Why software engineers are grieving

https://dev.jimgrey.net/2026/06/25/why-software-engineers-are-grieving/

by chrisp1118 • 26 days ago

31 33 26 days ago

dev.jimgrey.net

qweqwe143• 26 days ago

Claude, generate an article that will get to HN front page. Make no mistakes.

mrsilencedogood• 26 days ago

"For most of the last 20 years, the software industry sold more than jobs. It sold a story."

This "It's not (just) X, it's Y." pattern is so LLM-y it's almost hard to read it now.

qweqwe143• 26 days ago

This one is so riddled with this LLM language it makes me think it's on purpose

Tade0• 26 days ago

Stopped reading at that point. I guess I could go over the entire thing to discover what happened to that poor guy, but why bother if the author didn't put effort?

VariousPrograms• 26 days ago

Dramatic pause. "Then AI arrived."

The silver lining is that it's currently easy to recognize LLM blog posts and the "authors" never realize how bad they sound. This "author" probably removed em dashes and thought he was all set. These slop posts will be worse when LLMs are better at sounding human.

mohsen1• 26 days ago

Jokes on them, I just used Safari's summary feature. Even the title was enough for me to get the point.

bitlad2• 26 days ago

I think I have seen the transition. Google, facebook, et al genuine believed they were changing the world unless they became seen as evil big corp.

Then came the techbro, true nerds doing nerdy stuff got lost among the noise techbros created.

sroerick3• 26 days ago

Its okay to be a tradesman. You don't have to join a cult and save the world. Work is hard and unpleasant. That's okay.

bitlad2• 26 days ago

I dont think it is okay. If you spending 8-12h per week then you it needs to mean something. If you dont care, you are throwing away majority of your life without meaning.

qweqwe143• 26 days ago

You're making money, just don't think about it and you'll be fine. Retire when you feel like it and do whatever

Frost1x• 26 days ago

Then we need to redesign our entire economic system because none of it hinges on you enjoying your productivity to survive or reaping the rewards. Not saying I entirely disagree with you, just saying our economic system isn’t configured for the theoretical ideals you suggest. I’m not sure we can do that or the people with enough wealth and power to shift things would ever want to change these things.

drdexebtjl• 26 days ago

It means I need the money and the employer needs the work.

I don’t think it’s okay either, but we were kind of spoiled that we enjoyed doing something that was in high demand. This isn’t the case for most jobs.

sroerick3• 26 days ago

If you believe you have that, that's a privilege, but most people in the world don't.

All is vanity.

m0llusk• 26 days ago

Depending on the trade that may require reeducation, apprenticeship, and so on. Riding through years of that will be difficult for many if they are used to raising a family with full time pay or have only so many years before needing to face retirement.

sroerick3• 26 days ago

Maybe SWE is just a trade?

tekla• 26 days ago

Learn to weld.

codemog• 26 days ago

He told me more than once why he chose us over other offers. We were a B2B SaaS company that helped healthcare technology companies bring safer products to market faster. That mission mattered to him [..]

Mate, come on. Modern corporate hellscape America forces people say stuff like this. He wanted the job because you pay him MONEY which is required to EAT and not DIE OF ILLNESS, because employment is tied to if you get to see a doctor without going bankrupt.

alastairr• 26 days ago

100%

I'm not sure when all this mission nonsense came in, but it's daft when you see it parroted around something as beige as SaaS. It's fine to want to make something good and make some money from it, but you don't have to pretend it's some kind of moral quest.

eterm• 26 days ago

LinkedIn tier generated rubbish!

lwhi2• 26 days ago

I think I'm also grieving loss.

I'm at a time in my life where I most probably have 15 to 20 years of gainful employment left in me.

Perhaps too little time to retrain; but definitely too much time to retire comfortably now.

A midlife crisis, coupled with an existential crisis.

