[jh00ker]

There's so much risk when joining a new company that it will turn out to be everything you're looking for, that when everything actually looks great in the first couple years, you may think you've found your final home! But it turns out, companies can adversely change under your feet and you can suddenly feel like you're in a rug-pull situation, and you find yourself looking again.

I thought my last job (joined pre-pandemic) really could have been my "forever job." My "work persona" was the closest to my actual self in my whole career. It was fun and exciting and the people were amazing! We worked on a great product, shipping features and solving challenging engineering problems, using the latest tech.

But the pandemic absolutely decimated their amazing culture. Company growth slowed, focus shifted to cost cutting, there were a couple of annual merit increase freezes, company policies were incrementally changed to be less generous (the number of company holidays were reduced, sick time was tracked separated from PTO, etc.). All the best people left for new jobs by that point, leaving behind, well... the people that couldn't leave. The culture bar wasn't upheld in hiring, and the company culture diluted further. The company that emerged at the beginning of 2023 was a mere shell of the company it once was and I had to leave.

[scarface_74]

I have now worked for 10 companies in almost 30 years.

A corollary to the second law of thermodynamics is that everything goes to shit over time - including companies and culture.

I always keep my running shoes around my neck and stay prepared to change jobs.

[Spivak]

Are you me? This is shot for shot what's been going on at $dayjob lined up with the pandemic as well.

The sad part is that the culture that was so nice wasn't predicated on future growth. It wasn't like we ran out of runaway or anything and suddenly couldn't afford the perks. None of them cost dollars that would actually appear on the budget and productivity's tanked so not really sure what they bought here.

I genuinely don't understand "symbolic cost cutting" where they just artificially make it shittier to work there. It just makes people quit— and if you're thinking, "well that's why" they're desperately trying to get people to stay and will do anything as long as it's nothing.