9 ms·

Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

111 points by codyde 4y ago

bluedino 4y ago
Nurses, teachers, airline workers, hospitality employees, and now developers. We can't all just get tired of working and quit.
- _moof 4y ago
  Sounds like our system has become unsustainable.
- t-3 4y ago
  > We can't all just get tired of working and quit. Yes, we can.
the_gipsy 4y ago
Since always
codyde 4y ago
Full disclosure - I work at LaunchDarkly (I look after our DevRel team) - but this is a topic I'm super passionate about also, so though it was worth sharing out. We talk about burnout a lot - but what I really appreciate about posts like this (and the report that it references) is that it gives some tangible examples of where that burnout comes from - and hopefully some paths to mitigating it. Hope you find the read interesting!
- ranger_danger 4y ago
  I'm not burned out and would in fact love a part-time/freelance gig (I mainly do C/C++ and python but wear many hats)... however I'm completely unsatisfied with the current options for finding such work because it always seems like a race to the bottom against less skilled candidates from other countries who will always undercut your pricing and the companies never seem to care. What do you suggest?
- 999900000999 4y ago
  This is still an advertisement.
- kiawe_fire 4y ago
  I can confirm that, anecdotally, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of the reasons for my burnout over the last couple years. The past several years at my company have been particularly focused on “quick and dirty results” that I predict will end badly, and so far it has every time, leaving me feeling responsible despite management decisions that ignored the consequences and recommendations I laid out. It gets old. So, shortly before the pandemic, I took initiative to work extra nights and weekends to build a working prototype of a new version of our core internal app, that would ultimately let us go faster and would transform the way we communicate and give us unprecedented flexibility with our clients. It was passed off as “that’s nice, but let’s get {x} out the door first”. It quickly became apparent that there was, and will always be, another {x} that needs to get out the door before we do anything else. Having more autonomy and trust that I might actually have a solid grasp on what projects will yield the biggest returns, and being able to commit my focus to those tasks, and being able to hold my managers to the same accountability that they hold me to when making decisions, all would go a long way to improving my job satisfaction AND most importantly, improving our product and our value that we provide to our clients.
CoastalCoder 4y ago
> A report from software platform LaunchDarkly revealed that nearly 7 in 10 developers (67%) have left a job due to pressure around minimizing deployment errors or know someone who has. [emphasis mine] Without knowing more about the connectedness of software-developer relationships, I have no idea how widespread the problem is.
- vasco 4y ago
  That sentence could've been re-written to the equivalent: > Launchdarkly wants you to remember that they have a product that intends to help with deployment errors The rest is window dressing.
  - _jal 4y ago
    "A report from Obscure Gray Corporation demonstrated that more than 8 in 10 people had no idea who they are."
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > pressure around minimizing deployment errors ... while not being given any tools or time or support to do so ...
visviva 4y ago
> creating a crisis for recruiters Weird angle. Isn't the actual story the high levels of burnout in developers, rather than the inconvenience this creates for recruiters? The article is more balanced, but why lead with this?
- willcipriano 4y ago
  Recruiters are just barely part of the managerial class so they are more easily emphasized with by others in that class.
- ok123456 4y ago
  "Won't someone please think of the recruiters!"
  - altdataseller 4y ago
    I know a few recruiters who made close to $1 million in fees in the past few years. I dont feel sorry for most of them
    - mym1990 4y ago
      Probably not a great representation for the whole field in general.
- cjbgkagh 4y ago
  Reminds me of; ‘Loads of men are killed in war, women most affected’
  - georgeecollins 4y ago
    Or more commonly: Stocks decline today on news of unemployment. I sure feel sad for those stocks.
    - rob74 4y ago
      Actually, when a company announces layoffs, its stock tends to rise (unless it's in such a bad shape that even major "cost cutting" can't make the punters more optimistic).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jongjong 4y ago
I don't get it. I have a stellar resume and a proven track record in the public domain (open source but I've been struggling to find work and have accepted short term work for half my normal rate. There are so few opportunities, I had to switch to teaching people how to code.
- halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
  The market is still red hot, not sure what you're doing wrong.
- acchow 4y ago
  This goes against the feeling I have of the market (nonstop recruiters). At which point in time did you feel the market had more opportunities? 2020? 2017?
  - Silhouette 4y ago
