Good developers tend to have a predictable amount of cognitive energy each day. When work absorbs it, it dissipates cleanly. When it doesn’t, it leaks into side projects and binge-learning — or gets burned off fighting friction.
I’ve changed jobs plenty of times, but I’ve almost never stopped. This is what it feels like to step into a real pause, and why that matters.
I’ve worked in places where the fire never stops, and in places where the fire went out years ago. Neither is healthy. One will burn you out. The other will quietly let you rust. These are two faces of the same problem: a culture that’s failing its people and its purpose. It’s not just the productivity of the company the suffers. It’s the toll on the people inside the company, and how those patterns get built in. ...
Let me guess how your day started. You opened your laptop, fired up the sprint board, and grabbed the next ticket in the “Ready” column. Maybe it was a small feature. Maybe a bug. Either way, you didn’t write it, you didn’t scope it, and you definitely didn’t question it. Because that’s not how it works here. We are Ticket-Driven Developers now. Thinking is out. Throughput is in. Tickets are moving. Morale is not. ...