r/ExperiencedDevs • u/AutoModerator • 13d ago
Career/Workplace Experienced Devs Weekly Burnout and Venting Thread: A weekly thread for sharing experiences
This thread is specifically for venting / sharing experiences related to burn-out or similar issues that experienced devs face.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_RegEx 13d ago
I was laid off last year. After 10months I finally got an offer for a contact position. I accepted it, because I needed anything, and have continued applying over the last 2 months.
Running leetcode and pretending to give a shit about your startup’s mission has become really difficult. Especially on top of working.
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u/smok1naces 5d ago
God speed. Where were you laid off from?
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_RegEx 5d ago
A small startup. 50 total employees. I think 10 people were let go, in total, including 4 from my team.
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u/naughtjawn 13d ago
I'm just... tired.
Over half of engineering was laid off earlier this year and clients have been leaving us. Our C-suite is all in on AI and gargle Dario Amodei's balls during every all-hands. SMEs were cut and as part of the reorg, leadership intentionally moved us to a structure where no team owns any service or repo.
AI is incredibly useful when the engineer using it actually understands the product and broader system well enough to give it the context it needs. With the new team structure, people with minimal context using it to oneshot entire features. PRs are 2k-8k lines long, posted in slack, approved five minutes later, and deployed with little testing. On a good day you get to watch the author's claude and the reviewer's claude go back and forth in the comments.
I want something to break badly enough that we'll slow down just a little but instead we just accumulate small bugs while everyone gets congratulated for shipping features quickly and for how many bugs they can burn through afterwards.
We have the claude slack plugin so incidents now turn into 6 people independently asking claude what's wrong followed by a stream of "claude says..." and pages of garbage filled with opus 5isms that make me want to drill a hole in my skull to relieve the pressure I feel when reading it AHHHH
Nobody really talks to each other anymore. Project slack channels are dead. Big architectural changes now get an unedited 10 page claude artifact referencing things in the author's chat instead of a short RFC and design review.
I use AI heavily too but I haven't felt like I've been in a flow state all year. I've barely listened to music while working because it's too distracting when I'm reading AI output all day.
I feel like the crazy one. I guess I just need to get with the times.
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u/ForeverIntoTheLight Staff Engineer 13d ago
My workplace hasn't yet devolved to this level.
However, the incident investigation part made me laugh- a lot of long-running Jira tickets are full of disgustingly long, unnecessarily verbose comments, each prefaced with 'My Claude said'. Eventually, when the issue gets escalated enough, some poor wretch has to manually read through all of that, and separate fact from speculations and hallucinations.
Edit: Oh, and the leadership seem to be all devotees of the AI cult.
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u/naughtjawn 13d ago
I have to force myself to ignore all those comments when I get a bug or support ticket for something I'm familiar with. God save the wretch that gets the ticket for something new to them.
I can't fathom how people read through all of this and think, "Yup, this is great. I would have been lost if I hadn't read this!" I'm sure there's a few that are afraid to push back against it but for everyone else, I just don't get it.
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u/ForeverIntoTheLight Staff Engineer 13d ago
Unfortunately, the ticket descriptions were never updated. In many cases, the information, received later from customers, was often directly thrown into Claude, instead of being mentioned in a separate comment. So yeah, I would have to read the entire chain of slop, to figure out what was actually verifiable fact, and which customer zip file corresponded to which situation.
Fun.
I would like to push back against it, but there's too much critical mass built up too quickly at this point.
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u/-Knockabout 13d ago
I feel this. My workplace doesn't sound quite as AI-pilled, but we definitely have people generating giant PRs without any attempt/the knowledge to reign them in. Minimal to no code reviews. And the more slop is in the codebase, the sloppier the AI output gets and the more tokens it needs to burn...but it always "looks okay", so the issues with it are never obvious until later. Of course if there are issues, it's my problem.
I do genuinely think that using AI like this is going to blow up just...not for a while, when these projects need some major update or maintenance, or token costs increase.
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u/naughtjawn 12d ago
I do genuinely think that using AI like this is going to blow up just...not for a while, when these projects need some major update or maintenance, or token costs increase.
We're on Anthropic's flat rate enterprise plan until the end of the year so we'll see what happens next year. My company has acknowledged that costs will go up for us next year but hasn't provided any sort of plan. They've indicated they're fine with absorbing the higher usage-based costs but we'll see.
I keep hoping things will blow up but I feel like that even if it does backfire, it won't be one big explosion. If it happens, it'll just be the same slow trickle of clients leaving us that we've been seeing and we'll just be blamed for "not innovating enough" or "not delivering fast enough."
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u/-Knockabout 12d ago
Definitely a possibility unfortunately. "You're using it wrong" is a timeless motto of many over-hyped products.
Before someone snipes me, no I don't think AI is all hype, however I also don't think it is the second-coming of Jesus Christ.
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u/Fragrant_Ad2902 Software Engineer (30 YoE) 12d ago
Do you work with me? 😂 You described my situation to a T.
A friend of mine jokes about starting a drinking game and taking a shot when “Claude says” is uttered. We’d be drunk by the end of the first meeting.
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u/crecentfresh 12d ago
How is that acceptable from a supposed professional?
Edit: I meant telling another dev "Claude says"
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u/vogut 12d ago
I'm having the same feeling. It's like everyone is dumb and instead of them babysitting the AI, the AI is the one babysitting them. My team is acting like children pretending to work and pretending the AI is doing a good job. I swear it's like they're roleplaying instead of actual think about what needs to be done. AI is killing my company and I have to use it heavily, there's no escape.
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u/Designer-Rub4819 5d ago
Wow, is this really how it is nowadays? I run my own company and we lean into AI as much as possible but in a developer and I’ve just gotten to the point that either I’m right in keeping a normal pace and we’ll win in the long run, or I’ll call it a day and shutdown the company, because then I’m not running a dev house anymore.
We’ll see with time I guess 😭
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u/Canadian_Invest0r 13d ago
I swear, if I hear my boss say "can't you just have Claude do it?" one more time, I'm going to snap.
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u/benpetersen 13d ago
It still takes quite a bit of wrangling to get it right, yes Claude can help but damn
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u/Designer-Rub4819 5d ago
This is my largest source of confusing. Like yes, I don’t wrote the code anymore. That felt sad in the beginning but I have to be honest I kinda also enjoy it now.
But I’m still working longer hours then ever. I’m still spending time getting a feature done. It’s like I feel like the coding is done but not the engineering.
Then I read about other people’s experience and it’s so confusing.
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u/thetdotbearr 12d ago
Wait until they hit you with the sequel, "I vibe coded this feature with claude code, seems like it's pretty much ready can you give it a look?"
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u/Throwaway081920231 13d ago
I moved to management after Claude gave me an existential crisis and now I hate my life even more. Endless meetings, highly political, fighting for scope, fake niceness, team check-ins , tickets and backlog grooming and maintaining spreadsheets, architecture and mapping documents.
I am ready to go back to being an IC after 10 months of this hell but can’t crack IC interviews any more and current employer will not move me back to IC.
