It isn't the hours. It's the pettiness, the high-level dishonesty, and unending cognitive dissonance.
I’m always dumfounded by the fact that people even one or two levels above me (Director or Sr. Manager level) don’t even have a basic understanding of the impact that their ‘goals’ have on the people who actually deliver them.
Of course they praise us for delivering during challenging times, but then they go and setup a roadmap for the next year that creates the same situation.
This coupled with the absurd income disparity between internal employees and new hires is finally starting to burn me out.
I don't understand why tech companies keep doing this but it's a constant in my life, you get hired with a pretty decent salary, 2 years down the line and with a lot more subject matter knowledge and your salary is now lower than the new hire on the same level as you. It just creates churn, my previous employer was so guilty of this that employees started an anonymous spreadsheet for people to input: current level, years in the company, current salary. With that we concluded that it was a general practice that new people were being paid more than experienced ones, it got to a point where the company had to give raises across the board to level up salaries, I got a retroactive 15% raise after I had put my notice already.
It is a shitshow, it alienates and punishes people like me, that really don't enjoy jumping jobs every 2 years just to get a raise, I like to get expertise until I become comfortable with my work environment and subject matter knowledge, that's when I'm most productive.
If I wanted to stay somewhere for 5 years or more, I have to deal with a massive pay cut at the 4 year mark (equity cliff).
Then I have to be okay with getting paid much less than new hires being brought in to do the same work as me. Of course I have more internal org knowledge and subject matter expertise which should warrant comp being equalized accordingly.
Even though I like my team and work, I just can’t reconcile letting my pay lag behind the market for too long before I’m >50% behind what I should be making.
When it comes down to it, the only tangible item I have to exchange for my time and brain power is money.
I know most people think that's crazy, just ignore them...but man, it's just not worth my blood pressure spiking and lack of sleep anymore. At this point I don't even know who I hate more, him or my company for being so oblivious to it.
Toss in all the algorithmic cloud management of the people and they get completely disconnected from their workforce.
We can all see the ineptitude of management (the higher in the ladder they are, the worse they are). If we could fire them, we would.
It was good to break the streak though. Already setting up interviews at my next target.
Your “get right back on the horse attitude” is good. I’ve been on both sides of interviews so many times. There’s a huge component of random crap and if you’re rusty it might take a bit to get back into it.
I was expecting a technical interview.
Maybe. But I wonder whether others don't glorify job changes as the cure-all for work related problems.
I've seen a number of friends change jobs with some regularity. In some cases, they got out of really bad situations into something obviously better. But that seems to be the exception.
More frequently, the previous underlying problems (their attitude toward work, or toward co-workers, or systemic issues in the industry) re-emerged quickly in the new job.
Somewhere in between are the "serial monogamists" of employees: They start a new job, are quite happy with it, after a few years, dissatisfaction starts creeping in, and they look for a new job and start over. For them, changing jobs regularly also might make sense.
My spouse is kind, loyal, and behaves thoughtfully and with perfect integrity towards me. Because she saw my value and it was worth everything to her.
My employer is a legal abstraction run by sociopaths who, when the rubber meets the road, time and again show no kindness, loyalty, thoughtfulness, or integrity whatsoever. Far from sharing fairly with me, like my spouse, I am sure they would happily murder me to make an extra buck. Profit maximization is the only principle to which they submit.
I stick around for the paycheck. I will leave the moment I get offered a bigger one. Because it's what I want, and it's what they deserve.
Maybe some day I will be lucky enough to work for an organization whose values and behavior in the world I respect. I will contemplate loyalty at that time and not before.