Ask HN: Is it burn-out or the culture pushing me?
I have been at the job for >3 years and have had some great time shipping software and at the same time seeing the company introduce always-in-flux process after process for the past 2.5 years.
Most of my peers remain hush-hush because everyone feels helpless and there is an insane amount of time spent by line managers to do, - paper-work(jira and SAFe) to do minor things (we are not even that big an eng org, probably 60-70 people), - forced retrospectives on each an every defect(minor->major) where saying we missed a test-case is not sufficient, - forced retrospectives after every sprint that need to be shared across the company in the name of visibility, - slack-overload, - Over-coordination in scrum of scrums each day where every change that was committed by all teams is announced to be deployed. - Design by committee where every feature is discussed and needs to be approved by almost all Directors/VPs and most of the time they ask questions that are already on the document because they have no time to put a deep thought and dedicate time(understandably). So you end up repeating in comments what is already said on the document. - Lack of appetite to build small and scale without going through a large scale design and architecture review that may or may not result in a feature that the market wants now. Leading to product teams complaining to the CEO and eng leadership not having the backbone to pushback but turnaround and question engineering line managers and engineers decisions to manage conflicting signals from business and eng leaders.
All the while managing the above, I can see my technical skills getting eroded in-front of my eyes because I seldom get time to think deep enough about a problem, provide valuable code-reviews like in the past, have the energy and motivation to have critical analysis and thought on new designs.
At the end of the day when I leave my desk, I am so exhausted that I do not even want to look at a laptop screen, leaving no time for any personal projects/coding exercises.
Discussing with my partner about re-evaluating the need for me to be a manager now that I have been doing for close to 5 years and taking a more hands-on role at another company, although not a full IC. However, she feels I will be stepping back in my career with this step and not a great idea. I am not sure if I seek another manager role at another place, is it going to be similar to where I am at now or is it more to do with the culture at the current place that it is leaving me jaded.
It could also be burn-out or just that I am not adapting well
Looking for some wisdom and excuse me if this feels like rambling.