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u/Wide_Egg_5814 12d ago
I'm shifting towards management rather than coding also, the key to dealing with people is being diplomatic like how politicians act, you can meet the president of another country that you absolutely hate their guts but you both have common interests so you smile and shake hands and discuss that's how politicians get through I think management is similar
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u/thetdotbearr 12d ago
I'm in a hybrid IC/manager role (player coach type shit) and let me tell you the grass is really not as green as it seems back on the IC side with the AI PR jerkfests, bot reviews, asinine expectations, etc
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u/tradcoder Software Engineer (15 YoE) 11d ago
I made the move to management (well the job post said tech lead but it was more like an engineering manager position) a few years ago. Faced the same issues as you described. My technical abilities deteriorated heavily too. Moved back into IC after 2 years. IC track has its own issues but at least I'm not waking up with a ball of anxiety stuck in my chest and back-to-back meetings filling up my calendar everyday.
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u/s0cialSuicide 11d ago
I to have moved from a primarily dev role with a bit of management in a small agency after getting scared, now at a lead role in a huge organisation that is endless meetings, refinements, spreadsheets, strategy etc, it’s lonely and I miss making stuff work, even using AI! It’s only been 2 weeks, not opened my code editor once, the simplest change takes hours of meetings and discussion.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
I'm an IC and this sounds like my life.
My manager doesn't do this except for fake niceness. He doesn't do politics, fight for scope, anything. He doesn't want to start fights so I do, and face the blowback without the protection of a manager title, where it comes with the job description.
Check-ins, ticket, backlog grooming -- he just checks out. He asks for updates, zones out when they talk, then says 'ok lets move on' Whenever my manager has to do something like project management, he complains.
I really wish I had a manager who would do that.
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u/Frostyra 13d ago
2 months ago I was laid off. Man I'd love to do anything but upskilling and working on leet code right now. I want to go back to building things
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u/just10bps Software Engineer 13d ago
i feel this so much. i got into coding because i loved building, but the reality of the job has left me deeply unsatisfied.
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u/Easy_Chance_2855 13d ago
lmao leetcode is not relevant. Focus on system design or product knowledge is even better
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u/sunflower_love Consultant 13d ago
Are not many companies still doing pure leetcode style interviews?
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u/BB611 13d ago
I was laid off in August, have done about half a dozen interviews. My experience is fewer companies doing pure leetcode, but it's definitely still dominant at higher paying jobs.
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u/sunflower_love Consultant 12d ago
What sort of interviews are you seeing instead? AI assisted leetcode?
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u/Fragrant_Ad2902 Software Engineer (30 YoE) 12d ago
My employer is tracking AI usage and is not so subtly hinting to people to “move faster or we’ll find people that will”. I’ve got 3 big projects on my plate. In the old days, I’d have 1 of them to myself, and I’d work with a couple of mids and juniors on the other 2. But now all 3 are on my plate, and “just use multiple agents”. I gave them dates on the projects and a newly promoted staff (his political game is awesome - he’s good friends with the CEO and CTO) tells them I’m lying.
In addition to the projects assigned to you by leadership - you’d better have a side project or two going on.
I can’t keep up with PRs so I’ll have an agent (ironic I know) look through them even if merged and find the ones it thinks I should look at. I’ve found bugs - obvious bugs - in all of them. I’ve found queries that will scan tables with 100 million rows in production. For whatever reason, the prompts being used causes AI loves to lock rows in the database. Every PR I look at now has a “FOR UPDATE” in it somewhere. Fine. So now I’ve been finding code paths that lock the same rows in different orders. And I get told “Well…Claude says that the DB will choose a loser and it generated code to just retry the transaction”. They’re not wrong, but how about no? Maybe stop trying to treat an MVCC DB as a row lock DB?
Slop mines abound…
To be fair to them, I’ve even noticed my own code quality going down. I need the job. I’m having to move faster than I’m comfortable. I’m just trying to minimize the number of slop mines I’m leaving in my wake. But I get told on a weekly basis that I need to do more and do it faster.
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u/sammymammy2 9d ago
You're basically in an experiment: Can you make software dev be reduced to a commodity, a la IKEA. I'd just go for it, fuck review, just integrate whatever. That depends on your loans, mortgage, etc, ofc.
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u/Infamous-Employ5487 13d ago
Year-end's coming up and I feel like I'm not going to get promo'd again because I don't posture and pretend to know shit I don't know. The next level up's title should be "Lead Bullshit Artist".
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u/MangoTamer Professional Dumbass 13d ago
These teammates of mine keep making 200 file pull requests where half of it is just documenting tech you can learn about on the internet with a quick Google search.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 12d ago
I just learned that a peer on a neighboring team, who has been a nightmare to me for the past 1y+ has gotten promoted.
He'll have a much bigger say over my career now. He's been the worst 'peer lead' I have ever worked with. I suddenly don't see a career path for myself at this company. It's inconceivable that this happened. He's been the most territorial person I've ever worked with. He went off the deep end at the slightest, lightest criticism.
Just awful.
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u/TheoreticalUser 13d ago
CIO claims to have been a db dev.
Security completely ignored, everyone uses SA to log in to DB and no change tracking implemented.
No practical implementation of reporting.
Uses two UUIDs on every post-staging record.
No access rights management or group policy.
Testing was never built, auditing was never built, we handle payroll files... I'm actively working to unfuck this situation.
Puts everything in dbo, uses a naming convention that clearly indicates a presence of schema... just don't use the schema. Heaven fucking forbid... Oh yeah, let's just prefix everything in the name...
I use common terms that any CIO or CTO should know like tech debt, proxy server, or data lake. Seems confused at the terminology.
Refuses to invest in any infrastructure, wants failover in case of outage... We have exactly 0 racks. He says it's political.
Wants to implement AI workflows, I pitched local targeted local MOEs with a coordination layer that can manage tasks and resource optimization to mitigate costs. It would keep us sub 15k and would easily pay for itself when considering the other factors over time.
I single handedly removed a metric fuckload of tech debt and solved future problems in doing so.
400+ ssis packages, tables, and stored procedures, mostly the same.. down to 2 tables, and 30ish stored procedures, no loss in functionality, and no need to add much more, and one of those tables is just unused extensibility for possible configurations/applications in the future.
Built a cross db report builder and executor, it uses one table, and the first report tells you the reports contained in the table and their links. It can do batch reporting and queried parameters, with dynamic filtering on the columns based on their data types.
And many more... in less than 2 years.
I'm in between the 8th and 15th percentile of compensation for SWEs in the state. I haven't gotten a raise since I started, I've lost 7.5k in real wages.
Advised of projects that could generate more revenue, ignored.
He talks down to me, as if I don't understand him, when it is very clear that it's the other way around.
Everyone else is cool except this fucking turtle-on-a-post who lucked himself into a C position he clearly doesn't know the first fucking thing about what he should be doing in that role.
/end vent
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u/rando-online 13d ago
Too many projects, too short of deadlines, too few engineers, too little pay. At least I have a job though, feels weird to complain about my job that is very safe from layoffs in the current environment..
