[moosebear847]

I was on a small team at an early-stage startup, and felt forced to do 7+ hours of good work every day due to pace and visibility.

As a self-proclaimed productive dev, it was pretty obvious who was slacking or incompetent, and I definitely had some dislike of them for that. It felt unfair that others could coast, or create buggy code and then spend time fixing it, while my higher quality output wasn't rewarded in a way I cared about ($$$). Knowing this was going on did also contribute in some way to demotivating me and maybe deciding to leave.

In the end, we are victims or volunteers. I volunteered for the position, I volunteered to stay to earn equity.

If we don't like something, we can always volunteer to fix our current situation, whether by negotiating or finding a better-suited role etc.