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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

#91

Post by WorldMaker »

ravenstine wrote: post #87
ipaddr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this recently and by the time we reached the last stages of the process I've lost interest. I realized I literally need to be unemployed to bother going through all of these useless stages. Things I realized: The pay that is in the ad is always lower. That recruitor who won't go away just wants you part of a funnel they get paid for, if the company really wanted you they would just make an offer. Ghost…

Ghosting after a take home test really bites. Either provide feedback or give an expectation on how long it will take to make a decision. Don't make me do free work and leave me hanging. But yeah, it does happen. I used to advocate for take home assignments, but now I really don't know what the answer is for directly assessing skill. Leetcode sucks, but take home assignments have their own problems. Maybe the problem…

Lawyers take a Bar exam until they pass it and then never have to take it again. They just have to stay up-to-date/active with the associated Bar (so many hours of training a year; etc).

Real Engineers take a Fundamentals of Engineering exam followed by the Professional Engineering exam in their discipline/focus. Then Engineers have to stay with the associated Professional Society (so many hours of training a year; paying dues; etc).

In the Software industry we love using the title "Engineer", but we don't seem to want to put the work in to make it an actual engineering profession. There is a software PE exam and professional society in existence already (ACM) built and willing to be the professional society for software engineering. I would take the Software PE exam and pay my ACM member dues in a heartbeat if that meant never needing to do another leetcode or take home assignment or whiteboard exercise in an interview cycle. We have the tools to solve this, just not the will to solve it, it seems.

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

#93

Post by galdosdi »

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…

In my experience the problem isn't really lack of time/resources, but lack of accountability. There's always more to do than there's time and you just have to estimate and prioritize.

But even for cleanup efforts that clearly are worth the time/priority, places that develop these problems really bad usually make it very difficult to be in any way rewarded for thinking ahead to how your technical choices today will impact things in a year or more. People who stay there internalize this lack of accountability and stop trying.

You need your people to feel like caring about and investing in the future is a valued priority. Otherwise, they won't, and then you'll arrive in that future, and it will suck because everyone didn't care to build a good one.

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

#94

Post by adrianmsmith »

WorldMaker wrote: post #88
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 spent 8 hours on a Saturday the other weekend on a take home assignment and then spent most of Sunday regretting it and angry with myself that I'd let that eat into my weekend so much. The least companies could do is compensate this useless labor. Interviewing also has been putting me into a spot where I'm starting to wonder if changing professions entirely may be less work. I wish this profession would grow up. Th…

> The least companies could do is compensate this useless labor.

I've found having the company present when you do the test, i.e. screensharing or whatever, is a good compromise. You can talk about the problem, and you know they've got some (time) skin in the game.

The tests become shorter when this is the case, e.g. 1 hour rather than 8 hours. Because they don't want to spend 8 hours sitting there while you do the test.

They're not going to invite 100 candidates to do that test if they only have one position open, but if they send out the test and you complete it on your own time they might.

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

#95

Post by malermeister »

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.

This sounds a lot like the Marxist theory of alienation [0] in practice.

Because do-ers can't decide what they do, they get alienated from their work product and get apathetic.

The fact that it is happening during a capitalist crisis only adds strength to the theory.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_alienation

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

#96

Post by adrianmsmith »

ravenstine wrote: post #87
ipaddr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through this recently and by the time we reached the last stages of the process I've lost interest. I realized I literally need to be unemployed to bother going through all of these useless stages. Things I realized: The pay that is in the ad is always lower. That recruitor who won't go away just wants you part of a funnel they get paid for, if the company really wanted you they would just make an offer. Ghost…

Ghosting after a take home test really bites. Either provide feedback or give an expectation on how long it will take to make a decision. Don't make me do free work and leave me hanging. But yeah, it does happen. I used to advocate for take home assignments, but now I really don't know what the answer is for directly assessing skill. Leetcode sucks, but take home assignments have their own problems. Maybe the problem…

> I used to advocate for take home assignments, but now I really don't know what the answer is for directly assessing skill.

The way we do it is a one hour conversation with screensharing where they have an IDE open and complete a small test. They know we're serious as we're spending our time as well. An hour is still an hour, but more reasonable than a weekend-long take-home test.

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

#97

Post by WorldMaker »

Aeolun wrote: post #89
ryandrake wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

It’s not that the interviews themselves are so terrible. I’m just a bit tired of random people saying I’m not a good fit because I couldn’t answer a specific question to their satisfaction. I’ve been a valuable member of the team at my current company, and have received a mix of raises and promotions. I’m inclined to believe I’d do equally well elsewhere, but I first have to prove in a few hours what the past few yea…

Yeah, the nitpicky rejection cycles starts to feel like an industry wide mixture of gaslighting and almost intentional impostor syndrome creation tools. All the statistics of people in FAANG/GAFAM roles that feel stuck in them because they are certain they'd not pass the interview cycle again if they left. All the statistics of "dark matter" developers that are continually harassed by FAANG/GAFAM recruiters to interview but then continually ghosted without feedback following the interviews.

Lots of mentions of how much it resembles hazing rituals, and that also seems to be the intent of many hazing rituals: gaslight about the relative strengths of "the in group" and build survivorship bias among those that make it into "the in group" and survive the hazing rituals.

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

#98

Post by hinkley »

mabbo wrote: post #60

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 extr…

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.

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

#99

Post by WorldMaker »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #94
WorldMaker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent 8 hours on a Saturday the other weekend on a take home assignment and then spent most of Sunday regretting it and angry with myself that I'd let that eat into my weekend so much. The least companies could do is compensate this useless labor. Interviewing also has been putting me into a spot where I'm starting to wonder if changing professions entirely may be less work. I wish this profession would grow up. Th…

> The least companies could do is compensate this useless labor. I've found having the company present when you do the test, i.e. screensharing or whatever, is a good compromise. You can talk about the problem, and you know they've got some (time) skin in the game. The tests become shorter when this is the case, e.g. 1 hour rather than 8 hours. Because they don't want to spend 8 hours sitting there while you do the t…

That's just it, it's a power imbalance that favors the company and not the interviewee.

Most cases when I've requested accommodations or told interviewers that I don't have time for their take home tests, I've gotten back: "Well, start over again in a year or so when you do think you have time. Let us know when that is, kthxbye."

Even from companies "desperate" to fill roles according to recruiters.

Many of those roles I'm fine with that too, if they want to waste my time on a lengthy take home assignment and a bunch of free labor that truly benefits neither of us, maybe it isn't the right role for me. Many of those roles I do the free labor anyway and regret it and it negatively influences any interest I have in further next steps and/or my entire opinion of the company. (I will absolutely shit talk the companies that have most wasted my time in interview processes.)

There's not a lot I can do about that power imbalance other than point to the fact that it is deeply systemic and wish that we'd mature the industry to better systems.

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

#100

Post by hinkley »

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.

I wish that were true. Some use they power against themselves, making better delusions instead.

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