Work feels like a fucking dumpster fire

Confessions from a burnt out tech worker

Do you hate your job?

Me too.

Chronic back pain. Creative constipation. Existential doom.

This is just a sampling of the things I’ve experienced in the past year. Monday through Friday, I slouch at my desk and complete task after soul-less task. Like a lot of people, I’m driven by fear. I’m scrambling to get a good performance rating so that I can avoid being cut in the next round of layoffs. When the stream of pings comes in from the micro-managing leaders, all I can do is grin and bear it.

We can move faster now that we have AI, the managers say. One person should be able to take on the work of five!!! I will myself to nod enthusiastically. Work has become an endless performance at this point. Not only do you need to produce output, you also need to perform the role of a cheery, bright-eyed worker who gets along with others. If you really want to ascend the ladder, you may even need to kiss ass and form alliances.

As I adopt these tricks and learn the unspoken rules, I think about how I’m becoming the kind of person I used to hate. I think about how my mother did not give birth to me just so I could slog through a life in corporate America. I worry that work is encroaching on my values, my identity. I wonder if it’ll be long before it snatches away my integrity.

These questions keep me up at night. That, and the work-induced back pain.

I’ve had these thoughts for months on end, and they’ve only intensified as I’ve taken on greater responsibilities at work. I thought that new projects or a promotion would make me more optimistic. But if anything, they’ve only fueled my discontent. The new project turned out to be just as messy and poorly managed as the last. The promotion came with a much more demanding workload for not that much additional pay. It feels like I am being sold a never ending lie.¹

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Writing as Rebellion

For a long time, I was hesitant to write about my relationship to work. I was fearful of coming across as ungrateful, lazy, pessimistic. People talk shit about Gen Z in the workplace, and I was wary of fitting the stereotype. But then I saw just how jaded and exhausted my older colleagues were— the senior engineers complaining about their project deadlines during lunch, the resignation in my manager’s voice as he informed us that another team member had left the company— and realized that everyone else was just as burned out as me.

So here’s why I’ve finally decided to share my writing online: I may feel a lot of apathy at work, but I haven’t lost empathy for those around me. I recognize that burnout is a very real issue, and a lot of us are in the same boat. I want to write the newsletter that I wish I could have read during all those late nights doing overtime in front of my laptop. This is the newsletter I’d want to read when fending off the Sunday scaries and the work-induced tears.

I have so many thoughts fermenting in the back of my mind— there is much dread and rage, but I’d like to believe there is some hope as well. In college, I had a professor who reminded us that if you really want to, you can still make a difference outside of your tech job. He probably knew a thing or a two about the disillusionment that many of us eventually experience in the industry. Perhaps he was trying to warn us, or to comfort our future selves. I’ll always remember the words he left us with: your work is your protest.

I’d like to think of this as the beginning of my protest. It’s not much, but I’m trying my best to combat the soul-sucking void that is work. This is my middle-finger to all the toxic workplaces that hold us down.

1. Many people, myself included, joined the tech industry because we believed we would build something cool that could change the world. No one told me that it would just be a constant flood of top-down requests from leaders who barely understand the product, let alone what customers want. But I digress. I will save my rants about the tech industry for a future post.