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Pandemic hit, I had been working at an online education company as a senior engineer. New CEO begins to implement dark patterns- launches “free” degree programs

Pandemic hit, I had been working at an online education company as a senior engineer. New CEO begins to implement dark patterns- launches “free” degree programs to “help those impacted by the pandemic” that starts charging you after first free month, but at same time makes it impossible to cancel your subscription through website, even sets up a whole call center system to shuttle people into. Become incredibly demotivated by how our company misled struggling young people into a difficult situation. Do my best to pitch new ideas and sort of remedy the situation but am left with a terrible taste in my mouth. Get shingles from stress, working insane hours as I am now working from home, no work/life separation. Company had absolute insane micro service architecture, to the point of being a parody. Fires every other week, people jumping on at all hours to dive into why service X caused service Y and Z to fail. Hundreds of services owned by just handful of teams means your days are filled with meetings discussing impact of plans on other services, just so far from being agile, juniors all the way up to your best engineers are caught up in bureaucracy. Then my mother gets highly aggressive brain cancer, I’m going to her doctor appointments with her, trying to help figure out her options. Work no longer matters, I can’t even pretend to care. We discover she will die within months, ask company for family medical leave, they give me three months, but she is still alive after this time so I quit. We go on a road trip together, it is nice but also she is seeing her limitations, lack of balance, failing eye sight, it’s sort of dawning on her that the end is near. She got medication to end her life and dies in her living room with her three children and her brother and her husband there. I break my arm badly, need surgery, no longer have medical coverage, over 10k dollars spent on cobra + deductibles. Would have been in worse place if cobra wasn’t still available. After watching my mother concerned about thousand dollar brain scans with insurance and my own issues now have small glimpse into insane inequity in medical system within the states. My partner quits her job and we travel across the United States for 3 months for relief and in search of cheaper land to maybe build a farm. The US is beautiful but nowhere is really that special compared to where we are from (our biggest take away is more how similar everywhere is). We travel to Europe for 3 months, visit her family and come back. Travel back across the states to the west coast with goals of starting a company and getting a house. Want to work part time but cannot get a loan without salaried position. Starting back where I left off again, entertaining offer for much smaller startup hoping to start with better work-life separation and exercising every day, staying active and taking regular breaks. Life is overwhelming but exciting and we look forward to having a stable home and income again.

mxuribe 4y ago
My condolensces for your Mom. Plus, sorry about those other pretty difficult situations. My partner and i often wish to quit the "Rat race", but have a teen kid...so want to wait until they head to college. Of course, although we have a loose plan, i am fearful that we head off to some sort of cheaper living state in the U.S., work less...and then end up through some set of whacky circumstyances back to needing to find work that pays more...and by then we'd have aged a little more. Clearly, i'm just a nervous nellie...but its so tough and expensive in the U.S....at this point, i would settle for a cheap, modest home...where my partner can manage the smallest of gardens, where i don't have tio kill myself at a job to pay a mortgage, and a place that isn't too extreme in any way (don't want politically extreme people, don't want racists, don't want too many rich folks, no/low crime, etc.). When i talk to friends, i sometimes hear the suggestion of my partner and i heading off to live on our own farm in the middle of nowhere...but honestly, wqhile my partner loves gardening, we both also love pavement...Yes, having a walkable town is so important and so very fulfilling! Plus, we actually like to interact with other humans to a degree...so i think we may not be able to tolerate too much isolation, at least for too long. Sorry, i didn't mean to make this somr sort of streaming conciousness message...Just watned to say sorry about your Mom, and kudos to you trying something different! And, of coiurse, i hope things work out for you, and wishing you the best of luck and opportunity!!

mxuribe 4y ago

My condolensces for your Mom. Plus, sorry about those other pretty difficult situations. My partner and i often wish to quit the "Rat race", but have a teen kid...so want to wait until they head to college. Of course, although we have a loose plan, i am fearful that we head off to some sort of cheaper living state in the U.S., work less...and then end up through some set of whacky circumstyances back to needing to find work that pays more...and by then we'd have aged a little more. Clearly, i'm just a nervous nellie...but its so tough and expensive in the U.S....at this point, i would settle for a cheap, modest home...where my partner can manage the smallest of gardens, where i don't have tio kill myself at a job to pay a mortgage, and a place that isn't too extreme in any way (don't want politically extreme people, don't want racists, don't want too many rich folks, no/low crime, etc.). When i talk to friends, i sometimes hear the suggestion of my partner and i heading off to live on our own farm in the middle of nowhere...but honestly, wqhile my partner loves gardening, we both also love pavement...Yes, having a walkable town is so important and so very fulfilling! Plus, we actually like to interact with other humans to a degree...so i think we may not be able to tolerate too much isolation, at least for too long. Sorry, i didn't mean to make this somr sort of streaming conciousness message...Just watned to say sorry about your Mom, and kudos to you trying something different! And, of coiurse, i hope things work out for you, and wishing you the best of luck and opportunity!!