I joined a company where my friend joined as CTO. I lasted less than a year. Truth be told, I hadn't fully recovered from my burnout from my previous role, and

I joined a company where my friend joined as CTO. I lasted less than a year. Truth be told, I hadn't fully recovered from my burnout from my previous role, and the new role wasn't particularly thrilling. But that wasn't the only factor. I'm best in product-oriented companies, but there's a tendency where I am for product companies to be thinly-veiled development agencies for larger B2B corporate clients. That type of work I find soul draining, because I refuse to be at the whims of bad corporates with big wallets. I had also wanted to put more effort to improving the developer experience of the project as it was poor, but could never quite slot in enough time or motivation, and felt it went unappreciated. Eventually the higher ups pulled me in to effectively put me on a PIP. I showed some improvement for the next sprint, but they felt it was better to just part ways. Got my first true holiday in years after that, then went off to start freelancing. My friend is still at that company and he's doing great. I think we've just diverged in our work styles and preferences of company. No bad blood between us, but of course there's disappointment at both sides.