At the tail end of my last job I was saddled with a massive project to migrate a client to a new version of an application. We did this by standing up the new version, copying over their current data, asking them to test it and then cutting over when they were ready. This was a huge undertaking because most clients had one or two environments but my client had 18 different environments so the workload was way higher and everything took way longer.

On top of the scope they also took updates to these environments almost every night which meant it was a full time job just to keep things in sync, setup a testing window and then try to get them to approve the new state of things.

I was already burnt out before this all started, but thanklessly maintaining 18 non-production environments by myself for an application that no one could commit to testing or cutting over was driving me insane. I felt such a weight lifted off my shoulders when I quit. It came at the end of months of stress and wasted effort. I couldn't imagine a reality where anyone else would put up with that work or have a better chance of success.

Anyway I caught up with some coworkers and asked if that project ever got done. Apparently it got passed to a small team of three to manage and after getting jerked around for months themselves the whole thing fell apart.

So glad I didn't waste any more energy on that shit.