The WRONG Move? Quiet Quitting Software Developer [360 Video]

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all right folks I got the insta 360 going it's not raining for now so we'll see how that goes I'm going to jump over to Reddit for a question it says currently working as a full stack engineer I've been at my job for almost four years been promoted definitely grew as an engineer but the last two years I've really started to dislike the job due to my manager increasing workload and deteriorating culture So This Thread is titled what should I do in a job that I hate so like it's a classic story I know been working last two years trying to get a new job job markets are rough suck at technical interviews currently studying I know I'm still BL blah blah uh I try to quit oh quiet quit and work N9 to5 but sometimes it's so demanding that I can't realistically do that

feeling stuck um and then they go on to say that switching teams isn't an option um because of layoffs and stuff so anyway let's uh let's get going because it's going to be quite a long drive I mentioned on the drivein that uh I was going to work a little bit earlier so that I could be present for an inperson thing but I had a meeting at 8:00 a.m. so I drove into work to get there before the meeting started and then the meeting went overtime so I missed the entire event that I drove in for in the first place so that was very nice um and then it was raining too so I couldn't use the insta 360 just not a good day you know but I think this was a I know this person's kind of saying it's a bit of a generic

question and it kind of is I think uh that's okay though because I think that it's probably a bunch of people in a similar situation so we will chat through it and just a reminder for folks if you want questions answered leave them in the comments that's my go-to spot to answer your questions of course and then if you uh if you have other stuff that you want to send in you want to write something lengthier or keep it Anonymous look for Dev leader on social media um that's also my main YouTube channel and I will remind folks people are taking me up on the offer I got some extra filming to do but uh I am going to be doing resume reviews it's not currently paywalled or anything like that so if that demand gets more and more then I will probably move that

to members only on my M main YouTube channel but if you want to see how to submit your resume go to my Dev leader YouTube channel look for the this road is nuts uh you can see it on the insta 360 you can uh check out the playlist that I have and if you watch the videos you don't have to watch the whole thing if you don't care but you can see how to submit your resume okay but what should you do in a job that you hate well um I think the first thing and this person ruled out for them but I'm not addressing it specifically for them this is for for everyone um I think my first thing that I would kind of consider is like is there something about your team or your position that is worth you investing energy into changing

right and I've talked about this in other videos and stuff this is going to be very situational it will be very much dependent on the person the environment blah blah blah um but I think it's a good question to ask yourself uh when I've talked about this before I essentially said that I think like if you are and it's not a rule but if you're at a a much larger organization it's going to be a lot more effort to try and drive change so just something to think about and um it might still be something you want to try and do but if uh you're at a smaller place you may find that getting some momentum to try and drive positive change is uh a little bit more realistic and and you you can approach that uh but I will say if you're already feeling

like you hate everything going on around you or you're exhausted you don't have energy then like trying to change things around you may feel even uh more difficult so it like might get more difficult before it gets better now some people are just over it right the way that this person wrote about it they're like I don't care you know um but the company or whatever I know there's other threads on Reddit where people are kind of saying they're beyond and uh that's okay like I'm not telling people like no you have to stand up and you have to fight for the company you work at if you're over it you're over it that's cool I'm just saying like in some situations you may not want to give up on it I've talked about a situation or a couple of them that I've been in

my career where I did say like I want this to succeed right like I will try to make a change uh and other situations where I've brought it up and was not met with um support which is again like that's fine but I'm not going to invest the time if uh if I'm not going to be supported so uh that's part one uh part two is like oh low on gas what the hell it's too late we're already on the highway and I'm not pulling off um the next part I would say is like is this something that like you hate about your company like are you at a spot where the culture of the entire organization or company is just like nope like not doing this and you're over it because if not I know this person said no team change for them which

you know understanding their situation but I might say like hey if you're looking for a different opportunity you enjoy the company itself but maybe you're on a team maybe it's your direct manager whatever it happens to be then I would encourage you like you may have uh an easier time I don't it sounds like I don't mean to minimize things when I say easier like it's going to be easy easier uh more straightforward time trying to switch teams internally maybe in your situation but again this is something that's going to be dependent on what you're after because like I said if you're just over the company and you're like I'm done with it here uh or you perceive that the culture as a whole is just something that you're like nope like don't want to be part of this and you have reason to believe

