The Cursed Cursor

“I don’t want to work in tech anymore.”

A sharp pang of anxiety spreads through my chest as my words hang on the screen. A cursor blinks beside them, as if it’s waiting for a justification, or anything really, just something to break the unbearable silence. It’s the truth though, and while terrifying, it feels freeing to write it down. I don’t want to work in tech anymore, that’s all.

You may wonder why. After all, my salary is to die for, and I have so much flexibility, but does my balding head not speak for itself? Take a look at my chart and check my blood pressure, or perhaps check in at 3am when I’m trying hopelessly to sleep, agonizing over how we’re going to complete this sprint on time. Maybe check in with my spouse and ask how many dates we’ve missed for deadlines. My children would probably have something to say, if I actually had any. I can’t point at any one detail as the root cause, but I just can’t do this anymore. I’m too tired, and everything feels either sore, wrong, or disconnected.

The cursor continues to blink. Once per second. On. Off. On. Off. Just as it was programmed to do. Nothing more. Nothing less. Just like me. I should get back to work…

A horrid smell fills the air and my thoughts turn back to my surroundings: to the harsh fluorescent overhead lights, to the shiny white plastic walls of my toilet cubicle, and the thin black strips covering the gaps aside the door. Privacy is our primary value. I look down to the floor and notice the trousers either side of me. To my left is Rajeevn, and to my right is Bo. I don’t actually know them, that’s just what the badges hanging on the floor say. I’m sure they would prefer some anonymity, but it’s important to wear your badge visibly at all times. All times.

Let me interrupt your thought process for a minute. It’s been at least half a page now, and several paragraphs, can we move the story along please? You didn’t come here to read about my toilet expeditions, no, you wanted something cathartic that connects with your own growing sense of burnout. Right? Well fine, here you go.

That little cursor we were talking about, it’s not just any old cursor, it’s my cursor. You heard me. I’m the engineer who wrote the code that blinks the cursor on your screen (assuming you’re on meOS and aren’t a green grossie). I like to think that every little blink is a tiny clone of me pulling a lever back and forth, deep in the bowels of the machine, because that’s what code is really, isn’t it? It’s a tiny piece of our minds, running inside a computer so we don’t have to do it manually. My contribution to the world is a few thousand lines of code, all to turn some pixels on and off. Trillions of times per day, across billions of devices globally. I should be a saint for how much work I’ve done for humanity.

How does that sound? Good? Boring? Wait until you hear how I sold it. I singlehandedly designed, implemented, and orchestrated a core piece of system infrastructure for the company’s leading mobile user experience at the scale of billions of MAUs. I streamlined team operations, hosted cross-org implementation syncs to share knowledge and distribute organizational data. Last quarter alone, I reduced system battery consumption by 0.1%, which at scale translates to approximately 8 Amazon Rainforests worth of carbon globally per year. Does that make any sense?

I think the worst part is all that corpspeak is starting to feel natural and actually read like normal language to me. What do I really do though? I blink the cursor. I make it go on and off. I do it on lots of devices. I make it work without bugs. I help others understand how it works. I do it efficiently. Why can’t I just say that? Why do we have to complicate everything? Why does my manager keep asking for status updates? I guess that’s a different topic but it feels related.

The worst part, the kicker that truly drives home my burn out: I don’t even notice it. My work, like all work, only gets noticed when it’s broken. I am paid to be invisible. I am paid to be unseen. Just like the help. Just like the staff. It’s right there in the name. Staff software engineer. Lucky me.

I am going home for the holidays this year. Maybe I’ll just stay. Maybe I’ll just never come back. I’ll send my badge back in the mail, and the company will wipe my laptop remotely the moment I sign my severance. I might finally get some sleep.

Who am I kidding? I am never getting out of this place. I will be making the cursor blink until the end of time. I already wrote the code, now I just need to justify my existence long enough to… I don’t even know. Just long enough to feel like it’s been long enough. What else is there to do anyway, write fiction?

Hah.