[bamboozled]

Discount everything I'm going to say if:

* You're meetings go later than midnight or 1am, I think that's unreasonable.

* You're working more than 8 hours a day.

I also used to complain to myself about this a lot, then I became resentful and I became kind of grumpy / surly in the meetings. I complained to my managers about it and then I realized, for them, meeting attendance was more important than anything else. So I just adapted my schedule to that aim and it was a success.

For me it wasn't late night, it was early morning meetings that were a problem, I'm a night owl, I understand everyone is different, there you might like working early mornings for example.

Anyway I still struggle with the meetings, but I realized that I used to get up early and commute, and I also realized I have a very flexible life and I even have some of my meetings from bed if I'm extra tired, just turn off the camera.

After a while looked around me and saw that there are truck drivers, who drive all night, they are away from family for long periods of time. Pilots have to do all sorts of weird hours. I guess nothing is perfect, but at least once your meetings are done, you're off to a comfortable bed.

TL;DR: While it seems bad, is your situation really that bad, can you somehow make it work for you? Can you take most of the day off and work evenings? Can you be more flexible yourself?

[jrumbut]

Yeah, figuring out what you've really been hired to do is so important to happiness.

We all have our own idea of what excellence in software engineering looks like, but sometimes we're actually working as chairsitters, other times we're email account managers, sometimes we were only hired so our name/expertise/certifications can be listed on the "About Us" page.

Most of us would say an engineer can still be excellent with a flexible start time, but a chair sitter absolutely can't have that. However it would be fair for a chair sitter to get on the clock time to devote to upstream open source projects or to experiment with new database systems that might be useful for scaling.

[bamboozled]

I hear you, but don't see the parallels.

I'm talking about meeting attendance being important not just "chair sitting". It's important as a senior engineer to contribute to meetings for planning, setting direction, performance reviews etc. Which is what I'm doing in these meetings.

At one stage I was busy with projects and I'd refuse to attend the late night meetings, because I was busy, I thought just coding was what was important. Then I started to attend the meetings, wake up at 6am and work again. But that's when I realized that, the waking up early and working wasn't what they wanted from me , they wanted me to contribute to the meetings.

So now I reserve myself more for the important meetings task.

[yrgulation]

> So I just adapted my schedule to that aim and it was a success.

Stockholm syndrome, maybe a bit of ptsd.

I’d not follow such advice @op. Find a place that respects you.

[bamboozled]

What are you talking about?

Honestly, on my late meeting days, I just work about 3 hours and attend the meetings late at night, because that's what's expected of me and that's enough. The meetings can be intense so I just save myself for them and generally enjoy my day.

My company respects me a lot, but it also respects the fact that it's not all "one timezone is important and others suck" We have to meet with people all over the world and sometimes, it's my time to compromise and meet / work late?

[yrgulation]

That does sound like your employer respects you. Three hour work days on late meeting days sounds like a good deal. I jumped the gun and assumed you have to work extra, which is sadly the expectation in many places that have such late night meetings.