[HN Gopher] Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creatin...
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Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for
recruiters
Author : codyde
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-07-28 15:56 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.worklife.news)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.worklife.news)
| jongjong wrote:
| I don't get it. I have a stellar resume and a proven track record
| in the public domain (open source but I've been struggling to
| find work and have accepted short term work for half my normal
| rate. There are so few opportunities, I had to switch to teaching
| people how to code.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| The market is still red hot, not sure what you're doing wrong.
| acchow wrote:
| This goes against the feeling I have of the market (nonstop
| recruiters). At which point in time did you feel the market had
| more opportunities? 2020? 2017?
| rhacker wrote:
| 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.
| pojzon wrote:
| 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 would often consider pretty layed back
| about life in general.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 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.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Adjacent thread in a different market, currently at the top of
| r/medicine: "Is it just me... Or do things feel off?"
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/w9ufnt/is_it_just...
| strict9 wrote:
| 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=31812864 (Ask HN: Having
| trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it)
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32006252 (Ask HN: Where
| are all the senior front end engineers?)
| Sevii wrote:
| 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 losing people until the
| project fails. Can be basically impossible to restaff the
| project.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Which makes sense. Everyone learns that the best way to get
| jobs is skip the recruitment pipeline by using your network.
|
| The recruitment pipeline is so miserable at most companies, why
| would you put yourself through it unless it is absolutely your
| dream job? Even then it's probably unnecessarily stressful and
| time consuming and annoying. Way better to make contacts with
| people where you want to work and just skip it.
| nrmitchi wrote:
| > 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).
| kbuchanan wrote:
| It also bends credulity. It suggests 7 of 10 developers work
| for companies (or know someone who has) that fail to prevent
| onslaughts of their developers from leaving over deployment
| problems.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| That seems pretty realistic. Do 7 in 10 of us know employers
| with headache creating deployment practices? Probably.
| synu wrote:
| 60% of the time, it works every time.
| lelandfe wrote:
| 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/release-
| assurance-...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| What does "over minimising mistakes" mean? I would expect
| that the target for 'mistakes', especially serious ones' is
| zero (while accepting that it may be asymptotic).
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| oh that is so sneaky and that would never fly in a scientific
| study.
| JTbane wrote:
| 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.
| altdataseller wrote:
| Its also part of your job to be part of the solution and help
| fix them. Why are the tests flaky? Maybe you can spend a day
| and fix it? Obscure bugs - ok they are hard to reproduce, but
| if it was easy, they would probably outsource your job to some
| Indian developer
| icedchai wrote:
| If the test is flaky, the first thing you should do it
| disable it (until you can fix it), so it stops breaking the
| build and slowing down everyone else. A flaky test is worse
| than no test. I used to work at a place where people who just
| "re-run the build" several times until they got lucky.
| Eventually I just disabled those tests in one of my unrelated
| PRs.
| claytonjy wrote:
| 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 the sense
| that outside of HN, most devs will jump through all the flaming
| hoops of bad process, accumulating all the little burns,
| without ever considering it doesn't have to be this way.
| Improving internal dev workflows gets more pushback from devs
| than management in my experience, which makes me feel like a
| crazy person.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > 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._
|
| [emphasis mine]
|
| Without knowing more about the connectedness of software-
| developer relationships, I have no idea how widespread the
| problem is.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > pressure around minimizing deployment errors
|
| ... while not being given any tools or time or support to do so
| ...
| vasco wrote:
| That sentence could've been re-written to the equivalent:
|
| > Launchdarkly wants you to remember that they have a product
| that intends to help with deployment errors
|
| The rest is window dressing.
| _jal wrote:
| "A report from Obscure Gray Corporation demonstrated that
| more than 8 in 10 people had no idea who they are."
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Oh the poor recruiters! That's a group I have little sympathy for
| as employer and as an employee.
|
| To be fair to the article, it real seems to be more about
| developer burn out, which I have sympathy for. If you have
| trouble attracting talent, maybe think about how you are treating
| your talent?
| malfist wrote:
| You mean those recruiters might have to spam me more with "last
| chance" emails?
| visviva wrote:
| > creating a crisis for recruiters
|
| Weird angle. Isn't the actual story the high levels of burnout in
| developers, rather than the inconvenience this creates for
| recruiters? The article is more balanced, but why lead with this?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Well; a both cynical and charitable take: We the techies do fun
| techie things _in the service of business_. As such, developer
| burnout is a proxy impact, and inability of business to advance
| business goals is a final impact :- /.
|
| (Basically, daily I'm training my ops managers team that when
| they update directors/executives, impact is not "Process XYZ
| inadvertently set up flag ABC on table QEW due to lockwait
| timeout", but "300 employees had their union dues incorrectly
| deducted" )
| vkou wrote:
| I mean, if this were real, and this actually created a 'crisis'
| for recruiters, then this would be a great thing for them.
