Developer Burnout Fueling Great Resignation Staff Migration (itprotoday.com) 33
Developer burnout is helping to drive an exodus of software developer talent from organizations, as part of a larger trend known as the Great Resignation, according to a report released on April 13 by MuleSoft, which is a division of Salesforce. From a report: The MuleSoft report was based on research conducted by Vanson Bourne in February 2022 across the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Australia. Eighty-six percent of respondents indicated that in the last two years it has become increasingly difficult to recruit software developers. One of the reasons why is the larger macroeconomic trend of the Great Resignation, where employees are leaving their employers en masse during the COVID-19 pandemic as they seek a better work-life balance.
Burnout is also a large challenge for developers, according to the report. The top causes of developer burnout are increasing workloads and the challenges of learning new skills to adapt to emerging technologies. "The pandemic was a massive accelerator for the need of digital tools," Matt McLarty, global field CTO and vice president of the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) at MuleSoft, told ITPro Today. "Non-technology companies were ultimately forced to become technology companies overnight, and we saw nearly every organization require developers to help them achieve these new goals on high-pressure deadlines, all at once."
Burnout is also a large challenge for developers, according to the report. The top causes of developer burnout are increasing workloads and the challenges of learning new skills to adapt to emerging technologies. "The pandemic was a massive accelerator for the need of digital tools," Matt McLarty, global field CTO and vice president of the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) at MuleSoft, told ITPro Today. "Non-technology companies were ultimately forced to become technology companies overnight, and we saw nearly every organization require developers to help them achieve these new goals on high-pressure deadlines, all at once."
Steve Ballmer's got your back (Score:2)
If you're feeling burned out, just do the Ballmer chant [youtube.com].
programmer burnout is real but... (Score:5, Insightful)
>and the challenges of learning new skills to adapt to emerging technologies.
You mean, the incredible boredom of learning what new words are being used to describe existing technologies. There's been wave after wave of the same thing, now described by completely different words and the, ahem, very latest "paradigm".
I'm sure that rewriting the existing, debugged code in a brand-new, incomplete language is always a fine use of my time. It must be. I've been paid for that for so many years.
Re:programmer burnout is real but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It took me a long time to wrap my head around microservices, with all the terminology and technologies surrounding it. One day I realized that a microservice is just a service, and all the problems you have will normal services are going to exist with microservices (connectivity, flow control, push vs pull, latency, etc). There is no difference except with microservices, there are tools that try to handle some of the problems (like flow control, or auto-reconnect) for you.
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Oh yeah, and with microservices, all the problems of asynchronicity appear, and there's no magic solution. Deadlocks and race conditions. Plus you have the additional problems of versioning being more difficult, and setting up a test environment locally (or anywhere) more difficult. The end result is just a mess of bugs that are very difficult to debug.
Microservices are possible, but they are harder, and if you don't have well-defined interfaces, they are always going to be bad.
Re:programmer burnout is real but... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you make every component incredibly tiny, then everyone can understand each component very well. The problem comes now trying to figure out the full system, which is now vastly more complex because of the huge increase in the number of components.
Re:programmer burnout is real but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh yeah, and then there's the database problem. Do they share a database? If they do, then it's hard to update the database because you need to update all the microservices that use it. If they don't share a database, then either data needs to be duplicated across the multiple databases you now have, or something like a "data provider" microservice, and suddenly even simple queries become very difficult.
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The problem comes now trying to figure out the full system, which is now vastly more complex because of the huge increase in the number of components.
That's not the "problem," it's the "objective." It's a thing called "strategic division of information" and it exists so rich and unscrupulous people can duple the peasants into creating the tools of their own enslavement.
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Yes, there's not much new, especially in computer technology programmed by the masses (not counting quantum computing, etc). In real tech there is sometimes new stuff but it's incremental improvements. In software though, it feels like everyone studiously avoids learning from the past, and so they keep reinventing old ideas, again and again, only with new terminology...