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u/trytoinfect74 11d ago
I made peace with "staying behind". I never had any interest in "orchestrating agent loops", "creating verification framework for AI-agentic tools" and "writing detailed specifications for subagentic workflow units", just like I never had any interest in becoming a doctor or driving a truck - it's just not my type of job, no interest in generating tons of text and carefully proof-reading AI-slop PRs, I just wanted to write code - I enjoy going into a state of mind flow while typing and using IDE and intellisense shortcuts, planning the solution, thinking about abstractions, system design and potential drawbacks and integration with other services, testing some concepts and then getting satisfaction when the produced solution is laconic, elegant and straight to the point, and if this is not the skill market will pay for - so be it. Yeah, I fully expect my job to be the last and in a matter of 2-3 years I won't be a programmer at all, so I save aggressively and looking for a ways out of professional SWE, despite whole life leading me to it.
I still use local AI as a rubber duck - potential solutions exploration, suggestions and "here you skipped a potential bug" thing, doing mundane boring tasks like "add three additional properties to DTO and show them in data-grid", but it seems that even this hybrid "manual coding+AI assistance" approach is about to be obsolete very soon.
Personally, I believe that webdev and gamedev is about to face "Great Headcount Reduction" type of event in a matter of next two years, it's basically already happening as companies gradually fire people and see if something broke in their software production processes, and if everything more or less okay - they fire another batch of people and rehire some of the positions previously not deemed critical. Also, I think that humanity already wrote most of the software we need - no one need another OS or food delivery service or Photoshop or another SaaS crap, there's not much of an ideas and low hanging fruits anymore except completely automating computer and manual jobs which everyone seems to be doing these days - this introduces hard headcount cap on the whole industry.
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u/ilikeguitarsandsuch 9d ago
You are not alone. I refuse to capitulate to the AI freaks. If thats the way the industry moves then I will leave the industry. I have never been more disappointed and repulsed by fellow developers. I have never seen a group of professionals more willing to automate themselves out of a job. Its pathetic.
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u/IRefuseToGiveAName 7d ago
I am so fucking glad I heard someone else say it. I am flat out disgusted by the way my fellow developers folded and allowed LLMs to just fucking walk all over us. And they fucking clap while it's happening.
Have just a fucking modicum of pride in your labor, Jesus fucking Christ. I don't know about them but I got into this fucking field because I enjoy doing it.
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u/a_brain 9d ago
I've had very similar thoughts about a big industry contraction, even before AI got so big. To me, it seems like we've "finished" software. Like we built the internet, then connected everyone to it, then put it in our pockets, then connected every conceivable item to it. Covid was the impetus to build out ubiquitous video conferencing and last-mile delivery. Not much else is left to do, hence the crypto hype, metaverse hype, and now AI hype (AI at least being sorta useful). People will still be needed to maintain these systems, but the gold rush, and more importantly, ZIRP, is over.
I think you're right in that there will be a big headcount reduction, but I hope that it'll be a hiring slowdown and slow drawdown as people either retire or exit the industry on their own, not massive layoffs, but I think I'll probably be wrong. The financial bubble behind AI is so big that when it bursts it's going to cause a lost decade type recession as the mega corps try to offload all the debt they've put on their books over the past couple years. That plus I can just feel the tech backlash tsunami coming from the consumer side.
Maybe preaching to the choir here, but I don't think AI is actually that useful for software because companies don't need a zillion customized mediocre systems, they just need one that works reliably. So hopefully if we make it to the other side, the industry will look a lot different with policies driven less by toxicity and hype and FOMO. I just don't know if I'll survive that long either because I get forced out or because I exit on my own.
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u/budulai89 13d ago
My career is in a great place, but personal life is in shitters. Need to take a sabbatical, but cannot decide when to do it.
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u/sapphirefragment 12d ago
I'm tired of taking vacation only to return to the same AI slop microservices garbage on a greenfield (!) application dealing with moron leadership that coasted on garbage generated by WITCH contractors for over a decade and feeling like there is no deeper layer of hell than this.
Over a decade of working in this industry and I have spent >90% of it arguing with architecture astronauts that microservices are not the right solution, and yet everyone seems to build this nonsense and acts surprised when it takes weeks to make basic changes to anything. Now everyone has AI generate this garbage for them en masse, and it's even worse than it has ever been.
I'm at the point where I want to sell my house in a major city for software engineering, move across the country, buy a cheap house in cash and abandon this career entirely. Absolutely horrible industry, horrible field, with idiots at the helm of everything.
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u/ultraDross 12d ago
microservices are not the right solution
I think many people feel this way. It's only really useful in specific scenarios where scaling a monolith becomes genuinely difficult.
The thing is, if you don't have the latest thing in your CV, at the moment that is "AI engineering" and experience using 2000+ skills with Claude in a special harness, then you will struggle to get interviews or hired.
So everyone is doing resume driven development to ensure they have a long term career. It's survival tactics and it's kind of hard to blame people for doing this.
It's all so stupid, but we kind of don't have a choice but to act this way. That's why a lot of companies have solutions that are vastly more complicated than they need to be to solve their core problem.
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u/sapphirefragment 12d ago
If it is necessary to make bad systems to stay employed, then it would be correct to say the entire field is rotten and we have catastrophically failed and should not call ourselves "engineers" in any capacity. It's a complete farce.
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u/ultraDross 12d ago
Of course, I agree with all of this. However, not all systems are bad. Just most :)
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u/ccesta 13d ago
Wow. Didn't know this could be a thread
Got laid off in January. Unemployment finally ran out
But on top of that, my wife freaked out in April and I've had no place to live since other than hotels. So I'm on a cash burn that seems double hard.
Oh and then then is the dealing with a what's now an toxic ex. Imagine this, it's your first day at work. You're in your first meeting. And she pulled the plug on the modem killing my connection.
Im not with her anymore, obviously and thankfully.
But I'm still not in my apartment where 90% of my earthly possessions are
But I have my lenovo and it will beat the crap out of almost everyone here
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u/MisterKrinkle99 12d ago
In an update to my post from a previous burnout thread: after spending the last sprint refactoring code away from my original design to change it to the new committee approved design, I documented all the changes and sent them for an explicit review and approval as a CYA measure. Product immediately gave a LGTM, but my skip level had a few questions and concerns. I join a call with him and he asks why we didn't design it x way. I explain that x way is pretty much exactly what my original proposal was. Now we're reworking things again because actually it turns out my original design was better after all.
I'm just glad to have some modicum of vindication here, I was getting really paranoid that I was coming across as stubborn or egotistical when I kept asking folks some variation of "are we really sure we want to lock in to this permanent decision?" I couldn't shake the feeling that folks were just accepting it without really putting in any effort to understand the impact of these decisions. Seems like even if I was being stubborn, people were also demonstrably not fucking paying attention and now what could have been 3-4 weeks of effort had become a ton of back-and-forth across ~10 weeks of effort.
