How do you stay motivated when you're stuck building features you don't understand? Carol brings a conversation she's been having with her team about feeling like a "feature factory"—churning out work without clarity on what problem they're solving or what value it adds. When every standup is "is this done?" instead of "have we made anything better?", burnout follows fast. The hosts explore the tension between customer-driven features, competitive pressure, arbitrary boss decisions, and the human need to feel connected to meaningful work.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Full show notes and transcript here.

What happens when your passion project becomes so successful that you have to shut it down? Advent of Code creator Eric Wastl announced he was scaling back from 25 days to 12 and removing the global leaderboard. The reason? People were feeling bad at their jobs because they couldn't solve puzzles in 45 seconds like the leaderboard speedrunners.

Quiet UI launched with excitement, garnered incredible buzz, and shut down three weeks later when the demands became overwhelming.

This week, the hosts explore how good intentions collide with bad behavior—where success becomes punishment, communities ruin what was made for them, and the people who just wanted to share something cool are forced to walk away.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Full show notes and transcript here.

When you use ChatGPT instead of Google, you're not just getting a faster answer—you're cutting out the content creators who made that knowledge possible. In this week's episode, we explore the economics of AI search, the death of Stack Overflow, the junior developer problem writ large, and why capitalism keeps pushing moral responsibility onto individuals who have the least power to change anything.

Follow the show and be sure to join the discussion on Discord! Our website is workingcode.dev and we're @workingcode.dev on Bluesky. New episodes drop weekly on Wednesday.

And, if you're feeling the love, support us on Patreon.

With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.

Full show notes and transcript here.