I can relate. I chose my current job with a pay cut because I needed something remote WFH and low-stress to allow me to process WTF happened to my career. Afte

I can relate. I chose my current job with a pay cut because I needed something remote WFH and low-stress to allow me to process WTF happened to my career. After being highly ambitious for almost 10 years and literally moving across the world, changing countries several times with a month's notice to find top opportunities, I found that my contributions were often neglected in the end. I would get plenty of pats on the back, but never any reward. I never once got a bonus, not once in 10 years. One time when I asked for a raise from my boss, of a highly successful crypto project in Germany with hundreds of millions in the bank, he acknowledged that I was one of their best developers and offered a 2% salary increase... This is in crypto sector so we both understood that this doesn't even cover CPI inflation! When I suggested that I might leave if I didn't get a higher raise, he said that I was putting the entire project in jeopardy (using even harsher terms) and yet didn't offer anything more than 2%. I was told by an insider that he was paying himself at least 30k EUR per months! They had millions of cash sitting in the bank and I was on a modest senior dev salary by US standard. I had been there 2 years and was instrumental to securing their 300 million market cap blockchain and had just led a very successful refactoring of a complex sub-project in just 6 months. I still can't understand what happened. I quit. I was demoralized after that.