I Quit My Software Engineering Degree Because of Autistic Burnout

A year ago I decided to pursue a software engineering degree from WGU. WGU is self-paced and has online classes for the degree I was going for. I thought that would help.

I heard about all of the perks it could bring—being able to work remotely and to myself, much better pay than my warehouse job, and very stimulating in a good way since coding is a special interest of mine. (The reason why I decided to work on Spoons!)

I thought pursuing a special interest would help my burnout. In this case, It made it worse.

Coding was one of the few things that used to give me energy. Watching it become another drain was harder than the burnout itself.

I quickly noticed that being in autistic burnout for over 5 years (Now 6 as of March 2026) was significantly impacting my ability to learn programming. Majority of my cognitive resources were already depleted. Small debugging errors and habits drained me a lot more than I expected. I was still very interested in the process of it itself, but it still demanding too much of me to fully enjoy it with the intensive cost of getting through the begineer's learning curve to learning coding in the first place.

I knew the learning curve would be hard and I was fully expecting that. But I didn't realize my brain was having an extremely difficult time absorbing the information and repetition I was trying to do. Writing arrays, functions, variables—simple things that often complimented and worked together in code—was just extremely hard for me. I thought I simply wasn't trying or studying enough.

Yet after reviewing a skill or definition term for hours, practicing syntax freely in a sandbox enviornment, and engaging with all sorts of scenarios, I would come back the next day even after a modest good night of sleep and forget nearly everything I reviewed the previous day. I had to take additional time to review what I've forgotten on top of what I already planned just to make some progress.

So it felt (At least from my personal experience) that Learning programming in burnout takes days per concept. Sometimes even weeks. I knew it was hard, but it's like my mind is always fatiqued and not fully "revved up" to handle even a tiny bit of complex information.

The Daily Cost

Using my app 1-10 energy slider context as an example here: I'd start at roughly 3 or 4 energy, open up Anki, review terms like "What does the AND (&&) operator for short circuiting do?"—and forget nearly everything in terms of what it means. I already reviewed day after day before this came up, but the energy to actually recall it was significantly degraded.

I don't remember the terms for multiple reps per card. Most of the time I review around 8 to 11 cards per day. (Many of which repeating on a cycle of Again -> Again -> Good -> Again -> Again. Clicking "Again" always resets the card's memory as if it was brand new. Rinse and repeat that process for ultimately 80% of the card I reviewed that day.) After that, my energy is around a 2 and not much energy to do much else.

I have no additional resource to actually start practicing and reviewing the code I was about to write and what I wrote yesterday. I'm just writing lines of syntax and nothing is absorbing unless I read it around 5 or 6 times. The recall is still shaky. It quickly felt like I was going nowhere.

Every study session ended at 2-3 energy, and I never recovered above 4 the next day. I just didn't have the energy to do any more.

The Math Didn't Work

The main driver was unpredictability. Not knowing if a flashcard or new syntax was going to take 4 days to learn instead of 1–2.

The deadlines I set for myself to save on costs weren't working. Course credits on Study.com were costing me $95 a month, on top of spending $500 a month just to get to work—not including surge pricing either which is very common for me in my opinion given my experience of using both Uber and Lyft to get to and from work.

This quickly added up after weeks of trying. My energy baseline remained at around a 3 or 4, my normal baseline (Especially given that I was in burnout) andI was really upset since I spent so much money and time trying to pursue this seriously when I don't have the mental resources to actually complete it.

If I continued, that would further extend my burnout recovery timeline. Job interviews—even if I got my degree and an internship—would be much harder.

And I realized I would still end up having to mask a great deal anyways. Mandatory webcam interviews and meetings. Still a layer of unpredictability even in a remote setting and if I considered a FAANG position, "always-on" mode would be a factor as well so I never bothered with that either despite initally being very motivated to work at a big tech company such as Meta.

So I quit.

It's been about 9 months. My baseline is still around 3-4 energy, but I'm not losing ground anymore and not being completely exhausted, but still no energy to learn most new concepts in relation to programming even if I wanted to. The only exceptions to that were very simple ones involving readable syntax code or info that was self-explanatory, otherwise I simply couldn't absorb it.

About Me

I'm Omari, a 23-year-old autistic adult who's been managing chronic burnout for 5+ years while working warehouse shifts.

I built Spoons since for one, I realized my degree was making burnout worse, not better, as I orignally thought it would. Secondly, I felt building a tool to track moments that drain me (Such as the endless cycle of repeating flashcard)—moments I didn't fully see until I started tracking—was enough to quit and prioritize recovery. Taking a step back gave me more than enough clarity (And motivation) to work on Spoons!ge

Launching on April 2026. getspoons.app - One email when it's ready. No spam.

— Omari

Note: I'm sharing my personal experience as an autistic adult, not medical advice. If you're experiencing severe burnout or crisis, please consult a healthcare provider familiar with autism.

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