    I get seemingly endless messages from recruiters too but I don't think that's a very useful metric for the state of the market. Probably 1/3 of the roles they send to me don't look anything like my profile at all. At least another 1/3 match technically but are offering nowhere near what I already make. Of the final 1/3 or less that aren't immediately ruled out I am probably interested enough to respond to maybe half and at least 80% of those turn out to be snake oil one way or another. So maybe 3% of the recruiter emails I receive might actually be a real opportunity that I'd consider exploring. And that's before even speaking with a potential employer/client to see what the role really is and whether we're any kind of fit at all culturally.
- EarthLaunch 4y ago
  Maybe it's due to syntax errors?
  - jongjong 4y ago
    Haha good one! Unfortunately the edit button on HN disappears after some time. Missing brackets are among the easiest issues to find while coding.
nrmitchi 4y ago
> A report from software platform LaunchDarkly revealed that nearly 7 in 10 developers (67%) have left a job due to pressure around minimizing deployment errors or know someone who has. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the statement, but this is a biased-as-hell source for this statement given that LaunchDarkly's product is feature-flag-management (to minimize deployment errors).
- kbuchanan 4y ago
  It also bends credulity. It suggests 7 of 10 developers work for companies (or know someone who has) that fail to prevent onslaughts of their developers from leaving over deployment problems.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    That seems pretty realistic. Do 7 in 10 of us know employers with headache creating deployment practices? Probably.
  - chc 4y ago
    The "know someone how has" clause seems like it muddies the apparent purpose of the question (to gauge how common this is). 15/15 developers on my team either are me or know someone who is me, therefore being me is extremely common? There could be a small handful of people bouncing around from company to company for this reason and a large number of people at those companies would be able to answer "yes."
- synu 4y ago
  60% of the time, it works every time.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  The question from LaunchDarkly, btw, was as follows (asked to "500 software developers across a range of industries and job titles"): > Have you or someone you worked with ever left a job due to pressures from over minimizing mistakes (i.e. avoiding rollbacks or failed deployments)?[0] ...Which I also would not be comfortable summarizing as "minimizing deployment errors" [0] https://resources.launchdarkly.com/ebooks/release-assurance-report https://resources.launchdarkly.com/ebooks/release-assurance-...
rhacker 4y ago
It points to developer apathy. I sometimes wonder if that's just the global feeling at the moment. Everyone that's working on widget X suddenly doesn't care because of all the crises going on. Rampant inflation, extreme inequality. By continuing to work on widget x they are just supporting more of the same. Think people want society to change a bit before moving forward with being happy.
- pojzon 4y ago
  I like to think IT is mostly inhabited by really smart ppl. One thing really smart ppl have in common is that they see the world as it is. They are aware of thr glaring issues incompetence has brought upon this world. And that causes depression. Looking at the future there is literally nothing to be happy about. Ppl are slowly preparing for civil wars, power outages, food shortage and worse. And those are ppl you would often consider pretty layed back about life in general.
  - SantalBlush 4y ago
    >One thing really smart ppl have in common is that they see the world as it is. This is completely false. Isaac Newton spent more time studying alchemy and biblical prophecy than he did on mathematics and physics.
    - Aeolun 4y ago
      One could argue that at the time those weren’t as far removed as they are now. Newton mostly figured out how things work, not necessarily why.
    - trinsic2 4y ago
      Are you saying alchemy and spirituality is not as important as science? If that's the case, good luck with that view. Understanding and contemplating on both creates a Wisdom. Intelligence can only take you so far, the world is way bigger than science could ever be capable of containing.
      - 4y ago
strict9 4y ago
Not a surprise. When senior devs leave an org due to mismanagement or other reasons, it creates more work for those left behind. And it's become extremely difficult to find replacement for the seniors that left. Senior devs are nowhere to be found through regular applicant pipelines. They seem to be leaving as a result of reaching out to friends/former colleagues. Also relevant: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812864 (Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006252 (Ask HN: Where are all the senior front end engineers?)
- Sevii 4y ago
  People really don't talk about landslide risk enough. A project with a high tech debt or operations burden is at high risk of losing enough people to zero out the project. Lose one or two people at the same time and suddenly the rest of the team is in an untenable situation. Maybe they were thinking casually about leaving before, but now that their burden has increased by 30% its more serious. Then you just keep losing people until the project fails. Can be basically impossible to restaff the project.
  - marktangotango 4y ago
