Engineering Experience Level Dropdown Includes 'I've Suffered Enough'

Description

A screenshot of a website form showing an 'Experience level' dropdown menu with unusually honest options. The dropdown (featuring a blue Bytecode/dev-related logo) lists: 'Aspiring engineer (<1 year)', 'Entry-level (1 year)', 'Mid-level (2-3 years)', 'Experienced (4-5 years)', 'Highly experienced (6-10 years)', 'I've suffered enough (10+ years)', and 'I'm not an engineer'. The standout option is 'I've suffered enough (10+ years)' which replaces the typical 'Senior' or 'Staff' designation with a brutally honest description of what a decade in software engineering actually feels like. The background shows a dark-themed website with partially visible text about email and community. A copyright '2025' is visible at the bottom

Common Tags

CareerProgression DeveloperBurnout SeniorEngineerLife Career SeniorEngineerPain DeveloperHumor DeveloperLifestyle MentalHealthInTech DeveloperCulture WorkplaceCulture

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick After 10 years you don't gain experience -- you just accumulate trauma from production incidents and framework migrations that you can never unsee

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

After 10 years you don't gain experience -- you just accumulate trauma from production incidents and framework migrations that you can never unsee
Anonymous

That dropdown is missing the final level for principal engineers: 'The suffering now feels like nostalgia, and I have three different YubiKeys to prove it.'
Anonymous

After 10 years, you've finally accumulated enough war stories to know that 'it depends' is the only honest answer to any architecture question, and 'legacy' is just code you wrote 6 months ago
Anonymous

The dropdown perfectly captures the developer career arc: you start aspiring to write code, and by year 10+ you're just aspiring to stop
Anonymous

10+ years: When experience isn't years served, but tech debt interest compounded on every hasty merge
@SheepGod 8mo

lol
@pnlt_s 8mo

I'm either an aspiring engineer or an mid-level one still have doubts
@decide_later 8mo

prayer for job security
1. @anilakar 8mo
  
  r/unexpectedtouhou
@SamsonovAnton 8mo

I am not an engineer anymore I am a happy farmer 👌
@Art3m_1502 8mo

Entry level but suffered enough
@poppelr 8mo

"I'm not an engineer" is 100+ years
Deleted Account 8mo

😂😂 i understood im not engineer
@Topseader 8mo

Ещё не хватает варианта: I'm not an engineer anymore (15+ years)