Why is modern IT work so boring and automated?
Heavy automation and cloud tooling have removed hands-on troubleshooting and direct infrastructure management, leaving professionals unable to actually fix things or login to routers. This lack of direct engagement drains the joy from the work, forcing people to find fulfillment coding solutions for their own personal tasks instead of their jobs.
What the numbers show
Counted from the threads quoted below. How we count
- The most recent one is from October 2026.
- This comes up 87.0× more often in Hacker News than across the site as a whole.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1working for smaller companies, public sector organizations, or educational institutions with lower budgetsDid this help you?
- 2joining managed service providers (MSPs) to touch a wider variety of systemsDid this help you?
- 3looking elsewhere outside of employment tasks for the satisfaction that used to come from doing the job wellDid this help you?
- 4Developing hobbies outside of workDid this help you?
- 5Picking up side gigsDid this help you?
- 6Using downtime to study for certifications like the CPADid this help you?
- 7Riding the gravy train and enjoying the reduced stress and stabilityDid this help you?
- 8Embrace AI to maximize output and financial savings to reach early retirement (FIRE)Did this help you?
- 9Refuse to use AI and continue writing code manually until laid offDid this help you?
- 10Shift focus toward exploring the frontier where AI models still struggleDid this help you?
- 11Transition into management or other non-technical rolesDid this help you?
- 12Use AI for side projects or mundane optimizations instead of core daily tasksDid this help you?
- 13Switching to hands-on physical trades like becoming an electricianDid this help you?
- 14Separating work from passion by treating jobs purely transactionally while building retro systems, playing old games, and pursuing hobby projects at homeDid this help you?
- 15Moving further down the technology stack where abstractions and AI are rejectedDid this help you?
- 16Using AI strictly as a learning aid or to automate repetitive tasks while keeping human-in-the-loop controlDid this help you?
- 17Keeping a few small side projects completely free of AI to maintain the rush of problem-solving.Did this help you?
- 18Making changes or modifications manually instead of letting AI do it to build understanding.Did this help you?
- 19Using AI only for repetitive tasks while reserving architecture and complex debugging for yourself.Did this help you?
- 20Manually proving out and double-checking all AI outputs to comply with regulations like SOX.Did this help you?
- 21Continuing to use AI tools under employer expectation despite personal dislike, or quietly redoing/re-editing bad AI-generated outputs.Did this help you?
- 22Switching to lower-tier or cheaper models (e.g., Sonnet instead of Opus) for simpler Excel tasks.Did this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I always get this feeling that scale, tooling, and automation has ruined the field.”source ↗
“I almost never even have to login to any routers.”source ↗
“I love troubleshooting and fixing, but I almost don’t even get to do it really.”source ↗
“AI is killing my passion for computers.”source ↗
“It's really hard to take. I find the idea that we'll just be introducing a dependency to replace our own brains is so against what I love about computing that it's hard for me to see a future for me here.”source ↗
“It really does suck the joy out of IT for me.”source ↗
“I'm with you buddy, it's killing my interest in computers too.”source ↗
“Same. I'm working on an escape plan. Can't do IT for another 20 years if this is how things are trending.”source ↗
“I used to love digging away at forensics puzzles until the firm realised they could do more with less and now instead of spending a week cracking something open I’m condensing a weeks work per day but all I’m doing is fact checking a completely abstract and opaque thing and it is the most depressing and oddly stressful situation.”source ↗
“I absolutely agree with this, the way I feel about computers, programming and the technology surrounding it is very similar to yours. I seem to be in the minority of people who enjoy programming; it seems like everyone has breathed a collective sigh of relief that they never have to code again. It's so demoralising.”source ↗
“You nailed exactly how I feel too.”source ↗
“Coding agents removed everything I loved, and - mostly - amplified everything I hated.”source ↗
“Now I am forced to increase my mental throughput multiple times. What took a couple of weeks now takes a couple of hours, and I still need to comprehend that. I always feel tired, I don't have enough mental capacity to hold that many abstractions and technical details.”source ↗
“As I've more reliably produced reasonable quality code with automation I've found my joy coming from coding solutions to my own day-to-day problems and less to do with solving the problems I'm employed to solve.”source ↗
“My job pays me for output therefore I have no choice but to embrace the Claude pandemic.”source ↗
“We know AI makes mistakes all the time, and our job has become that of an AI corrector.”source ↗
“The more I am working with Claude, the more dissatisfaction I am feeling in myself.”source ↗
“but dissatisfaction is killing me, I used to get butterflies when I used to build something amazing, or solved a problem. All gone, I think I need to go back to my inefficient, route.”source ↗
“Feels weird when the thing that makes you more productive also makes the work feel hollow somehow”source ↗
“My concern is that I'm not building up real, independent skills.”source ↗
“I went from absolutely loving my job as a cost accountant, to loathing every day I work. I get zero satisfaction in being a "prompt expert", and my career development has come to a standstill.”source ↗
“While my workflow has improved, my critical thinking has tanked. I literally feel like Homer Simpson just pushing a button over and over as a job to prevent a nuclear meltdown.”source ↗
“i get the homer simpson feeling, my brain went to mush after few months of just prompting and checking outputs like some kind of quality control robot”source ↗
“Went from public accounting to private, fixed basically everything, and now I’m bored out of my mind.”source ↗
“I spend most of my day staring at it because it no longer needs me.”source ↗
“Frankly, I’m amazed the company made it this far without getting into significantly more legal/compliance trouble.”source ↗
“Now I make low six figures, have dramatically less stress, built a department that basically runs itself…and I’m bored out of my mind.”source ↗
“I genuinely feel like I waste my day sitting here doing nothing.”source ↗
“I'm also not a fan, but I would probably be told to change my mind or GTFO if I told my boss that.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6Why is corporate industry accounting so boring after public practice?
- 4How to make a career pivot out of accounting
- 12Why do I feel guilty on slow work days?
- 13Should I quit my demanding job for a simpler, lower-paying one?
- 6Why does working extra hard just get you more work and less pay?
- 5Why am I stuck doing basic help desk tasks instead of growing?