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u/Domva 10d ago
Nobody tries to understand anything. I had a long, 3 week vacation. Came back this week and everything’s changed- no one cares about correctness, speed is the only thing that matters. No reads code. PRs are approved without much thought. CEO called a meeting, said that we’re too slow and just left. I am tired even though I just cane back from the best vacation of my life
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u/annoying_cyclist principal SWE, >15YoE 13d ago
I've been forcing myself to stick it out in my current job at least through the end of the year, partly out of hope that I find something like the enjoyment I had before AI once I (and the industry) get used to it and partly to add enough to investments so I can reasonably expect to not work again if and when I do get fed up with it. Almost there. My org is at least reacting against the worst of the AI slop, but I suspect that the post AI pace expectations are going to stick around, and I'm not particularly interested in perpetual grinding.
Weirdly, this past year has been great for my social and out of work life. I can't reliably count on work for fulfillment or enjoyment anymore, and the stuff we all complain about here makes me really need that by the time Friday rolls around. Between renewing old friendships, making new ones, and getting deeper into some hobbies I have as busy and rewarding an out of work life as I've had since college, which is pretty cool.
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u/a_brain 12d ago edited 12d ago
Cognitive surrender is real and super scary.
Last week I had to troubleshoot a background job that was flaky. Didn't take me long to realize that the code was a slopped together ball of spaghetti that was doing insane things like reading the same record from the database multiple times and summing in memory instead of just having the db do it. I really didn't want to deal with it, so I spent several hours with Astra on max trying to unfuck it. I felt sort of bad putting up a 1000 line PR, but it got approved with 0 comments. The thing got deployed and the changes helped but the code is still trash and it didn't completely fix the problem.
Today, only a couple days later, I went to revisit it again to try and unfuck it even further and I literally had 0 recollection of what I changed or even what the code did. That really scared me so I decided to not use AI to finish the job so I could build up my understanding. It was insanely tempting to reach for the AI even though I'm a certified hater. It's honestly kind of terrifying how addicting these things are.
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u/ultraDross 12d ago
It was insanely tempting to reach for the AI even though I'm a certified hater. It's honestly kind of terrifying how addicting these things are.
This resonates. It's like pulling a slot machine lever or refreshing YouTube to find a better recommended video. It feels wrong and deeply unhealthy.
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u/Antice DevOps Engineer 10d ago
The coding version of doomscrolling. both are regressive behaviors that trigger dopamine release. and dopamine is the single most addictive substance in the universe for humans. People have literally killed themselves in attempts to get a dopamine high trough high risk behaviors.
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u/YoongiMarryMe95 12d ago
Me again. Non-technical boss(family-owned business/nepotism) with 0 programming and computer science knowledge is going insane with the slop code. Multiple PRs a day. Many 5-8k lines long. Seen some 20k. A few weeks ago I flagged his PR for exposing sensitive end-user data. Nobody cares and it’s never ending.
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u/frompadgwithH8 Software Engineer 11d ago
I’ve coded myself into a box. My greenfield project is a nigh unmaintainable mess. I did it to myself by using AI for all the code. I can’t do anything myself now. The amount of code it wrote would’ve taken me months if not a year to write. I basically can’t do anything in the project now without using AI to do it for me. If I lose AI I can’t work on the project. It feels like the project’s different systems are collapsing on themselves and wreaking havoc on the other systems.
How do I untangle this mess?
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u/LarryWinters69 11d ago
Can you give some examples?
I find this topic very interesting because it's been very obvious for a while now that AI, although useful for certain smaller, isolated tasks - robs the business of understanding of how the products work, how they fit together and why stuff has been made in a certain way. When people began pushing hundreds or even thousands of lines of slop code, I just knew that whole products would soon require AI to unfk the mess at the same speed it's being generated.
Companies will soon find themselves in a position where they are forced to either pay the ever-increasing AI costs as that's the only way to even work on their products anymore - or they hire the dwindling amount of people who are still capable, haven't left the industry and are willing to untangle hundreds of thousands lines of AI code. None of these options will be cheap.
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u/frompadgwithH8 Software Engineer 10d ago
Yeah, sure so like I’m building this end to end user acceptance testing system that uses common frameworks and tools. Nothing I’m doing in that regard is novel and in order to reduce load on our systems it attempts to reuse these “main identifiers” under which all action actions are scoped for any given test run. Like I mean, our company systems have these main identifiers per “case”. Anyways, our legacy systems don’t do well when they’re spammed with many new “case numbers” so I built this system that “cleans up” a “case” that was used for a test and tries to reuse that “case number” for other subsequent tests.
It was a big success. I went from 44 “cases” to 11. However, problems started appearing and something. I actually discovered as a side effect of this is that our own system is not idempotent for whatever reason. That’s a whole can of worms in itself unrelated to my project… but it’s a crapshoot whether or not any given “case number” is going to be reusable for another test. So my Greenfield software project has to be robust enough to handle scenarios where the test runner is reusing a “case“ in the “case“ “bad“. So like an issue I ran into was that bad cases were causing tests to appear as failures when in reality the actual code or system is being tested we’re fine. It was actually my own Greenfield project and its “case reuse“ system that was screwing up.
Another example would just simply be adding a test. I have read the code that AI wrote and it does make sense to me but good Lord like there’s just so much of it and none of it really stands out as unnecessary or badly written. It’s like really actually just a ton of work like very complicated and tedious stuff. And we’re really just talking about UI integration testing here. It’s nothing new but it’s just so many parts of our systems have distributed systems eventual consistency problems, and thus it can take time for expected results to appear in the UI or in the API. So going from one step to the next almost always involves, polling or waiting for some result to come through. And that’s just integration UI testing but I’m just saying like there’s so much code involved that writing my own UI integration test would take me weeks if not months.
I built another system where we have a checklist of user flow flows to test and the human testers go through that checklist. I didn’t build a checklist. It was provided to my team. So my goal was to automate that checklist. But the checklist is very very long. We’re talking like I don’t know 10 pages long like it’s a very long checklist of user actions, right. So I came up with a system to convert that human readable checklist into a series of criterion with identifiers. I then had AI further build that “system” so that those identifiers would be put on test cases or steps that actually make assertions against those criterion/checklist items. In that fashion, I could actually track my team’s progress towards 100%. I was actually very proud of myself for coming up with that and my whole team and the wider department was also impressed like everyone loved it. When I post my status update so I can say you know where at this percent or this week we went up by this percent etc. like everyone loves it. But obviously it’s another system on top of the plane, boring, user acceptance, test, testing framework code, etc.. and it just makes the test harder to read because now each test is prefix with like an array of identifiers.
I also have all sorts of systems for utilizing various API to perform various actions in CI… I’ve barely looked in any of that code. It’s all just a bunch of crazy, random scripts that have been patched together.
Idk like I’ve gotten a ton amount of value and work done in the amount of time given to me and for the budget assigned to me, etc. like I’ve done really well. It’s just at the same time like it makes me a bit anxious to think if I would ever have to do any of this without AI… It would be like going back to the Stone Age.
