The Collapse of Job Enthusiasm in Software Engineering

[@Charles-ew9hs]

i felt like when in Software engineering, it feels like nothing you do is never enough and things are just going to get worse because things become more demanding and companies want things to be done faster.

[@yohannestz9893]

this is exactly how I feel

[@alpaca_growing_kit]

It's just depressing a lot of the time. You get a "small" feature that is incredibly vaguely specced but takes 50 file rewrites to achieve properly because the codebase is a mess that nobody really understands. PO is convinced it's just a small thing because lo and behold, the person doesn't understand code. When you send off the PR and someone reviews it you can hear them sigh loudly across the room because it's just too much.

[@StephenSamuelsen]

totally agree. I find it hard to appreciate the things I make because often time I never really hear feedback or its just a bug fix and that's it.

[@Charles-ew9hs]

@@StephenSamuelsen probably because they don' t know what you're actually doing, thats what they hired u for.

[@gubsyn59]

i feel this is not only in software engineering but engineering in general. it's so difficult to deal with bad managers and this sense of urgency that is always present in engineering. everything is for today, but it is because someone did things wrong before or it was not very well planned and now combine it with the organizations wanting more and more from each employee then you have the perfect receipt for burnout

[@automatewithjonathan1870]

Well put. I cant stand managers setting deadlines or asking for delivery of things before they fully state what it is that's being delivered. But then act like im dodging their questions. I feel like there's a lot of people in managerial roles that have no business being there.

[@StephenSamuelsen]

an always lingering sense of urgency leads to burnout unbelievably fast. probably one of the reasons why turnover rates are what they are now today

[@batuhanaydn4592]

It's not easy to feel enthusiastic when you deal with badly written legacy code, an uninteresting domain, insufficient coworkers, unfair treatment and misjudgments from like team lead and managers.

[@Sasquatch89537]

I talked to my previous boss about this, and he mentioned that something to keep in mind is we're doing hard stuff in software, and stuff that not very many other people have done, especially in history... I try to remind myself of that on month 3 of release week. Take the easy wins and work on something fun and that fire comes back!

[@_jamesdphillips]

For me, I feel that the industry has just all interest in thinking big, innovating, and trying new methods. When I started in the mid-2000s teams were small, everyone was passionate, founders were technical, and decisions were mostly designer and engineering led. Today we’re inundated with clueless managers, no-one seems passionate beyond receiving outsized pay cheques, and every novel idea is killed in its crib. Beyond that, work from home has further killed coworkers passion, work gets done slower, people stepping on one another toes, and yet we somehow seem to have MORE meaningless meetings now. I’ve been daydreaming about changing careers, or even going back to school. May have to before it’s too late.

[@StephenSamuelsen]

yeah I've thought about switching to something else sometimes. Idk what though. It would have been interesting to see what software dev was like in mid 2000s, ive only known dev work as pretty much how it is now in todays world of "Agile" programming which does not seem good for the devs doing the work

[@bigbao9843]

Good vid, publicly speaking to others that I'm burnt out, exhausted helps me to recover quickly for me.

[@demetrik8642]

Currently dealing with this right now

[@alek5248]

Love following along, really like your somber takes and attitude. Feels like a running contemplation. Love it

[@Roniczka]

bro, you just burnt out by working on project that not interesting for you. make a pause, reflex, and choose company that working with interesting domain and product, not because they have nice office or high salary.

[@xtraa]

Feels like all the Palo Alto enthusiasm and all Star Trek hopes that got us in pole position just got killed and blocked in evolving with that wave of stupidity and sellouts, peaking with Trumps re-election and AI stealing our creativity to sell it back to us.

[@steflift5165]

@@hyperadapted emotionally, in that (Palo Alto) part of the country, it would appear to be

[@bigbao9843]

TF is Trump doing here. He's making AI great I swear.

[@raccoons_stole_my_account]

I think this is due to the illusion that has been built for entire 2010 decade that software is "kind of" work but not really. We're all just in entless party with all the games and all the toys etc. Any job, even the one you're best at is JUST A JOB. First of all it is just a way to earn money. And second it is an activity you will be tired of. No questions, no other options. No, working insanely stressful constantly changing day job for decades followed by moonlighting side projects into early hours of the morning is not going to be forever. Software engineering is a very young indstry and what you are describing is this industry hitting 35. Seeing first gray hairs. Realising that kids and retirement are real and you will be dealing with it. And that new react library means fuck all in the grand scheme of things.

[@StephenSamuelsen]

yeah I could care less now about new libraries lol