Why software engineers are grieving

Joel came to work for us with his eyes wide open — or so he thought.

He told me more than once why he chose us over other offers. We were a B2B SaaS company that helped healthcare technology companies bring safer products to market faster. That mission mattered to him and was a genuine reason to get out of bed in the morning. He was a strong Staff-level engineer who could have worked almost anywhere. He chose us because he got to solve difficult problems, build things that hadn’t existed before, and do it all in service of something that felt larger than quarterly revenue targets.

“You mean I get to do stuff I like in service of a greater good I care about?” he told me once. “Sign me up.”

I understood exactly what he meant.

If you’re an engineer who has spent the last few years feeling disoriented, grieving without being sure what exactly you lost, or wondering why work that once felt meaningful now feels like an unrewarding grind, I think Joel’s story may feel familiar.

Something changed. The disappointment many engineers feel is real. What I’m not sure we’ve done a good job of explaining is why it happened.

Looking back, I think the software industry spent 20 years offering engineers two unusually powerful reasons to love their work. The first was mission: the belief that our efforts were contributing to something worthwhile. The second was craft: the deep satisfaction that comes from solving difficult problems and building useful things. What many engineers are experiencing now is the realization that both of those pillars are less permanent than they appeared.

For most of the last 20 years, the software industry sold more than jobs. It sold a story.

The story was true, more or less, which is why it was so effective. You weren’t merely writing software. You were improving patient outcomes, transforming education, empowering creators, helping small businesses succeed, or connecting people around the world. The products usually did help real people solve real problems, and the missions frequently reflected something genuine about the value the company created.

Over time, however, the story expanded beyond the work itself. Increasingly, the mission wasn’t simply part of the job. It became the reason for the job. Companies encouraged employees to find purpose, identity, growth, community, and meaning through their work. Do work that matters. Join the mission. Change the world. Bring your whole self to work.

The language varied, but the underlying messages were remarkably consistent.

Work wasn’t merely where you earned a living. Work became where you found purpose.

That story landed particularly well with software engineers. We enjoy difficult challenges. We like building things that hadn’t existed before. We take pride in mastering complicated systems. Many of us grew up reading stories built around quests, competence, sacrifice, and transformation. The industry didn’t invent the hero’s journey, but it certainly offered us a place inside one.

Part of the reason these stories became so powerful was economic. During the long years of cheap capital and rapid growth, software engineers were scarce. Companies competed fiercely for talent, and compensation alone wasn’t enough to stand out. A company that said, “We make healthcare compliance software” had a harder time recruiting than a company that said, “Help us improve the quality of life for patients worldwide.”

Most companies weren’t inventing these stories from whole cloth. The products were useful, the customers were real, and the missions generally reflected something true. But when every company is competing for the same limited pool of engineers, the incentives naturally push the story in a particular direction. Over time, the language becomes more ambitious, more aspirational, and more emotionally resonant.

For many people, it genuinely worked. They found fulfillment in the combination of challenge, compensation, craft, and purpose. Some of the best years of my own career fit that description.

Then the conditions that supported that story began to change. Interest rates rose and investment dropped off a cliff. Hiring freezes followed, and then layoffs. The talent shortage that had shaped so much of the industry’s behavior eased rapidly and dramatically. Engineers who had once been extraordinarily difficult to hire became much easier to find.

The same engineers were doing the same work, but the labor market around them had become very different.

The values and aspirational mission statements remained. But the conditions that had helped elevate the story lost much of their force. The business realities that had always existed pushed back into the foreground. Companies focused on profitability. Efficiency mattered more. Headcount became easier to scrutinize.

The story wasn’t suddenly false. It simply stopped feeling complete.

For many engineers, that wasn’t yet a crisis. Even if the mission no longer felt as central as it once had, the work itself remained. The craft was still there.

You still got to solve difficult problems.

You still got to build things. You still got to master complex systems and exercise judgment. Even if the hero’s journey had been oversold, the satisfaction of engineering itself remained available. Many engineers could have lived quite comfortably with that adjustment.

Then AI arrived.

We’re still learning whether AI will transform engineering as dramatically as its proponents predict. What matters for this discussion is that many engineers experience it as a challenge to the craft itself. Engineers who once spent their days happily writing code increasingly describe themselves as managing agents, reviewing generated output, and orchestrating systems that do the construction work for them.

Building software isn’t disappearing. But the nature of the work is changing, and many engineers experience that change as a loss. Just as the mission narrative became less stable, the craft narrative became less stable too.

I think this is why the emotional reaction has been so strong. The industry didn’t merely weaken one source of meaning. It weakened two.

The mission no longer feels as central as it once did. The craft no longer feels as permanent as it once did. For engineers who built a professional identity around both, the resulting grief and disorientation are entirely understandable.

What strikes me is that the disappointment isn’t primarily financial, at least for software engineers who have remained employed. We are still among the best-compensated professionals in the economy. What many people are grieving is the loss of a story that explained why the work mattered and why they loved doing it.

For most of modern history, people generally expected work to support the rest of life. Family, community, friendships, faith, hobbies, and purpose were often found elsewhere.

The software industry gradually moved in a different direction. Because compensation was already strong, companies competed on meaning. Over time, many of us accepted an arrangement in which work carried more weight than work had traditionally carried.

Work became identity. Work became community. Work became growth. Work became purpose.

That arrangement lasted so long that many of us stopped seeing it as a product of particular conditions. We mistook it for the natural order of things.

That’s a very human mistake. People who come of age during periods of high inflation often assume high interest rates are normal. People who enter adulthood during long periods of economic growth often assume growth is normal.

The software industry’s boom lasted long enough that many of us stopped seeing it as a boom. We assumed the mission would always be central.

We assumed the craft would always look the way it had. We assumed the conditions that produced both would continue indefinitely.

And when those assumptions break, grief is the natural result. People aren’t simply losing confidence in an employer. They’re losing confidence in a worldview that helped them make sense of their lives for years.

You weren’t foolish to believe the story. The mission wasn’t fake. The products were useful. The customers were real. The satisfaction engineers derived from the craft was genuine. But none of this existed independently of the economic and technological conditions that helped create them.

I wish someone had explained that to Joel. I wish someone had explained it to a lot of engineers.

Mission depends on institutions. Craft depends on technology. Both are valuable. Neither is permanent.

Perhaps that’s what many of us are rediscovering now. Not cynicism. Not disengagement. Not the belief that none of this matters. Something older and simpler.

The mission can matter without becoming your identity. The craft can matter without becoming your worth. The company can matter without becoming your community. The work can matter without becoming your purpose.

The software industry spent twenty years offering engineers two unusually powerful reasons to love their work: mission and craft. Both were real. Both were rewarding. Many careers were built around them.

What we’ve discovered lately is that neither was guaranteed. The mission depended on economic conditions. The craft depended on technological conditions.

We mistook a historically unusual moment for the natural order of things. The conditions that produced it lasted so long that we stopped noticing them.