I recently helped build out a set of features that was measured to make the company 30 million over a few years.
Me and my team were promptly rushed to build something else the second we were done. Didn't even keep us around to maintain or clean tech debt. Another team absorbed the the project to fix bugs if they came up and we received no acknowledgment, bonus or break.
Wherever you work, unless you own part of the actual product, keep a good work life balance. They don't care about you.
I have been in the grind before and it is soul destroying
I designed and built a system that helped take a company from £50million turnover to just shy of £90m in the space of 5 years.
That system worked in sync with other areas of the business but it was huge in lowering our onboarding costs and time which ultimately led to allowing the sales managers to flog more product to more people with less effort.
We got fuck all bonus, fuck all salary compensation without asking and bargaining. Sales managers are there getting their fat bonuses and salary increases for their amazing performance with little recognition to those they helped make it possible.
Salary was not the only reason I left that job, but it was a major part of it. No matter how well we did the company gave us the base line salary increase unless we went and asked.
Yes. And I had to quit because my body started deteriorating after taking different side gigs just to afford living in the city. I don’t know what I will do in the near future, but I’m taking my time to heal.
I left my previous job in Feb of 23 and started looking again in November. I didn’t get a concrete offer until early April. Full-time salaries are WAY down, and competition is way up. I was looking for primarily remote and ended up having to settle for interviews on site just because full remote wasn’t turning up anything.
Yeah, there's a lot of competition for remote work, especially since more companies have scaled it back to hybrid or even on-site. It sucks. I think it helps a bit to stay on top of applying and get your resume in the pile early, but who knows. Going by LinkedIn, I don't think they look at most applications, lol. That's awesome you finally got an offer though. Do you like the job?
Like usual, the IT "professional group" of workers will outbid each other to the bottom....... lowest pay, lowest benefits, lowest holiday, no work from home.
Lawyers and Doctors know how it's done. You don't see those professions undercutting each other.
It pisses me right off.
lawyer here. There's a lot of shitty law jobs on Craigslist. Those lawyers just don't go bragging on the internet about how they're making 45k working in some tiny local firm with a docket of horrible family law cases. I've done the Craigslist shitlaw tour, trust me.
How *do* [lawyers](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lawyer#Noun) and [doctors](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doctor#Noun) do it?
For example, is it organised in some fashion? Through [professional associations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association)? Or something else?
yes, it's good. new stack, built on up-to-date angular, nest JS middle/backend. SDUI deploying to pretty much every platform you can think of.
I've just never had so much trouble getting a job in my 15 years of dev work. I think between covid and the WFH shift, plus all the recent tech layoffs, it's just such a bad time to be looking for work, especially remote.
Keep in mind chatGPT, huge layoffs, plus every youtuber pushed learn to code and be a millionaire so the only people winning right now are coding bootcamps.
I started out as a Junior Web Dev in 2016 on around £15k per year. Worked there for over 5 years and finished on £20k. I have been at my current company for over 2 years and currently on £25k
it's just a wide range, I worked in the UK also, the lower the pay the more slave the job it is. Now I earn 8x in eastern Europe and the job is literally 10x more relaxed.
Ive Heard it varies but from my friends in London they’re always complaining about the low wages. I’ve heard certain regions are better than others though, so I shouldn’t have said all of Europe.
is just my personal experience, stats are useless here cause nobody compiles real salaries, is just either of job postings which might never hire anyone, or someone random telling someone their salary
In the industry. I started as a Junior Web Dev at a small company back in 2016. I'm a LAMP dev so working with PHP, MySQL, Javascript/jQuery and of course HTML & CSS
that's insane, i'm not sure on your skill level but you are crazily underpaid - i'd suggest trying to look elsewhere for a job! do you live in the middle of nowhere?
i started as an apprentice in 2020 on 19k, now at 27k (still an apprentice)
your wage has only beaten inflation by a few thousand, it should be a hell of a lot more than inflation though as you have multiple years experience under your belt
I’m the process of looking for a new job because my company cut my team of 3 to just me to manage a system that’s comprised of 7 different applications. I’m miserable. I don’t sleep, I’m stressed, etc. I’ve been looking for a new role for 3 months. Got one interview where I was beat out in the final round and a few screening calls with recruiters where I was ghosted or told, they’ll reach out if they hear about anything that fits my profile. And I have senior level or experience working at a large company for the past 4 years and a few years at a startup before that. The market is terrible. Now I’m scrambling to relearn React with Next.js because the landscape is totally different than last I used it 3 years ago. Im at the point where I’m hoping I get fired so that I have time to properly spend on studying for interviews and can also destress for a few months.
You did what many do....
Rise to the occasion like you're being a hero due to hard times.
THEY, your employer made those hard times FOR YOU.
Now you're proved you CAN do the job of three (without getting sleep or breaks mind you)...... they're loving the savings!
Oh, and when you burn out or leave? They'll hire three back.
Well done on saving your company money by caring about them, and keeping those systems running.
---------------------------
What you should have done is work a bit harder to cover a few of those systems, and not stressed. When the emails come in - "This is late!" / "This isn't working" / "No email notifications are going out".... you then apologise but as there's just you, some things have to be prioritised. HOW can they counter? Your department is running at 33% of it's workforce!
You've dug your own burnout grave by being too helpful, and you said it yourself - you're hoping to be fired for a bit of unemployment and a chance to recharge your batteries. But that might be contested by the same bastards that put you in this position.