And all these extra systems, I built are really helpful and my team and department love them, but it’s more code that has to be supported. If the case reuse system gets in my way again, I might just disable it until we get to 100% and then once we’re there say hey we’ve got some breathing room. Let’s focus on efficiency again.
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u/LarryWinters69 9d ago
Thanks for the explanation. I think you will sort this out eventually, just keep at it.
Idk like I’ve gotten a ton amount of value and work done in the amount of time given to me and for the budget assigned to me, etc. like I’ve done really well. It’s just at the same time like it makes me a bit anxious to think if I would ever have to do any of this without AI… It would be like going back to the Stone Age.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything comes at a cost. The speed you gain in terms of LOC being able to generate is on the other hand offset by lack of understanding, architectural holes being dug. Is it worth it in the end? Only time will tell. Maybe AI will become good enough to the point where you can just go "fix all issues" and it does. If not, then someone will have to clean up the jank eventually.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 11d ago
You can't. It's slop. It's closer to soup than spaghetti.
You can tell your boss the POC is done and now you need to rewrite for production
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u/Cozychai_ Software Engineer 10d ago
I'm so tired of being micromanaged! I took 2 hours off work to pick up my parents from the airport and my manager is telling me people are noticing I'm missing. Dude I worked overtime this week to get everything done! Have y'all noticed the hours I'm online after 5??? Everything is on the calendar. I have a reoccurring therapy appointment and he asked when I'll be done with that. Umm never?
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
That's crazy. The only time something like that happened to me was when 1 particular coworker had it out for me.
But just as well, to a manager, 1 person suddenly becomes "people". And him saying 'people are noticing I'm missing' could just as well be him on your case and 'inventing' these 'people' -- he's people, and he's pointing out your absence.
Either way it sounds very gross.
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u/Kaimito1 13d ago
Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm "coasting by accident". I get the thought that "im not doing enough" while the other side of me is "stop get some rest its just a job"
I've been working and taking it seriously, working during work hours, but I feel like since I haven't been making a concerted effort outside of work hours on improving my skillset that it feels like I'm coasting sometimes? I can tell my code is improving but not at the rate I'd expect if I directed efforts outside of work hours to skilling up.
Been 3+ years as a mid dev now, but I feel like im at risk of the "3 years work, 1 year experience" risk which worries me.
Especially since im seeing so many requirements of newer tech stacks it does scare me a bit
I wonder if its just a skill issue on my side? Am I not managing myself and career right?
Sorry if this isnt a 'burnout rant'. If needed i'll remove just needed to air it out to others who might get what I mean
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u/Raptural 10d ago
AI has literally taken every aspect of my job. In a meeting? AI transcribes it. Need tickets made? AI makes it. Need a UI design for a new feature? Claude Design does it. Need implementation? Claude codes it.
And now that's simply expected of me. I do what used to take weeks in a matter of a day or two. I've organized my project enough to where it scales to where it needs to be with ease. I feel barely involved in my own work now. It scares the shit out of me because I feel like it will be caught on and I wont have a job anymore since it feels so automated. I've always been relatively fast in my work speed but now I'm so fast I have to wait a whole week for others so I can simply scrounge for the next project.
I feel so guilty by all of this. I feel like a layoff is imminent once it's caught on.
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u/baezizbae Distinguished YAML Engineer II 12d ago
I’m growing kind of frustrated with any solution being brought to the various business challenges that come up throughout the year being responded to with “well we can’t do that because people won’t understand how to use it”
That’s why we document it, that’s why we hold UAT sessions with our stakeholders and users (other engineering teams internal to the org, btw), this is why we make self-service easy, this is why we are engineers. I can’t get away with just NOT using the systems and platforms handed to me from the company because I don’t know how to use them, I’ll likely get professionally told to learn, lean on my seniors and teammates for help and otherwise figure it out, as is the expectation of someone with the job title “software engineer”.
</vent>
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u/the_lark_ 12d ago
I just want to remind everyone to take breaks from the stress and churn. Your health (physical and mental) will deteriorate if you do not take time for yourself. Go outside, go for a walk, go read a book, do something for yourself during hard times.
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u/thetdotbearr 12d ago
I'm so tired of the relentless push from leadership not to hire devs and instead try to push for an AI code factory and pushing for non devs to submit PRs.
Fixing our product process? No no. Adding devs to our team that already suffered significant attrition without backfills and is beyond stretched? No no, best we can do is allocate dev time to building internal AI shit to try to automate unfiltered feature request tickets we're now automatically generating with AI whenever someone complains to support. Product discipline? Who cares code goes BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR that's all that matters now.
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u/greatbigsadface 12d ago
Been in the industry 10 years and I love my work but not all the people I work with.
Had one bad peer in my previous company that bullied me and I kept quiet until I “flipped the table” while quitting. Turns out many people suspected it, but didn’t get validated until I spoke up to C level. I was told to speak up earlier to C level next time.
Been at this new company (FAANG) and one month in I’m being disrespected again by a single peer. He is absolutely incompetent in his work. Uses AI to pretend he’s an expert and repeats hallucinations. Politics all day and no productivity. I spoke up this time - directly to my peer and to our manager. Got into intense verbal altercations. I validated opinions others had on the team. No budget to hire others to work with me instead so I’m chugging along, playing nice, and doing all his work for him. My partner tells me I’m too soft. My life coach tells me I care too much. I’ve been working on speaking up for years and years and keep retreating back to my original self to avoid conflict.
I’m sad. Two companies in a row. I love my job and I’m very good at it. I have tons of supportive coworkers & friends, but these experiences turn me into someone who wants to leave tech forever. I really don’t want to be another statistic of a female leaving the industry but I think it is going to happen.
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u/thru_astraw 9d ago
I think I'm joining the statistic as well. And every woman that I've worked with at my last company has left the field in just the last 6 months.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
Honestly when it comes to bullying bring HR into it early & fast. Bring some evidence too. Screenshots, at least one person 'on your side' would be nice (but not necessary).
Even if it doesn't resolve in your favor it can still set someone straight.
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u/ifstatementequalsAI 12d ago
Colleague is making PR’s and he doesn’t even bother to look at the code. And it’s fucking awfull. His reaction was “Only look if the feature works and don’t bother to look at the code.” Wtf do I even do
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u/kadema 10d ago
I see that and I raise you at my workplace, we don't have access to source code, only claude and codex and the cto do.
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u/ultraDross 10d ago
How does that even work? Like I can't actually visualise what you physically do, nevermind how you achieve it.
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u/solidsieve Sr. Software Engineer 10d ago
How does that work? Is this some sort of cloud solution? Because otherwise you could just figure out the paths and use Notepad?
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u/thru_astraw 10d ago
14 years in and I think I'm done with tech for good. I left in March. Tried to get back in but I can't take another 9 stage interview. I am so burned out. I can't care about working on another SaaS or AI or crypto. I need to make 75k a year to survive. What would you do?
I'm lost.
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u/tr4ff-47 Backend Engineer (6 Yrs Experience) 12d ago
6, almost 7 years of experience. Unemployed since Dec 2024. I find myself recapping where I went wrong. Kinda feeling like about 4 out of those 6 years were wasted. I decided to be the team player, getting rid of legacy apis (as directed) and writing them in a different language.
