Quiet quitting is sorta stopping working... so I guess we are like a dim lightbulb lol That said though, a burnout antidote is to start a union and love your craft, not your boss's bottom line. That's the real boss fight. Grind culture can lead to burnout but frankly it can also not. For me personally, grinding to level up my own coding skills for myself or for volunteer efforts is far more satisfying that working extra hours for some VC's profits. Not that I haven't had cool projects at work but you don't always get to have those and also I am not gonna be putting in unpaid hours of work anymore for their profits. Open source, personal projects for a portfolio, volunteering for something you actually CARE about is a good burnout antidote. If you do it off the clock at a strict workplace you can still enjoy what you got into tech for in the first place while you spend your time at work doing what it takes to stay employed, while organizing, should you choose to do that. In a more bougie workplace you could even do that on the clock and not get much pushback at all. That said, if you really want to be pro-athlete level coder you are probably gonna have to put in more than 40 hours weekly combined at and off work, tech skills are fastly moving target, so it does require it but hell, at least its not physical work... And as far as the corporate porkies and their manager lackies, my observation (* anecdotal but I have also talked to many coworkers about this type of stuff and confirmed it repeatedly) is that the bigger the company, the more clueless they are about who is really doing what of value. Case in point, working hard and overdelivering doesn't always save you from the random 'fire' button. I've seen it happen to myself and my coworkers based on really dubious reasoning behind upper management's layoff decisions, which they are also super un-transparent about. If you are not levelling up skills you will probably eventually get proletarianized, having to do much more manual and outdated work for much less pay than before, which is also good, in a way, because you will find yourself with other proletarianized ex-coders that will want to start a coder's union much more than a bunch of bougie techies who are feeling themselves as indivuals far more than as a workers collective. Don't be a sellout, be skilled worker that's also an organizer in solidarity with the rest of the working class, even if you are a bougie worker. Code for your own enjoyment and to keep up with the craft and for whatever org or volunteer effort you actually CARE about, not for licking the bosses' boot.