    Indeed, I've seen two instances of this. First, early in my career, a company was acquired and had a layoff leaving a skeleton crew in IT and development. People remaining did not have the knowledge or experience to deploy or maintain the applications. That company had a week of down time where business just halted. No purchases were made, nothing previously purchased shipped, no calls to customer service were answered. The second time was when I was an engineering manager and 3/4 of our team quit for high pay within 6 months. Our application was a line of business app with a few thousand users. Our release dates went from being delayed a few months to over a year. The companies reputation was horrid, and hiring was impossible. My boss, a Director, sent me support people who could spell "java" and expected me train them from zero. I left that disaster soon after. So yes, the risk is real, and the result can be calamitous.
  - 4y ago
JTbane 4y ago
My biggest source of burnout is really from mundane failures in processes: flaky tests that fail for no good reason, and obscure bugs that are hard to reproduce. These things take up 90% of my time and I feel like a code janitor, rather than a developer. Any company dealing with burnout should consider this.
- altdataseller 4y ago
  Its also part of your job to be part of the solution and help fix them. Why are the tests flaky? Maybe you can spend a day and fix it? Obscure bugs - ok they are hard to reproduce, but if it was easy, they would probably outsource your job to some Indian developer
  - icedchai 4y ago
    If the test is flaky, the first thing you should do it disable it (until you can fix it), so it stops breaking the build and slowing down everyone else. A flaky test is worse than no test. I used to work at a place where people who just "re-run the build" several times until they got lucky. Eventually I just disabled those tests in one of my unrelated PRs.
- claytonjy 4y ago
  How should a company address this? They can provide developers cover and time to improve those processes, but that delays product goals at a time when those goals are more important to the ongoing survival of the business than at any point in the past decade+. If companies wouldn't let developers fix stuff when money was easy, how will they now that money is hard? To make matters slightly worse, I increasingly get the sense that outside of HN, most devs will jump through all the flaming hoops of bad process, accumulating all the little burns, without ever considering it doesn't have to be this way. Improving internal dev workflows gets more pushback from devs than management in my experience, which makes me feel like a crazy person.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    I am someone who routinely pushes back on improvements and fights them. Why? 1. I get held accountable for delays. The Scum Master will whine to me about "why is X taking so long?" and I capitulate as I do not care. 2. Production bugs are blameless. The team gets blamed as a whole and it gets blamed, particularly at one job, on the non-existence of a team lead. Basically, incentives at two of my jobs make me want to turn every ticket into a production failure. But this is me sacrificing everything about the code and the infrastructure to keep schedules happy and that is because I have no intrinsic need to do good work at my throwaway jobs. It makes things miserable for the other developers who do care though.
georgeecollins 4y ago
Oh the poor recruiters! That's a group I have little sympathy for as employer and as an employee. To be fair to the article, it real seems to be more about developer burn out, which I have sympathy for. If you have trouble attracting talent, maybe think about how you are treating your talent?
- malfist 4y ago
  You mean those recruiters might have to spam me more with "last chance" emails?
wnolens 4y ago
Oh no, poor recruiters.
seneca 4y ago
This is thinly disguised advertising.
ravenstine 4y ago
Not only is there burn-out on the job, but could there also be interviewing burn-out? In the software industry, you're doing yourself a disservice by staying at a company for more than 3 years. Even 2 years is pushing it, that is unless you are seeing wage increases that match or exceed inflation. And even if you haven't reached that amount of time, it's smart to start applying and interviewing earlier so you can have a better pick by the time you're ready to get out. I know some on HN will deny this, but I've seen enough resumes and LinkedIn profiles that demonstrate otherwise. Hence, many of us are in a sort of medium-frequency cycle of interviewing. Applying for jobs becomes a job in and of itself, and as someone going through that process right now, I think the process has gotten much worse. Not only are you likely to go through 3 to 4 rounds of interviews for a given employer, but now you've got to do take-home assignments. Most of the time, the estimated duration they provide is an understatement, especially if you actually want to show your best work. I've had 3 so far that wanted me to do a take-home assignment that they said could take several hours and even days. I refuse to do any that are estimated to be longer than 2 hours at this point. The other person is likely an introvert and sucks at interviewing, which can ruin your chances if they perceive the interview as not having gone well. In either case, you probably won't be hired at that place anyway. Now multiply that experience by around 30% of