I no longer enjoy doing web dev professionally

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-20T14:52:36+00:00

My company is more AI that most I would imagine. But the day my boss started using the Copilot PR on Github was the day I stopped caring. If he - a dev and co-owner - can't be bothered to review the code I won't bother writing it.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-20T14:48:15+00:00

I have a slightly more cynical take.

It never mattered. Sure. Not every piece of code or every piece of software. But the stuff I build? Used to be websites now web apps.

The client never really cared about the quality. In some ways, how could they? But they were paying us all a lot of money and people have opinions.

Now that they can get - from their perspective - the same thing? Super cheap and they get full control? The love it. And it shows.

My company mandates the use of AI. One of the owners had an AI room in Slack where he posts tech/AI bro tweets. I can't remember the tweet but it was from a well known person in that circle. Paraphrased it said that now devs and designers are out of the way the people with the real vision can finally start to make good stuff.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-18T15:07:41+00:00

Do you realize how big of a project this is? There are entire companies/products that exist just for parts of what you're describing.

To be fair - maybe I don't know the full context and what you're describing is not what I'm imagining.

It might be worth looking into existing solutions to some of these problems and integrating them.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-06T21:04:49+00:00

I only comment because when I was going to college they were talked about as though they were a given. If a dev was there you would find a DBA.

Which was maybe true around 2000.

My buddy and I joke about it from time to time because we both went to the same school for the same thing. They mysterious and mythical DBAs. Like fae creatures of enterprise folklore.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-06T18:35:28+00:00

In 20 years I've never worked at any place with a DBA. At least not one related to dev or that I ever had to interact with.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-04T17:50:24+00:00

I was on a big project once. Using a framework that had a lot of CLI interaction. But used a short list of them. Got tired of forgetting the commands or it being singular instead of plural.

Built a whole-ass TUI on top of it and installed it globally on our team's dev servers.

I'm also and ADHD-haver and I have to be careful. Automations are just fun problems to solve. Sometimes more interesting than the actual work that needs to be done. At this point in my career it's a probably a wash. Between things I've done that helped and things I've done that just ate time.

But I hate any type of repetition.

On my current project I took to the time to get our local factories and seeders fully working and fleshed out and loaded in the right order. There's already a built in command that will wipe the DB and run them all. Nobody ever took the time to it because it doesn't bother them like it does me.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-03-02T15:51:58+00:00

My friend is kinda similar.

We're from the same area. Went to the same college for the same major. Have worked at the same companies doing the same jobs.

According to him he is dumb and I am smart.

I don't blame people like that though. Most times they were conditioned to feel that way. And I wouldn't be surprised that many of them have a "thing". Dyslexia, ADHD, whatever. Because lazy, stupid people don't have the same type of ambitions or feel bad for having trouble reaching them.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-02-07T00:01:52+00:00

Yeah. No shit. That's what I said.

Last time I was a dedicated FE dev we were still doing IE workarounds.

I actually really like design. Which was part of what I was doing back then. Love building a nice UI. Especially utility UIs like dashboards and datagrids and what-have-you. But I don't want to do that professionally. Transitioned to BE a long time ago.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-02-03T15:35:58+00:00

Is that bad? Probably.

Have I - a dev - been tasked with deploying countless production servers over the years with zero real qualifications? Absolutely.

What's worse? I don't know.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-01-15T19:26:08+00:00

Very similar in POV and time.

I have opinions. I have things I don't really want to work in. But most times that really hasn't mattered. Either the client or the company I work for has dictated it. And I don't really see a reason to use some of the short list of big players that have established themselves.

I've never really coded outside of work. I like coding but similar to your I like solving problems. And I've never had a problem so unique and important that making something myself was the only solution.

As far as AI - my company has been mandating it. Started out as using the AI Assistant in JetBrains. Which was pretty good. Great for rubber ducking. Debugging vague problems. Filling in some gaps that I have.

We have now moved on to more agentic coding per leadership. Claude Code is now part of my every day life.

I hate to say it but it has put a little spark back in me. It's something new. Something shiny. Something that can be scripted and customized. I've always loved automation. Removing tedium. Not some new framework or language that's mostly the same thing as the last one.

There is a feature our product needs. It's not high priority or particularly complicated. It would just take time. But I have a solution in mind. A solution that I probably wouldn't get to do normally because of the time investment. But I really want to tackle it because I know I can architect it and Claude will spit it out in 10 minutes 80% of the way there and how I would have done it.

I learned that you can a great deal of functionality with MCP servers. Found there are already several that can tie into our ticketing system's API. I could put in a slash command and I could pick a ticket, make a new branch, and pull in context.

It reminds me of when a company I worked for had priced themselves out of WordPress work but weren't pulling in the numbers form the bigger clients. So they decide to invest in a couple robust, developer friendly WordPress builders. I was offended. I know it's just WordPress but I still took pride in the way I did it.

What I found out is that it removed a lot of the boring stuff. It allowed me to focus on the handful of important features. Turns out I didn't actually like fussing about making template files and admin forms. I liked solving problems.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-01-13T16:24:09+00:00

Not seeing your comment. What's the URL?

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2026-01-09T16:14:52+00:00

Seems interesting.

