Your company is laying people off because they need something to do. They’re goalless in the extreme and relying on big talk and big action about the latest fad. You don’t have leaders, you have owners.
You must look around and see the lack of men, and force yourself to become one.
I feel Your pain. And I have a advice: take a deep breath and leave. Because burn-out is real, because there is nothing that can compensate damages of Your mental health.
You are still a human. You are intelligent. Yes - you are, this is demonstrated by the ability to think critically and independence of your views. So - You are capable to adapt into new environment and into new tech. Search for anything and switch job. Don't wait for a toxic environment to destroy your confidence.
> I don't have any other marketable skills. My coding skills were barely marketable to begin with.
Hot take: moving is more about interview skills than coding skills. Whether you leave or not, start interviewing now. You might end up finding a better place sooner than you hoped.
You don't have to quit to start looking for another job, just start looking. You have 10 years experience, how can you say that you have no marketable skills? You could network, go to events, get involved in your local dev communities, show someone else your enthusiasm.
Sometimes I wonder about even if you are the owners of such companies[0], then there would simply be issues arising in the near future about profitability at one or the other time.
The only thing that I can realistically think through is the fact that because such owners were able to get the personal income and expenses sorted out for a few years and maybe got a bigger house.
But if things change, which realistically speaking, it would. they might get so accustomed to the way of doing things and the shock would be too much in too short period of time.
It doesn't atleast in the moment, seem worth it to me to try to create or chase trends for investors or anything.
I also sympathize with the workers working in said companies like OP. Not sure what realistic solution is out there, the job-market is terrible at the moment for many people and IMO business-making is a hard thing to do and some of us might like to over-estimate ourselves in it too (& side note on under-estimating yourself too)
Accurate estimations of if you should do business or not seems to me to always contain some inaccuracies and you might have to decide your own decision in that and in that sense, job seems better.
You also can't go live without money if one has to exist within society.
I don't know if there is a catharsis to such problem. To me, it seems like an authenticity/trust issue on if you can trust the founders or not but trust by definition is a bit weird and immeasurable and it can always have blind-spots. Maybe the investors investing into such a company trusted the wrong guy but what if the company somehow sells to more people (Ahem SpaceX) and ends up making incredible amounts of money. You would never know and thus you have to just trust the system but the system doesn't work sometimes in a good fashion.
[0]: (We need a better term for such companies which are just trend-chasing and mostly are just built to impress investors rather than try to generate actual profits)
If the pay is OK and you're not being asked to do anything unethical, just ride it out. AI is the technology du-jour but one day it will just be a part of the landscape and its role will have stabilized. Certainly worth interviewing and seeing what else you might find, but pretty much every dev organization is in chaos right now.
Look, it sucks and nothing I say will fix it, but know this: it's never been easier to spot people WHO ARE DOING THE ACTUAL WORK, and never so easy to spot the impostors who care most about looking productive.
The world is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
There are precious few of us left who even still know how to write in our own voice, who have a will to grow ourselves and faith left in human ability. I urge you beyond all urging not underestimate yourself, for you have never been more rare and valuable!!!
I look forward to the day that AI slop is embarrassing for executives. We're at an inflection point for the herd mentality moment where they're dreaming of mass layoffs. When AI proves incapable of delivering ROI the wave will roll back.
Did we get any embarrassment from all the 2000s outsourcing that went to the cheapest sweatshop, and then slowly rolled back when they realised that you need to have expertise?
Thinking that you can do this without skills has been here before, and it'll come around again after the executives take the money and run.
The answer is "simple": invest your energy in a workers union. Respect working law, and don't let the boss/manager overstep boundaries. Depending on your jurisdiction, this may mean that you can refuse extra hours, that you have no obligation to answer calls/emails outside of working hours, etc.
You should document everything the bosses are doing, because in many countries firing people for not magically becoming more productive is highly illegal. And workplace harassment is highly illegal.
Build up your power with your colleagues, stay strong and solidarity will prevail!
I've done it twice. First when an $evil company aquired the place I worked, and the second time when an $evil company aquired the place I worked (the second one being Oracle and Sun, as described in the anthropomorphizing Ellison speech better than I can).
This is a relationship question. Like any other relationship in your life that you might see early warning red flags or full-on toxicity right now, you have to consider if continuing to dedicate your limited time and energy to them is healthy for you. That a job takes up a very significant portion of a persons waking time, often as much or more than is given to family, friends, and romantic partners, then it is very important question to have a good answer to.
23 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 50.2 ms ] threadIn either case, this job is clearly not healthy for you in several different ways
You must look around and see the lack of men, and force yourself to become one.
You are still a human. You are intelligent. Yes - you are, this is demonstrated by the ability to think critically and independence of your views. So - You are capable to adapt into new environment and into new tech. Search for anything and switch job. Don't wait for a toxic environment to destroy your confidence.
Hot take: moving is more about interview skills than coding skills. Whether you leave or not, start interviewing now. You might end up finding a better place sooner than you hoped.
You don't have to quit to start looking for another job, just start looking. You have 10 years experience, how can you say that you have no marketable skills? You could network, go to events, get involved in your local dev communities, show someone else your enthusiasm.
The only thing that I can realistically think through is the fact that because such owners were able to get the personal income and expenses sorted out for a few years and maybe got a bigger house.
But if things change, which realistically speaking, it would. they might get so accustomed to the way of doing things and the shock would be too much in too short period of time.
It doesn't atleast in the moment, seem worth it to me to try to create or chase trends for investors or anything.
I also sympathize with the workers working in said companies like OP. Not sure what realistic solution is out there, the job-market is terrible at the moment for many people and IMO business-making is a hard thing to do and some of us might like to over-estimate ourselves in it too (& side note on under-estimating yourself too)
Accurate estimations of if you should do business or not seems to me to always contain some inaccuracies and you might have to decide your own decision in that and in that sense, job seems better.
You also can't go live without money if one has to exist within society.
I don't know if there is a catharsis to such problem. To me, it seems like an authenticity/trust issue on if you can trust the founders or not but trust by definition is a bit weird and immeasurable and it can always have blind-spots. Maybe the investors investing into such a company trusted the wrong guy but what if the company somehow sells to more people (Ahem SpaceX) and ends up making incredible amounts of money. You would never know and thus you have to just trust the system but the system doesn't work sometimes in a good fashion.
[0]: (We need a better term for such companies which are just trend-chasing and mostly are just built to impress investors rather than try to generate actual profits)
The world is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
There are precious few of us left who even still know how to write in our own voice, who have a will to grow ourselves and faith left in human ability. I urge you beyond all urging not underestimate yourself, for you have never been more rare and valuable!!!
Thinking that you can do this without skills has been here before, and it'll come around again after the executives take the money and run.
You should document everything the bosses are doing, because in many countries firing people for not magically becoming more productive is highly illegal. And workplace harassment is highly illegal.
Build up your power with your colleagues, stay strong and solidarity will prevail!
I've done it twice. First when an $evil company aquired the place I worked, and the second time when an $evil company aquired the place I worked (the second one being Oracle and Sun, as described in the anthropomorphizing Ellison speech better than I can).