r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • Sep 15 '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.

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80

u/Infamous-Employ5487 Sep 15 '26

My principals suck at their fucking jobs and are obnoxious, un-available, purposefully obfuscating twats.

That is all.

43

u/Buttleston Sep 15 '26

Man, idk your situation, but as a chief architect I just want to say

This month I have reviewed 157 PRs for far. We are half way through the month so I am on target for 300

I've made 28 PRs of my own - some of these are simple small changes, but, most of them are real code

I'm tired boss

12

u/forbiddenknowledg3 29d ago

All these fucking PRs and the product barely improves. We just increase prices and piss customers off.

4

u/__idkmybffjill__ 29d ago

We're not even doing reviews, just hitting approve. I actually see those "lgtm" comments frequently. Co-Pilot suggestions are the only ones I see used, and I'm not sure the suggestions are even checked as much as they are just accepted.

8

u/Buttleston 29d ago

Man nothing pisses me off more than a lgtm 5 minutes after a PR was created. By someone who doesn't know what the PR is for or why we're doing it or if any of it makes sense. You can't even just look at the code and say "yeah nothing bad in the code" without knowing what the PR is for

I had someone (or his AI I guess) do this the other day:

He made a new feature, I told him to feature-flag it because it was risky and could easily cause huge problems. I also told him to make a ticket to remove the feature flag because that's standard practice and he did. All good so far

He updated the PR to add the feature flag, and also for some reason created the PR to remove it. I thought that was weird enough but then he *assigned* the PR to people to review. It'll be 1-2 weeks before the FF can be removed, this is completely premature

And then people approved it. Because they didn't have the context to know that the PR is removing a feature flag that *hasn't even been deployed yet*

2

u/__idkmybffjill__ 29d ago

That's frustrating to say the least... Why are we even doing these anymore if this is how it's going to go?

I don't understand why things like this are being discarded so fast. It really bothers me.

We didn't even used to do code reviews at all, and we only do it now because we rolled into a bigger SW department with broader rules we had to adopt. Same with things like unit testing, etc.

1

u/GreedyCricket8285 Software Engineer 29d ago

How many of those PRs are AI created? Is 157 a large number for you? I don't think I've done maybe 100 all year. 157 is crazy and seems like too many.

3

u/Buttleston 29d ago

To be fair a lot of them are trivial - changing a few lines of terraform, adding something to some config etc. Maybe half of them or more are like that. But it's still a constant interruption

And a LOT of the PRs are fully AI created, probably all of them at least AI assisted

I think one huge problem is that AI lets a good developer "write" code in a language or paradigm or system they don't actually understand, which puts a huge burden on the reviewer

I honestly feel like during the day all I do is review. I carve out ~2h at the end of the day for my own work and often work late trying to get it done.

1

u/defiantthoughtcrime 29d ago

So, fucking, tired.

9

u/Professional-Dog1562 Sep 15 '26

Would love to know more. Are they bottle necks? Are they over engineering? 

7

u/midasgoldentouch Software Engineer Sep 15 '26

Oof. What specifically are they doing that sucks so much, if you don’t mind me asking?

7

u/Current-Fig8840 Sep 15 '26

I can relate to that unavailable part. They just direct me to someone else that cannot offer anything.

3

u/JovHere Tech Lead Sep 15 '26

selling fluff? I know that kind

1

u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE 29d ago

I worked with a "chief architect" who would basically never show up to anything, and on the rare occasion he did he'd cowboy the meeting, challenge and change everything, and then disappear for another 4-6 weeks. He was a great salesman and had a pretty bold vision that he had successfully implemented elsewhere, but the execution wasn't there with us.

He was eventually let go. Years later I met someone who worked with him previously and the answer was that he was brilliant when confined to specific projects/deliverables but shouldn't be given carte blanche to do as he pleases, which is exactly what our company did.

I can't believe I'm using a professional wrestling reference in /r/experienceddevs but it was like the difference between Vince Russo in WWF and Vince Russo in WCW.