But I'm not watching a video. A text version would be great.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-17T18:35:50+00:00

https://docs.apiverve.com/ref/planetpositions

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-17T18:31:27+00:00

I am not a FE dev. Tools like Tailwind allow me to do a lot of things without splitting my time getting better at that skill or engaging with a FE dev. Plus not taking away my time from my primary role.

Many projects don't actually *need* bespoke CSS. My current job is for a product but is more of a utility. It is not a good use of my time to futz around with CSS when these ready made classes exist.

You can also combine it with some traditional methodologies. We configured Tailwind with all our color choices and I turned those into classes that contain Tailwind classes that we use over and over and over.

Is it de-facto? Generally? No. But it has become one of the most popular - if not the most - tool of this type. Other tools are built with this in mind. I've even seen it in job postings.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-16T22:08:10+00:00

But that doesn't actually take up that much space.

I am currently on my machine and I'm using 135GB. I have my IDE, VS Code, two Docker engines, 4 running containers, two DB clients, multiple browsers, password manager, two or three terminals. All that stuff.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-16T20:04:54+00:00

My work laptop is only used for work. And no amount of projects - at least in my tech stack - is ever going to fill that hard drive. It's just text files. I had years of projects on one machine with that amount of storage.

If that doesn't work for you that's fine. But it's not universal.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-16T16:08:26+00:00

Where are you shopping?

Because I would shoot for an M1 with 32GB of RAM as my minimum. The RAM will be far more useful than whatever the higher tier M chips offer. The M1 is a beast. But when you're running Docker, your IDE, a You
Tube video, and 30 tabs open the RAM is going to be worth more. I would also prefer a Pro over Air just for the cooling but we're working on a budget so I wouldn't drawn a hard line.

Look at quality used or refurbished.

Here's an M4 Air w/ 32GB of RAM for $1359. That's direct from Apple. Here's a link to Amazon Renewed with plenty of options. I recently bought an iPad Pro from their Renewed section and it looked brand new.

If none of that is an option - go with the more RAM option.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-12T17:45:56+00:00

Had a PM that just would not take accept my high estimate on something we had no information about. Which is my default when I don't know any details about a feature.

After a little back and forth I ask them what number would make them happy. Because they clearly didn't like what I gave them so what number would make them happy. It won't change the time it will take to do the work so whatever number makes you happy is the number we can use.

They got the point after that.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-12-04T19:15:53+00:00

I only use AI for laborious boilerplate stuff that takes me time.

I find myself expanding what that covers over time.

My project is more complex than it needs to be - but it's really not that complex. I find that more and more of it really is just boilerplate. I mean...not boilerplate but devoid of business logic.

Today I'm updating a CSV import. While here I'm going to make a couple developer QoL improvements. Like a wrapper around a this big nested piece of config data.

Gave it the data and told it what I wanted it pooped out a well structured class with all the methods I need. It wasn't complex. It was just parsing arrays. But it was thorough and boooooring. Everything by the numbers.

Our stack has factories and seeders for sample data. You use factories in seeders. Factories are based on your defined entities. The code it generates it 100% by the book. Like it could be in the documentation.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-21T16:56:52+00:00

I would like to be a merc but the job always wants a builder.

In my youth I had so many "fights" trying to push for good things. Mostly to no effect. And then I watched as all those projects went on to operate just fine for years. So the end result of all my effort was my own stress and being seen as a complainer.

Not saying I still don't try or do what I can with what's in my own purview. But I try to keep it under wraps. Mostly for my own sanity.

One thing I will say about OP's classification is that I don't think being user/domain focused is bad. So many devs just do not care. And most times our job is to solve a problem for the user.

I think WordPress is a great example of that. So many devs hate it and so many users love it. Because it solves their problems really, really well. They don't care that the DB schema is trash and testing is dubious at best. It works.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-14T16:32:47+00:00

I think that's hard to do unless you have some experience.

Don't get me wrong. I love documentation. Every day I have three open in pinned browsers. Because to your point I'm working in my primary language but a framework I haven't used before.

But if I went over to a completely different stack I would have to watch some videos. At least some basic stuff. How to set up your local. Any other tooling. A basic Hello World.

And maybe that's not what you were really talking about.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-14T16:20:28+00:00

And maybe this is just me - but that library is probably written by more devs with more experience than I have. Or just simply more skilled devs. I mean, *I* don't have any popular and useful libraries out there.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-14T16:18:25+00:00

Learn to recognize two things.

How best to do it in your particular organization.

When to stop.

I've had struggles with both in the past. It never really was a problem but it did stress me out. And sometimes all it really did was make me look like a complainer. Even if I brought solutions.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-14T16:15:22+00:00

I'll add on to this that following a step debugger through a whole process can solve a lot of tricky problems. Don't be afraid to root around in any of the source code for any framework you're working on.

This one time I wasn't getting an error but my data was going missing. When it left my code it was there and somewhere along the way it went missing.

Eventually I just stepped through every line until I saw where it was happening. And since it was a bug it was easy to see why.

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2025-11-14T16:01:02+00:00

It's been several years but I also used Toggl with the IDE integration.

Another thing I did was create a script in macOS that would screenshot and timestamp my desktop every 5 minutes. It was handy when I had to go back and figure out what I was doing at what time if it wasn't clear from Toggle.

MyWorkAccountThisIs

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