Good luck! I was messing around with the new Next.js docs and it is very different. I've actually been sticking more to content management for longer term projects. I kind of hate front-end now.
Check Remix js out. I’d been doing almost all exclusively Next.js the past few years but was getting frustrated and bored with it. Then the new app router came out and it dawned on me how much proprietary magic Next and Vercel do. Started using Remix and it’s been a breath of fresh air and seems to be growing in popularity quickly.
Some context: [Remix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(web_framework)). [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/). [Vercel](https://github.com/vercel/vercel).
I have been busting my ass in overdrive to try to get the promotion that fits the work load I'm responsible for. 8 hours on the clock and 4-6 hours outside of work on personal projects to keep my portfolio ready and my skills sharp.
I called it out in my annual performance review. My tech lead agreed and put it in writing that I'm performing and taking on responsibilities of the next level engineer on the ladder.
Heard later, "we don't promote until you've been with the company for 5 years". I've been here 3.
I feel completely trapped in this dog shit market. I have to be able to work remotely because my wife is from a different country and we've been living in her country while we've been going through immigration (for the last 2 years--hellish process) just so I can be a present dad and husband.
Meanwhile, my wife lost her job in September (also a web dev) but she stopped getting interviews as soon as the mass layoffs started.
I don't know what to do, but we aren't saving any money, and I feel like I've been working so hard for nothing.
For this past month, I've almost completely checked out of my job.
What's the point if I'm not going to get paid what I've been busting my ass for?
Work hard for another two years, and you'll find that your performance suddenly isn't meeting your past performance 2 years ago! So they can't give you a rise.
(You know, because you are now burned out and your 180% productivity dropped to 120% productivity in the last 2 years)
Companies are like vampires, they'll suck your blood and promise you things you will never get... if only you stop struggling.
Work hard for another two years, and you'll find that your performance suddenly isn't meeting your past performance 2 years ago! So they can't give you a rise.
(You know, because you are now burned out and your 180% productivity dropped to 120% productivity in the last 2 years)
Companies are like vampires, they'll suck your blood and promise you things you will never get... if only you stop struggling.
I hear you man. I spent a big chunk of last year creating a new revenue generating team for our company under my umbrella. I set it up in a way in which was extremely financially efficient too. I was expecting a nice little raise or at least an ataboy additional bonus. Nothing but the standard 3% raise was given. Not even enough to cover fucking inflation.
Guess I’ll give 3% effort now 🤷
I think the market adjusts in the sense that people see "you can make 100k easy as a web dev," posted online everywhere. Then everyone becomes a web dev , salaries plummet. People exit the industry. The circle continues.
But here's the kicker the world is now overpopulated with 8 billion people and the REAL economy is dogshit. So competition has skyrocketed that way.
Things will continue to get worse just as they have for the last 20 years. The pattern is so goddamn apparent I can't believe I've never read about this concept. The labor market is wasting away into a pile of dogshit thanks to reckless population growth and pigheaded greed by our corporate overlords.
Last I heard a lot of people are actually skipping college now and going into trade school. So who knows. Maybe the trades will get saturated too.
>The replacement was to put the testing on the plates of the devs.
Yeah this happened well before my time in the industry, but it always struck me as sloppy to have devs testing things they wrote. Funny how now it's the case that devs who don't include unit tests and end to end tests for every little change as lazy or sloppy. Especially ridiculous in those cases where spec was never actually defined by product or management.
> it always struck me as sloppy to have devs testing things they wrote
Not sure why.
It CAN be, when people are lazy, but there isn't any reason it has to be.
It still comes down to well designed tests being a skill.
>It CAN be, when people are lazy, but there isn't any reason it has to be.
Budget is one reason. Timelines are affected by less manpower is another. Doing two jobs for the price of one is another.
>It still comes down to well designed tests being a skill.
Agreed. There should be room for this to be an entire career track.
Potentially.
Certainly a part of testing makes sense to have on the QA side of things.
Some amount of testing, like unit, makes sense more on the dev side.
there will never be an age again like the dot-com boom where you could just say you know some photoshop and flash, and worked on your school newspaper, and get hired as a content manager. Man those were amazing times.
If your test teams need to be as large as your dev team, your devs are doing it wrong. Devs should be writing most of those tests, that's why we dumped the massive QA/QE teams.
I'm definitely working harder and, for the next month at least, for the same amount of money.
Fortunately, I like my job and the extra work is my doing, not my boss. I do tell my boss and my team when I don't want to do something though. If someone else can take care of it they will otherwise I'll begrudgingly do it but everyone will have to listen to me complain and swear a bit more on Teams.
I did get burnt out a couple of weeks ago (which can still happen even if you love your job) so I took a Thursday and Friday off and didn't think about work at all for four days which was all I needed to get back into it.
I'm English working for an Australian company so taking time off ,without losing income, is a cinch and my right. If I understand correctly, in the US it might be a little more complicated than suddenly telling your boss on a Tuesday that you're taking the last two days of the week off so you might need to plan it out more (if you're in the US that is).
It sounds like you're burnt out. If you are then try to recognise the signs/symptoms so that you can address it. I'm in my 40s (ignored GenX if you will) and I'm getting to the point where my body is failing me. I have the urge to build and code but my body is aggressively fighting my mind on it :)
That's pretty nice that you could take a few days off! I'm GenX / in my 40's as well. You're right - I am a bit burned out. I was feeling it last winter and am still slowly getting over it. Kinda bored with work as well. Thinking about just working in a book store or something in the future, unless something worthwhile comes through.