the applications you've sent out. To have enough options on the table, you've got to send out at least 40+ applications (unless you've got a connection at a company already). Not only are you having to fight off all those other applicants, but you're spending a lot of your free time doing so. Let's not forget the hours you'll also now have to spend hammering through Leetcode so you don't look like a complete fool in front of unrealistic problems you wouldn't be expected to complete in under an hour in real life. Who actually doesn't dread facing this every few years? I want to work in my field, but part of me also feels like saying "screw this" in favor of living in a van down by the river. Having experience might land you a better salary, but when you switch companies it's like being a junior developer all over again. I can only imagine how much it sucks for someone who has a family and kids.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  I have a family and kid and hobbies and an already-demanding (time-wise) job and can absolutely say that the current high-friction hazing ritual style of tech interviewing dissuades me from looking around, even though I know I could make more by going through Thunderdome again. Even with recruiters reaching out and starting the process, interviewing is a grueling “second full-time job”.
mabbo 4y ago
I think it's more complex than just "burned out". If Shopify had laid me off on Tuesday (as it did to a few great people I worked with) I'd have been given 16 weeks severance. I doubt I would have looked for a new job for at least 6 months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. I've been paid so well over the last decade in this industry that I don't have debts anymore (car, home, credit cards). I don't spend much or live extravagantly. I have a safety net of money. And I have a 5-month old daughter that I want to spend more time with. I'm not burned out, but I also don't really need to work right now. I could get by a long time just playing with my kid without needing to write a line of code. Maybe I could even downsize, move out of the city, go live somewhere with a lower cost of living and a quieter lifestyle. If I ran out of money, I could get a remote developer job in a week or two, even if it didn't pay as much as I make today. I don't think I'm unique in this feeling. Developers are free in ways so few others are.
- hinkley 4y ago
  Six years ago I took about eight months off. Didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped by half, but I’m almost at the point I could do that again. But at some point I should be hinting if early retirement instead, so I probably won’t. Live below your means folks. Especially if you think your ethics actually matter to you, instead of something you do for theater.
Aeolun 4y ago
Developers: “Cumbersome processes are contributing to burnout.” Clueless VP: “It’s remote that’s at fault! If everyone were just in the same location, and we could do team-building exercises then everything would be fine!” Not sure what the author of the article was thinking putting those two statements next to each other.
throwawaysleep 4y ago
I am overemployed. That is, I work three full time remote jobs. At all three orgs, there are developers rapidly burning out and the biggest problem is that despite major organizational crises, ranging from mass layoffs to mass turnover and the inability to fill half the seats on any given team (especially with team leads and senior talent) to enormous projects that have crept up in scope from 8 people to 60, there has been no acknowledgement by management that anything is even wrong. At the company with layoffs, we are still working on product roadmaps from before, but now entire teams responsible for certain product dependencies are gone. At the company that cannot fill half the seats, there are no truly senior devs and only two juniors and one intermediate/senior (me and I am not willing to fill a senior role). Our skip manager literally said "assume we have a senior dev or team lead for planning." They have not been able to hire one for 6 months now. At the company with the project exploding in scope, it can take several weeks to get a meeting with key people as there are just so many wires crossing. Not even a "we understand that X is not working" from management. Just them repeating goals and deadlines in all orgs.
wonderwonder 4y ago
Its just the grind. Show up everyday, do the same thing, build Widget X or Widget Y. Sit in meetings to discuss mundane points. Sit there on mute while people argue and are openly rude to each other. Do it for 2 years and then get a new job to move up the ladder and get a higher salary. Remote makes it even worse as you have zero real work relationships. Meet with your director once a week to discuss progress with his little black zoom box with his name on it in white font. Every day... For decades... At the end what have built? What can I show my kids? There is no bridge the I made with my hands, no building, nothing permanent. Whatever I made has been cast aside in the next redesign.
elforce002 4y ago
So, on one side we have layoffs and freeze positions and on the other side we have this. This is odd.
beej71 4y ago
>Team forming and relaying goals is much harder to do in a fully remote environment. Anecdata: I've found this to be true in places that were primarily non-remote. But places I've worked that were full remote didn't have this issue.