"It's web 6.0!"
"It looks like yet another type of client-server architecture..."
"No, no, stop living in the past and try to learn somethin
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Re:Burnout, Backache, RSI, Chronic Fatigue (Score:4)
Are they "too lazy to work," or are they "too lazy to work for you"
Then you have to ask, is "too lazy to work for you" a thing, or is that just entitlement to labor?
Re: Burnout, Backache, RSI, Chronic Fatigue (Score:5, Interesting)
It takes a lot of persistence to drive yourself beyond exhaustion.
Had a coworker who unexpectedly snapped under pressure. The guy was great. Took charge, easily dealt with the most demanding and difficult customers. We thought he had a very thick skin. After he snapped, all he could talk of was getting back to work. We tried to reassure him that everything was fine. Boss told him to stay home and take his time. He ended up in a mental hospital. He had to detox from workaholism.
He got better... sort of. Still can't handle much stress. Had to quit the job. Now works part time
Since then, I think twice before calling these people lasy. It was horrifying to see.
Re: Burnout, Backache, RSI, Chronic Fatigue (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this across IT but also in virtually all jobs. People that get work done end up doing all the work until they burnout. Incompetent management is pervasive and often driven by metrics that only show part of the picture. I've got a group of network and/or systems engineers that are the same way. They are required to be 80% billable all the time which doesn't leave much time for learning any new technologies or products.
These were all issues before the pandemic and companies that adapted to support remote work can now hire from larger pools which hamstrings companies that haven't adapted.
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I'm in the same position as he is. But I actually let some projects fail. Whenever management gets overexcited for some big name company that is paying less than it costs, but promised to do more projects with us if we do this one good, and by the way, we need to improve our specs
What are they going to do? (Score:3)
They burn out as software developers, what are they going to do? It's kinda a specific skill set that doesn't translate to much else besides "software developer for different company".
Re:What are they going to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
They could easily move to fields that pay a lot more while requiring far less intelligence and effort. Like...management....
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70% troubleshooting, 10% thinking ahead (Score:3)
Being a programmer is about 70%-75% troubleshooting.
Knowing how to bisect a problem. That skill applies to a very large number of disciplines. Anything that involves fixing problems with anything. A lot of people don't have that skill.
Btw, if you think there is no such skill as troubleshooting properly, that simply means you don't have that skill. :)
It's another 10%-15% thinking ahead, so you don't discover that your idea doesn't work AFTER you've built it. The ability to plan a solution and foresee possib
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Well, most software developers are well suited to a career in online video watching and chair testing. Granted, not a money in those careers right now, but it's the right time to get in at the ground level.
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Often the burnout is specific to that company, so moving on really helps. Being stuck with an ancient, horrible code-base is a common cause. Poor planning and unrealistic deadlines are also quite frequent. Bad bosses too.
Not unique to software developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Agile to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder how much this Agile fad is playing into turnover rates.
The tyranny of the endless 2 week sprints, with daily "are you done yet?" interrogations... it's crushing.
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I fucking HATE scrum.
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Think of "Agile" as the one ture management method bad managers desperately hope will finally make them not suck at their job. Kind of like some wannabe coders are always looking for the one true language that finally will allow them to write good code. Of course that will not work and cannot work.
Re: Agile to blame? (Score:2)
When done properly it's not a daily "are you done yet?" it's "is there anything you need today to do your work?"
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I wonder how much this Agile fad is playing into turnover rates.
The tyranny of the endless 2 week sprints, with daily "are you done yet?" interrogations... it's crushing.
Good question. I left a well-paying job in the middle of the pandemic because of Agile. Of course, it was applied to Security Architecture (where using Agile is about the most stupid idea possible) but still. Have decided that "Agile" is on my blacklist of things now that I will never use. You do agile? Do not even ask me whether I want to work for you! Funny side-note: The job I left has now been open for more than a year and they really, really need that security architect. Gives me a smile whenever I see