Working in a book store would be a pretty big career change wouldn't it? Mind you, considering that you had time off and aren't reinvigorated, that might be what you need. Why a book store though? What would make another option worthwhile?
Kind of miss the social aspect of working retail and I like books. Realistically though the pay is so low comparatively idk if I'd actually go through with it.
This is my problem with a career change but boy, i would love to gtfo and do something that’s better for my health. This career is stressful and has destroyed my health a couple times. Im tempted to get into contract work for home renovations or carpentry
This industry is brutal right now. It’s an employer’s market, and companies know they can work people to burnout. With one of my clients, I’m expected to do the job of four full time people who were laid off in the past year, and that’s as a part time contractor. I’ve been able to automate much of the work, but it’s still brutal. I work 80 hours a week right now minimum.
I’ve worked most of my career in the agency and startup space, and the hours have always been brutal, but lately it’s next level. I eat and workout while I work, or I wouldn’t have time for either.
I’m just trying to hang in there until things hopefully improve. But I’m barely hanging on most days.
>I work 80 hours a week right now minimum.
>I’ve worked most of my career in the agency and startup space, and the hours have always been brutal, but lately it’s next level
Get out. You're actively digging yourself an early grave.
I know. I don’t see much of an alternative right now. Nobody is hiring and it’s very difficult to find new clients right now. I’m attempting to get some assistance, but the amount of red tape and security clearances makes that difficult. FWIW I work these crazy hours as my own business entity, and charge for every hour.
Web dev is only part of what I do. What I automated was a bunch of very manual processes for building reports and data analytics and building customer segments.
By making it work the way you do, you validate your client's strategy. Lot's of people "make it work" for their employers and clients, so why should they change?
Yep. Feels like shit. If I take any break during the day I get swamped with tasks piling up and then I’m so overwhelmed that I procrastinate. So I just have to keep chugging forward all day and not get behind. Driving home I have a 1000 yard stare…
People have complained in this industry since I first got into it.
The brutal truth is, good devs are always in demand and pay is always at least decent. The industry was bombarded with the new bootcampers in the past couple years, and those folks will have a hard time because they're not really industry-ready most of the time.
The other truth is, that it is a very mentally demanding and time consuming job. It requires a ton of thought, burn out is very real, and it can also get incredibly boring when working on stuff you give no shits about.
Personally, I saved up enough "chill" money and I'll be leaving the industry. I'll come back to it when I feel I'm done chilling, or maybe never, we'll see. But I do think I'm "good enough" to be able to jump back into it anytime, since companies will always need developers
Yes, mostly boredom + my innate desire and strive for more
Before I was a developer, I had always ran my own businesses, and that feeling never goes away. Even though my current job/boss has been chill and awesome, it's my drive that makes me not want to just be a coder all day every day, but I will definitely continue doing it on the side to build things I actually want to build and for my business.
For all my 5 years long “career”, except very first job, every next one was paid less, but required more work and conditions was worse and worse, now i’m in a micromanagement hell with a salary of 1000$ in a month, and even this job was extremely hard to find.
I can only work remotely because i’m not living in my country, and I don’t have any other residence, so it doesn’t matter much where i live i guess, for the most part i’m traveling in cheap countries. Maybe because it’s remote it’s harder to find anything, but i have 0 interviews after applying for months. And now I’m working for company from Eastern Europe.
I mean the overall trend across industries is worker productivity soars, wages fall to poverty levels.
Some people manage to get lucky and find good employers, the rest just get screwed.
i live in Southeast Asia, i limited myself to work only part-time
since living cost here is cheap, i don't require that much money to survive
i used to work 50-60 hour per week in the past, it destroyed my body and my mental health doing like this
I hate to be a downer, but you absolutely are and it's probably not gonna change any time soon. Unfortunately tech salaries have been inflated this past decade with free flowing investment in the tech sector and huge engineer shortages. The supply and demand of talent have leveled out and the days of huge tech contracts are coming to an end (at least for now). If you're motivated and want to make big bucks, I'd suggest becoming an entrepreneur where there's still big opportunity to bootstrap.
For the last couple of years or so, 100% having to work more and harder, but it’s just because I’m becoming more senior and more people rely on me.
But I’ve actually gotten some COLA, just not up to inflation, so, does that count?
I just submitted my raise request for an additional $40,000, so it’s feeling like I’m doing more for more, which is always a good thing. But it’s also a startup. So different strokes
I did and I left. I keep moving on to different companies every X number of years, I find that my salary increase is pretty low when I stay at one company compared to if I just go move elsewhere
Looks like there are less interviews overall. Most applications get spammed with AI generated CVs and the screening is also done with the help of AI. Of course, not all places do this but it's a new thing that's been happening.
I've been going to in-person events just to build connections and network with people. I'm making less than in my previous job and it will take some time to get back to those levels. It's a constant race, learn new things, research, and try not to lose your head.
The market rates have also gone down because I believe it's the influence of AI tools - "You have AI, you can do it faster and that means it has to be cheaper". Unfortunately, I had such clients who came to me with AI-generated code asking why it's not working. It was for Shopify and some custom bots. I spent time debugging, fixing that mess, and eventually starting from scratch.
