How to deal with demotivation in current work environment and increased lack of interest in coding?
Posted by DesiBail@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 39 comments
Biggest change in the workplace in expectations and senior management behaviour is the happening of AI.
Below is based on my experience and also few devs with 5+ years of experience who I am supervise for my business but work at customer locations.
More work is expected and that is definitely putting more pressure, but the responsibility for quality of work is still with the middle level of experienced developers. We are facing burn out and doing extra effort for good output means AI is getting credit. Management is assuming and behaving like AI is doing all the work and treatment of developers at all level is changing. Forget respect, now it's like they are doing a favor by even paying developers.
Whatever code I used to enjoy writing sometimes feel less fun because it can be partially generated. This is making me and many other developers less motivated to read docs and learn the nitty gritties of our work. We all know how much we took pride in knowing behaviour of things like equality and null for JavaScript etc.
Add to this knowing that every code correction or improvements by us are just a feedback loop for the LLM training meaning we are literally training our obsolecence.
How to deal with increased expectations which are coming without the encouragement or motivation from above and also less own motivation.
Green__Hat@reddit
You should really consider leaving tech. Maybe even the digital world (for a living).
Just today I read this comment on hacker news that you may find interesting:
(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48135325)
yegegebzia@reddit
I found that the only way for me to cope with the issues you describe is to be less mentally invested in everything job-related, and to put more weight on my hobbies that are totally unrelated to tech.
itsmegoddamnit@reddit
The only problem is that advice sometimes sounds like “have you tried to stop being sad and be happy instead?”. We don’t really get to choose what we are mentally invested in - but therapy could really help with shifting this.
PokeRestock@reddit
Have you tried not giving a fuck? Works wonders until you're laid off.
dekai-onigiri@reddit
Do the bare minimum and be miserable at work like the rest of the humanity. But in all seriousness, I feel your pain. I think the good times are gone and if you want to do proper engineering then either switch to a much more complex domain where the AI tools still haven't penetrated, or just work on your personal project.
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
This may sound pessimistic but it's very realistic. Every damn developer with some experience is dreaming of a breakthrough in startups but i can't think of a complex domain which me or most experienced Devs can do today without extensive domain education which the LLM's will beat us in learning. And the thought that an AI bot can just spin out in an hour or two my personal project of a few weeks kills the joy of personal projects.
Maleficent_Tank2199@reddit
Younger me didn’t wait become a developer because: „Developers are support staff, domain knowledge pays“. I actually found that insight a few days ago when cleaning out old paper. This was about selecting which Uni to go to. I somehow still ended up as a developer.
Domain knowledge pays, add „soft skills“ and then software engineering for extra.
hippydipster@reddit
"Domain knowledge pays", and then people get degrees in physics, biology, chemistry, economics and come out with very few prospects that will pay much at all.
Maleficent_Tank2199@reddit
Because those are general degrees and the domain is so vast you only scratch the surface.
I could have replaced domain knowledge with „business relevant knowledge“, I.e the knowledge relevant in the domain of this business.
If your company sells fire retardant insulation material that knowledge is a lot more specific that physics or chemistry.
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
I hear you and your pain.
New-Locksmith-126@reddit
Pick more complex projects.
Try building a game engine or something. AI can help you but it absolutely cannot build something like that independently. Try it and see what happens.
_vertexE_@reddit
I’ve been trying to balance this by using AI to generate a lot of my feature work, then during the very careful vetting/review process I note down anything of interest. If I spot an API I don’t know or anything technically interesting I will spend time experimenting with that API / problem.
I’ll invest in either learning the problem space, coming up with improvements, or diving really deep into the API. Before I didn’t have time to do this as I would have been a lot slower to ship features. Now I can spend 2-3+ hours on each ticket just focused on research and learning.
This method provides an opportunity to learn much more than before using LLMs. I get the benefit of shipping faster without losing my technical knowledge. I am not challenged writing out an API controller for the 1,000th time, but I can be now by diving way deeper into ORM, AMQP, etc. Has to be a conscious decision though.
ivancea@reddit
A psychologist. At this point, is the only thing that can help the doomers.
You have bad management? You find another job.
They require you to use a new tool? You learn to do so.
They add more pressure? Literally NOTHING changes. You work at a speed, and that speed is the same whatever they say. Better tools, better speed. Period. Any sense of pressure is on you to handle.
