'I regret my decision joining here': Techie after promotion shares how his job impacted his personal life and career growth

A promotion is supposed to feel like a win. Better title, better pay, and a clear step forward in your career. But for one tech professional, a move that looked perfect on paper quickly turned into a daily struggle. In a detailed Reddit post that has caught wide attention, the developer shared how being promoted to a lead role in a service-based company slowly began affecting his personal life, health, and learning curve, leaving him overwhelmed and deeply regretful of his decision.

The Reddit user explained that he recently switched companies and was promoted to a lead developer position. At first, the opportunity seemed promising. However, the reality inside the organisation turned out to be far more exhausting than expected. Much of the project had already been built by another company and was handed over to the current organisation a year earlier. When he joined, there was no proper knowledge transfer, no documentation, and no recorded sessions, despite repeated requests.

As a result, he found himself leading a system he barely understood. The lack of structured onboarding made it difficult to grasp existing workflows, architecture, and deployment processes. Still, expectations from him were high, and there was little room for learning or adjustment.



He also pointed out that the team environment offered limited support. While he tried his best to help teammates who came to him for technical guidance, the same support was rarely extended to him. Senior or older team members, who had more context about the project, were not particularly helpful. Managers, according to him, were also unsupportive, leaving him to deal with most challenges alone.

The workload added to the pressure. As a lead developer, he was expected to deliver six to seven hours of development work every single day. Along with that, he had to handle daily deployments, which alone took nearly two hours. His schedule was further packed with daily status meetings and multiple calls with business analysts and clients, consuming another two to three hours.

On top of coding, deployments, and meetings, he was also expected to mentor the team and step in to resolve UAT and production issues. This was especially stressful because he lacked full clarity on the system and had limited help from those who had worked on it earlier. Over time, the constant multitasking and unrealistic expectations left him feeling frustrated, mentally drained, and physically unwell.

The situation worsened when he revealed that the organisation followed a client-based support calendar. This meant no Indian holidays, even during major festivals. With work bleeding into personal time and no real breaks, his work-life balance completely collapsed.


The Reddit user admitted that the role had negatively impacted both his personal life and career growth. Instead of learning and growing as a lead developer, he felt stuck in survival mode, constantly firefighting issues. The stress had begun affecting his health, making him question whether the promotion was worth it at all.

Ending his post, the techie openly expressed regret over joining the company and reached out to the Reddit community for advice on how to handle the situation. His story struck a chord with many readers, sparking discussions around burnout, unrealistic expectations in service-based roles, and the hidden cost of promotions that come without proper support.