Over the course of the pandemic I lost my dad and had a baby. I also changed jobs and took a promotion. That really gave me quite a bit of perspective and my priorities absolutely shifted.
I was(am?) a very ambitious, motivated, “go-getter” who has moved up the ranks fairly quickly and am in a very senior leadership position for my age. I genuinely like what I do, so that definitely helps. But I saw an unqualified person take over my old job and is, at best, ‘coasting’ and more realistically slowly killing an amazing platform I had helped develop–and driving away incredibly talented engineers and analysts.
Leadership changed and just moved on to the next shiny object and seems content to let that platform flounder because…it’s not their baby. Why on earth would you continue to move that invaluable platform forward when you can make a name for yourself on something else?
I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes, because its not that. It’s more that I realized, why did I kill myself for that job? The bigwigs seem to be totally fine cutting it loose. Why did I stress myself out to drive that platform forward so hard? Why should I kill myself, sacrifice limited time with my family to drive products forward when, as soon as leadership changes or as soon as I move on, it will get scrapped or forgotten about? It obviously wasn’t nearly as important as they claimed it to be.
So, I am not killing myself for work. I am taking my entire paternity leave and not taking a single call or text from work. I am not going to work overtime. I am not going to work on my day off. I am not going to travel unnecessarily. I am going to prioritize things that benefit me personally. And I am not going back into the office on someone else’s terms. (I honestly dont mind going in once or twice a week. I do less work in the office than I do at home tbh–as far as “work” goes its usually a free day. But I am fully remote officially and I’d probably hop to another company if they started to force me back in ‘officially’ because, like I said, I am prioritizing me and mine and commuting 45-60minutes each way, paying for parking, to sit on the same Zoom calls I can do at home, doesn’t really benefit me in any way.