other parts of the company are like that then a team switch isn't going to fix anything for you so You' rule that one out but again context dependent so so far the options we kind of talked about are um you can try to drive change or it might be time for a team change now if it's not either of those what do you start to do right now this person kind of mentioned quiet quitting um I I kind of feel like this is my personal opinion if you're in a situation where you're just kind of like giving up on work like maybe maybe you're remote working and you're like whatever I can just slack off and like like fly under the radar um I know like as an engineering manager and for those of you that know that I am my opinion is going to

sound pretty biased here but I I want to just want to like explain my thought process like kind of giving it away like I don't think you should do that but um it's not because I'm like fearful like oh then my employees are probably doing that and I'm paranoid about it um the reason I don't think you should do that is because like I think your life is still going to be absolute if you're doing that um the paycheck might be coming in still but like I don't know man like you're working eight hours a day maybe a little less CU you're quiet quitting so you have this portion of your day that's like it's just nothingness right or you're dreading it or whatever but it's not positive and uh I just don't think that that's any way to like to go about your life

um and some people will say like hey man like we shouldn't expect to love our jobs or whatever it's just work and like it's just the pay check and you know not for me to decide how you want to to live your life right like that's literally a you problem um but my perspective is I'm going to be working for a large part of my life right I uh I plan to to work for a long time I enjoy creating things I enjoy being in the software industry if I had an infinite pile of money sitting beside me I would be building software just different kinds of software because I like to do it so I do enjoy work which work I do is you know subject to change but I just think that if I'm going to be spending a large part of my

life working I don't want that to be a large part of my life that's either you know completely boring something I hate or whatever I want it to be as close to awesome as possible now I realize like like I said I I know that some people are like I just don't think that that's real that's that's okay um but I it feels like pretty feels pretty trash to me to give up on that idea to be like it's just my career and like I shouldn't expect that I enjoy it so when I hear people talk about quiet quitting or just like flying under the radar and whatever to me I'm like I could get why you would want to do that but I I can't imagine you would feel fulfillment in your life personally I just I don't know um all you know to

briefly mentioned the times in my career where I have felt like there's nothing that can be done right like I'm unable to get work done because I'm completely blocked for whatever situation is going on and it's fortunately not been that many times but in my career when it's like I literally feel like I cannot make any progress on anything like those are the worst days it's not like hey there's nothing to do like woo party it's like no those are for me those are the worst days because it's frustrating or it's boring and like I don't want I don't want either of those things so I'm just kind of throwing it out there that like my perspective on quiet quitting as like the end solution I don't think is uh sort of not in the cards for me and sort of not what I would

recommend to people now to Pivot a little bit um because maybe we could flip this around um I think what might be left for this person is kind of what they were hinting at which is practicing for their interviews they should start brushing up on their resume shopping around um applying to jobs practicing for their interviews that's probably going to mean lead code questions unfortunately uh that's going to mean depending on your level of experience system design type questions it's going to mean brushing up on your behavioral interview questions these are all things that you probably need to practice because you're not doing them regularly now you might be designing like maybe you're at a level where you're doing architecture designing things regularly and that's great but unless you're like an actual architect you probably would benefit from practicing like a system design questions even

an architect would and just going through and making sure that they can take an open-ended situation ask questions about it and make progress right um I've talked about when I was applying for big Tech like as an engineering manager behavioral interview questions are probably going to be something that I should excel at and you know I felt pretty comfortable I still practiced them I didn't spend as much time but I still practice them so that I could like make sure that I'm thinking about how to answer things accordingly you know making sure I have extra scenarios in the back of my mind because inevitably when I freeze up in an interview because of pressure then I'm like it's okay there's another story I can tell so all these things I would just like recommend you practice like it's just it's just going to help increase

your odds um so this person's talking about doing that now back to the quiet quitting part I might say like hey look like if you don't have capacity at any other point in your life and you've already given up I could understand why you might want to quiet quit and then you're you know repurposing some of that time to to brush up on things like I'm not this is not me like encouraging you to do that because again if I put my my engineering manager hat on like I wouldn't want anyone to be doing that on on my time so it feels kind of like feels kind of bad that I would be encouraging others to do it but I could understand why so I guess my point around that is to say I don't like the idea of quiet quitting where the solution is

