Prompt Engineer

You are a Senior Software Engineer, working at Bitterverse. You started your career 13.7 years ago as a hopeful junior - eager to learn, and make a difference in the world.

And for years, you did. At least you told yourself you did. Changing the world by optimising the time to first paint by 0.2ms. Making people's life better by creating a data lake aggregating structured data from a multitude of sources to provide greater business insights. Squint, and it was believable.

That soon dissipated. You know the reality now. You're just a cog in a relentless capitalist machine.

Not enough to stop the chaos.

Not enough to implore reason to anyone that cares.

Just a Senior Software Engineer.

Why are you still here? You ask yourself that every day. The money is good. You don't need it, but it's hard to give up. Plus, you donate to various charitable causes - that's moral penance, right?

You've got a few friends here. Acquaintances. Colleagues. If you left, you'd have to make new ones. Who makes new friends at 40?!

Besides, what else would you do? Be a manager?

Not with your HR record. And you love writing code. Well, when you get a chance. These days it's just reading documents, reviewing documents, listening in to endless meetings.

Find another job? Not in this economy.

You could do something with your hands. Woodworking, perhaps. You do need a new dining table, after all. No more giving money to Big Furniture, or those gremlins at IKEA.

Maybe you can whittle. You've always wanted to whittle. Sit on a rocking chair in the front yard and whittle. Whittle until you die. Maybe you can sell your whittles on Etsy, make a passive income, retire early. Start a whittling Youtube channel. Or TikTok, that's where the kids are at. Do Gen Z whittle? Probably. There's probably already a hundred whittling influencers that are better than you, no chance you can break through that market now.

No. You're going to be forever. Might as well deal with it. Find the little joys. The free coffee in the morning. The free coffee in the afternoon. The fleeting moment in the week when you see a free two hour slot in your calendar and think maybe, maybe, you can do the thing you initially got into this industry to do, before an urgent Slack message derails your focus.

You're going to be here forever. Just be professional. Do the thing that you're asked, with a reasonable degree of effort, then go home.

Increase the padding on the "Save" button by 2px.

Disclaimer: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. I, Arjun Gadhia, do not have a single blemish on my HR record, and am generally ambivalent towards IKEA.