[mangamadaiyan]

The job itself is not too bad. I've become inured to crappy work over the years.

What kills me is the relentless manner in which work attempts to make inroads into my personal time. I hate late-night meetings, especially those that start beyond 11 pm. I hate the fact that most of my co-workers are online and working well past bedtime, and on most weekends. I hate that most think nothing of installing the office messenger app on their personal phones to "be more available". The (pre WFH) office commute, while it was a pain, was an effective moat between work and home. WFH has since brought down that moat.

The other thing that gets my goat is the "peg yourself at 100% CPU all the time" culture that Agile has fostered. Before Agile took over my world, I found that my best ideas came during downtime, when I was able to explore the codebase and play with it. There's no downtime at work anymore.

What keeps me going is the fact that I need the money.

[halt40]

Yeah, Agile really ruined development for me. It's like it's just endless sprints. It seems like productivity and project management are the focus, instead of building software.

[ivraatiems]

Where do you work that's having meetings at 11PM frequently and everyone working on weekends? A startup? Why not go somewhere else - does it pay it that much better?

[mangamadaiyan]

Just about every (software) workplace I can think of in my area. My current workplace isn't a startup; startups are far worse with their work culture.

I fled a toxic startup for my current workplace about a year ago. Many things are better here. I'm pretty decent at what I do but no good at leetcoding, so interviews are a hard proposition for me.

The 11 pm meetings are an unfortunate consequence of timezone differences and the madness that is DST. I wouldn't mind it so much if they switch about the timings a bit (my evenings sometime and their evenings sometime), but not everybody thinks too much about these things, I guess. I can't kick up a fuss about it because I don't want to be a snowflake.

The working on weekends ... is again a sad consequence of covid-related WFH combined with workaholic tendencies that some of the senior folks have. I strictly stay away from my laptop on weekends, but I'm definitely and painfully aware that many co-workers including my boss are available on most weekends. I try not to let it bother me, and there are no spoken or written injunctions, but it's hard to hold your own against this all the time.

The money is decent. It's definitely not top-tier, but I'm not looking for top-tier pay in any case. A sane workplace is my holy grail :)

[ivraatiems]

What's your area? Do you maybe work remote from the Ukraine or similar for an American company?

[mangamadaiyan]

I work for an American company, yes. I'm not remote, though. I work in the local timezone from a Southern Asian location :)