atsushin

I'm a software engineer / technical architect bordering on 3 y.o.e. at a large firm. Two of those years being in the architecture role, which includes team lead duties. While I've adjusted well to the role and my boss seems satisfied with my performance, he and an overly ambitious workaholic leadership really left me burned out at the end of last year (same experience with several others in the same role too). To a degree I'm still burned out now but I have resolved to become a better lead this year before leaving my job.

That said, I feel like I'm no longer interested in computer science and programming as a whole and that really bothers me. I never felt this way until I got into this architecture role and I've struggled with sparking my desire to learn more and *do* more things related to comp. sci & software development which obviously has its benefits at my job. I guess I'm at a loss with how I can get into the groove of things again, I've forgotten so much and when I compare myself to those who seem to be able to talk circles around me when it comes to these topics I feel even more discouraged especially when I feel like I should *know* these things already.

I've been at a very large firm / project for a little more than a year working as a backend developer. During that time I've accrued a decent amount of technical and domain knowledge about our system, enough that they've placed me as a technical architect working with two teams for an upcoming release whose deadline is about a year from now. Given most of HN consists of tech-oriented folks, I was hoping to get some advice on how to thrive in this new role both from a technical and leadership standpoint, as I feel I am still getting my footing in adjusting to this sudden change.

How do you deal with burnout, especially when close to a big deadline / release?

I'm a junior dev and have been at a pretty huge company for about a year now. I generally do good work (manager and other team members say as much at least) and I'm often 'visible', having built a good enough reputation among the other teams and leadership in the project to the point where I tend to be one of the main points of contact for my team outside of our technical architect.

However this sprint I've been working on two stories (features?) that I absolutely despise working on (involves working with other team's microservices that have much spaghetti code and parts of the product I've never worked with before), and the deadline for them was cut super short yesterday by leadership as we're close to release. But I am feeling super unmotivated and the mounting pressure isn't helping kick my ass to gear. I know that if I continue work on this I'll just be phoning it in...

Honestly this whole release has felt like a death march and I'm just drained.

In any case, apologies if this sounds like just a rant but how do you get through the slog of sh*t work and shit deadlines while your battery is drained? Not even thinking about salary and insurance is getting me anywhere. I'm wondering if this burnout is a symptom of something deeper.