111 points by codyde 4y ago

Nurses, teachers, airline workers, hospitality employees, and now developers. We can't all just get tired of working and quit.

_moof 4y ago
Sounds like our system has become unsustainable.
t-3 4y ago
> We can't all just get tired of working and quit. Yes, we can.

the_gipsy 4y ago

Since always

codyde 4y ago

Full disclosure - I work at LaunchDarkly (I look after our DevRel team) - but this is a topic I'm super passionate about also, so though it was worth sharing out. We talk about burnout a lot - but what I really appreciate about posts like this (and the report that it references) is that it gives some tangible examples of where that burnout comes from - and hopefully some paths to mitigating it. Hope you find the read interesting!

ranger_danger 4y ago
I'm not burned out and would in fact love a part-time/freelance gig (I mainly do C/C++ and python but wear many hats)... however I'm completely unsatisfied with the current options for finding such work because it always seems like a race to the bottom against less skilled candidates from other countries who will always undercut your pricing and the companies never seem to care. What do you suggest?
999900000999 4y ago
This is still an advertisement.
kiawe_fire 4y ago
I can confirm that, anecdotally, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of the reasons for my burnout over the last couple years. The past several years at my company have been particularly focused on “quick and dirty results” that I predict will end badly, and so far it has every time, leaving me feeling responsible despite management decisions that ignored the consequences and recommendations I laid out. It gets old. So, shortly before the pandemic, I took initiative to work extra nights and weekends to build a working prototype of a new version of our core internal app, that would ultimately let us go faster and would transform the way we communicate and give us unprecedented flexibility with our clients. It was passed off as “that’s nice, but let’s get {x} out the door first”. It quickly became apparent that there was, and will always be, another {x} that needs to get out the door before we do anything else. Having more autonomy and trust that I might actually have a solid grasp on what projects will yield the biggest returns, and being able to commit my focus to those tasks, and being able to hold my managers to the same accountability that they hold me to when making decisions, all would go a long way to improving my job satisfaction AND most importantly, improving our product and our value that we provide to our clients.

CoastalCoder 4y ago

> A report from software platform LaunchDarkly revealed that nearly 7 in 10 developers (67%) have left a job due to pressure around minimizing deployment errors or know someone who has. [emphasis mine] Without knowing more about the connectedness of software-developer relationships, I have no idea how widespread the problem is.

vasco 4y ago
That sentence could've been re-written to the equivalent: > Launchdarkly wants you to remember that they have a product that intends to help with deployment errors The rest is window dressing.
- _jal 4y ago
  "A report from Obscure Gray Corporation demonstrated that more than 8 in 10 people had no idea who they are."
commandlinefan 4y ago
> pressure around minimizing deployment errors ... while not being given any tools or time or support to do so ...

visviva 4y ago

> creating a crisis for recruiters Weird angle. Isn't the actual story the high levels of burnout in developers, rather than the inconvenience this creates for recruiters? The article is more balanced, but why lead with this?

willcipriano 4y ago
Recruiters are just barely part of the managerial class so they are more easily emphasized with by others in that class.
ok123456 4y ago
"Won't someone please think of the recruiters!"
- altdataseller 4y ago
  I know a few recruiters who made close to $1 million in fees in the past few years. I dont feel sorry for most of them
  - mym1990 4y ago
    Probably not a great representation for the whole field in general.
cjbgkagh 4y ago
Reminds me of; ‘Loads of men are killed in war, women most affected’
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  Or more commonly: Stocks decline today on news of unemployment. I sure feel sad for those stocks.
  - rob74 4y ago
    Actually, when a company announces layoffs, its stock tends to rise (unless it's in such a bad shape that even major "cost cutting" can't make the punters more optimistic).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jongjong 4y ago

I don't get it. I have a stellar resume and a proven track record in the public domain (open source but I've been struggling to find work and have accepted short term work for half my normal rate. There are so few opportunities, I had to switch to teaching people how to code.

