# Are You Really Happy in Tech, or Are You Just Chasing the AI Gold Rush? > Source: > Published: 2026-07-15 18:24:30+00:00 I was scrolling through my usual feed recently, reading some truly amazing articles written by great authors on how to not be jealous of others and the age old dilemma of whether you should quit IT or not. It got me thinking. It really forced me to sit back, look at my terminal, and ponder a deeper question that we rarely ask ourselves in the middle of sprint cycles: **Are you really happy working in tech?** We talk a lot about framework migrations, salary bumps, and optimization hacks, but we rarely audit our own joy. Let us pull back the curtain on what it actually means to be a developer today, cross examine our motivations, and figure out if you are on the right career path or just caught up in the modern hype cycle. The shift started happening after all the artificial intelligence revolutions took the world by storm. Suddenly, everyone started seeing software engineering as a career filled with endless piles of money and absolute ease, especially since artificial intelligence can now do most of the heavy lifting. To top it all off, the market became flooded with no-code and low-code tools that dynamically help non-technical people build a website in minutes without needing any developer's help. This corporate gold rush has resulted in an absolute flood of people changing careers and choosing artificial intelligence shortcuts rather than actually mastering a foundational tech stack. We are now living in a world where people are building and deploying production websites that can be hacked with basic SQL injection commands. People are building and shipping applications on a regular basis without understanding a single line of the underlying code or the errors flashing in their console. They are happily paying for artificial intelligence subscriptions rather than taking the time to learn and build things from scratch. This superficial workflow has unfortunately led to many people calling themselves developers when they have never actually solved a complex problem. For me, the definition of a developer is someone who genuinely loves to write code, deeply knows how to debug, understands how to increase their skills every single day to match industry standards, and is someone who can selflessly help others as well. I can honestly say I am happy in tech because I am creating and doing something I love. I love the beautiful frustration of building, breaking, and then rebuilding websites. Every single time I use a web application, rather than just passively browsing, my mind immediately goes into a systematic breakdown of the interface architecture and how the original creator thought of making something like this. Even the smallest interactions can give such an amazing user experience that you instantly start loving the platform. For me, that gold standard website has always been YouTube Music. The sheer smoothness of the application, the incredibly fast access, and the seamless reshuffling of songs make for a flawless experience. I feel good when listening to music on YouTube Music, and I am always surprised to see the innovative features they deploy. As a developer, I cannot help but look past the sleek user interface and marvel at the engineering required to make it happen. A separate team of engineers had to meticulously design the state management, configure aggressive cache headers, optimize audio compression algorithms, and minimize API latency so that the transition between tracks feels completely instantaneous. I really love the yearly wrap-up recap, specifically how it turns my most-played tracks into a personalized playlist and proudly tells me that I'm in the top one percent of listeners for a specific artist. The ability to pin songs for fast access is brilliant, and I can go on all day about it. This exact feeling is what I love about being a developer. As I use a website, I get an overwhelming curiosity about its inner workings. I still remember seeing Hadil's incredible interactive Halloween submission on Dev.to and using it again and again because it made me feel like a kid playing with new toys. A true developer should always remain curious. Now the hard question comes back to the surface: Are you really happy working in tech? I promise I will not give you a sad, philosophical talk about life. Everyone has profound problems they are dealing with behind closed doors that cannot easily be explained. The hardest inner battles are always fought and won completely alone. But we need to be honest here. Did you switch into tech simply because you saw the entire world moving into tech? Did you see your friend earning a massive salary package, so you joined the industry just to get the ability to earn the same? Did you switch because you saw artificial intelligence, started playing with prompts, and thought to yourself that it is so easy to create websites and apps that you might as well join the party? If so, let us run a rapid, five minute diagnostic audit on your baseline engineering knowledge. Let us see if you are actually building a foundational understanding of computer science, or if you are simply copy pasting code fragments without a map. More importantly, can you answer all these foundational questions without opening an AI chat window for once? The tech field looks incredibly fascinating from above, but the deeper you go, the deeper you realize the harsh realities of intense burnouts, the psychological drain of not getting a job, the frustration of being stuck in a dead end role for years, and the absolute fear of not being able to grow. The highly engaged articles written by amazing writers on this platform are living proof that many engineers have felt intense burnout, toxic professional jealousy, or the feeling of being completely trapped. It is a completely natural response from your mind and body telling you that you desperately need rest. Think about it mechanically. If a machine runs twenty-four hours a day with no break and works continuously for a whole year, it will suffer catastrophic wear and tear. On the other hand, a machine that works twelve hours, rests for twelve hours, and gets oiled frequently will perform far better and last significantly longer than the overworked machine. You are not a machine, so stop treating your brain like a server with a hundred percent utilization rate. If you are trying to figure out where you stand, ask yourself these three basic diagnostic questions: First, do you find tracking down complex system bugs fascinating? Second, do you find genuine, profound happiness in finally completing a complex project? Third, do you actually enjoy the micro process of working on a new software feature? If your honest answer is no to all three of those questions, then maybe the specific branch of tech you are currently in is simply not for you. Technology is not a giant monolith, and hating the process of centering a div or managing React state hooks does not mean your engineering journey is over. You might just have a completely different calling waiting for you in another corner of the ecosystem. If frontend or full-stack web development feels incredibly draining, it is time to pivot and explore alternative technical disciplines as soon as possible. You might discover a profound passion for data normalization as a database administrator, automating deployment pipelines in a DevOps role, focusing entirely on native application development, or working on low-level systems engineering. But if your answer to those three diagnostic questions was a resounding yes, then congratulations on genuinely being a part of the tech community and loving the art of problem solving. Now the real question remains: Are you truly happy? Do you feel deeply satisfied after a full, exhausting day of coding work? If yes, then you are on the right track at the absolute right time in your life. If the answer is no, do not abandon ship just yet. Instead, shift your focus, alter your path, and go design or build something today that you are genuinely proud of. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through my personal reflections on our industry! I want to open up the floor to the community because your insights are what make this space so valuable. When you shut down your local server at the end of the day, do you feel fulfilled by the code you wrote, or are you feeling the weight of modern tech burnout? Are you staying curious like a kid with toys, or has the AI hype cycle drained the fun out of your editor? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below! If you want to keep swapping debugging survival stories, discuss foundational engineering skills, or share your build journey, feel free to connect with me over on [ LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/konarksharma13/). Let us keep building, supporting each other through the burnouts, and growing together!