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.<p>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.
There's nothing but sand at the end of that road, start building something that you own.
fear is a reaction, courage is a choice.<p>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.
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.<p>You must look around and see the lack of men, and force yourself to become one.
> You must look around and see the lack of men, and force yourself to become one.<p>As a man I need you to expand on this because I'm trying to imagine what concrete actions you think "a man" would do in this circumstance, and of the things I've come up with the only one I think I'm allowed to say on this forum is "quit and find a new job."
> You must look around and see the lack of men, and force yourself to become one.<p>What exactly does this mean?
I think parent commenter is using "men" in a manner similar to <i>mensch</i>, as in "a person of integrity and honor" [1]. In other words, "look around and notice nobody is taking responsibility, and choose to be the person who lifts others up." Or something.<p>It's a weird way to phrase it, in my opinion, especially in this era where we are generally avoiding ambiguously gendered collective nouns... but I'm pretty sure that's the gist. Or, at least, it's how I read it.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mensch</a>
"Men" is colloquially used here to mean "decent people", "strong people", "principled people", etc. It's a generic positive description ("Be a man", "Man up").<p>Younger generations might bristle at this use of the word, and that's fine, but try to give the benefit of the doubt (in fact, it's a rule on HN).
I'm giggling a little, imagining a company run almost entirely by raccoons... and the OP sitting there as the sole human, lamenting the lack of men.
It means you need to become a good wage slave and do more work without increases in pay or equity. Why should you get the rewards of your boss when you are given the ownership of their workload?<p>Apparently equal in value according to some fools.
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.<p>The world is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.<p>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!!!
How do you know your skills aren't marketable if you don't go out and market them? Go apply around. You don't necessarily need to leave to do it.
Your company never had humanity. Thinking it did is mistake number 1.
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.
Anywhere! Just leave! :)
Unionize.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>It doesn't atleast in the moment, seem worth it to me to try to create or chase trends for investors or anything.<p>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)<p>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.<p>You also can't go live without money if one has to exist within society.<p>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.<p>[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)
> I don't have any other marketable skills. My coding skills were barely marketable to begin with.<p>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.
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.
If you have been coding for 8 years and don't have marketable skills you are either naive/insecure or doing something very very wrong.<p>In either case, this job is clearly not healthy for you in several different ways
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It’s just business.<p>If you’re new to it, it might be a shock.<p>If it’s not to your taste you might look for work in an industry that matches your values such as social services or environment.
That's no panacea. I worked for a social service non-profit for years. Yes, some stuff was better, there were still tons of issues.
No, it’s capitalism. You don’t have to do business in a specific industry to do it in a humane manner.
"Humane" treatment of workers under socialism is far worse.<p>Repeatedly, around the world.<p>No, this time will not be different.
You haven't lived in a communist country nor visited any communist country, I see...
It's too bad those are the only two sides to the binary of political ideology!
You haven't ever studied logic, I see. Look up "false dichotomy" to start with.
You haven't looked up what "capitalism" or "communism" is nor considered the possibility of <i>other</i> alternative economic systems, I see...
I have. What are other options?<p>Capitalism, socialism (what people refer to as communism), and then communism which will never exist because it always stops with the government stealing everything and not wanting to give up power to move on to communism.<p>What are other economic systems? Not saying there aren't any other ones, I just don't know.
No, it's communism when you hurt a capitalists feeling. That has always been the definition, especially when it comes to enforcement.
I grew up in ESSR or as it was known locally ENSV. Replying to any criticism of capitalism with an immediate “so you want communism” without even a stopover in complaining about socialism is quite something.
What do you want, then?<p>Isn't there capitalism, socialism--which is what people are actually talking about when they talk about communism, and then communism which will never exist?<p>What were you referring to?
> They're taking away our perks bit by bit, like remote office and working without having to clock in and out.<p>So tired of elites complaining about totally normal working practices in every other workplace on earth. Oh no you have to come to the office and you have to clock in. Join the club with the rest of us. Your McDonald's fry cook has to come to work & clock in, so should you.
I think we should improve working conditions for everyone, not make them worse for everyone.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality</a><p>This is the poison that kills entire societies.
Yeah, the other complaints are valid but complaining about punching in? I don't see how that's an issue.
A remote worker who hates McDonald's in 2026 is an "elite"?
If they're on Hacker News, there's a good chance they've never made less than a six figure salary in their entire life, which would certainly place them in the upper 5% of wealth globally. So while it isn't a certain bet it is a safe bet.<p>And if it doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you. There are plenty of people here it does apply to.
Yeah... that's 1 in 20? The smart kid in the back of the class grew up? I'm not sure who you were expecting that person to become.<p>If the barrier to becoming an "elite" is that low and you still consider 6-figures a meaningful benchmark in a world that sells big macs for 10 bucks, are you also calling anyone running even a modestly successful small business "elite"?<p>I'm not even sure I'm engaging with a meaningful political statement here. The barriers to this level of "success" are more reliably psychological, not systemic. You're basically upset at anyone with a career. There are definitely things we need to do to help those struggling, but yelling here is slacktivism.
> Your McDonald's fry cook has to come to work & clock in, so should you.<p>Haha fuck you, no. That's your choice, don't put it on the rest of us.
Ressentiment is a deep-seated state of impotence and people like you aren't even worth a shred of pity.
> Ressentiment: A chronic, festering state of mind. It is a lasting mental attitude where the suppressed emotions of envy and spite continually replay in the mind, leading to a general, cynical worldview.<p>lol not even close. I have a positive outlook and think the world can be a better place. I just think that world will involve most people working together in workspaces and clocking in. There will always be some professions & situations where that's not the right call but I have no reason to believe SW dev will always be one of them.
These are just category errors masquerading as morality.