halfmatthalfcat 4y ago
The market is still red hot, not sure what you're doing wrong.
acchow 4y ago
This goes against the feeling I have of the market (nonstop recruiters). At which point in time did you feel the market had more opportunities? 2020? 2017?
- Silhouette 4y ago
  I get seemingly endless messages from recruiters too but I don't think that's a very useful metric for the state of the market. Probably 1/3 of the roles they send to me don't look anything like my profile at all. At least another 1/3 match technically but are offering nowhere near what I already make. Of the final 1/3 or less that aren't immediately ruled out I am probably interested enough to respond to maybe half and at least 80% of those turn out to be snake oil one way or another. So maybe 3% of the recruiter emails I receive might actually be a real opportunity that I'd consider exploring. And that's before even speaking with a potential employer/client to see what the role really is and whether we're any kind of fit at all culturally.
EarthLaunch 4y ago
Maybe it's due to syntax errors?
- jongjong 4y ago
  Haha good one! Unfortunately the edit button on HN disappears after some time. Missing brackets are among the easiest issues to find while coding.

nrmitchi 4y ago

> A report from software platform LaunchDarkly revealed that nearly 7 in 10 developers (67%) have left a job due to pressure around minimizing deployment errors or know someone who has. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the statement, but this is a biased-as-hell source for this statement given that LaunchDarkly's product is feature-flag-management (to minimize deployment errors).

kbuchanan 4y ago
It also bends credulity. It suggests 7 of 10 developers work for companies (or know someone who has) that fail to prevent onslaughts of their developers from leaving over deployment problems.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  That seems pretty realistic. Do 7 in 10 of us know employers with headache creating deployment practices? Probably.
- chc 4y ago
  The "know someone how has" clause seems like it muddies the apparent purpose of the question (to gauge how common this is). 15/15 developers on my team either are me or know someone who is me, therefore being me is extremely common? There could be a small handful of people bouncing around from company to company for this reason and a large number of people at those companies would be able to answer "yes."
synu 4y ago
60% of the time, it works every time.
lelandfe 4y ago
The question from LaunchDarkly, btw, was as follows (asked to "500 software developers across a range of industries and job titles"): > Have you or someone you worked with ever left a job due to pressures from over minimizing mistakes (i.e. avoiding rollbacks or failed deployments)?[0] ...Which I also would not be comfortable summarizing as "minimizing deployment errors" [0] https://resources.launchdarkly.com/ebooks/release-assurance-report https://resources.launchdarkly.com/ebooks/release-assurance-...

rhacker 4y ago

It points to developer apathy. I sometimes wonder if that's just the global feeling at the moment. Everyone that's working on widget X suddenly doesn't care because of all the crises going on. Rampant inflation, extreme inequality. By continuing to work on widget x they are just supporting more of the same. Think people want society to change a bit before moving forward with being happy.

pojzon 4y ago
I like to think IT is mostly inhabited by really smart ppl. One thing really smart ppl have in common is that they see the world as it is. They are aware of thr glaring issues incompetence has brought upon this world. And that causes depression. Looking at the future there is literally nothing to be happy about. Ppl are slowly preparing for civil wars, power outages, food shortage and worse. And those are ppl you would often consider pretty layed back about life in general.
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  >One thing really smart ppl have in common is that they see the world as it is. This is completely false. Isaac Newton spent more time studying alchemy and biblical prophecy than he did on mathematics and physics.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    One could argue that at the time those weren’t as far removed as they are now. Newton mostly figured out how things work, not necessarily why.
  - trinsic2 4y ago
    Are you saying alchemy and spirituality is not as important as science? If that's the case, good luck with that view. Understanding and contemplating on both creates a Wisdom. Intelligence can only take you so far, the world is way bigger than science could ever be capable of containing.
    - 4y ago

strict9 4y ago

Not a surprise. When senior devs leave an org due to mismanagement or other reasons, it creates more work for those left behind. And it's become extremely difficult to find replacement for the seniors that left. Senior devs are nowhere to be found through regular applicant pipelines. They seem to be leaving as a result of reaching out to friends/former colleagues. Also relevant: - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31812864 (Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006252 (Ask HN: Where are all the senior front end engineers?)