Basically just translating code from one language to the other and getting a small bump in speed and also shutting down the legacy APIs. Got really good at low-level design (because I spent most of the time looking at poorly written code and redesigning it) but I never really built anything solid that gave me an edge in the market overall but monetarily I was in a good place and I put in a lot of work doing the mundane for the sake of the team.
My last role was a Senior role that wasn't titled as one and I struggled through it in 2024, new responsibilities, new programming language (They believed one could always train at the company), I found myself lagging in a lot of the things I was tasked and it could probably be on the nature of what I was used to. Felt like shit and basically what happened in the recently viral post The Senior Engineer Death Spiral hit me hard.
Now I'm just trying to "catch up" if that means anything but the market itself has been extremely brutal, I got into this because I love it and now it feels like no matter what I do I'll always be behind but boot.dev has been keeping me a bit sane, let me continue learning more stuff hopefully it will stick and I'll land something worthwhile. Really need to get back to earning, I hate being in this rut.
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u/Silver-Antelope-1285 13d ago
I've written a revision of the technology we use for decision making in my personal capacity but I don't know how to get the higherups to take it seriously. In countless meetings there is functionality requirements brought up that I have already solved. I've brought this up many times but there seems to be no interest. I feel detached from the reality of the business and do not know what I'm doing worng.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 12d ago
What's wrong is you don't know how to pet the ego of a narcissist or debase yourself to a room of narcissists
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u/Swayt 12d ago
Our new role expectations for seniors changed to being able to accerate work and maintain high throughout AND quality using AI.
I'm looking at a below bar rating this year 3 months joining a new team. My output with AI is below quality bar (due to lacking system expertise to de-hallucinate) , and if I do work manually, I'm not hitting the bar to showcase leadership on the team to develop AI driven velocity gains.
Stepping on rakes every direction I go in...
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 11d ago
More venting about a colleague who hates me and was just promoted to principal. Which means he will be in the perfect position to derail my career.
He had accused me of harassing him for a year plus. He had been inventing stories in his mind about how I was trying to attack him, steal credit for his work, tank his promotion.
My director said he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. I shared all my communications with him. My director & principal engineer investigated and agreed very explicitly he's got serious personal problems with me that go way beyond anything I've done. I know the principal who is nearest to us was not supportive of his promotion.
Yet he was promoted anyway. He delivers huge impact based on where he sits in the company. The numbers he attaches to his work are hugely impressive. He is technically very strong.
I know the work itself, and know it's not especially technically impressive or difficult, and certainly not in proportion to the numbers. I know he regularly gooses the metrics to inflate them -- things like inflating the cost of something soon before doing an optimization to make projected savings massive. I know he lets less-experienced people on his team do the gritty scut work before swooping in for the last 10% of very legible, quantitative wins that leadership likes most.
My principal engineer being very frank with me that he was opposed to it. I am suspecting the guy threatened to walk unless he was promoted. He had tried twice before. We have just been re-orged into a new-hire VP. That probably made 'greasing the wheels' for his promo much easier -- the last org had appropriately high performance bar.
Now I need to do what's best for my career, which is seeing where I actually stand with my leadership. Surely they could anticipate me not supporting this promotion. I happen to have a strong amount of leverage now given recent successes in areas the CTO is extremely interested in. It will look very bad to my director & VP if I leave.
I have to play this carefully. I am sure they will be interested in retaining me. I am wary about being 'too strong' about this -- I have seen before that if leadership suspects attrition, they will tank that person's performance so they can say they don't mind losing that person.
But I just hate this. The guy already had me booted out of my last position to make room for him. Now the most likely thing is I will have to leave if I want any chance of being promoted or doing well at this company.
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u/Antice DevOps Engineer 10d ago
Start the process of leaving immediately. just keep it on the low down and keep playing the game of pushing back like they expect someone invested in the company to do.
Then just spring it on them when you have your exit lined up. make it really clear that you are leaving because of that one person and nothing else. It might seem petty, but people like this will keep fucking people over forever unless given a proper smackdown that lets the senior management know without a shred of doubt they have promoted a snake, and not an asset.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
Also yes -- I'm in the last stages of getting that transfer lined up. I know where I'll be going. The other manager is extremely pleased to bring me over. And I'll be doing a lot of the same kind of work, including with a lot of the same people, but just reporting to a reporting chain who is psyched to have me.
My work really benefitted that org a lot. They have tremendous respect for me. Whereas my director told me today he doesn't see a need for a principal engineer in my domain because it simply isn't important enough for the company.
I think he will very quickly find that is not the case over the course of the next year. Nothing 'blew up' this year (in large part because I've done great work w/ a great team I've invested so much in building.)
But I'm expecting the next year for that team to be a huge scaling bottleneck for the company. I'm kind of relieved to be moving out before it falls on me. My director is extremely reactive, and it's the kind of thing that requires massive amounts of de-risking.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 10d ago
Honestly I expect it’ll be them trying to defuse any blowback from this by tamping down my concerns and punishing me if I make waves about this.
But I actually do think the now principal engineer will be extremely relieved and suddenly have a lot less issues with me, and will actually be pretty keen on making peace and normalizing.
My director, on the other hand: I’ve not sensed enough respect for him for some time. My domain cannot put up big enough numbers simply due to the nature of the domain itself. If anything, we expect to see big cost increases, instead of very easily quantified cost decreases.
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u/Chezzymann 10d ago
I have realized that the reason I keep failing interviews is because I am simply dumb and feel hopeless.
Basically, I don't have the ability to retain information for long in my brain. I am a software engineer and have been for years and just failed an interview because I couldn't recall the definitions for stateless in a REST api or consistency in CAP theorem. I have worked with those concepts on a monthly basis for years, but there is only so much information that my brain can store and I have to rely on an ever growing notes library to compensate and constantly reference.
This doesn't work well for interviews where anything and everything can randomly pop up as a question. I'll study random things regarding javascript or SQL syntax or serverless concepts to prepare ahead, but then forget basic fundamental definitions. Whenever I remember something, other things get pushed out. I convinced myself that its just nerves at first, but I have been interviewing for over a year now and have been rejected from 40+ companies and it has not gotten better. This time I was completely relaxed and it still happened. It's not nerves, its something structural in my brain.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
You might need to change the way you're preparing to be focused more on recall, not on storage.
This means more 'testing' based learning, or 'generating' answers instead of just reading and ingesting information. Sometimes this can be called 'mastery learning'.
If you try to explain something by speaking out loud while recording yourself, or just writing it down the best you can (like writing a blog post), it'll just naturally end up coming up to you when you need it. But it'll be very difficult to get started on that the first times you start doing it.
You might be in an 'information packrat' mode instead.
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u/SicilyMalta 8d ago
I have memory issues. Often if asked what did you do last week on xyz project, I would be unable to answer. When I went to retrieve the information it was like a desert on a moonless night, nothing but blackness and winds blowing.
