Ask HN: Should I quit software development?

I have noticed radical changes at my company in the past 5 years too.

They started outsourcing and layoffs - stuff they previously bragged about not doing in the job interview. They have restructured the roles so that some of them are combined but pay the lower salary (like team managers who are PMs and line managers but get paid like a PM). They also adjusted the grade structure so that it takes much longer to get to the same overall comp than it did under the old structure. The rate of technology changes went way up too. We are in a constant churn of upgrades, or switching from one vendor product to another, or having to deal with some new paperwork or test results requirement.

I hate my job and want to quit also. They might fire me someday anyways because I'm "slow". I need the insurance since kid and wife have major health issues.

How many different companies have you worked for? Were you only a manager at that one company?

It sounds like you should quit your job but not necessarily software dev as a whole.

Also, I enjoy programming but not Leetcoding / fancy algorithms. Software dev is a broad field, maybe you can find a different engineering job without abandoning your previous experience.

Generally speaking, I’d say run towards something, not away from something. And if you choose to leave, let your current thing fund your search for the next thing.

Firstly, life is too short. If you hate what you’re doing, definitely find something better to do then quit. Philosophically, if you could do anything what would want you do? What things in your life make you happy to be alive? It isn’t giving up if you’ve found something better to do with your life.

Management is really hard to do well and not for everyone, I realize that much more now than I did as a young person.

What if there isn't anything better?

What if there are hundreds of things that are?

I can't find any

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that way. If you do, you’re just letting the people who make your life difficult win. Search for something better, make the best of what you’ve got, or forge your own path. The only way to lose is to give up when you didn’t need to.

I would love to be able to find something I enjoy. Unfortunately, my time and money are limited. I have a number of things I'm interested in, but there's no way to get a free trial to see if I'd truly enjoy them. It has to be an all in decision, whether that sacrificing time to try to build the skills necessary (which could very likely be in vain as as you can teach yourself skills, but you cannot teach yourself experience, which is weighted much hire than skills in many areas) or something else. It's very rare for me to see a job that makes me thing "oh this looks very cool and is something I'd like to do", and when I do see one, I almost certainly do not have the skills or experience to obtain it. If I were to try to work towards it, I'd probably fail too, as by the time I find myself at a point where I could comfortably apply, the job is gone, and I've wasted time that could have been spent elsewhere. Additionally, despite what many people here seem to think, many careers and companies (even with SW development) still heavily rely on credentialism, where if you don't have any, or the right type of credentials you're out of luck.

Side note: can anyone shed some light on how to differentiate between job burnout and career burnout? I thought I had the former but now being out of a real job for quite a while I'm beginning to think I have the latter.

I’d think job burnout would look like dreaming for your current job without the downsides. Career burnout might be a complete disinterest in this job or the next one like it.

I pretty much agree with this, but my take is a little more cynical.

Job burnout is when you're tired of dealing with the BS. Career burnout is when you realize that there isn't a similar job out there with less BS. This is the best you're going to do and there's no hope for anything better.

I’ll make your life even more complicated and suggest it’s neither of those things. It’s people burnout. This can happen anywhere. Some people have large, political families, and they burnout from those people. The solution is always the same, disassociate to endure, see if it helps, otherwise get around new people.

It can happen anywhere in life.

There are plenty of dysfunctional companies out there.

I was lucky enough to find a company which did things right but after 5 happy years (of which a percentage as a manager) the investors basically replaced the leadership and killed the engineering culture. Everyone left and they started hiring cheap overseas contractors.

I haven't found a decent company since.

My "solution" was to contract for 6m - 1 year and then change before I burn out. Eventually I just transitioned to running a side business and topping up with contracting every once and then when some interesting project comes up.

A friend I have, who seems to enjoy management more than me, ended up being a vp of engineering setting the kind of culture that we enjoy but he had to try several times before finding the right place where that kind of culture could grow.

Best of luck

Honestly, it sounds like you need to leave your job.

I went through burnout, and quitting the job/career that was draining me, was enough to remove the weight off my shoulders and give me some clarity.

