Ask HN: Are you happy with your current job?

I’m in Australia and people are starting to get back into it. Cannot say about Bay Area as it’s been a while since I’ve visited.

I’m in it for the money. After 20 some years in tech, I think I’ve got 4 years left in me of dealing with the pedantry required when working for someone else, particularly a corporation. Call it compartmentalization, apathy, professionalism, whatever, I don’t evaluate my 9-5 based on my happiness.

This job is not my ultimate destination but it's a pleasant place to be and I am happy enough. I changed jobs in March, and was just promoted at my new company. My total compensation has almost doubled, plus a lot of equity I didn't have before, plus better benefits, so my livelihood situation has improved dramatically and it wasn't too bad to start with. My employer respects my time and schedule and sets reasonable expectations, for which I am grateful.

I'm also getting the opportunity to do more technical leadership sort of tasks - mentoring, hiring, planning, designing architecture, etc. - but I am not a manager or directly responsible for anyone. It is a lot of new responsibility, and a challenge, but I like it.

The biggest downside of my current position is the sheer amount of cruft I have to deal with - the extra time everything takes because of how big/complex all the systems are, the slowness of local development, etc. - and the fact that I'm more extroverted than many of my colleagues, so the "work social life" suffers. (We are a full remote org, but I don't think it's about that as much as about working with people who would prefer to do their own thing asynchronously whenever possible.)

I don't know whether these will be fatal issues in the long run, but I also don't really care. I don't intend to spend more than another five to ten years in technology before finding something else to do with my life, preferably something creative, and something that will give me more time to have and raise kids. My significant other is also in a lucrative career path, so I feel this is an achievable goal. Hopefully, I will be happy in my current position until then.

Just about every (software) workplace I can think of in my area. My current workplace isn't a startup; startups are far worse with their work culture.

I fled a toxic startup for my current workplace about a year ago. Many things are better here. I'm pretty decent at what I do but no good at leetcoding, so interviews are a hard proposition for me.

The 11 pm meetings are an unfortunate consequence of timezone differences and the madness that is DST. I wouldn't mind it so much if they switch about the timings a bit (my evenings sometime and their evenings sometime), but not everybody thinks too much about these things, I guess. I can't kick up a fuss about it because I don't want to be a snowflake.

The working on weekends ... is again a sad consequence of covid-related WFH combined with workaholic tendencies that some of the senior folks have. I strictly stay away from my laptop on weekends, but I'm definitely and painfully aware that many co-workers including my boss are available on most weekends. I try not to let it bother me, and there are no spoken or written injunctions, but it's hard to hold your own against this all the time.

The money is decent. It's definitely not top-tier, but I'm not looking for top-tier pay in any case. A sane workplace is my holy grail :)

I work for an American company, yes. I'm not remote, though. I work in the local timezone from a Southern Asian location :)