I just stepped down as tech lead at a startup after a REALLY good year followed by a REALLY awful six months. I left because the CEO lost a big customer and decided the lesson to take from that was that he needed to be in direct control of everything and everyone and because he jumped on the “back to the office” bandwagon (he reads all those frickin management articles from like Business Insider). I went from being the highest performing employee with the most brownie points to being miserable the second he switched up his management style. Also, the place haemorrhaged employees over the last six months. It’s now an engineering company with ZERO engineers and a whole lot of open job postings that aren’t filling for what he’s willing to pay + the credentials he expects (+ the local, rather than national, applicant pool, now that he expects everyone to be in person). He has a big government customer though, so he’ll probably keep floating for a while even if he can’t actually do anything.

I knew I was unhappy, but I didn’t realize HOW unhappy until my first day returning to freedom.