this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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I have 3 decades of experience in programming. I started with QBasic on an IBM386. I learned what system files to not delete out of Windows or Linux. I went to university and learned Java and .Net and SQL. I've done web. I've done server admin. I've got decades of Windows and Linux and shell scripting and databases of every flavor and just... All of it.
What do I do lately at work? I fill out spreadsheets with information that already exists in 7 other spreadsheets, but we need this in THIS format for THIS VPs request. And I fill out status updates. And I go to meetings and listen for an hour as everyone talks about their status updates on projects I don't even know anything about or care.
My manager asks us to make sure we are learning and using AI. Why? Well, the C and VP suites think we should be. Does it actually help or make anything better? Not really. But ok, fine.
And then the real irony kick in the balls. As we push literally everything in the company to be "Cloud This" and "Distributed That" and "AI more!" and "Be flexible !" .... and they did the big RTO mandate last year. The fuck? You want everything to be remote and cloud and distributed and modern and agile, except employees must commute in and sit in this specific chair to join their video call meeting. And 3/5ths of my team is out of state and so exempt from the RTO mandate, including my supervisor. What the fucking fuck? I have to drive in and sit in a shitty cube while they get to kick back at home? Fuck that.
Decades of knowledge and experience and talent, and I fill out spreadsheets with duplicate information IN PERSON while coworkers get all the benefits of WFH and the same damn pay.
I don't even know what my supervisor does except ask us "is XYZ done yet?" a couple times per week, that seems to be it, I don't think they even know what we do tbh. They just sit at home and make sure all our check boxes get checked. But if you mention a single detail of a project beyond "done" or "not done" they get confused. Fucking hell.
And it hurts even more knowing the CEO makes 100x my pay + benefits + stock + who knows wtf else.
What are we doing?
Addon: Oh! And then there have been layoffs. And cutbacks. And hiring freeze. And no promotion or raises beyond a basic 2-4% yearly "cost of living" raise, even though the cost of living has fucking gone up like 300% in the past few years.
I haven't actually programmed anything in so long. It's depressing to be wasted pointless effort in a bureaucratic corporate nightmare.
I resonate so much with a good chunk of that. I legit left my job because I couldn't take it anymore. My job while different went from negotiating multi-million dollar contracts, and securing pricing agreements with manufacturers to essentially being a spreadsheet jockey after a re-org. They wanted all the interesting parts of my job done by commodity management and reduced my role to something a fucking monkey could do, but asking for 47 different reports that essentially all had the same data just slightly different for dickheads 1,2, and 3 in the C-Suite, and overloading us with so much of it that it took 80 hours a week to complete. It was a fucking nightmare.
What did you go to? Still in tech or did you go down the pipeline to gardening or become a cryptid in the local forest that scares people?
I've been taking a sabbatical essentially. Living off savings that was supposed to be for a down payment on a house (lol). Got to do a lot of traveling with the kids and I've been looking for a similar role elsewhere but haven't secured anything yet. Thankfully, my wife still makes good money and we're doing OK financially, but I'm not thrilled about my prospects in my field. It's hard to be optimistic in a fascist AI hellscape.
Real.
Glad you have the ability to take that time with family, that is awesome!
Yeah, it really is rough right now. Fascist AI hellscape is accurate.