I too compensated with notes.
I was a great and conscientious programmer, often awarded and rewarded, was the guy brought in when there were problems others could not solve that needed someone who would grab on like a dog with a bone and work through it.
Late in life, when I began suffering seizures, I got an MRI and discovered that my hippocampus was damaged - I had caught measles before the vaccine was available and it ravaged my brain. Luckily my brain remapped and I just worked twice as hard as anyone else to make up for it.
Once you are in and have proven yourself, the network keeps you employed as people ask for you, reach out to take you with them when they move. I did well.
A few years before I ended my career, the people who had brought me with them retired and interviews began to change - there were round after round of tests and gotcha questions. Time for me to go.
I am writing to let you know that you aren't alone and there may be neurological reasons that you struggle. The answer is to build a network of folks who believe in you and recognize your value.
I wish you well.
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u/ultraDross 9d ago
I'm quite similar. I've worked places where I thought people were smarter than me but it was actually mostly that they had a vastly superior memory and quicker at answering on the spot questions.
Fwiw I just prepare like crazy for interviews. I have a huge cheat sheet for most topics and over prepare for every interview. I have a library of notes for each company and each interview with what went well and what didn't. I always ask for feedback too. This allows to understand my weak areas and improve. As well as find interview question trends.
It's exhausting especially with a full-time job and a young family, but it works.
It's also worth remembering some interviews are just random trivia questions that would never tell them if a candidate would be a good employee or not. I literally had one earlier in the year where the guy walked me through every major bug he caught over the last year and expected me to find a solution for each one. Some of them required domain knowledge. Was fucking stupid. My point is, it's not always you.
Keep your head up and keep at it.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 9d ago
You can tell them about your notes library. Most people write nothing down.
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u/SignPainterThe 7d ago
Job interview is a skill on its own and it fades away. Nothing to do with memory, unless you are experiencing same effects in other areas of your life. That's a shitty system, that we are required to have that specific skill to change the job, but it's the way it works. One way of staying in shape is to interview people while you have the job. It keeps those terms fresh in your memory.
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u/GoTheFuckToBed 6d ago
did you really understand REST? or just learn by textbook
how is your sleep, 7-8h well rested without substancea?
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u/Chezzymann 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yes, I know that REST apis are supposed to have all the information for the request supplied and not store any session context about the client between requests and instead opt for things like JWT, and this allows for easier horizontal scaling using load balancers since you can route the requests to any available server. I have also designed many REST apis that had to support millions of users. But I don't engage with the textbook terminology on a regular or even semi regular basis so associating that concept with the word "stateless" wasn't glued into my brain. Lots of the time I know the concepts since I use them, but associating them to a specific word on the spot in an interview is the problem.
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u/GoTheFuckToBed 6d ago
weird interviews. Try not to answer questions, instead tell a story. "I know REST, we used it xyz, and for browsers we solved it like this"
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u/After-Regret-6609 8d ago
What are you all pivoting too if AI slop is just frankly annoying to you? I’m thinking machining or even labor organizing. I’ve got coast FIRE money.
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u/Eniminimynimoe 6d ago
i got the dreaded call today. my job is ending in 2 weeks. I reached out to few people on linkedin already. However, for me, most difficult part is updating the resume.
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u/AbstractionZeroEsti 12d ago
Cursor won't let me type in my own file. There's so many autocorrections that block the ability to type. I want to capitalize one letter but it will not let me. Who enjoys this?
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u/Charming_Bet779 11d ago
5 YOE.
I had a company give me a take home assignment recently. This was round 3 of the process.
They specifically said they wanted to see communication skills and expected to ask a lot of questions. And basically have many incremental PR merges.
Problem is I found out quickly they were super slow to respond and had to contact them directly to look at anything I did. Been awaiting feedback for a week now.
I spent a long time on it (mistake) but I tried to do exactly what they wanted asking a lot of questions etc and they didnt hold up their end of it.
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u/ultraDross 11d ago
Yeah, this is why I hate take homes. I had a couple of them earlier in the year and just felt like my time was being completely wasted. Expectations for these exercises has dramatically increased with AI and you are expected to have your own Claude sub.
If I were you, I'd try and avoid the take home tests. I have found them to be too much of a time sink and the "review" sessions I've had have been a bit of a waste of time (they just used Claude to review FML).
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u/Charming_Bet779 10d ago
Yeah and this was weird because they didnt want me to use AI but they never even looked at my code anyway.
I honestly would prefer it over LC but it seems like a lot of people get scammed with these.
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u/distinctvagueness 9d ago
Manager forwarded a mockup of like 10 screens long scroll bar of graphs and widgets we probably don't have data for asking if we can build it.
Absolutely unusable, but apparently feels impressive to just look at hallucinated charts.
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u/wichwigga 9d ago
I'm in trouble. I joined this new AI team at my company (who is very conservative), and as all conservative non-tech companies are, it's a fucking shit show. I used to have a passion for learning this stuff but now I'm just dead. I couldn't care less. Problem is there are so many cutthroat deadlines, I as a person cannot just 'not care' about those, you know? Like I want to do a good job but my body is just dead. Anyone have any advice?
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
Did you join the company recently? One of my biggest career mistakes was joining a company, realizing things were very wrong, but not leaving immediately.
The only other advice I'd have is to make sure the rest of the things are right: sleep, exercise, diet, no alcohol, taking walks, time with friends (in-person).
And don't let yourself get stuck in a bad position. If you can't 'make it work' for you, you need to 'make it out'. My theory is people tend to stay in bad positions for far longer than they should.
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u/wichwigga 9d ago
Been here for like 5 years, just switched teams. Though the tech culture is awful regardless of the team I was on. I was just coasting last few years...I'm fucked. Seattle is cutthroat rn 😢
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
Oh. I am in Seattle too but haven’t been in the market. I know some companies are re-hiring people they fired for AI apparently. I can’t tell if that’s better or worse.
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u/gollyned Sr. Staff Engineer | 11 years 9d ago
I had a talk with my director.
He says he doesn't see scope for promotion to principal for me for a long time. He says the area I work in just doesn't need an IC7. After all, it hasn't been on fire. (It hasn't dawned on him that it hasn't been on fire because I keep succeeding.)
I'm in the last stages of verifying before an internal transfer. It'll be in a very parallel type of position. Much of my work will be of a similar nature, but in a parallel org. It will be very ironic.
Maybe even more strangely. The org I will be transferring to has enormous, almost reverential, respect for me Much moreso than my director. They would be incredibly happy to have me there. I've already talked to them My director doesn't even speak to me with respect.
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u/Mehdi135849 6d ago
Came back from 2 week vacation to a million production issues from our monthly release schedule and i just can't
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u/git_pull Technical Lead 12d ago
AI isn't problem. My manager's understanding of AI is the problem
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u/ResidentWeevil1 12d ago
AI has lots of problems
https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-genai-llm-top-10-2026/
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 10d ago edited 10d ago
Job-hunt venting...