Sevii 4y ago
People really don't talk about landslide risk enough. A project with a high tech debt or operations burden is at high risk of losing enough people to zero out the project. Lose one or two people at the same time and suddenly the rest of the team is in an untenable situation. Maybe they were thinking casually about leaving before, but now that their burden has increased by 30% its more serious. Then you just keep losing people until the project fails. Can be basically impossible to restaff the project.
- marktangotango 4y ago
  Indeed, I've seen two instances of this. First, early in my career, a company was acquired and had a layoff leaving a skeleton crew in IT and development. People remaining did not have the knowledge or experience to deploy or maintain the applications. That company had a week of down time where business just halted. No purchases were made, nothing previously purchased shipped, no calls to customer service were answered. The second time was when I was an engineering manager and 3/4 of our team quit for high pay within 6 months. Our application was a line of business app with a few thousand users. Our release dates went from being delayed a few months to over a year. The companies reputation was horrid, and hiring was impossible. My boss, a Director, sent me support people who could spell "java" and expected me train them from zero. I left that disaster soon after. So yes, the risk is real, and the result can be calamitous.
- 4y ago

JTbane 4y ago

My biggest source of burnout is really from mundane failures in processes: flaky tests that fail for no good reason, and obscure bugs that are hard to reproduce. These things take up 90% of my time and I feel like a code janitor, rather than a developer. Any company dealing with burnout should consider this.

altdataseller 4y ago
Its also part of your job to be part of the solution and help fix them. Why are the tests flaky? Maybe you can spend a day and fix it? Obscure bugs - ok they are hard to reproduce, but if it was easy, they would probably outsource your job to some Indian developer
- icedchai 4y ago
  If the test is flaky, the first thing you should do it disable it (until you can fix it), so it stops breaking the build and slowing down everyone else. A flaky test is worse than no test. I used to work at a place where people who just "re-run the build" several times until they got lucky. Eventually I just disabled those tests in one of my unrelated PRs.
claytonjy 4y ago
How should a company address this? They can provide developers cover and time to improve those processes, but that delays product goals at a time when those goals are more important to the ongoing survival of the business than at any point in the past decade+. If companies wouldn't let developers fix stuff when money was easy, how will they now that money is hard? To make matters slightly worse, I increasingly get the sense that outside of HN, most devs will jump through all the flaming hoops of bad process, accumulating all the little burns, without ever considering it doesn't have to be this way. Improving internal dev workflows gets more pushback from devs than management in my experience, which makes me feel like a crazy person.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  I am someone who routinely pushes back on improvements and fights them. Why? 1. I get held accountable for delays. The Scum Master will whine to me about "why is X taking so long?" and I capitulate as I do not care. 2. Production bugs are blameless. The team gets blamed as a whole and it gets blamed, particularly at one job, on the non-existence of a team lead. Basically, incentives at two of my jobs make me want to turn every ticket into a production failure. But this is me sacrificing everything about the code and the infrastructure to keep schedules happy and that is because I have no intrinsic need to do good work at my throwaway jobs. It makes things miserable for the other developers who do care though.

georgeecollins 4y ago

Oh the poor recruiters! That's a group I have little sympathy for as employer and as an employee. To be fair to the article, it real seems to be more about developer burn out, which I have sympathy for. If you have trouble attracting talent, maybe think about how you are treating your talent?

malfist 4y ago
You mean those recruiters might have to spam me more with "last chance" emails?

wnolens 4y ago

Oh no, poor recruiters.

seneca 4y ago

This is thinly disguised advertising.

ravenstine 4y ago

Not only is there burn-out on the job, but could there also be interviewing burn-out? In the software industry, you're doing yourself a disservice by staying at a company for more than 3 years. Even 2 years is pushing it, that is unless you are seeing wage increases that match or exceed inflation. And even if you haven't reached that amount of time, it's smart to start applying and interviewing earlier so you can have a better pick by the time you're ready to get out. I know some on HN will deny this, but I've seen enough resumes and LinkedIn profiles that demonstrate otherwise. Hence, many of us are in a sort of medium-frequency cycle of interviewing. Applying for jobs becomes a job in and of itself, and as someone going through that process right now, I think the process has gotten much worse. Not only are you likely to go through 3 to 4 rounds of interviews for a given employer, but now you've got to do take-home assignments. Most of the time, the estimated duration they provide is an understatement, especially if you actually want to show your best work. I've had 3 so far that wanted me to do a take-home assignment that they said could take several hours and even days. I refuse to do any that are estimated to be longer than 2 hours at this point. The other person is likely an introvert and sucks at interviewing, which can ruin your chances if they perceive the interview as not having gone well. In either case, you probably won't be hired at that place anyway. Now multiply that experience by around 30% of the applications you've sent out. To have enough options on the table, you've got to send out at least 40+ applications (unless you've got a connection at a company already). Not only are you having to fight off all those other applicants, but you're spending a lot of your free time doing so. Let's not forget the hours you'll also now have to spend hammering through Leetcode so you don't look like a complete fool in front of unrealistic problems you wouldn't be expected to complete in under an hour in real life. Who actually doesn't dread facing this every few years? I want to work in my field, but part of me also feels like saying "screw this" in favor of living in a van down by the river. Having experience might land you a better salary, but when you switch companies it's like being a junior developer all over again. I can only imagine how much it sucks for someone who has a family and kids.