just like you know your life is kind of empty so this this career time that you have is just like wasted time but I think that um you know if your if your goal is to be able to switch companies apply for jobs and stuff like my point is don't sit idle maybe that's a good way to put in so um I think in this person's case based on what I'm hearing the the best move that I can imagine is going to be to interview um now what I was thinking about trying to touch on because I've videos like this before we acknowledge it's already kind of a generic question a generic scenario to go through um I I just wanted to kind of connect the dots between this conversation so far and some other video content I made which is like okay you're in

this situation now where you're like I hate it right let's make sure that you understand why and I realize that might sound like a dumb thing to say like Well I obviously know why I hate it but like do you um you know is is it specifically your manager a lot of people you know there's like a what's the saying like people don't quit jobs they quit their manager like is it actually a function of your manager and if it is like what is it that your manager is doing or not doing that's driven you to this point right if it's not your manager if it's like the company culture if if it's just the space that you've been in if it's uh the workload like whatever it happens to be I just urge you to take this point in time to reflect on that

and understand so not only the negatives like everything that sucks about this and understanding that um again don't stop at the service level and just say I have a bad manager therefore I will work anywhere else because what's going to happen when you get a bad manager again like what makes a bad manager to you understand that take that opportunity and then try to understand like what are the things that you you need to feel engaged so I'm I'm saying this because I I realize on the surface you're listening to some actually I'm not so bald right now the hair is coming in but I got to shave it uh tonight for sure um you're listening to some bald dude in a car talk about you know understand what makes you upset and you're like okay man like shut the hell up like I get

it um but I mean it genuinely like if you're about to go take this opportunity to switch what you're doing what are you going to try to avoid or what are you going to try to steer towards in the next opportunity because you're about to go through this whole process invest all of this time and effort like let's make sure that we understand what's up so again I I don't I don't want it to sound like it's just fluff and like oh this guy's just manager like who gives a what he's talking about I'm just trying to give you an idea of things that you might want to consider if you're about to go put all of this energy into going for another job okay so we're down to one tick for gas we should be able to make it cut off a lot of

time already yeah we got this it's not even flashing at me we got lots of lots of fuel um says says home's only seven minutes away on the highway so that's great so we're taking this opportunity to understand what's not working well what we want to go after and um the other thing is like kind of like internally right when we're thinking about the stage of your career and this is going to be different for absolutely everyone by the way if you're a much more Junior software developer you might be like I have a lot more sort of like freedom in in in where where I go and what I do if you're someone who's maybe older you have a family you have you know wife kids or a husband um and or like uh say you have a family members that uh like your

parents or something that you have to live nearby like you might not have as much flexibility right you might be at a different stage in your life where you're prioritizing different things so again this is another opportunity to kind of think about like okay I don't like where I'm at I want to as much as possible you want this to feel like a step forward but if you feel like you need to do a step that's not obviously one step forward in my career at least try to understand where are you heading in your career especially based on your current circumstances so for example if you are someone who's like hey I've been you know I've been at this company for a while and this person's case four years or whatever and maybe you're like I actually think that you know I've been kind of

I've been stuck in my level as well so I'm a I'm a level one engineer and I really think I should be level two okay well if you're going to go looking for jobs like maybe that's something that you want to prioritize right like that is for you A big value ad maybe you're like I was already getting paid pretty well I'm content with that I know everyone always wants more money I get it but if you were like I could literally take uh you know keep the same pay or even a small pay cut if it meant that I could have you know more seniority more responsibility because that's going to give me some career growth that might be something you want to prioritize maybe for other people one of the reasons that you hate what's going on is because I talked about this

in the video that I made earlier today maybe you've reached a point where you've been promoted and you have so many responsibilities that the stress is overwhelming like you hate work because you are responsible for so much stuff and truly you're overwhelmed so maybe it's time to go look for a different role like a different level essentially and I know that's hard for some people to even think about CU you're like there goes all my career progression but like is it are you losing the career progression if your title changes to something else you get your sanity back maybe you keep your your pay around the same right cuz you can work at different places at a lower level and potentially get paid more so oh oh it's not a very effective way to drive is you stuck behind another car kind of I think

he just likes the sound of his exhaust cuz he's doing this like I get it it sounds fun um there goes all your fuel um so I think we need to do this reflection to see where we're at in our career and where we want to be going so I the point of me talking about this whole thing is just like you know you're already acknowledging you're in a crappy spot and instead of just being like whatever I'll take anything else to get out of here if you're already talking about quiet quitting like I mean go put in a little bit of extra effort and see like understand where do you want to be head and then make an opportunity out of that so I think I think that's mostly it I'm trying to think if I have like a good story to share something

