Oh wow, this resonates so badly with me. This guy must be my Malay / Aussie doppelganger. My company has the same bullshit, but we have terrible coffee instead

Oh wow, this resonates so badly with me. This guy must be my Malay / Aussie doppelganger. My company has the same bullshit, but we have terrible coffee instead of terrible tea. I used to buy my own on the way to the office, but now I've become so cynical I just don't care anymore. When I joined just after COVID we were working from the office 5 days a week. I'd been working remotely for nearly a decade so thought it would be a welcome change, but oh man, I completely forgot about all the office BS you need to deal with. Eventually they realised that policy made hiring people hard, as now everyone expects to WFH, so they now allow is to work from home 1 day a week. Over Christmas and New Year they were so grateful for all our hard work, that they allowed us to work from home for 2 days a week. That was literally all we got for Christmas. For the past few months I've been looking for a more chilled out job. I have a family now, and have gone past the point of seeing any purpose or fulfilment in my work. I just want to clock in, do my 8 hours, then leave at the end of the day and switch to family mode. The biggest issue for me has been recruiters ghosting me. I have an interview that goes well then at the end I hear "I'll be in touch by the end of play tomorrow" and don't hear anything back. Or recruiters message me on LinkedIn, I reply saying "yes I'm willing to torture myself with your interview process. Can you call me tomorrow afternoon?" and then I don't hear anything back. Like OP most of the jobs I've had are through my network, or from recruiters reaching out to me during times when anyone with a heartbeat could get a senior React position. Sometimes I wonder, am I just a bad engineer? Am I just terrible at selling myself? The best job I ever had was also with a team that had funny shaped keyboards - it's how I learned Vim. We would stay after work to play video games, and go out for drinks as a team once or twice a week. We worked hard, but it didn't feel like work. I'd love to find that again, but nothing has even come close. I don't know if it's just that I was young or naive and "the grass is always greener" when looking back, or that I have now been infected with the cyninism that capitalism breeds. (And for anyone wondering, I - and I assume OP is the same - do not talk like this to others, and especially not in an interview. My cynicism stays in my head)