Really, this must be post #20 this week on this topic. You can ask AI to tell you how to search, and feel free to read existing comments in existing posts. For God's sake
daringStumbles@reddit
I bet you've had a lot of patients that did one session and then didnt come back.
ivancea@reddit
I'm not a psychologist. I said that's a solution when you can't find a way to cope with an always evolving field
daringStumbles@reddit
So maybe type in full sentences instead of starting a reply with a title that is very easily assumed to be a type of "as a"
ivancea@reddit
It was a direct answer to the post question. You're guessings "could have been real", but don't get angry at me because they weren't
djnattyp@reddit
This field is always evolving - except this time the morlocks in charge want you to evolve into an eloi.
ivancea@reddit
That has been happening for decades. As said, it's nothing new. But new people keep coming and forgetting the past (or maybe they simply didn't read about computer history...), and keep screaming in the least constructive and doomish way
chickadee-guy@reddit
I run laps around the AI boosters at my work with my 2 hands and my brain, its not that hard.
I prompt a ralph loop or mess around with Gastown type stuff to meet LLM quotas
MagicalVagina@reddit
Let's be honest, there was never any respect to begin with imho. They are simply showing their true colors now.
NotGoodSoftwareMaker@reddit
Maybe gym or actively seeking a way out of software?
OriginalTangle@reddit
I'm contemplating whether I would be happy as an electrician.
Pro: Hands-on, tech-adjacent, ai-safe, in-demand here in NL.
Con: Does not pay as well unless you're self-employed and good at finding new projects. Mistakes could be fatal, though this is unlikely.
The more posts like OP's I read the more I think it's worth it for me as I don't really need much money.
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
Doing some fitness stuff for positivity already. Only way to carry on.
NotGoodSoftwareMaker@reddit
I got into boxing for what its worth
Shreds you and helps with aggression from work
Plus its usually a pretty tight community, so you make some good friends
Synaqua@reddit
Same at my own corporate hellscape
I don’t have any advice, sorry mate. Just condolences. I’ve been beaten down to the mindset of collecting paycheque and letting them burn their own bridges with this mindset. It’ll bite them in the rear when their products suck.
To get the satisfaction of quality work I do side projects at home with the hope of doing my own thing one day.
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
Too many of us thinking on these lines.. doesn't look like such an opportunity is coming.
Synaqua@reddit
Ok, so why are you asking the question at all then? I’m not trying to be rude. I just can’t figure out why people who think this way haven’t jumped ship yet
jhartikainen@reddit
I've tried AI tooling and I never liked using them. So I simply don't use them. I really don't care if a customer or whoever thinks I should use them.
This has been a pretty easy solution so far.
joxxer42@reddit
My company has an adoption dashboard. It has leader boards, who has (and who has not) picked and used the various options. I shows teams, leaders, and adoption rates for their orgs.
We don't have a strict "80% code must be AI generated" but it's heavily implied to make it used in your daily work.
jhartikainen@reddit
My immediate thought was this would probably be easy to fabricate even by feeding input from AI into the AI to compound the numbers lol
Maybe I'm in the minority but I probably would just let them fire me if it really came to that as a result of not using AI. I don't think I would want to work there. (I've looked at some companies in the past that I thought "could be interesting to work there", but then they become AI obsessed and I lose interest)
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
I am not going to describe here what some customers are doing to avoid replication. But it's not nice and not yet escapable.
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
Wait till the AI madness driven management kicks in.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
I leverage the ai tooling to spend less time doing job and more time living life
Gotta be sneaky though, I already got fired for not “uploading commits frequently enough” even tho I was doing massive ass code submissions for the sake of productivity, I was simply doing a lot of work locally before pushing it on the date that I requested the review. I was a fool, I could have trickled that job, one commit per day, for the next two months.
That’s where we are at as an industry
joxxer42@reddit
I'm currently building a locally running tool to handle reply initial drafting to Teams messages, Outlook emails, and PR reviews; I'm also training it on my personal voice and tone. This should take care of a large amount of my work loop each day.
Bit of initial setup up front, but hey, I'm doing more with less, company!
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
Your work if in some repository is just a personality for the next cycle
PressureHumble3604@reddit
Same situation, the pressure is now to output much more code but AI isn’t there yet, past a certain complexity the code may work but has many issues including design but management doesn’t care
We are writing tech debt faster instead of addressing it.
I had a lack of motivation and now is even worse. I am more motivated to work on personal projects though.
Personally I do what they say as long as I can contain it. I don’t want to introduce tech debt on something critical for the system. If they complain that I am too slow their issues, it will save me overtime in few weeks or months.
If I don’t get a good performance review I will jump ship and if the market will be so bad I will start my own thing
DesiBail@reddit (OP)
Welcome to the start my own thing club. I keep hearing the same food joint, teaching, side project to startup everywhere.
chikamakaleyley@reddit
i've found that learning something else outside of work, still related to development, has helped. a few yrs back i felt stunted in the area of FE (I'm currently 18 YOE) and so i did something else, learned more about my system and dev tools. I got better at them, that new info helped connect dots at work, I got better at my job
at the moment i've got an interest in game development, but it doesn't have to involve actually learning how to do it - learning how programming was approached in retro games is kinda fun/interesting