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PRANTA Dutta Published on Apr 19 • 5 min read

Why Being a Software Developer Sucks in 2025

Nothing feels like anything, and Stack Overflow might as well be a museum.

Welcome to 2025. You thought flying cars would be a thing by now. Instead, you're arguing with an LLM that swears your code is “syntactically correct” while your screen screams SEGMENTATION FAULT (CORE DUMPED).

This post is for all my fellow devs out there — the ones who start their day with caffeine and end it in an existential crisis.

Let’s talk about why being a software developer in 2025 absolutely sucks.

1. You’re Not a Developer. You’re a Prompt Engineer with Imposter Syndrome

Back in the day (2020s), you were a warrior. You could center a div, maybe even write a recursive function without crying. But in 2025, all you're doing is typing:

"Hey GPT, write a login form in Flutter with Riverpod and GoRouter and emotional support."
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And if it works? Great. If it doesn't? You're on your own, buddy. AI's like, “Sorry, I don’t have consciousness, bestie. You figure it out.”

You're not coding anymore — you're whispering sweet nothings to a machine, hoping it gives you something that runs.

2. AI is your coworker, but also your boss, therapist, and frenemy

AI tools like Copilot, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Claude and “InsertStartupNameHere AI” (LOL 😂) are everywhere. They autocomplete your code, fix your bugs, and sometimes gaslight you into thinking you're the problem:

You: “Why is this not working?”

AI: “Have you tried reading the documentation?”

You: “You wrote this.”

AI: “Well, maybe improve your prompting.”

It’s like asking your dog to do your taxes and then the IRS comes for you anyway.

3. Stack Overflow is dead. Long live Stack Underflow.

Gone are the days when you could Google an error and end up on Stack Overflow, where a saint named Jon Skeet had already answered it in 2011.

Now? You get:

  • 404 pages
  • Forum posts that say, "Just use AI!"
  • A Medium article titled “I Fixed It But I Won’t Tell You How”

Stack Overflow in 2025 is basically a graveyard of “similar but not really” problems and ghost answers.

4. Tutorial Hell has evolved into YouTube Purgatory

Want to learn something new? Cool. Here's a 38-minute YouTube video called “How I Built a Fullstack App with Rust, React, Firebase, GPT-5, and a Toaster.”

You skip to the end to see the app.

It’s a To-Do list.

No shade. But you just wasted an hour and all you learned was how to install 5 dependencies you’ll never use again.

5. Everyone's judging you. Including yourself. Especially yourself.

People assume you're a genius because you're a dev. But your brain is busy trying to remember if JavaScript uses == or ===.

Meanwhile:

  • A recruiter asks you to reverse a linked list on a whiteboard.
  • Your friend in finance is making 3x your salary, working remote in Bali.
  • Your parents think you fix printers.

You know you're good. But then you spend 2 hours debugging a null error and realize… maybe you’re not. 😭

6. "AI will replace you" is the new "learn to code"

You used to fear being replaced by offshore developers.

Now? You’re getting replaced by a Python script running inside a Discord bot, and your boss is like:

“Hey we’re automating your job but you’re still expected to deploy it, okay? :)”

At this point, we’re not even developers. We’re like tech support for the bots that are replacing us.

7. The performance review is vibes-based

You shipped a whole feature, fixed 12 bugs, and made dark mode actually dark.

Your performance review?

“We just feel like your impact wasn’t felt.”

Meanwhile, Chad in DevRel posted a TikTok explaining Kubernetes using pizza metaphors and got promoted.

8. You can't even center a div. But also, no one can.

You stare at your screen. The div. It's almost centered. Not quite. You try:

display: flex;
justify-content: center;
align-items: center;
margin: 0 auto;
transform: translate(-50%, -50%);
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Still off by 3 pixels.

You know what? Let it float. Nothing matters.

9. Everything changes every 6 seconds

Just learned React 19? (Yes, it's out, google it)

Boom. Now it's SolidJS.

Got comfortable with Docker?

Boom. Now it’s Kubernetes with AI-integrated orchestration and a side of YAML soup.

You spend more time learning how to learn than actually building things.

10. Every tool needs 10 other tools to work

You want to build a simple website?

  • Install Node
  • Set up Vite
  • Add Tailwind
  • Install shadcn/ui
  • Configure Prettier, ESLint, Husky, Lint-Staged, TurboRepo
  • Set up CI/CD
  • Watch it fail

Suddenly, it’s been 3 days and your “hello world” is still in staging.

11. The job market is vibes + buzzwords

Your resume doesn’t need skills anymore — just the right incantation of tools:

“Built scalable microservices architecture using NestJS, Kafka, GraphQL, Redis, and vibes.”

Meanwhile, you're praying the recruiter doesn’t ask you to explain any of it.

12. Work-life balance is a myth you read on Hacker News

You open VSCode at 10pm “just to check something.”

Next thing you know it’s 2am, you’ve learned nothing, your feature still doesn’t work, and somehow you're watching a video titled “Why Functional Programming is the Future of Humanity.”

Sleep? What is that? We only rest when the CI passes.

13. Burnout is the default setting

If you're not burned out, you're probably just new.

You wake up, open Slack, and see 43 unread messages, a production bug, and a random Jira ticket assigned to you by someone who left the company last year.

You're not thriving. You're surviving.

14. Senior devs are mythical creatures who don’t do code reviews anymore

You finally ask for help.

“Hey can someone review my PR?”

Crickets.

The only person who replies is a junior dev who started yesterday. Meanwhile, the senior dev is too busy writing architecture docs no one reads.

15. Refactoring? Nah. Just rewrite the whole thing.

You suggest cleaning up some old code.

“Let’s just rewrite the whole system in Rust.”

Six months later: project cancelled, company bankrupt, you’re still trying to compile.

16. Nothing feels like anything. But we do it anyway.

You finish a feature. You deploy it. No one says anything.

No confetti. No “good job.” Just Jira tickets that spawn like Pokémon in tall grass.

You start to wonder:

“Why am I doing this again?”

And yet… you keep going. Maybe because somewhere deep down, despite the chaos, the bugs, the AI gaslighting, and the 3AM stack traces… you still love building.

Final Thoughts: It's Hell. But It's Our Hell.

Yes, being a software developer in 2025 sucks.

It’s chaotic, competitive, unstable, and emotionally draining. But it’s also one of the most creative, bizarre, ever-evolving fields out there.

We complain. We cry. We meme. But we stay.

Because somewhere in the middle of “why is this undefined” and “it finally works,” there’s a spark. A glitch in the Matrix that says:

“Hey. You made something. That wasn’t there before.”

And maybe, just maybe… that’s enough.

Shoutout to every dev reading this:

You’re doing amazing. Even if your div isn’t centered. Even if your PR has 18 comments. Even if AI roasted you today.

You belong here. You’re valid. You’re real.

Now go delete node_modules and try again.

P.S. If you're ever feeling too overwhelmed, just remember: even billion-dollar startups use Google Sheets as their backend.

You're fine.

We’re all just winging it.

Together. 💻🔥