Software developers are not okay
42 points by aloys
42 points by aloys
being a software developer is getting more and more depressing for every day that goes by.
Yeah. And not being a software developer just seems not even existing at all
think about a possible future outside the tech industry proper
? Like what, go to grad school for math? Yikes. Anyone wanna spot me 150k for law school?
When the productivity multiplier arrives and instead gets used as a workforce divisor, it’s hard to not feel completely zero-valued in this world
I'm considering becoming a teacher.
I went from education (community college CS) back to industry because teaching in the early bits of the LLM age was soul-crushingly depressing and stressful. I doubt things have gotten better since then. :-/
depending on the field (more or less hands-on) it may or may not help to have a prepared response to "chatgpt is a much better teacher than you".
Me too. If it wasn’t for the required 3 month residency period id be going for my masters in education right now.
Math is probably not where I'd go - they're coming for that as well.
the future seems to be whatever manual work we can find where physical robots are still too expensive or clumsy.
I'm trying to figure that out myself. I'm oscillating between being convinced that I can't see myself doing anything else, and that I can't stay. I dropped out of college to do software dev, so I really feel like I screwed myself.
Even as a developer who's independent for now, I'm still affected by this. I don't like seeing my friends suffer. And seeing folks who've demonstrated no prior interest in, say, classic Mac OS suddenly churning out slop is just depressing.
As a counterpoint to all the AGENTS.md files I see nowadays, and also as a symbolic act of defiance, I added a HUMANS.md to my main code repo.
Writing as a self-expression
Sometimes helps address depression
Putting into words my sadness
Counterbalances the madness
Rhyming verses, cadence bardic
Free of curses, yet cathartic.
I can't promise "That'll show 'em!" —
Still, I hope you like my poem. :-)
I have seen too much legacy code, with weird idiosyncratic behaviors within hard-to-inspect systems, where few (if anyone) understands the system, to believe that "AI writes all the code" will replace all developers.
The future software engineer looks more like a lawyer to me: much fewer of us, each serving multiple clients, billing insane amounts in 6 minute increments.
We need to adapt to this new era. I share the same stress and dislike for the situation; however, as mentioned in the post itself, I do not have enough savings to stop producing software for money. I am barely recovering from my last burnout.
I am skeptical of building this entire argument on "I keep seeing videos about this". For one, that's how the algorithm works; if you watch "this sucks I quit" content it will find more of it for you. Secondly, people whose jobs don't suck and who aren't quitting aren't making videos about that fact; and if they were, it's well known that the algorithm prioritizes negative content, so you wouldn't see it.
My biggest problem with the current scenario is that we have so much demand for software improvement and new software. Companies just don't want to invest on it anymore, it is a kind of paralysis where no new great app, no new amazing service is create anymore, competition doesn't exist and big tech is making whatever they can to protect current revenue growth by enshitfication.
If we all agree enshitfication is real, why the incumbents are not losing users and money?
Because no one has the will or the capital to make upstarts to compete with them. Well, not no one, but not enungb to really take many of the users and money.
For me, none of these larger tech companies were ever nice places to work to begin with. Which is why I spent my career trying to avoid them (though I ended up at several big players temporarily due to buy outs).
I fully believe these terrible places are worse now. But I don't think they were ever nice places to work.