When I landed my first tech job, I imagined I’d be solving big problems. I thought I’d be designing slick architectures, writing clever algorithms, and changing the world one commit at a time. Instead, I got a Jira ticket that said, “Add field to form.”
The field? A single-line text input. The form? Part of an internal tool that nobody outside our company would ever see. The purpose? “Just in case we need to collect dietary restrictions during onboarding.”
I spent a whole afternoon adding that field. Updating the frontend. Changing the backend schema. Re-running the database migration. Writing a test for a feature nobody would test. Deploying it to staging. Getting approval. And finally… shipping it.
That was when it hit me. I wasn’t solving hard problems. I was just moving data around. Tech, for all its mystique and innovation, had turned into glorified data entry.
The Harsh Reality of Most Tech Jobs
Let’s be honest. Most developer work today looks like this:
- Mapping fields between two APIs
- Parsing inputs, validating them, and sending them somewhere else
- Copying requirements from a ticket and turning them into UI components
- Writing boilerplate code to do the same thing ten different ways in ten different microservices
We like to dress it up with phrases like “data pipeline,” “ETL,” “API gateway,” or “middleware,” but let’s call it what it really is: taking information from one source and reformatting it to fit into another.
You’re not building the next Twitter. You’re just turning a spreadsheet into a database entry and making it look decent on a dashboard.
Why It Ended Up This Way
There’s a reason for this, and it’s not entirely anyone’s fault.
Modern software architecture is complicated. Companies use hundreds of tools, services, and APIs. Every one of those has its own format, quirks, and rules. Someone has to make them talk to each other. That someone is usually you.
Want to take Stripe payment data and sync it with a CRM? Cool. Now go read two APIs, map a dozen fields, and pray they don’t change on you next week. Need to display a user profile? That’ll require pulling info from five microservices, combining it in just the right shape, and caching it because it’s slow.
This is what we do all day. It’s not glamorous, but it keeps the machine running.
The Illusion of Innovation
The weirdest part is that, on the outside, tech still looks innovative. People talk about AI, machine learning, blockchain, augmented reality. But on the inside? On the ground floor where code actually gets written?
It’s just buttons and forms.
The AI-powered chatbot? Probably just a wrapper around OpenAI’s API with a slightly nicer interface. The NFT trading platform? Mostly just a backend syncing data between wallets and a bunch of React components. The new feature that took two sprints? A couple of checkboxes and a dropdown.
Even the jobs with fancy titles like “Platform Engineer” or “DevOps Architect” often boil down to writing YAML files and debugging CI pipelines. That’s not bad. It’s just not the dream many people were sold.
Why That’s Okay (Sort of)
There’s a case to be made that this is fine. Software is infrastructure now. It’s not magic. It’s plumbing. And plumbing is important. Society breaks without it.
But it also explains why so many developers feel burned out or uninspired. They came in hoping to build bridges and skyscrapers. Instead, they’re sealing pipes and cleaning filters.
If you're lucky, you’ll get those rare moments where you actually solve something meaningful. A clever solution to a real problem. A feature that makes someone’s life better. But most days, you’re just playing translator between systems that were never meant to talk to each other.
So What Do We Do?
I’m not saying quit your job or go live in the woods. But it’s worth acknowledging what tech work actually is, not what the hype says it is.
And once you do, you can make better choices. You can:
- Look for roles that prioritize product thinking and autonomy
- Build side projects that scratch your creative itch
- Push for simplification instead of more layers of abstraction
- Stop pretending that every ticket is changing the world
The truth is, most of tech is just moving data from A to B. It’s not glamorous, but it can still be done with care, creativity, and maybe even joy if you stop expecting it to be something it’s not.
Final Thought
Next time someone tells you they’re “revolutionizing the industry,” ask them how much time they spent last week syncing dropdown options between two internal tools.
Chances are, it was more than they want to admit.
