I try the compensate for skills atrophy with leetcodes and kata wars, but the plain reality is that real software engineering, the one requiring you to absorb and make a problem intimate is just not there.

The work rhythm has ballooned and as every co worker is now pushing work (generally mediocre but acceptable due to strong codebase fundamentals and them being good engineers) it is increasingly becoming a rat race of who delivers more. Companies don't even need to promote AI productivity because engineers being engineers will engineer the minimum effort required to deliver as much output that makes stakeholders happy.

I am less and less fond of this work.

I'm sure there will be people with different experiences, but I've never worked as much as I did in the last two years, but I'm too burned out. I genuinely feel I've regressed as an engineer and I see the same in my coworkers, some of them contributors to the highest impact OSSs you can think of.

Every day, I'm more and more leaning into changing industry.

I love code and programming and solving product problems. But the job has changed dramatically.

If the pay+comfort ratio wasn't that good I would've done that already.

It's hard to give up to 6/7k+ net per month in southern Mediterranean. I'm way better off financially than most US devs making even more, there's no comparison.