I’d far rather work in an environment that required and enabled me to get shit done than the opposite. My last W-2 job required a quarter-long planning period and then I had to go from team to team pleading my case and begging them not to stone wall me. Each time requiring a specially tailored slide deck, going behind the scenes to ask what questions _that one guy_ is going to try and derail us with so I could have an answer ready, and often follow up with a second or third meeting to address concerns of the DBA team on what effect using a WHERE clause will have.

I yesterday sat in a meeting where someone showed for an hour all kinds of organizational charts with acronyms and vague terms, and who could do what and who is the boss of who. The various organizations were there to help employees dealing with European privacy regulations while also publishing data open access when possible. Basically: Which parts of the org can help you to deal with the contradicting government regulations.

I honestly find high pressure work more relaxing than these kinds of meetings.

You get addicted to the adrenaline. If you’re with really good people that kind of pressure is actually fun. Sort of like how a championship sports game is fun.

I think the joy of working at this scale makes up for that for a lot of people. There are plenty of low-stress, low-impact companies that someone that's bigtech-approved can go to

Its surely not for everyone but I think this is the wrong take. They did not detail how the rest of the days look but one can imagine they are not launching a Threads every week/month/year. This must have been an exciting project for folks.

Having been in both setups, the frustration and demotivation I got when working in the bureaucracy was way worse than doing the rare weekend work and on-call rotations at a place where things moved fast. Many people get pumped up by doing stuff.

Imagine the compensation.