Develop Yourself
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Develop Yourself
#269 - I'm Burnt Out! The 3 Worst Parts About Being a Software Developer (and why I still love it)
It’s Labor Day weekend and, honestly? I’m burned out.
Maybe this isn’t the best business move, but I’d rather keep it real with you than fake the whole “everything is great in tech” narrative.
I’ve been plenty vocal about why AI isn’t about to replace us all tomorrow, much to the dismay of to all the AI bros out there.
But here’s the other side: being a developer is nothing like those “day in the life” TikToks where someone shows up to the office around 10AM, gets a fancy coffee, fixes a UI bug and then gets a 400K salary with stock options.
So here it is—my three worst parts of being a software developer.
... and why I still enjoy what I do.
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Welcome to the Develop Yourself podcast, where we teach you everything you need to land your first job as a software developer by learning to develop yourself, your skills, your network and more. I'm Brian, your host. People always talk about the best parts about being a software developer Big bag, flexible schedule, working on really cool technology but what we don't talk about usually are the really stressful parts, and today I want to lay out some of that for you and the three things that I think are the worst things about being a software engineer. If you're watching this on the day it's released, then it's Labor Day, happy Labor Day and honestly, I needed this day off because I am feeling pretty burned out. I've been working as a software engineer for 11 years now. I also run a coding mentorship program called Parsity, where we teach people how to code and then get into jobs in tech. So maybe this isn't the best business decision for me to be outlining this kind of stuff, but I'd rather just kind of keep it real with you, right? I've been really vocal about why AI isn't about to replace developers and the shortcomings of that, and a lot of tech bros and people online have kind of baked me for that or said I'm tripping, or said that you know I don't know what's going on, basically, that I have too optimistic of a view, or I don't know what I'm talking about. Even though I have, objectively, a lot of experience in this field, working with some very, very smart people, I don't see this whole doom and gloom narrative as reality. I see it as a lot of hype marketing driven by people that either don't know better or that do know better and just want to lie to sell you something or have to justify their outrageous spending to their CEOs. But at the same time, I'm going to keep it real. Being a developer is 100% nothing like those day in the life TikToks where some dude shows up to the office around 10 am, gets a fancy coffee, does his laundry or something like that, fixes a bug in some UI that's super simple using React or whatever, and then gets a $400,000 salary with stock options. That's just not my reality. It's not the reality of really anybody I've ever met, and I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area next to Silicon Valley, where, if you were going to be doing that kind of stuff, this is the place where that would be happening. So here it is. Here are the three worst parts about being a software developer. Number one is the time pressure. So parts about being a software developer Number one is the time pressure. So I joined an AI startup a few months ago. Team is really smart, brilliant people. The product is super cool. I've learned a ton about applying AI into full stack applications and I've learned more in the last few months than I probably would have learned in a year or two or more at a really big, stuffy company. I know because I've worked at really big, stuffy companies and they just move slow. That is the nature of larger companies. But here's the other, not so fun, truth. I've been working basically nonstop to get this launch out. Along with the rest of my teammates, I'm working on the backend, front end, ai integrations, data engineering, pipelines all to meet this upcoming launch.
Speaker 1:And deadlines in software are weird. Whether you work at a startup or a not so startup, you will have deadlines and they rarely move. And at least once in your career, at least once, you're going to be up past midnight fixing stuff that has to be fixed before a launch. If they told investors or there's a Black Friday sale, they're not just going to move the due date, it's just unlikely. Do you know what they say when you say, hey, this is going to be really difficult Nothing, they don't really say anything because it still has to be fixed.
Speaker 1:An engineering manager at Microsoft that I follow and know offline actually just had what's called an on-call shift. On-call basically means that you have to keep your phone on you. It's like a pager, if you know what a pager is like. Back in the days when doctors had pagers on their hips so that way they could get paged or beeped if an emergency happened and then they could get directly to the hospital to work on a patient or whatever right Software developers have something called on-call shift, which is similar, but the stakes are typically a lot lower than somebody's life being on the line. Basically, if something in production the app or the code or the website or whatever you maintain that people interact with if it goes down, if something breaks, you will be paged. If it's 4 am on Saturday or 2 am on Tuesday, you will be paged. If it's 4 am on Saturday or 2 am on Tuesday, does not matter. You need to answer that and try to jump online as fast as possible to see what's going on and try to fix the incident, or at least do the initial investigation so somebody else can take over.