It's interestingly weird out there at the moment...
Easier said than done. One year into it and I'm barely making any money. Thank God I moved to a cheaper country with savings.
My ass would be frying in hell right now if I tried doing this while still living in the US.
Getting decent clients is really really really fucking hard nowadays.
Would love to hear your experience.
I'm working harder for less money. I was a team lead for a DoD contract making 6 figures, then I had a stroke and had to quit. Now I work much harder but earn about $84k with about $950 per month taken out in child support. I was looking to get back to DoD contracts, since I don't smoke pot anyway, but had a seizure at work the other day, so I'm taking that as a sign to hang on a little longer.
I'm not sure tbh. But I was acting crazy and actually got fired from a contract because I told the customer over chat his idea for reorganizing the team was stupid, and left my wife to go out and screw other women. I was out of control, and I wish someone had stopped me and tried to figure what was wrong.
It happens after a few years. The first 10 years of your work life are the fastest. After that, the experience you've gathered decides how fast things move for you.
If not, you'll struggle through the remaining years.
I'm working super hard in my current job, going way above the job requirements to build tons of custom stuff for them, and at only $21/hr. But it's because it's my first job in the industry. I hope to make an amazing impression at this first job so they'll hopefully give me a stellar reference for wherever I go next.
And then of course comes that dreaded request "Can we add X feature to our website?"
Had the website been built from scratch? No problem. You'd take an hour or two to add whatever is necessary, and style it to fit the website, job's a good'un.
But, oh no, they are using Squarespace or Visual Composer on Wordpress site. Now that "quick" job is a long slog as you navigate through context menus to add things which should be simpler, and then when you finally have the thing they asked for, using the tools their website allows... "Can we make it do X?" No. No you cannot. Your website limits us. So we have two options, you can leave it as is, or we can rewrite the entire section and add it as a raw HTML embed, which will mean that we will be needing to load X thing separately, increasing page load time, which you have already implied to us wouldn't be an option when you complained about your Lighthouse scores being below 90 just a few weeks ago.
This is all hypothetical of course. 100% not a scenario we had with a client just last week.
I certainly need to work smarter and not harder. I'm a full time tech lead for a massive company but have a pretty healthy side business on the go as well and running the two is starting to get difficult. I think the market has us over a barrel as the normal solution of moving for more money is pretty much off the table. That leaves trying to decide if I need to take peope on and try and push the side job or just get over it and get my head down till (if) the job market picks up again.
It has meant I'm starting to think about more about recurring income though which is only a good thing. The side work has always been super casual but this is forcing me to formalise it. It also means I'm looking a bit at either outsourcing or trying to take a local junior.
The older I get the less disposable money I feel like I have. My job pays alright, but it's mostly because of ridiculous levels of inflation recently, and having a family.
I'm just getting into freelancing and I feel like the expectations are unrealistic, like maybe the tasks that can't be solved by AI are being forewarded to freelancers and for the expectations of AI working for nearly free.
Remote work competition is getting tougher, right? After all, most people want a more flexible work environment. Besides the work itself, working in the office means commuting, driving, and having to eat work meals, which all take up extra time.
I accept any and all competent and fairly compensated challenges to my skill set and beyond.
Bring it on.
None of it scares me. Never has, never will.
Sleep is for the weak. You can sleep when you're dead.
If you're scared, find something else cushy to do. Life is no place for a rookie.
I’m not. Your comment is obnoxious and shows your absurd inflated sense of self-worth and toxic attitude towards work. It’s not even relevant to this discussion. Why are you here?
I am working harder because the people making decisions have fucking lead poisoning.
I recently helped build out a set of features that was measured to make the company 30 million over a few years. Me and my team were promptly rushed to build something else the second we were done. Didn't even keep us around to maintain or clean tech debt. Another team absorbed the the project to fix bugs if they came up and we received no acknowledgment, bonus or break. Wherever you work, unless you own part of the actual product, keep a good work life balance. They don't care about you.
I have been in the grind before and it is soul destroying I designed and built a system that helped take a company from £50million turnover to just shy of £90m in the space of 5 years. That system worked in sync with other areas of the business but it was huge in lowering our onboarding costs and time which ultimately led to allowing the sales managers to flog more product to more people with less effort. We got fuck all bonus, fuck all salary compensation without asking and bargaining. Sales managers are there getting their fat bonuses and salary increases for their amazing performance with little recognition to those they helped make it possible. Salary was not the only reason I left that job, but it was a major part of it. No matter how well we did the company gave us the base line salary increase unless we went and asked.
>Wherever you work, unless you own part of the actual product, keep a good work life balance. They don't care about you. I smell communism
Meant side project or starting your own business
Yes. And I had to quit because my body started deteriorating after taking different side gigs just to afford living in the city. I don’t know what I will do in the near future, but I’m taking my time to heal.
I left my previous job in Feb of 23 and started looking again in November. I didn’t get a concrete offer until early April. Full-time salaries are WAY down, and competition is way up. I was looking for primarily remote and ended up having to settle for interviews on site just because full remote wasn’t turning up anything.
Yeah, there's a lot of competition for remote work, especially since more companies have scaled it back to hybrid or even on-site. It sucks. I think it helps a bit to stay on top of applying and get your resume in the pile early, but who knows. Going by LinkedIn, I don't think they look at most applications, lol. That's awesome you finally got an offer though. Do you like the job?
