Full transcript of “Software developers are not okay”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:11 We're not doing well in the software industry. I'm guessing we've all been getting a bit of a sense of of things being off. And I'm not just talking about the the financial bubbles surrounding "AI" or the debates that have been taking place— arguments—more properly and and devour and the sort of shifting um shifting sentiments are running the software industry. What I'm talking about is the fact that people who work in software, specifically sorts of developers and user experience designers who I've been seeing the most evidence of this trend,
0:59 ... They're not doing great. And I'm talking specifically about burnouts and other and mental health issues quite often in these videos that I've been finding on youtube and elsewhere. Those who are doing videos announcing their their leaving or they've been laid off talk about not that he'll think about quitting anyway. And especially within the user experience designers fair I keep encountering videos of designers preemptively quitting as in they look out —see—look at the job they're doing, look at the way industries is trending, and decide I'm gonna I'm gonna leave before I'm pushed.
1:47 There seem to be a number of common factors there. But the one that struck me as the most interesting was the fact that these aren't people who are against "AI". This isn't a case of people like me who are not fond of the technology, who have very severe criticisms about the way it's made, the way it's forced on people and have severe doubts about the the long-term benefits of applying this technology to our industry. These are people who actually embraced "AI". Who assumed that what they were
2:35 told was true, that this was the future, that this is is how things are going. And, more importantly, parts of the reasons why quite a few of them are leaving— like the UX designers—is that they actually believe it. They believe when they're told that this is the future of the industry. They've tried it and they say "I see where—see what you're trying to say but this isn't fun anymore, this isn't enjoyable, this is emotionally bad" and decide to leave. What interests me and what i think it
3:20 interests should interest at all is that there are a number of systemic factors in why solidly software z is ah inhospitable work environment at the moment it's never been a hospitable work environment the issue that people are facing is a case of what happens with incentives what you have is a situation where they lay people off that means there are few people working in ah in ah in any given organisation doing the same amount of work ah that means more stress more pressure um there's also less novelty that's what one thing has had a ah I've noticed that even though there's an increase in
4:06 number of apps of software ah being deployed they're all either the same ai products ah or ai feature released everywhere or they are um agent generated clones of existing software that none of it is novel there is no and the the problem with us in this industry and I'm definitely one of them is that we are a novelty seeking group so so we are um we're doing more with less time and it's less interesting and because of the nature of the agent automation it's big it's it's a kind of automation that
4:52 has more is more related to delegation than automation so when you're doing woodworking um the power tools in woodwork and didn't reduce the woodworker's investment in the output they still felt like they'd made the thing out of wood um some of them might have ah might still use hand tools for a variety of reasons some of them romantic some of them you know just because um it's more fun but having a tablesaw doesn't make you feel like you ask somebody else to make the shelf or or table chair but the nature of automation as with agents does actually
5:39 feel that way um is an abstraction that separates you from the output of the work and that has an effect of making people feel less invested in and and the out but it doesn't feel like there are work that takes away a lot of the joy of coaching there's also the removal of the sort of flow states these sort of ah focused states of mind that you get into when you really deep into a problem there is a lot more uncertainty in the evening history the people know that there are layoffs um every quarter and that they're they're probably next on the block for um you know arbitrary reasons and if
6:27 you talk about how badly that all of this makes you feel the ai true believers will basically say that it's a skill issue and ah and if if your managers drew believer that would be cause to ah basically fire you at some point so there's a lot of stress and worry and pressure in the industry that wasn't there before a lot of people are thinking about quitting and a lot people are quitting um literally that was the topic of few of the videos and this favours the um lines up with incentives of the people running these companies people who quit get don't get a ny san
7:12 science package um people who quit um might not be fully invested and people will quit for especially if you're quitting to preserve your mental health you can't time that based on your finances and once once you're gone they can hire somebody to repay place you out of the vast pool of now unemployed software developers at a lower pay ah at a slightly lower pay than you will getting so their incentives aligned to perpetuate this this ah situation to to air even make it worse and from the perspective of the executive that running the software company this makes up for the inability to
7:59 replace software developers completely with ai this isn't something that's going to get fixed when ah the ai financial bubble collapses because that will collapse it's way too big to be sustainable you can just as long as you can have some overworked um sort of developer who maybe has five to ten years of experience the dynamic doesn't change once the ah costs increase for the hosted ah models um things just get more stagnant um bottles might get updated as often they're going to use the bargain basement chinese
8:46 models they'll be ah run with more hours and the work of making up for that is going to be pushed on the developer this is probably the future of software this misery of this pressure the the overwork the under the the the the underpayment the um lighted detachment from the work this is this is probably going to be what making software is going to feel like a lot more people are going to be having not just a career issue over the past over the next few years but an identity crisis um which is
9:34 harder to deal with because um if you've built your entire identity around being sort of developer about being a programmer about being the these sort of like tak person who works to enable progress and drive the world to the future um you're gonna have a bad time um once you've been pushed out of that role I'm sure what we can do or you can do um except you know the first edges acceptance it's a horrible thing to say but you can't ah deal with ah a new change situation or a problem if
10:21 you stay in denial so think it might be time to if you're working in software to think it might be time to try and figure out a way out of it
