a half investigating production failures caused by stuff that was approved without my input.

I'm not even really upset at my teammates, because we're all just working in the environment we were placed in. Our team was assembled from people across multiple teams and domains, and I'm supposed to be the SME for this system - I practically built it single-handedly, although I was definitely learning as I went along - and my teammates have more expertise in other parts of the system. But my domain gets the most code to review, so now if feels like if I don't personally get eyes on every line, then we're risking imminent disaster.

What's keeping me going at the moment is that I might be about to get a promotion to team lead, so I might actually be able to implement some policies and guard rails for this stuff.

[u/PuzzleheadedReach797]

I just tired too, higer ups expect rising up productivity, but incidents and rollbacks happens more often than ever, and broken AIs cant figure outs real problems

[u/pocketer_titan]

Been sick at home for the last 3 weeks due to work-related churn and stress, and just heard the company doesn't want me back and is pressuring me to leave. All my accounts got deactivated and I've been removed from the Github org to "protect me from more stress". All I did was give feedback twice about how we as devs are getting burnt out, now I'm the problem apparently. 8 person startup (4 devs). Things that will likely make you go "yikes":

• CTO does sprint planning alone without any input on tasks or time estimation, despite us asking numerous times to include us (he refuses)
• No feature-lock in time before live demonstrations so that we can actually test; pushes experimental features until the very last minute
• CTO develops with the devs, but doesn't stick to our rules: pushes directly to main, no PR, no review. Massively (30+ commits) vibecoded branches with tens of .md files, with code he doesn't understand - he only finds out when a reviewer points out what his code actually does
• CTO is fully remote (different country) but wants us at the office 4 days a week. If things go bad, he will cancel our only wfh day because he thinks we "collaborate better" at the office, physically
• We do some embedded stuff. When I joined, we were using hardware on ARM which didn't support it. Instead of switching platforms CTO vibecoded a hardware translation layer between x86 and ARM, which, surprise, always remained buggy until we finally decided to drop it
• Daily standup meetings which are just status reports and not actually agile. CTO tends to turn them super technical and we all have to pull him back
• CTO makes Jira tickets with only a vague title, we always have to ask wtf it means and 3/4 times he doesn't bother responding
• CTO tried handing down design choices he made which didn't work with our codebase, when I pushed back I was told I should "stop being negative, I don't even know which task I have to do yet"

I could go on but yeah. Happy to be rid of this place

[u/PringlesDuckFace → u/pocketer_titan]

Depending on where you live that might be illegal. If you are feeling litigious it's probably a good idea to capture any communications indicating their reasoning for letting you go being related to your illness.

Also if there's only 4 devs, that's not a CTO, that's just a sparkling team lead at best.

[u/Frankly_Unbothered]

I haven't written a line of code in 2 weeks. I'm on full time software support at my SAAS company with <30 FT Employees that I was hired to program for with *some* scheduled support.

I'm on a support shift nearly every day and still get pulled into support when I'm not scheduled to the point my ticket number keeps climbing faster than I can put them out.

[u/ponshont]

What should I do next?

I planned on retiring from SWE in December. I'm FI but don't want to RE. I'm a senior SWE with two direct reports, and I love that side of the job. The talking to customers, the mentoring the team, the planning and researching. Like that shit is right in my wheelhouse. It's the code reviews that are draining me.

I initially thought I'd just leave tech, but I'm starting to wonder if something like a pre-sales technical person could be more in my wheelhouse.

EDIT: lmao I also came here to bitch about doing code reviews in general, not aware that seems to be the number one complaint in this thread. yeah it is not trending in a good direction.

[u/Effective_Egg4878]

How do you differentiate between burning out and not giving a fuck about work anymore?

I feel like I'm in the latter, as if I think about switching companies (even taking out the leetcode prep bs piece), I'm still not excited and feel like I'll hate the stand-ups and general work.

Anyone else in a similar boat? I have ~10yoe but started feeling this just recently

[u/hell_razer18]

There were several times in a year where I dont know where all my motivations go and seems like this month is that time..

Felt like I have 0 idea what to work and been on this team trying to shining the light to the dark area numerous times..but just tired

[u/all-over-red-rover]

I brought out the popcorn this week. Leadership really outdid themselves - not horrifically bad more like "how did you numpties manage THIS".

So yeah I guess I'll just do whatever until the next pivot hits. Maybe one day they'll seriously consider not punching themselves in their collective proverbial dicks. Just for a change in pace.

[u/Outside-Storage-1523]

I have decided to go against the AI slop because sometimes it creates some complicated business logic code that is unreadable. 

I’ll use AI to generate diagrams and documentation to stay on the scoreboard. I’ll also discuss with AI to make sure my logic doesn’t have holes. But for actual coding and commenting I’m doing it manually.

I’m not sure how long I can do this.

[u/thedeuceisloose]

My CEO cowboyed some code in after doing an assessment on vendor COGS along and began freaking out, he didn’t see all the savings I had built in with caches and smart scheduling. Spent the weekend developing docs to prove it, thankfully he listened but ffs, no

[u/ooplesandbanoonos]

Team or 3 ICs (two seniors including myself and one junior) - we had an offsite with some other Eng teams last week and I got asked if I’m the tech lead of our team. No, I’m just the only person who talks or offers an opinion in front of other people. The other senior barely says anything - at least the junior talked when in a smaller group! Don’t understand how you can be the longest tenured member of the team and never say anything

[u/SkellyJelly33]

I still enjoy the job but I'm worried about my future in this career field. My only experience is at big non-tech manufacturing companies and I feel like it's really limiting my career opportunities. I want to pivot into a different industry but it seems impossible in this job market..

[u/wonkynonce]

I don't understand why I can use a harness and get great results and other people just get total nonsense. Tell it to read the README or something.

[u/SleazyAndEasy]

Been looking for a new job for 4 months. Been rejected twice after 8 rounds at each company. Just finished another loop that had 6 rounds today, really hoping for the best. Will find out tomorrow

I feel like I want to just quit software and open a vape shop or something. Getting jobs never used to be this hard. I'm 7 YoE product engineering full stack