Why 80% of Developers Are Not Happy With Their Job
According to the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer survey:
- 32.1% of developers are miserable at their job,
- 47.7% are just surviving,
- and only 20.2% are happy in their current role.
That’s a significant percentage of developers who lack fulfillment, are unhappy or are on the brink of burnout.
Even in my relatively short experience as a full-time software developer (the rest is mostly freelance), I’ve struggled with burnout. After landing my first job as a software developer, I was happy for a couple of months, during which I gave my best. But somehow, over those months, I stopped paying attention to my health and self-improvement goals. Things worsened when a toxic CTO joined the team, and the company started demanding more and more from me, leading to burnout.
I eventually quit that job and was fortunate to join another company with a great work-life balance, where I felt appreciated and could work in a more relaxed environment.
Besides the obvious technical frustrations from the Developer Survey, I want to highlight the deeper reasons developers are so unhappy. I know many software engineers (some of whom are close friends), struggling with burnout, health issues, addiction, anxiety, and depression. From my…