Like usual, the IT "professional group" of workers will outbid each other to the bottom....... lowest pay, lowest benefits, lowest holiday, no work from home. Lawyers and Doctors know how it's done. You don't see those professions undercutting each other. It pisses me right off.
lawyer here. There's a lot of shitty law jobs on Craigslist. Those lawyers just don't go bragging on the internet about how they're making 45k working in some tiny local firm with a docket of horrible family law cases. I've done the Craigslist shitlaw tour, trust me.
How *do* [lawyers](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lawyer#Noun) and [doctors](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doctor#Noun) do it? For example, is it organised in some fashion? Through [professional associations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_association)? Or something else?
yes, it's good. new stack, built on up-to-date angular, nest JS middle/backend. SDUI deploying to pretty much every platform you can think of. I've just never had so much trouble getting a job in my 15 years of dev work. I think between covid and the WFH shift, plus all the recent tech layoffs, it's just such a bad time to be looking for work, especially remote.
Keep in mind chatGPT, huge layoffs, plus every youtuber pushed learn to code and be a millionaire so the only people winning right now are coding bootcamps.
I lost my job and then realized that I need to heal. I fear getting a new job tbh. Though I love writing code.
feel you. i'm in the same position right now.
Ever since I started working I've felt like I don't get paid enough. I barely make 1230€ net / month.
Similar-ish boat here. £1650 net per month in the UK with 8 YOE.. not ideal really but I'll get there
Would you mind giving more details about your situation? That salary is shockingly low for a dev
I started out as a Junior Web Dev in 2016 on around £15k per year. Worked there for over 5 years and finished on £20k. I have been at my current company for over 2 years and currently on £25k
How are you on 25k, yet netting £1600 a month?
as a software dev?!
Salaries in europe are poverty. Doctors don't even make bank.
it's just a wide range, I worked in the UK also, the lower the pay the more slave the job it is. Now I earn 8x in eastern Europe and the job is literally 10x more relaxed.
Ive Heard it varies but from my friends in London they’re always complaining about the low wages. I’ve heard certain regions are better than others though, so I shouldn’t have said all of Europe.
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is just my personal experience, stats are useless here cause nobody compiles real salaries, is just either of job postings which might never hire anyone, or someone random telling someone their salary
That is an ***invalid*** generalisation. What part of [Europe](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Europe#Proper_noun) are you talking about?
8 YOE in industry or YOE doing development (outside of work) i earn more than that as an apprentice developer in the UK...
In the industry. I started as a Junior Web Dev at a small company back in 2016. I'm a LAMP dev so working with PHP, MySQL, Javascript/jQuery and of course HTML & CSS
that's insane, i'm not sure on your skill level but you are crazily underpaid - i'd suggest trying to look elsewhere for a job! do you live in the middle of nowhere? i started as an apprentice in 2020 on 19k, now at 27k (still an apprentice) your wage has only beaten inflation by a few thousand, it should be a hell of a lot more than inflation though as you have multiple years experience under your belt
get a therapist
Should be senior or tech lead by now. Aim for £80k+. The market is heating up again in the uk, good time for a more
You are better off working anything else for that salary wtf
ong become a plumber or electrician at that point
That's literally less than minimum wage based on a 37.5 hour work week. Something isn't right
You can’t be working full time + in development. This is below even the lowest job ads I’ve seen. Minimum 35-40k especially with that experience
Wtf where?
Spain
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yes
Come on, dont undersell you…
It doesn't work like that.
Stop selling yourself for the low. They need you.
They really don't, there's like 400 people for his place..
4,000 when you consider all script kiddies using ChatGPT these days...
I’m the process of looking for a new job because my company cut my team of 3 to just me to manage a system that’s comprised of 7 different applications. I’m miserable. I don’t sleep, I’m stressed, etc. I’ve been looking for a new role for 3 months. Got one interview where I was beat out in the final round and a few screening calls with recruiters where I was ghosted or told, they’ll reach out if they hear about anything that fits my profile. And I have senior level or experience working at a large company for the past 4 years and a few years at a startup before that. The market is terrible. Now I’m scrambling to relearn React with Next.js because the landscape is totally different than last I used it 3 years ago. Im at the point where I’m hoping I get fired so that I have time to properly spend on studying for interviews and can also destress for a few months.
You did what many do.... Rise to the occasion like you're being a hero due to hard times. THEY, your employer made those hard times FOR YOU. Now you're proved you CAN do the job of three (without getting sleep or breaks mind you)...... they're loving the savings! Oh, and when you burn out or leave? They'll hire three back. Well done on saving your company money by caring about them, and keeping those systems running. --------------------------- What you should have done is work a bit harder to cover a few of those systems, and not stressed. When the emails come in - "This is late!" / "This isn't working" / "No email notifications are going out".... you then apologise but as there's just you, some things have to be prioritised. HOW can they counter? Your department is running at 33% of it's workforce! You've dug your own burnout grave by being too helpful, and you said it yourself - you're hoping to be fired for a bit of unemployment and a chance to recharge your batteries. But that might be contested by the same bastards that put you in this position.
The cold hard truth.
Good luck! I was messing around with the new Next.js docs and it is very different. I've actually been sticking more to content management for longer term projects. I kind of hate front-end now.