CU I still got a few minutes before I'm home got like 10 minutes we'll see this guy in the the BMW again no no sir oh he can use a signal interesting we all know that most BMW drivers can is what a police officer that's a definitely a cop no thanks buddy no don't do it don't do it he trying to make burb sounds and he's literally right behind a cop it's funny if you're watching the 360 video this is always a fun little exit here cuz it goes like people treat it like multiple Lanes but it's really not and then we'll see if this guy stops at the light even though it says no stopping yeah good that's always the worst someone Slams on their their brakes when they get to that light and you're like hey man the sign literally says don't don't

stop um yeah I don't really think I have a good story and sorry that car was distracting me um and then I saw the police officer which is also distracting me and then I saw the car tail gaining the police officer wasn't quite tailgating but I don't know if he clued in that that was a a cop I got to remember to get gas you guys got to remind me to get gas for next time okay what do we got going on so let me give you a little uh if you're still watching and just listening to me ramble um maybe one person made it this far in the video um so I'm still working at uh on a really big project at work that's pretty demanding um going through a period of burnout for sure uh directly related to this project uh like absolutely

no doubt in my mind where the burnouts coming from like 100% correlated uh in order to try helping myself out a little bit with that I I got a second gym membership so that if I miss Crossfit in the morning uh because I have to be there for 6:00 a.m. if I miss it for any reason like I'm tired then instead of missing the gym for like an entire week then then I can go in the evenings and sort of just a crappy commercial gym um I actually tried filming a little video on on talking about this and I like was doing it while I was driving to the gym and I was like this just felt this felt bad so instead of inste of me posting that you know just a quick note like one of the things that I kind of learned from

myself was that having having that outlet to go to the gym consistently is like truly something I need and um there a lot of cop Cruisers out I think not only from the perspective of just like you know getting some movement in it's probably a lot of software developers can relate to this like you're at a desk all day if you're not into like sports and other stuff you're probably not moving too much uh so beneficial to move around but I think the other thing is I switch from like bodybuilding to CrossFit and bodybuilding was kind of like my opportunity to I don't know uh like have some mindfulness right put my headphones on get in the zone but I think that uh at CrossFit I don't get that at all so I've kind of lost touch with having that opportunity so trying to reincorporate

that help with the burnout a little bit I know this project has an end date so trying to just navigate towards that uh and then otherwise brand ghost stuff which is if you're not familiar that's the sort of the SAS that I'm building on the side use it for posting content to social media we're getting a lot more traction recently which is awesome um and yeah we have like a kind of a pipeline of users that are they're kind of using our free trial they're trying things out and exactly as planned right like hey this is all great I would be willing to pay for this if and we're going great tell us and then we'll go build it so doing that and just keeping that momentum going and then the other thing that I would just add on to that is like we we're

getting a lot of positive feedback around responding to things whether that's you know quick bug fixes or uh Landing features and enhancements people are going holy crap like that was so much faster than I thought and it's funny because for us we're like man like we're doing this part time like if we were doing this full-time you know that would have been done in like you know 1% of the time almost so it's kind of funny uh but it's really good feedback um and a lot of momentum so that's uh you know really enjoyable so otherwise um I got a course it's my last one that I have lined up with Ryan Murphy for Dome train and uh the courses we do together are more around like career progression and stuff like that so one more to do with him then we'll have to plan

out what's uh what's coming up after that and yeah otherwise I think I mentioned at the beginning of this video a new thing on my main channel is doing resume review so um trying that out I'm going to see if I can get like three of them done today or at least two and then like another tutorial I'll let this person go come on get in here not you um yeah I think that's it and I'm going to have to get gas I think because now this light's flashing at me and I'm almost home so I'll probably wrap it up here and then head to the gas station because editing that part out for like two more seconds because there's a gas station right by my house probably not worth it so thanks so much for watching right to the end I know a couple

people are like I always watch to the end that's awesome um you better watch to the end you never know when there's going to be something cool um yeah I think that's all for now so I will see you folks next time and I'll stop this video once I get through this intersection like right now take care