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

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

#51

Post by nrmitchi »

lelandfe wrote: post #35
nrmitchi wrote: post #18

> 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).

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…

In any reasonable setting this would be considered priming the respondent for a particular answer and should definitely not be trusted as an unbiased response.

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

#52

Post by throwawaysleep »

claytonjy wrote: post #42
JTbane wrote: post #20

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.

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 th…

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.

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

#53

Post by SantalBlush »

pojzon wrote: post #27
rhacker wrote: post #14

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.

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 wou…

>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.

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

#54

Post by ryandrake »

ravenstine wrote: post #38

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 hav…

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”.

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

#55

Post by marktangotango »

Sevii wrote: post #33
strict9 wrote: post #15

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…

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 losi…

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.

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

#56

Post by euroderf »

JTbane wrote: post #20

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.

Which languages are we talking here ? Just wondering, cos I'm prejudiced for NJ "worse is better".

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

#57

Post by infamouscow »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #34
rhacker wrote: post #14

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.

This is just intrinsic to how businesses are run. Businesses are run by decision makers. Decision makers delegate tasks to do-ers. If do-ers mess up, it is solely their fault for underdelivering (in the eyes of the delegator/decision-maker). The idea that do-ers can make decisions or inversely - that decision makers can do (anything beside delegate) is alien in business.

And if decision makers mess up, it is solely the decision makers fault for making a bad decision. Of course, holding decision makers accountable for their error never happens in real life, so the do-ers go elsewhere.

I don't understand why this is so hard for people to grasp.

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

#59

Post by mym1990 »

altdataseller wrote: post #32
ok123456 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Won't someone please think of the recruiters!"

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

Probably not a great representation for the whole field in general.

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

#60

Post by mabbo »

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.

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