Ask HN: Anyone Else Burnt Out?

12 points by lmpdev 42 days ago | 7 comments

There’s a lot of change occurring in the industry and am curious if it’s burning others out

nickdodd 42 days ago |

It's definitely a chore to keep up. I work a full time job in manufacturing, run my own VPS hosting business from my house and a salon on the side too. Burnout is my middle name, especially in the age of AI where more happens in 1 month than used to happen in a year in the early 2000s. Learning jQuery seemed like a lot to take on back then, now every language and solution has a framework to bolt onto it. I'm only just learning go

markmatsushima 42 days ago |

When an LLM read a lengthy log and source code and found a bug in seconds, I felt useless and burnt out. It is strange that I feel the same tiredness as when I finish a project that takes a week by hand, even when it is done with an LLM in a day of conversation.

kypro 41 days ago | |

I find mental burnout is largely a product of my ability to keep pace.

I feel burnt out in spoken conversations because I find it very difficult to process sentences at speed. But I don't feel that at all when reading, writing or listening to podcasts because I can go at my own pace.

Similarly I love maths and it doesn't give burnt out when I do it myself, but in school I remember it being agonising trying to get my brain to keep up with everyone around me.

I think this is why AI burns out engineers. Agents can do things do much faster than us so we're no longer comprehending things at our own pace, but trying to keep pace with the AI.

I feel that useless thing too. It hurts me more than anything. I've poured my heart into so many blog posts, tutorials and open source projects over the years. They were genuinely hard at the time. Each tutorial or code project might have been weeks of effort – and it showed. Today an AI could do the same in 10 mins from a single prompt. What was a source of pride for me, now just feels like a major waste of the last 2 decades of my life.

Maybe that's for the best though. I think in hindsight I over index on the value of knowledge. Maybe there are more important things in life.

zloy88 41 days ago |

For me the AI boom is honestly rather a relief. I have way less stress than before, because before the AI boom I'd spent days on huge tasks and I am working in an agency with constant time pressures. So AI is such a huge benefit for my stress levels. I love it. I can finally also take more care about quality and automated tests, which often lacked because lack of time. Sure, you have to learn now all the new tools, but that doesn't bother me.

sph 41 days ago |

I burnt out seriously in 2021, recovered in a fragile state in 2023 when AI started to become a thing tech was getting obsessed with. I'm so way past burn out now, I'm not a software engineer any more. No idea what I'll do next, but I just know it's not going to be whatever this is.

You're not the only one.

paulcole 41 days ago |

You have to define what burnt out means to you.

The WHO has a very specific definition of it but it seems like everyone has their own personal definition which leads to a lot of unproductive conversations which are just complaining about work.

austin-cheney 41 days ago |

A couple things I have learned from burn out:

* Software, isn’t a profession. A profession is more than just employment. It’s a set of minimal agreed ethical standards that governs conduct, output, and relationships. Education, medicine, the law, the military, and most every industry has this. Software does not have this, so other developers critical of your anti-populist approaches to better performance and lower costs can go fuck themselves.

* The primary goal of software is hiring and employment. If you are an experienced developer who ships completed products then build for yourself first. All be your first client/customer and realize other potential clients/customers are likely not shitty developers whose only concern fear of writing original code.

* Jobs will come and go. Always have a back up plan, both financially and professionally. I have been doing this long enough that my retirement accounts are worth more than I am in every other regard, which is safety net. I also have back up employment with a part time job that is worth as much as being an experienced software team lead.

* I love sharing and writing open source, but many people who write software just expect you to give them all the answers. It feels like there are now people who can build anything and there are people who barely open a code editor without crying. People who cannot receive guidance without first crying about why you didn’t do all the work for them or simply give them all the answers should just be ignored.

* There are great leaders in software, but they seem exceedingly rare. Don’t be hurt when insecure people intentionally destroy your employment. Consider it the expectation of doing this work for a living.