| Given that hiring is slowing down, and all.
| ok123456 wrote:
| "Won't someone please think of the recruiters!"
| altdataseller wrote:
| 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
| willcipriano wrote:
| Recruiters are just barely part of the managerial class so they
| are more easily emphasized with by others in that class.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Reminds me of; 'Loads of men are killed in war, women most
| affected'
| georgeecollins wrote:
| Or more commonly: Stocks decline today on news of
| unemployment. I sure feel sad for those stocks.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Or "no damage to car after cyclist killed in traffic
| accident"
| slg wrote:
| I have never heard of worklife.news before, but it seems to be
| a site more targeted at managers, recruiters, HR folks, and the
| like. Not surprising or even necessarily bad that they would
| frame a headline to highlight the story's connection to its
| audience.
| bluedino wrote:
| Nurses, teachers, airline workers, hospitality employees, and now
| developers.
|
| We can't all just get tired of working and quit.
| codyde wrote:
| Full disclosure - I work at LaunchDarkly (I look after our DevRel
| team) - but this is a topic I'm super passionate about also, so
| though it was worth sharing out. We talk about burnout a lot -
| but what I really appreciate about posts like this (and the
| report that it references) is that it gives some tangible
| examples of where that burnout comes from - and hopefully some
| paths to mitigating it.
|
| Hope you find the read interesting!
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This is still an advertisement.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| I can confirm that, anecdotally, this is a fairly accurate
| portrayal of the reasons for my burnout over the last couple
| years.
|
| The past several years at my company have been particularly
| focused on "quick and dirty results" that I predict will end
| badly, and so far it has every time, leaving me feeling
| responsible despite management decisions that ignored the
| consequences and recommendations I laid out. It gets old.
|
| So, shortly before the pandemic, I took initiative to work
| extra nights and weekends to build a working prototype of a new
| version of our core internal app, that would ultimately let us
| go faster and would transform the way we communicate and give
| us unprecedented flexibility with our clients.
|
| It was passed off as "that's nice, but let's get {x} out the
| door first". It quickly became apparent that there was, and
| will always be, another {x} that needs to get out the door
| before we do anything else.
|
| Having more autonomy and trust that I might actually have a
| solid grasp on what projects will yield the biggest returns,
| and being able to commit my focus to those tasks, and being
| able to hold my managers to the same accountability that they
| hold me to when making decisions, all would go a long way to
| improving my job satisfaction AND most importantly, improving
| our product and our value that we provide to our clients.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| I'm not burned out and would in fact love a part-time/freelance
| gig (I mainly do C/C++ and python but wear many hats)...
| however I'm completely unsatisfied with the current options for
| finding such work because it always seems like a race to the
| bottom against less skilled candidates from other countries who
| will always undercut your pricing and the companies never seem
| to care.
|
| What do you suggest?
| wnolens wrote:
| Oh no, poor recruiters.
| [deleted]
| seneca wrote:
| This is thinly disguised advertising.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Since always
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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 have a better pick by the time you're ready to
| get out. I know some on HN will deny this, but I've seen enough
| resumes and LinkedIn profiles that demonstrate otherwise.
|
| Hence, many of us are in a sort of medium-frequency cycle of
| interviewing. Applying for jobs becomes a job in and of itself,
| and as someone going through that process right now, I think the
| process has gotten much worse.
|
| Not only are you likely to go through 3 to 4 rounds of interviews
| for a given employer, but now you've got to do take-home
| assignments. Most of the time, the estimated duration they
| provide is an understatement, especially if you actually want to
| show your best work. I've had 3 so far that wanted me to do a
| take-home assignment that they said could take several hours and
| even _days_. _I refuse to do any that are estimated to be longer
| than 2 hours at this point._ The other person is likely an
| introvert and sucks at interviewing, which can ruin your chances
| if they perceive the interview as not having gone well. In either
| case, you probably won 't be hired at that place anyway.
|
| Now multiply that experience by around 30% of the applications
| you've sent out. To have enough options on the table, you've got
| to send out at least 40+ applications (unless you've got a
| connection at a company already). Not only are you having to
| fight off all those other applicants, but you're spending a lot
| of your free time doing so.
|
| Let's not forget the hours you'll also now have to spend
| hammering through Leetcode so you don't look like a complete fool
| in front of unrealistic problems you wouldn't be expected to
| complete in under an hour in real life.
|
| Who actually doesn't dread facing this every few years?
|
| I want to work in my field, but part of me also feels like saying
| "screw this" in favor of living in a van down by the river.
| Having experience might land you a better salary, but when you
| switch companies it's like being a junior developer all over
| again. I can only imagine how much it sucks for someone who has a
| family and kids.
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(page generated 2022-07-28 17:00 UTC)