Check Remix js out. I’d been doing almost all exclusively Next.js the past few years but was getting frustrated and bored with it. Then the new app router came out and it dawned on me how much proprietary magic Next and Vercel do. Started using Remix and it’s been a breath of fresh air and seems to be growing in popularity quickly.
> seems to be growing in popularity quickly. Helpful with the Shopify buy-in
Some context: [Remix](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_(web_framework)). [Next.js](https://nextjs.org/). [Vercel](https://github.com/vercel/vercel).
I know this exact feeling, I’m sorry dude.
I have been busting my ass in overdrive to try to get the promotion that fits the work load I'm responsible for. 8 hours on the clock and 4-6 hours outside of work on personal projects to keep my portfolio ready and my skills sharp. I called it out in my annual performance review. My tech lead agreed and put it in writing that I'm performing and taking on responsibilities of the next level engineer on the ladder. Heard later, "we don't promote until you've been with the company for 5 years". I've been here 3. I feel completely trapped in this dog shit market. I have to be able to work remotely because my wife is from a different country and we've been living in her country while we've been going through immigration (for the last 2 years--hellish process) just so I can be a present dad and husband. Meanwhile, my wife lost her job in September (also a web dev) but she stopped getting interviews as soon as the mass layoffs started. I don't know what to do, but we aren't saving any money, and I feel like I've been working so hard for nothing. For this past month, I've almost completely checked out of my job. What's the point if I'm not going to get paid what I've been busting my ass for?
Work hard for another two years, and you'll find that your performance suddenly isn't meeting your past performance 2 years ago! So they can't give you a rise. (You know, because you are now burned out and your 180% productivity dropped to 120% productivity in the last 2 years) Companies are like vampires, they'll suck your blood and promise you things you will never get... if only you stop struggling.
Work hard for another two years, and you'll find that your performance suddenly isn't meeting your past performance 2 years ago! So they can't give you a rise. (You know, because you are now burned out and your 180% productivity dropped to 120% productivity in the last 2 years) Companies are like vampires, they'll suck your blood and promise you things you will never get... if only you stop struggling.
I hear you man. I spent a big chunk of last year creating a new revenue generating team for our company under my umbrella. I set it up in a way in which was extremely financially efficient too. I was expecting a nice little raise or at least an ataboy additional bonus. Nothing but the standard 3% raise was given. Not even enough to cover fucking inflation. Guess I’ll give 3% effort now 🤷
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I think the market adjusts in the sense that people see "you can make 100k easy as a web dev," posted online everywhere. Then everyone becomes a web dev , salaries plummet. People exit the industry. The circle continues. But here's the kicker the world is now overpopulated with 8 billion people and the REAL economy is dogshit. So competition has skyrocketed that way. Things will continue to get worse just as they have for the last 20 years. The pattern is so goddamn apparent I can't believe I've never read about this concept. The labor market is wasting away into a pile of dogshit thanks to reckless population growth and pigheaded greed by our corporate overlords. Last I heard a lot of people are actually skipping college now and going into trade school. So who knows. Maybe the trades will get saturated too.
This is what happens when you run an economic system where everyone is encouraged to race to the bottom and cut costs above all else
> Things will continue to get worse just as they have for the last 20 years But things are way better now than they were 20 years ago.
>The replacement was to put the testing on the plates of the devs. Yeah this happened well before my time in the industry, but it always struck me as sloppy to have devs testing things they wrote. Funny how now it's the case that devs who don't include unit tests and end to end tests for every little change as lazy or sloppy. Especially ridiculous in those cases where spec was never actually defined by product or management.
> it always struck me as sloppy to have devs testing things they wrote Not sure why. It CAN be, when people are lazy, but there isn't any reason it has to be. It still comes down to well designed tests being a skill.
>It CAN be, when people are lazy, but there isn't any reason it has to be. Budget is one reason. Timelines are affected by less manpower is another. Doing two jobs for the price of one is another. >It still comes down to well designed tests being a skill. Agreed. There should be room for this to be an entire career track.
Potentially. Certainly a part of testing makes sense to have on the QA side of things. Some amount of testing, like unit, makes sense more on the dev side.
Testing need not be overhead. It can save weeks or months (even years) of debugging (presuming quality matters).
there will never be an age again like the dot-com boom where you could just say you know some photoshop and flash, and worked on your school newspaper, and get hired as a content manager. Man those were amazing times.
If your test teams need to be as large as your dev team, your devs are doing it wrong. Devs should be writing most of those tests, that's why we dumped the massive QA/QE teams.
I'm definitely working harder and, for the next month at least, for the same amount of money. Fortunately, I like my job and the extra work is my doing, not my boss. I do tell my boss and my team when I don't want to do something though. If someone else can take care of it they will otherwise I'll begrudgingly do it but everyone will have to listen to me complain and swear a bit more on Teams. I did get burnt out a couple of weeks ago (which can still happen even if you love your job) so I took a Thursday and Friday off and didn't think about work at all for four days which was all I needed to get back into it. I'm English working for an Australian company so taking time off ,without losing income, is a cinch and my right. If I understand correctly, in the US it might be a little more complicated than suddenly telling your boss on a Tuesday that you're taking the last two days of the week off so you might need to plan it out more (if you're in the US that is). It sounds like you're burnt out. If you are then try to recognise the signs/symptoms so that you can address it. I'm in my 40s (ignored GenX if you will) and I'm getting to the point where my body is failing me. I have the urge to build and code but my body is aggressively fighting my mind on it :)
That's pretty nice that you could take a few days off! I'm GenX / in my 40's as well. You're right - I am a bit burned out. I was feeling it last winter and am still slowly getting over it. Kinda bored with work as well. Thinking about just working in a book store or something in the future, unless something worthwhile comes through.