Speaker 1:This is yet another reason why I'm not super concerned about AI just replacing developers anytime soon. There's a lot of reasons, but this is one of them. You don't trust AI to do things like pay your credit card bills or buy you a plane ticket or renew your car registration, so do you trust it to fix critical issues in a system that might make millions of dollars, like at Amazon or Microsoft, facebook, even the small company that no one's ever heard of? You just can't right. You can't just trust one of these AI agents, which is just this dumb term. Honestly. This agent thing, it's over. It's not going to happen, guys. Agents aren't going to happen. It's over.
Speaker 1:In fact, here's a really hot take for you. If you think AI can replace you as a developer, you're probably right, because if your daily job is writing trivial code such trivial code that AI literally could write everything that you're doing you might want to be nervous, and I honestly just don't know any developers in real life that I've come across that do those kinds of jobs. Back in the days, we had things like email developers, html developers. Those jobs haven't existed for a while. So if you're literally just making HTML CSS websites from like a template that you can find online, that's really simple. Yeah, ai can do that and honestly, I still think there's probably a career for you somewhere, because I don't think many people even know how to do that translation from template into code and then deploy it out to the web. So even if you're doing something super simple, I actually don't know if you're replaceable quite yet. Anyway, that's a whole other bag of beans to dig into.
Speaker 1:Second worst thing about being a software developer, in my opinion, especially nowadays, especially in 2025, staying in interview shape. Here's another brutal, not so fun truth. Whether or not AI takes your job doesn't even matter anymore. Companies have already told investors that it will, which means, basically, layoffs and efficiency gains are now baked into the earnings reports, right? Not like tariffs or economic instability or high interest rates have anything to do with all these layoffs. No, it's because AI is replacing developers, making them more efficient, even despite studies like Cornell University that showed that seasoned developers were 19% slower with AI. 95% of AI projects never took off or became profitable, according to an MIT study, but yet they're able to replace so many developers to be efficient. Of course. Who wouldn't trust these CEOs telling us this stuff at quarterly earnings reports Makes total sense. Anyway, it doesn't even matter anymore, because your job is at stake. Stability was always a myth, but nowadays it's even less stable than it's ever been right.
Speaker 1:I've gone through six, seven jobs at this point and so I honestly stay in interview shape year round and I suggest you do the same. It may not be fun, but I suggest you do what I do to make sure I'm not scrambling to find work or scrambling to study for interviews when and if I need to. You have to stay in interview shape year round. So I interview once every six months, not because I'm just trying to job hop all the time, because honestly, that's really really stressful. Trust me, I've done it. It is not fun. It's actually more advantageous and better for your mental health to stay at the same job for a while, but nothing is really scarier than being out of a job and also being really rusty in interviewing when you need a job.
Speaker 1:People always talk about the getting hired stage of your career, but nobody talks about the how do you stay hired stage, because I've met quite a lot of developers that got hired and have really struggled to stay hired, so people sell you on hey, learn to code, and, honestly, that's part of what my business does too, but the harder stage is don't fall behind, and the last thing that I really hate, that I'm kind of experiencing now, is a little bit of burnout. Right, I'm a human, I'm not an AI robot. Yet, you know, doing late night shifts, working with shifting deadlines, the pressure to stay sharp and learn all sorts of new technologies, job hopping I've had three jobs in the last 18 months. That is too many Now, honestly, in many ways, I feel very lucky that I was able to get these jobs in what people are calling a pretty down market. I really haven't had a hard time finding work or even getting people inbound to me. I think that's because I have some AI skills, have a pretty large network on LinkedIn, and I've developed a network, naturally, over the years, so I don't really have a hard time finding work.
