In fact, the team needs to lead the modernisation effort. It needs updating before the rest of the system can be.

From your explanation it sounds like you expected to find a modern and skilled team maintaining a legacy project. That is not at all so frequent. If the project is legacy, most often is because the team also is outdated.

So, obviously you can just switch jobs. And if you're getting sick from it, then you should by all means leave this job.

But then again, if what you actually want is to make this job work, then my suggestion is to:

1. Get the whole team together and evaluate their situation. Make a list of the skills the team is lacking and the knowledge updates needed. Make them participate in this so that, at the same time, you can evaluate their attitude towards the whole thing.

1.a. If the team does not want to update, then there's no successful path and I would suggest leaving.

1.b. If the team is receptive, then go ahead.

2. Meet with whoever needs to authorise it and get them to commit to providing both time and resources for re-training the team. You will need a plan, a timeline, and achievable goals.

3. Start as soon as you can. Focus first on basic infrastructure. Any tools, processes, skills, that are generic and widely applicable. Then go for more specific ones directly related to the project's technologies.

The team may need some rearranging too, but try to keep this at minimum so that they can be confident that all of this is strictly related to a technology and skill update, and will not imply any sort of job insecurity or competition.

You may have noticed that all of this is mostly people management. If this is not something you'd like to do, then the only option is leaving. The job you're in right now is clearly one of people managing and not so much a technological one -though is still requires knowing and choosing the technological goals to seek, obviously-.

If you do follow, then who knows what will happen. But if things go well, you might expect to see some results in around 6 months or so, depending on how large/small the team and project are.

No job is worth your health.

Is there a tech/team lead on the project - what’s their opinion of the progress the team is making?

It sounds like you are taking all the delivery responsibility on your own shoulders.

Is this project really top priority with your management? It sounds like it might not be.

I would just treat the job as a source of paycheck while looking for something better. There are lots of people working jobs like that in slow-moving organizations, most simply don't care as long as they are paid. It's best to find meaning to life from somewhere outside work, such as hobbies.

Coming from Finland, the #1 in EU unemployment rate, I've slowly learned to be happy of the fact I have a job at all.

Also, being told to sell a modernization roadmap to customers while the team can't actually ship it isn't really a you problem. That's just a bad setup.

I'm in Slovakia but have a bit of a Swedish connection myself - studied there, speak alright Swedish, even made it to the last round for a PM job in Skövde once (didn't get it). Market's rough right now but your CV sounds solid, that'll turn.

Hope you find something better soon. Lycka till!

Leave before burning out. In the meantime, maybe take sick leaves if you can.

Consider many people don't notice they are burning out as well.

Leaving even if you don't yet have another plan could lead to a better outcome even considering that leaving your job creates financial difficulties right now because burnouts can take years to heal, some never manage to fully heal as well.

* getting buy-in from stakeholders, developers, and testers

* dealing with low performers

* protecting yourself from backstabbing attempts

* deflecting the barrage of scattered requests coming from the top brass

* appeasing customers angered by actions that someone else took

* reacting to big shifts from other parts of the organization

etc etc.

That sort of thing worn me down so much, I had to move sideways to regain some self-respect. Even though I was eventually vindicated by most of the calls I made (which someone else shipped and got credit for, another frustration of the job), I just accepted I am currently not in the right headspace to be a PM/PO in a big company.

So my only suggestion is to keep looking for another job, or even better create your own: with AI getting incredibly good, there has never been a better time for PMs to build their own prototypes, which can then be used to hunt for the job you really want. Otherwise, take the Serenity Prayer to heart and find more meaning away from the job.

It can also take steadfastly trying dozens+ of antidepressants to find one that works best with least side-effects. Don't have anything important to do when changing medications because some side-effects are difficult. It can take around days to a week to stabilize to titrate on and about the same off, depending on the medication.

I feel like there are a lot of people nowadays that are just pretending to be devs and ship things to prod using LLMs

You outlined the root cause: “our development team simply does not have experience with building, testing, shipping, and maintaining APIs, which has made my job as a PO/PM considerably more difficult.”

Do you have any authority or influence to change this, either through training, bringing in consultants (be very careful with this one), or worst case via hiring/firing?

If the company pays to do a project where nothing happens for six months and it keeps paying, they are probably okay with a result, otherwise they would listen to your constructive proposals on how to improve the process. Or fired you. Do they say they like what you do there or not? It's important to have a perspective here.

There are two ways to deal with it -- one is reframing it. Sure, it's not the most exciting project, but doing the boring stuff and being persistent at that is a challenge of it's own. Challenge doesn't have to be technical, especially for the product owner.

Second is to give it less time and space in your mind. Physically not being in the same environment, closing the laptop, taking a lunch break and taking a walk. You are not supposed to care about something more than the company owner and your boss anyway, unless you have a direct financial incentive tied to results of the project (which in Sweden your probably not have).

While you give less time and space to the annoying part of the job, find something that displaces it. Vibecode an open source project, learn Arabic, Japanese or whatever, go skuba diving on vacation, do some serious gaming or religion. Something bigger than work.

I was laid off from a very well paying job and to support my family I had to take up a worse paying job with similar problems to the one you described.

Yes. Ive had dark thoughts sometimes. I dont know the answer. It helps to distance oneself and treat the dark thoughts passively, as in if I wasnt in this situation these ideas would not be coming to me, or something like - these are just thoughts and I acknowledge them and let them pass.

Few of my friends did not have good results with medication.

I am also detached from my job, its only purpose is to make enough money to no longer need doing the job. Today I work to live and see tomorrow and the same thing tomorrow again.

I suggest talking to someone elder and with a more positive outlook on life, not from work. Preferably retired.

In summation- You are not your job friend. Not should it give meaning to your life. Live to fight another day. It helps to detach oneself.

I don’t understand why you haven’t just let an AI agent do all the tasks your incompetent coworkers take months to do.

Never take your primary source of personal worth from a job. Get out of that mindset as soon as you can. In most companies like that you’re fungible in a moment’s notice even if they tell you they value you. As for non delivery, everything we build loses money because it’s built on a guess and doesn’t work properly because it’s designed and built by idiots. Do not listen to the people here doing 90 hour weeks on a startup. That’s insane. I manage about 6 hours a week :)

What they do provide you with is income. Save money so you can afford to lose a job first. Security helps. Find meaning outside work with that income. That is your purpose. And it probably shouldn’t be another let’s just do a side project at home and do another day of work. It should be social in some way.

So the clients wanted me to do one thing (run operations), my supervisors wanted me to focus less on technical contributions and more on administration and leadership, the PM wanted me to be a junior developer. The PM knew I was a supervisor as nd knew of the client expectations and still wanted me to do something else. He even thought he was my supervisor even though my bosses were meeting with him every two weeks and told him the reality. The dude lied to the clients and withheld client communications until I was fired. I think he is autistic because he perceptions of reality were frequently wrong, his only management style was hazing people, and he confused lots of things between various people and work assignments.

I really miss my team because they were awesome people and I kind of miss the income. I really loathed that I was leaving my people behind in such a toxic environment. I was super relieved to not have to do that job anymore though. I had been considering walking away from it two months prior to termination.

What saved me (in no particular order)

1. Sport. I felt I was “burning” my stress and anxiety by doing 1h of sport a day, in nature.

2. Therapy

3. Family and friends, quality time

4. Find another job

5. Stop social media

6. Fixed sleep schedule

The only way to cope is to only deliver the minimum, and not care too much about it. This is risky as there is a chance that the minimum delivery and no care attitude could filter into other areas of your life.

Luckily for me, I was able to find a job soon after.