[DracheZahn]

After 35 years in tech and 10 years with the same company, today is my last day at a Fortune 100 tech firm. I left voluntarily with no new job lined up.

Never felt so relieved.

I realized that the depression I was experiencing was caused entirely by leadership, not my job. No matter which products I worked on, the same feelings of depression and ultimately loathing of the environment and process kept returning.

Don't get me wrong. My employer is world-class, and the benefits were amazing, but the software development and engineering culture are destroying their employees.

A sabbatical to rethink my career is in order.

I've saved for the past 20 years and realized that unless I take time now, I might never have the real opportunity to enjoy life the way I’ve dreamed. I now have two years of savings set aside, so we will see where life takes me. I might work for myself or simply step down from technology development into a new role.

Modern software engineering is killing its employees. Global teams across time zones working from 5:00am to 10:00pm., on projects that aren’t even mine—just because someone else left and needed someone competent to pick up the slack and carry the project to completion. Leaders overpromise and commit to deadlines without even asking if the solutions are feasible. Being reprimanded when you push back and say that the solution they just promised isn’t realistic or even possible.

[DracheZahn]

One more comment and a bit of advice for junior product and engineering staff. If someone else leaves, make it clear to your leadership that you cannot be expected to always pick up the slack. Don't get stuck in the cycle where leaders learn they can dump tasks on you and never backfill for the skill set. Becoming an essential team member will lessen your chances of getting promoted, and you will have very limited career change opportunities..

[spacemadness]

Sounds great until they’re PIPd. And I fully agree with you. The industry is hellbent on working people into the ground because they’re drunk on their newfound layoff powers. They absolutely love the turn around in their favor and I’ve personally witnessed management using horrible psychological tactics to overwork people in this environment. This industry really disgusts me, but hey, at least they’re going masks off finally so we can see them for what they really are.

I don’t care what people say online, I’ve seen excellent engineers treated like trash recently, some of which are also thinking of leaving the industry. That’s everyone’s loss. I’m so tired of all this short term thinking.

[ryandrake]

It’s a lose-lose situation: if you are getting your work done and not sweating, then you are seen as having more capacity, and you’re given more work until you are visibly at your breaking point. If you -are- dropping things because you’re overbooked, then you’re seen as performing poorly and get PIPd.

[scarface_74]

That’s why you should always have - an emergency fund, an up to date network, resume and career document.

If you live in any major city in the US, as a software engineer you are probably making twice the local median wage and should be able to build up savings.

[spacemadness]

Are you suggesting I don’t? I have those things but the industry is still in a bad place and is doing a lot of damage to good people.

[scarface_74]

If you have those things, you are empowered to say “no”.

I just came away from a 3.5 year stint at AWS - the most toxic of the big tech companies - the year before last. While many were losing sleep, overworking during their “focus”, I didn’t cancel a single vacation, refused to be overworked, and when they gave me the choice of accepting the severance and “leave immediately”, I accepted the severance without even listening to what I could do to possibly stay, reached out to my network, started interviewing and went to NYC for a week two weeks later to go to the US Tennis Open.

I had an offer ten days after my last day.

The next year in 2024, I got an invite at 7 PM for a “1-1” with my manager the next morning at 9 AM. I told my wife I’m about to be let go probably. She asked me was I okay. I said yes, set my alarm and rolled over and went to sleep.

I said thank you to my manager, asked them about the process to turn in my laptop (worked remotely) and asked about my severance and started interviewing that day - I had an offer within two weeks - staff architect working full time at a cloud consulting company.

I’ve been working since 1996 and I’m in my tenth job. I don’t panic, I don’t work over 40 hours a week unless I’m spending time learning something new to me, I don’t sacrifice my health or well being. I’ve been through the dot com bust, the 2008 recession and the shit show of the last three years.

It’s not “doing damage” to people who stay prepared. I don’t do the leet code grind. I don’t do take home test. I’ve never struck it rich in either BigTech or startups and I was a mostly your standard enterprise dev until 2020.

I mentioned my background here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44377380

[spacemadness]

Good for you. But I’ve seen the psychological damage this current environment is doing to folks and it just excuses it away in some illusory realist stance. So maybe don’t speak for everyone like they’re failing for being human.

[scarface_74]

How have you been in the industry for 35 years (myself 30 years in a year) and not had the optionality to say “no” to being overworked? I’ve worked for 29 years across 10 companies from 60 person startups to two F10 companies (including one FAANG) and always knew the worse case for saying “No” is that they could fire me and I just get another job.

[octo888]

Solidarity my friend. I'm doing the same.

Offshoring massively increasing, Scrum, story points, poor leadership with no vision, pointless projects, working across timezones, different language levels, having to understand 2-5 cultures, no in-person interaction with my colleagues, haughty Product Managers...totally burnt out.

[insane_dreamer]

> Leaders overpromise and commit to deadlines without even asking if the solutions are feasible.

Because salespeople promised the client.

Terrible.

[MongooseStudios]

I think we're going to see more of this. The general result of all the RIF/outsourcing seems to still be that the onshore employees workload increases and they burn out.

I'm genuinely glad that you said enough is enough. I hope you go make something rad and never need to go back to that world.