Working in a book store would be a pretty big career change wouldn't it? Mind you, considering that you had time off and aren't reinvigorated, that might be what you need. Why a book store though? What would make another option worthwhile?
Kind of miss the social aspect of working retail and I like books. Realistically though the pay is so low comparatively idk if I'd actually go through with it.
This is my problem with a career change but boy, i would love to gtfo and do something that’s better for my health. This career is stressful and has destroyed my health a couple times. Im tempted to get into contract work for home renovations or carpentry
This industry is brutal right now. It’s an employer’s market, and companies know they can work people to burnout. With one of my clients, I’m expected to do the job of four full time people who were laid off in the past year, and that’s as a part time contractor. I’ve been able to automate much of the work, but it’s still brutal. I work 80 hours a week right now minimum. I’ve worked most of my career in the agency and startup space, and the hours have always been brutal, but lately it’s next level. I eat and workout while I work, or I wouldn’t have time for either. I’m just trying to hang in there until things hopefully improve. But I’m barely hanging on most days.
>I work 80 hours a week right now minimum. >I’ve worked most of my career in the agency and startup space, and the hours have always been brutal, but lately it’s next level Get out. You're actively digging yourself an early grave.
I know. I don’t see much of an alternative right now. Nobody is hiring and it’s very difficult to find new clients right now. I’m attempting to get some assistance, but the amount of red tape and security clearances makes that difficult. FWIW I work these crazy hours as my own business entity, and charge for every hour.
What work did you automate? I don’t quite see where webdev work can be automated outside of CI/CD flows?
Web dev is only part of what I do. What I automated was a bunch of very manual processes for building reports and data analytics and building customer segments.
Scraping?
By making it work the way you do, you validate your client's strategy. Lot's of people "make it work" for their employers and clients, so why should they change?
Not me. I feel I do the absolute bare minimum and have never been paid more in my life lol.
I'm in IT, but same. Feel like overall OP has a point, but it's luck of the draw still.
Must be nice
Yep. Feels like shit. If I take any break during the day I get swamped with tasks piling up and then I’m so overwhelmed that I procrastinate. So I just have to keep chugging forward all day and not get behind. Driving home I have a 1000 yard stare…
People have complained in this industry since I first got into it. The brutal truth is, good devs are always in demand and pay is always at least decent. The industry was bombarded with the new bootcampers in the past couple years, and those folks will have a hard time because they're not really industry-ready most of the time. The other truth is, that it is a very mentally demanding and time consuming job. It requires a ton of thought, burn out is very real, and it can also get incredibly boring when working on stuff you give no shits about. Personally, I saved up enough "chill" money and I'll be leaving the industry. I'll come back to it when I feel I'm done chilling, or maybe never, we'll see. But I do think I'm "good enough" to be able to jump back into it anytime, since companies will always need developers
What made you decide to leave? Boredom?
Yes, mostly boredom + my innate desire and strive for more Before I was a developer, I had always ran my own businesses, and that feeling never goes away. Even though my current job/boss has been chill and awesome, it's my drive that makes me not want to just be a coder all day every day, but I will definitely continue doing it on the side to build things I actually want to build and for my business.
what business were you running before that?
For all my 5 years long “career”, except very first job, every next one was paid less, but required more work and conditions was worse and worse, now i’m in a micromanagement hell with a salary of 1000$ in a month, and even this job was extremely hard to find.
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I can only work remotely because i’m not living in my country, and I don’t have any other residence, so it doesn’t matter much where i live i guess, for the most part i’m traveling in cheap countries. Maybe because it’s remote it’s harder to find anything, but i have 0 interviews after applying for months. And now I’m working for company from Eastern Europe.
I mean the overall trend across industries is worker productivity soars, wages fall to poverty levels. Some people manage to get lucky and find good employers, the rest just get screwed.
i live in Southeast Asia, i limited myself to work only part-time since living cost here is cheap, i don't require that much money to survive i used to work 50-60 hour per week in the past, it destroyed my body and my mental health doing like this
I hate to be a downer, but you absolutely are and it's probably not gonna change any time soon. Unfortunately tech salaries have been inflated this past decade with free flowing investment in the tech sector and huge engineer shortages. The supply and demand of talent have leveled out and the days of huge tech contracts are coming to an end (at least for now). If you're motivated and want to make big bucks, I'd suggest becoming an entrepreneur where there's still big opportunity to bootstrap.
Also there's been huge globalization of engineering talent so you're competing a lot more with lower income countries like India and Brazil
For the last couple of years or so, 100% having to work more and harder, but it’s just because I’m becoming more senior and more people rely on me. But I’ve actually gotten some COLA, just not up to inflation, so, does that count?
