Hi there, I need to write about my experience and see if it makes sense to someone else.
I'm a FE dev working on the engineering team at this company for about 4 years. First it was a small company and everything was much better; few meetings, nothing too formal, I would just take care of my tickets and that was it.
Then 6 months after the pandemic started the company was acquired by a bigger company, and things started to change; we have now stupid social meetings, and even if I could just decide not to go to those I would still be forced to meet other teams that I don't care nor need to know about.
It was still ok.
Then I was promoted to a manager position, and I started seeing and feeling things differently. There's so many early morning meetings now talking about 4, 5 project scopes. It's so overwhelming. My manager also has never helped at all, he's one of those who's never satisfied with the work, has “strong but humble opinions” about everything and always wants to do more (meaning he wants us, the team, to do more) even if we're about to close the damn ticket. Lately more than never he's a royal pain in the ass because when I talk about how I approached a project he always has something to say, making me feel like I never do things right.
I see the bureaucracy everywhere I turn, I hear now the other managers talk about their frustration with the higher ups, our computers are getting more and more restricted, my coworkers are also always joking about how “I make more money now than them” which can get to you after they joke about it so much. I'm starting to lose interest in the projects the more I get them shoved down my throat, getting up early is starting to get harder and harder every day, I've dealt with incompetent juniors and I need to talk to so many people all the time. It's starting to be too much for me.
I have vowed I'll leave this job in a few months and save as much as I can in the meantime. I'm also thinking it might be better to never have an office job again. I ended up somehow part of the rat race and I hate it.
Thank you for reading.