Speaker 1:What I'd like to do, though, is stay at a very stable company with stable people, and that's been incredibly difficult to find for me, at least lately. It's exhausting switching jobs this many times, and even if you do get into a stable job, the burnout can happen Now. I've had pretty cushy jobs, to be honest, and I've had really, really hair-on-fire jobs. When you're working at a startup, you shouldn't expect a cushy style of job. I mean, that's just not going to be the reality, but eventually it can catch up to you.
Speaker 1:Now I'm experiencing what I consider a little bit of burnout right, like I don't feel like, oh my god, I'm just going to go crazy right now. But it's true, like the pressure takes a toll. Doing 12-hour days a few weeks in a row can really take a toll. Now, on the flip side, I don't have a schedule that I stick to. Some days I might work four hours, some days I might work 12 hours. Some days I try to work somewhere in between. I never let my work interfere with my personal life. As far as, like gym commitments or child commitments, things like that. Those are non-negotiable for me. Those make sure that I'm in a healthy enough space so I can actually show up to work and do well. But eventually you know things. So I can actually show up to work and do well, but eventually, you know things just happen right and it's natural that this would happen.
Speaker 1:This is a very interesting career where coding might be your hobby. It's your profession. Technology changes incredibly fast, layoffs are rampant, and so you're feeling this pressure just to keep up, and it's a lot to do. So if you're feeling like that, I feel you On the flip side. I didn't want to end this on some doom and gloom note and deck Yep. That's it, the three things I hate. Now, good luck. And never become a software engineer. Here's the other flip side, right? I love this job and I'm actually more optimistic about the future than I have been in a long time.
Speaker 1:After 11 years, I still feel like this career is just beginning in many ways for me. I feel like I'm just starting to kind of really get into a sprint where I feel more confident now. I've done a few different types of roles. I've worked at a few different types of companies. I know what I do like. I know what I don't like. I'm like this is a whole new world going on, and I think this is a super fun time to be a software developer, and I do get to work with really, really smart people. I enjoy what I do. If you don't enjoy what you do, though, I don't think you're ever going to enjoy this career, despite how much money you could make. You could make half a million dollars, but if you're barely able to keep up and you're sweating bullets and you have no desire to keep up with technology, so it feels like a chore, like you're always studying for some test or something like that, that would feel awful. I definitely don't feel like that, and so if you're asking yourself, is this career for me, I really strongly suggest you consider both sides the excitement and the grind.
Speaker 1:And lastly, I just wanna talk really briefly about where Parsity is going, because AI obviously is not going anywhere. We're making a really big pivot into full stack with AI, not in some gimmicky, prompt engineering way. We're focusing on the actual hardcore stuff that is going to make you valuable as a software engineer and also get you paid right Vector databases, retrieval, augmented generation, professional grade AI integration. I'm seeing the change in real time where I'm working and with people that are in my circle. This is the future of software development. The very least you need to understand how to integrate AI and large language models into your full stack web apps. That, to me, is a bare minimum.
Speaker 1:More and more companies are either expecting you to know how to do this or looking for talent that knows how to implement things like retrieval, augmented generation and use vector databases. We're at such the beginning stages of this kind of stuff that it's not even on the radar for a lot of software developers or boot camps out there, and I don't even think either they don't know or they don't care, and they're waiting to see how this plays out. I know how this is going to play out. I feel super confident that this is going to play out that people that are getting early in on this, like cloud computing or like React they are going to be the winners, which is exactly why we're teaching this stuff at Parsity. Anyway, didn't want to make this a big old pitch for Parsity, but probably a really good time to join. I'm super excited about this stuff. I'm making the curriculum as we speak, based on my actual experience building these things production grade systems for two companies so far. So I just can't wait to share this with you at some point, whether it's gonna be through Parsity or maybe be through a standalone course.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I hope you're enjoying your Labor Day. I hope you're not feeling too burned out, but if you are, I hope you take the time to recover, unwind, maybe with a nice book, or a glass of wine or a 40 ounce of Old English, whatever floats your boat. Maybe it's solving some leet code easies. No judgment, right? No judgment. Maybe a little bit of judgment, not too much, though. Anyway, hope that's helpful. See you around. That'll do it for today's episode of the Develop Yourself podcast. If you're serious about switching careers and becoming a software developer and wanna work directly with me and my team, go to parsityio.