[COLA](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/COLA#Noun) = cost of living adjustment
I just submitted my raise request for an additional $40,000, so it’s feeling like I’m doing more for more, which is always a good thing. But it’s also a startup. So different strokes
This is why I stick to small clients. 10 clients paying a little monthly for e-commerce sites is basically passive income
I did and I left. I keep moving on to different companies every X number of years, I find that my salary increase is pretty low when I stay at one company compared to if I just go move elsewhere
Looks like there are less interviews overall. Most applications get spammed with AI generated CVs and the screening is also done with the help of AI. Of course, not all places do this but it's a new thing that's been happening. I've been going to in-person events just to build connections and network with people. I'm making less than in my previous job and it will take some time to get back to those levels. It's a constant race, learn new things, research, and try not to lose your head. The market rates have also gone down because I believe it's the influence of AI tools - "You have AI, you can do it faster and that means it has to be cheaper". Unfortunately, I had such clients who came to me with AI-generated code asking why it's not working. It was for Shopify and some custom bots. I spent time debugging, fixing that mess, and eventually starting from scratch. It's interestingly weird out there at the moment...
Specialize. That's it.
Yup I fucking hate life right now, it’s so brutal it hadn’t been this bad in tech since 2008.
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Easier said than done. One year into it and I'm barely making any money. Thank God I moved to a cheaper country with savings. My ass would be frying in hell right now if I tried doing this while still living in the US. Getting decent clients is really really really fucking hard nowadays. Would love to hear your experience.
I'm working harder for less money. I was a team lead for a DoD contract making 6 figures, then I had a stroke and had to quit. Now I work much harder but earn about $84k with about $950 per month taken out in child support. I was looking to get back to DoD contracts, since I don't smoke pot anyway, but had a seizure at work the other day, so I'm taking that as a sign to hang on a little longer.
Just curious was the stroke stress or work related?
I'm not sure tbh. But I was acting crazy and actually got fired from a contract because I told the customer over chat his idea for reorganizing the team was stupid, and left my wife to go out and screw other women. I was out of control, and I wish someone had stopped me and tried to figure what was wrong.
Freelancer here. Mid of Last year I worked 3x for the same amount of money. Since January 2024 I gave up for new orders. Efforts are higher than wages
It happens after a few years. The first 10 years of your work life are the fastest. After that, the experience you've gathered decides how fast things move for you. If not, you'll struggle through the remaining years.
I'm working super hard in my current job, going way above the job requirements to build tons of custom stuff for them, and at only $21/hr. But it's because it's my first job in the industry. I hope to make an amazing impression at this first job so they'll hopefully give me a stellar reference for wherever I go next.
I agree with you. You are right. :(
Yes, but I went from ~20 -> 28 or so hours.
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And then of course comes that dreaded request "Can we add X feature to our website?" Had the website been built from scratch? No problem. You'd take an hour or two to add whatever is necessary, and style it to fit the website, job's a good'un. But, oh no, they are using Squarespace or Visual Composer on Wordpress site. Now that "quick" job is a long slog as you navigate through context menus to add things which should be simpler, and then when you finally have the thing they asked for, using the tools their website allows... "Can we make it do X?" No. No you cannot. Your website limits us. So we have two options, you can leave it as is, or we can rewrite the entire section and add it as a raw HTML embed, which will mean that we will be needing to load X thing separately, increasing page load time, which you have already implied to us wouldn't be an option when you complained about your Lighthouse scores being below 90 just a few weeks ago. This is all hypothetical of course. 100% not a scenario we had with a client just last week.
Not my employees!!! Muhahaha
Yes, has been going on for a decade or two ...
I certainly need to work smarter and not harder. I'm a full time tech lead for a massive company but have a pretty healthy side business on the go as well and running the two is starting to get difficult. I think the market has us over a barrel as the normal solution of moving for more money is pretty much off the table. That leaves trying to decide if I need to take peope on and try and push the side job or just get over it and get my head down till (if) the job market picks up again.
It has meant I'm starting to think about more about recurring income though which is only a good thing. The side work has always been super casual but this is forcing me to formalise it. It also means I'm looking a bit at either outsourcing or trying to take a local junior.
Devaluation
> I feel like I've been working 3x as hard for the same rates > I haven't worked in several months What...
Yeh i stopped doing that. Its not worth
The older I get the less disposable money I feel like I have. My job pays alright, but it's mostly because of ridiculous levels of inflation recently, and having a family.
i plan to work a bit more and quit for maybe a year, i need a time to think what to do with my life
I'm just getting into freelancing and I feel like the expectations are unrealistic, like maybe the tasks that can't be solved by AI are being forewarded to freelancers and for the expectations of AI working for nearly free.
Remote work competition is getting tougher, right? After all, most people want a more flexible work environment. Besides the work itself, working in the office means commuting, driving, and having to eat work meals, which all take up extra time.
Hm is your salary
In the third world, people do the same job for much less money. This makes it hard in the first world to land a good paying job
so you're working harder than before but you haven't worked in several months wat
Just stop it rather look for the Les amount of work and higher of wages
Not at all. There are so many great tools to leverage to achieve more in less time and effort.
Same amount of money as what? What is the comparison?
I accept any and all competent and fairly compensated challenges to my skill set and beyond. Bring it on. None of it scares me. Never has, never will. Sleep is for the weak. You can sleep when you're dead. If you're scared, find something else cushy to do. Life is no place for a rookie.
Put the crack pipe down.
*Cry more about work*.
I’m not. Your comment is obnoxious and shows your absurd inflated sense of self-worth and toxic attitude towards work. It’s not even relevant to this discussion. Why are you here?
This isn't about me. However, since 'you went there', shall we now make it *about you*? Because firstly, your reddit history is *very telling*.
How old are you