People aren't machines. Productivity in the workplace doesn't translate to productivity in life, but managers would like you to think so, and because jobs are d

People aren't machines. Productivity in the workplace doesn't translate to productivity in life, but managers would like you to think so, and because jobs are directly tied to your livelihood (with medical insurance and money to pay for food and shelter), it's easy to buy into the premise that if "you suck at your job, it means you suck at life". The author moved to a new city to start a new life and perspective, which was a personal choice to make themselves happy. That's great! But then small pressures began to happen: > manager at the new job didn't work out > power dynamics with the team lead forcing a 'special, one-time' transfer > having to deal with a new manager due to a reorg > OKRs that placed significant pressures to get optimistic deliveries, being on call with a secondary team > Wanting to join the Google protest, and then being threatened by management with being fired for taking PTO to join the protest effort > Raised concerns about manager's behavior with on-call stuff to HR, only for HR to sit everyone down and have the manager chide the author about the tone of voice, which is completely irrelevant. > finding out later that the manager blocked the author's potential transfer to another team where the author could have been successful > Low bonus and no stock refreshments due to only meeting expectations, with no hope of getting a better rating because manager hates the author Going through all that, I can definitely emphasize with the author feeling down. All that artificial pressure for what? Everyone saying not to abandon job duties, or that the author took on too much... Isn't Agile supposed to solve that? You define units of work, then spread them out to sprints. And Google does do Agile, I looked it up. If we say it's because each manager does Agile different, well then we shouldn't be blaming the author, we should be blaming the manager for not assigning work properly. Yet the author feels responsible and overwhelmed, which is ridiculous. All the mental and physical stress is directly sourced from the job itself, and needlessly too. Jobs don't have to be this way, but it is, and it's everywhere. And the worst part is, the end result was... nothing. The author tried to remedy the situation with HR, but ultimately was forced to change jobs, and the manager is still at Google bullying others. It's great that the author found their place at Meta, but how many others weren't so lucky? And, why do we, as engineers, even tolerate such a toxic environment in the first place? Everything listed above is toxic to the core, and can heavily affect mental health. Jobs should enable you to live a life that you want to live, to experience the things you want to experience. Jobs shouldn't be able to bully you into thinking you're a worthless person because that's just your boss making you work harder to make the boss look better, and to make your employer richer at your expense. We should not tolerate bullies, we need to back each other up and help each other. It's the only way forward for any of us.