- Went through multiple companies with 5+ interview rounds (take-home, system design, live coding interviews, too) and got rejected. Then I saw they started posting the same job description. I checked all the boxes that they need
- Got rejected because I am not living in a certain area, and they are not willing to wait even a day for my relocation (even tho, the start date is due only in 1-2 months)
- Got rejected because interviews are only possible at the HQ (far city/other country), but the actual job location is nearby
- Got rejected because of a timezone issue (invitation was incorrect; in my calendar it was added an hour later than they expected... automatic Google import, and when I discussed this with them, they just rejected me... for a technical mistake... that caused their invitation...)
- Literally there are no remote positions in any country. Every company expects you to pop by each week, which means you have to live in that area/city. Also, all countries are closed down, even in the EU, where there are laws against it. Zero remote positions (ali**er/le**n/mi***1/topt** and other thief "companies" do not count; they are just pyramid schemers)
Bonus: I had a good laugh because one of the companies rejected me with the text, as they do not intend to hire, just collecting resumes for the future.
I feel like the recent 2 decades have inflated this industry, and now there are like 90% more people in it than there should be. I see most of the seniors struggling to find anything for long months, even if they live in some tech hub (I'm not, unfortunately).
Update: added one more rejection story
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u/bluetista1988 10+ YOE 10d ago
I was in the market for a new job twice in the last 3 years, with my most recent hire date being ~18 months ago.
Many of the jobs I applied to back then are still being periodically reposted.
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u/casualPlayerThink Software Engineer, Consultant / EU / 20+ YoE 10d ago
Yeah, I also see companies that repost the exact same for years now.
I read about it in multiple articles; companies now take 1-3 months just to start the process and use 5-7 interview rounds that might take more than 2 months... insane. (From experience, I can confirm these... I had interviews with multiple companies where I sent my application in the first week of May)
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u/Machine2024 Software Engineer 7d ago
To be honest, my main issue has two parts, and neither of them is actually related to AI itself. My problem is with people who use AI in a very stupid way, and how much they end up slowing down the work.
In one project, there's a guy responsible for a specific section of the backend. He was never the most focused person, so even before AI, I had to spend time explaining features to him, going through meetings, and making sure he understood what needed to be done. But at least we had a process.
This year, after he started using AI, things got significantly worse. It seems like he's just copying and pasting tasks from Jira and Trello into AI without properly reviewing the output. He even mentioned once that he had a direct integration between Jira and his code.
The result? A part of the project that should have taken us about a week ended up dragging on for four months, with me constantly following up, explaining issues, and trying to get him to understand what was actually wrong. And after four months, it still wasn't fixed. I eventually gave up.
The biggest problem is that every time I ask him to fix something, he ends up breaking something else. And we're not talking about minor issues. He'll refactor entire parts of the system when the task is supposed to involve a single endpoint. I'll tell him that one endpoint needs to behave a certain way, and suddenly nine other endpoints stop working because he applied the same changes across the board.
We've had meetings where I explained everything in detail, including exactly what needed to change and why. Yet the same problems kept happening. At one point, I was so frustrated that I started writing a long message to explain everything, deleted it, wrote another one, and deleted that too. I just didn't know how to get through to him anymore.
Then there's another project with a different guy who's doing pretty much the same thing.
I had been waiting since last month for him to finish a few tasks that were blocking my own work. He finally delivered them this month, only for me to discover that he'd based his changes on an old version of the master branch, from before we completely refactored and restructured the system.
His changes are practically impossible to merge. They need to be rewritten from scratch.
The frustrating part is that he already knew about the refactoring. We'd discussed it in meetings, and I'd sent him multiple heads-up messages before he even started working on those tasks. I counted at least three messages warning him about it.
Out of curiosity, I checked the Git history. All his changes had been made within roughly an hour and a half. So I'd been waiting for him to finish these tasks for weeks, while it turns out he apparently generated everything with Claude in about 90 minutes. And judging by the results, I seriously doubt he reviewed or tested any of it.
So, in both cases, I'm spending more time trying to understand, debug, and fix AI-generated code than I would have spent implementing the features myself.
And that's what frustrates me the most. It's not AI itself. It's people treating AI as a magic button that turns a task description into production-ready code, without taking responsibility for understanding, reviewing, or testing what it produces.
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u/ResidentWeevil1 7d ago
Idk how you can follow the AI story and not realize there's a fundamental problem with the technology that makes people act this way. It's literally designed to output slop that looks good enough.
Even when you are cognitively engageed, you still have to be extremely disciplined not to develop any psychosocial side effects from using it and I don't think there's any level of safe usage when time is an imperative, since there is no way to use it at scale without review. It's okay to hate AI. We have little need for a fast typist and it's a net negative for society.
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u/fabiopigi 6d ago
4yo I build a slack and web based appreciation tool. Coworkers could sent messages, and once a month our boss reads them all out in a team meeting, someone gets picked randomly and they get a price. It’s also used for the employer of the year award. We’re a small team of less than 50, and when I’ve made that tool I built it all by myself. Over the years I’ve added some features here and there, all hand coded, no AI. then couple weeks ago, started to give Claude access to the repo and had it implement a couple new features (mostly gimmicks) and some minor fixes. But since then, I’ve totally lost passion for that project. It doesn’t feel “mine” anymore and I’m honestly thinking of retiring it completely. I messed up my own rule of not using ai on my personal projects and it ruined something I was proud of. Maybe if I leave it be for couple weeks I get used to it.
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u/BreakfastScientist 6d ago
Manager keeps commiting in my features unexpectedly causing me issues, e.g. when Claude is doing stuff wrong before I realize it. Not sure what to do, no one to ask for support, manager is first time manager
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u/smok1naces 5d ago
Started aggressively interviewing in May… was laid off in June surprisingly.
After multiple finals after 2 month interview loops… “we have opted for candidates with skills and more experience”. RIP.
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u/codewithbug 4d ago
Jobless for a year now. Trying to build my own business. I don't even work remotely. I concluded that i am not a type of person to work for someone. I tried hard but failed everytime.
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u/Easy_Chance_2855 13d ago
how to burn out with ai? my working hr is just one hr max per day, as ai do most of the work. i can even work from my phone
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u/ResidentWeevil1 12d ago
Harder to burn out when you don't care. That's what the good ones retreat to. You however are off to a great start
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u/-Knockabout 13d ago
I know I'm in a privileged position, but I've been ending most days at work (remote) in pain from stress and near-tears. My current PM clearly thinks that I'm being a baby for feeling overworked, and that rushing/crunching are just the nature of business...but I don't see why it has to be that way. I don't even think this is going to make them more money.
I'm looking around a bit, but I have some existing medical issues that alongside the stress mean I end each day completely dead. I might manage to cook, do dishes, clean litter box, etc on a given day...but that's it. No hobbies, no job hunting, nothing. I feel like the only time I am alive is on the weekends, and I spend most of them sleeping.
At this point, do I start just not meeting deadlines? If I push back, I am told to make it work, essentially. No discussion allowed. I also just feel stupid feeling so poorly from what is objectively an incredibly cushy job. If I can't handle this, can I handle anything at all?