ryandrake 4y ago
I have a family and kid and hobbies and an already-demanding (time-wise) job and can absolutely say that the current high-friction hazing ritual style of tech interviewing dissuades me from looking around, even though I know I could make more by going through Thunderdome again. Even with recruiters reaching out and starting the process, interviewing is a grueling “second full-time job”.

mabbo 4y ago

I think it's more complex than just "burned out". If Shopify had laid me off on Tuesday (as it did to a few great people I worked with) I'd have been given 16 weeks severance. I doubt I would have looked for a new job for at least 6 months. Maybe a year. Maybe longer. I've been paid so well over the last decade in this industry that I don't have debts anymore (car, home, credit cards). I don't spend much or live extravagantly. I have a safety net of money. And I have a 5-month old daughter that I want to spend more time with. I'm not burned out, but I also don't really need to work right now. I could get by a long time just playing with my kid without needing to write a line of code. Maybe I could even downsize, move out of the city, go live somewhere with a lower cost of living and a quieter lifestyle. If I ran out of money, I could get a remote developer job in a week or two, even if it didn't pay as much as I make today. I don't think I'm unique in this feeling. Developers are free in ways so few others are.

hinkley 4y ago
Six years ago I took about eight months off. Didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped by half, but I’m almost at the point I could do that again. But at some point I should be hinting if early retirement instead, so I probably won’t. Live below your means folks. Especially if you think your ethics actually matter to you, instead of something you do for theater.

Aeolun 4y ago

Developers: “Cumbersome processes are contributing to burnout.” Clueless VP: “It’s remote that’s at fault! If everyone were just in the same location, and we could do team-building exercises then everything would be fine!” Not sure what the author of the article was thinking putting those two statements next to each other.

throwawaysleep 4y ago

I am overemployed. That is, I work three full time remote jobs. At all three orgs, there are developers rapidly burning out and the biggest problem is that despite major organizational crises, ranging from mass layoffs to mass turnover and the inability to fill half the seats on any given team (especially with team leads and senior talent) to enormous projects that have crept up in scope from 8 people to 60, there has been no acknowledgement by management that anything is even wrong. At the company with layoffs, we are still working on product roadmaps from before, but now entire teams responsible for certain product dependencies are gone. At the company that cannot fill half the seats, there are no truly senior devs and only two juniors and one intermediate/senior (me and I am not willing to fill a senior role). Our skip manager literally said "assume we have a senior dev or team lead for planning." They have not been able to hire one for 6 months now. At the company with the project exploding in scope, it can take several weeks to get a meeting with key people as there are just so many wires crossing. Not even a "we understand that X is not working" from management. Just them repeating goals and deadlines in all orgs.

wonderwonder 4y ago

Its just the grind. Show up everyday, do the same thing, build Widget X or Widget Y. Sit in meetings to discuss mundane points. Sit there on mute while people argue and are openly rude to each other. Do it for 2 years and then get a new job to move up the ladder and get a higher salary. Remote makes it even worse as you have zero real work relationships. Meet with your director once a week to discuss progress with his little black zoom box with his name on it in white font. Every day... For decades... At the end what have built? What can I show my kids? There is no bridge the I made with my hands, no building, nothing permanent. Whatever I made has been cast aside in the next redesign.

elforce002 4y ago

So, on one side we have layoffs and freeze positions and on the other side we have this. This is odd.

beej71 4y ago

>Team forming and relaying goals is much harder to do in a fully remote environment. Anecdata: I've found this to be true in places that were primarily non-remote. But places I've worked that were full remote didn't have this issue.