This all assumes you have financial means do to so (for me, it took 4 months), and if that is not the case, I suggest preparing yourself for it.

That just sounds like a toxic work environment. I recently moved from a toxic job to a non-toxic job, and despite working on similar tasks the difference in my overall happiness has been night and day. I don't think you have enough data yet to know whether the entire field is a bad fit for you.

Seems to me that you are in a toxic environment. So it's unclear whether it is your workplace that you dislike or the role of being programmer. Doing "leetcoding" most certainly isn't what software development is about.

Have you looked into changing jobs for a better company?

If you have the capacity to quit, in other words, enough savings to explore what you like for a couple of years. Do it and see what sticks.

There's this guy on Twitter who quit his job at Amazon while he was in a senior position because he was not motivated to work there anymore. He's in his early 30s too. Long story short, he's now doing well with his own projects and is happy with his current life.

Have a read on his post on Medium: https://dvassallo.medium.com/only-intrinsic-motivation-lasts...

One of the running jokes in our company is "let's just quit our jobs, start a farm and live off the land". We have very similar issues to the ones that you describe: team dysfunction, constant staffing changes, low velocity... Which of course leads to low morale, which feeds back on itself. I actually enjoy the work but we can't seem to actually ship anything. One solution is to just head for greener pastures but I'm not sure where that exists.

Your story is very similar to mine, except I am currently also working for my family business with no means to escape by just quitting and moving to another company.

Has completely extinguished my love for software/product development. Managing people/clients has made me start hating humanity :). But I don't know what else to do.

I am currently just moving forward, hoping that things become better in the future.

I don’t think the field has changed much in the last 5 years, technology is still technology just with some new fashionable solutions to offer, people are still people.

Sounds like you need a new role. We’re I in your shoes, I’d find something that at least appears to offer good work life balance then start looking into the next big thing. You might love your new job or you’re at least in a better position for a bigger career change.

I think it depends on the company - mine changed a lot.

We had on-prem java/JSF monolith with backend COBOL systems, different leadership/pay structures, fewer third party integrations, and even a slightly better culture.

Now we do microservices (distributed monolith), angular frontend, AWS hosting, outsourcing, layoffs, more hectic culture, worse pay and leadership structures, and constant churn through third party integrations or technical upgrades.

Maybe, but that change was coming for 20 years, it just so happen that the marketing money only came in for the upgrade / rewrite more recently.

I was first involved in outsourcing in 2000ish, I'm now actually working for an outsourcer, having always worked at local technical consultancies. It's actually the customers pushing for the offshoring not us, based on the perception of lower costs. They know that they have/had a huge number of experienced competent technical people who knew their business very well, but they were happy (at a high level) to risk that to untie themselves from that staff burden and reach mythical offshore productivities.

They tried to replace our 8ish person team with 19 people. There was no cost savings.

That's why I say perception. Cost savings could be up to x4 but this makes no difference as if you can't do something, you can't do it with more people. If you got 100 people to write doom on the original hardware and Carmack wasn't one of them you wouldn't get it. Business software is generally a lot easier but even so, still issues...

You have to figure out if the job burns you out, or the career. Seems like the job, which you can change. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.

Sounds like things you hate are tied to your current job. I wouldn't discount an entire industry because of that.

Because as others have mentioned your environment is toxic, when you raise these issues openly, be wary of empty promises and other games to maintain status quo. Since you are experienced, I'm sure there are many companies out there that will welcome you.

You have a shitty role

Go to another company

What if they all seem the same? How to find a good one?

Keep trying until you find one. You only need one.

I had two of my friends take a manager role. They went back to development because of the politics having to deal with senior management and partners.

There is a reason why Business Administration and Computer Science courses are different. Not everyone can be Steve Jobs and handle it all.

Think you should try one or two different companies first before jacking it in. If you still don’t like it then fair enough.

I'm in literally the same conundrum.

Agree with the point about the team. An uncooperative team can make a managers job very unpleasant.