I thought I had a clear route ahead. What do I do when everything I've learnt and dedicated myself to, is no longer valuable?

xpct3• 26 days ago

I've always thought that I could retrain myself multiple times in my life, and wouldn't suffer too much because of it. But the paths that I would've taken have changed as well: for example, I wouldn't feel as confident retraining myself for a designer-esque position, and I'm not sure whether I'd enjoy how those roles appear to be modernizing. This (seeming) lack of options seems to be a part of my low spirits.

georgemcbay• 26 days ago

Yeah, I'm not a fan of this particular article (as others have noted it reads like something an LLM wrote specifically for LinkedIn) but referring to the situation I find myself in as grieving is spot on for me.

I'm a 52 year old software developer that spent my entire career purposefully trying to avoid being pushed into management so I could remain a direct contributor because the craft of writing software has always been my favorite part of the job.

I'm still employed in the age of AI but what used to be more passion than job has flipped to be more job than passion because the chunk of it that I was most passionate about is rapidly being devalued. On one hand, I should be (and am) grateful that my job was ever something I was very highly passionate about as not everyone gets to experience that, on the other hand its hard not to grieve when you've had that luxury and feel it slipping away.

I think that if I were a younger person I'd probably be thinking seriously of finding something different to do with my life in terms of career, but at the same time I'm sure people in that situation are also struggling because AI is making the future very murky for almost everyone in terms of what they can do that they will both be passionate about and for which human input will continue to be valued.

lwhi2• 26 days ago

Well, I'm 47 .. I've been a contractor for the past 8 years. I'm still (fairly) optimistic that I'll be able to find a permanent job, but the spring that fed my motivation is no longer flowing.

Maybe I need to spend some time finding myself and rediscovering what I want and need .. but I can't help feel pretty disheartened.

sgt101• 26 days ago

It's not about the money, it's about the money.

xpct3• 26 days ago

I think if change was fast it'd be less painful. Dragging this out is what makes it so. LLMs being as unreliable as they are, and being gaslit about model capabilities every other week burns you out fast.

dsjoerg• 26 days ago

Those who pay no attention to history are surprised when things change. It's the temporal equivalent of never leaving your home town. Very provincial. Then one day change comes and they're all shocked pikachu face.

xpct3• 26 days ago

Would you fault those who've had outstanding 20+ year programming careers for not anticipating the change?

samatman• 26 days ago

You're not wrong, Walter...

harimau7772• 26 days ago

People saw change coming, they just don't have the ability to do anything about it.

zug_zug• 26 days ago

I think this is an interesting thesis that could have been expressed in 100-200 words.

jaredcwhite• 26 days ago

We were literally told that because of the Computer/Internet revolution, the entire nature of business was changing…politics too! Companies would become collectives, employees would have immense power to set their own goals and be radically UX-focused, profits would be widely distributed, and the old corporate structures & crony capitalism would largely be done away with. In a certain sense, becoming a software engineer was to be birthing a new form of leftism.

That largely turned out to be complete and utter hogwash. The instant capitalists realized they had extracted enough out of that myth to gain ultimate power and reassert dominance, they pounced. 2020-2026 has been a boiling-frogs-in-pots shift from collectivism to an extreme sort of New Oligarchy. Software engineers weren't making the world a more fair, creative, and democratic place. LOL! The exact opposite, in fact, has occurred.

Yes, of course we're grieving. But using agents to generate "code" isn't the issue. That's merely a symptom, one among many. The root cause? Societal systems based on pure greed and bigoted supremacy which were NEVER properly dismantled. The new leftism of tech? Nothing but a mirage. Millennials got played.

And wow did we fall for it.

My only hope at this point: Gen Z will succeed where we clearly failed. Our best hope is to listen to them, partner with them, help them channel their rage into action, and take control back from the tech moguls and oligarchs.

ChrisArchitect• 26 days ago

Gen Z? Hardly. They'll hand it over without question not having any reference to the prior computer era, technologicial independence etc. Sure some of them are anti-establishment etc, but huge swathes are totally dependent on the platforms telling them what to do, have a ephemeral disdain for any history and exist only in an empty, cultureless now grapsing at only the recognizable/familiar. Not betting on them.

Why software engineers are grieving

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