Ask HN: Is it possible to have a structured work day in software dev?

Lately, I feel exhausted with all the late night meetings thats required of me at work. Discussed it with my manager few months ago and he offered to take me off on-call rotation and put me in a leadership role. While this was good initially, lately this has come up with its own set of challenges, where in I'm required to have nightly meetings with other teams who are outside of my timezone. Since I'm in a leadership role now, my manager says its inevitable as I've to be present in these meetings.

I feel so burned out and anxious all the time, not because of overwork, but due to a lack of formal structure in my work day.

I'm thinking of starting out on my own someday, but I wonder, is it even realistic to have a 9-5 kind of structure in IT/software dev field ? Whether i work for a big org / startup / myself, is it inevitable that I have to work round the clock and I've to accept it as a way of life ? Is there a sub-field in software dev where in I can login at a specific time / logout at a specific time and not have to worry about work after I log out.

PS: Honestly speaking, I used to work at IT service industry not too long ago (perhaps in mid 2000s), where I was working on a boxed software. Except for some crunch time during major releases, there was no pager duty expected, the pay was average at best and work was monotonous bug fixing, but I felt much more at peace since work was always predictable most of the time. With this on-call culture thanks to the 99.99 uptime thats become the de-facto industry standard for most companies, I wonder whether such companies exist anymore !

Sure. Get a job at an insurance or a bank

I used to work as a programmer for an investment bank. Got in at 10 AM, left at 6 PM. Almost never thought about work outside of those hours.

Usually the company will arrange meeting time that's closest with both parties working hour. Let's say between 6-8 AM or 18-20 PM. Otherwise that very late time meeting will be rare and in special situation.

Having that kind of meeting be regular sounds like a bad management to me.

Your company is badly managed.

Mine also has international teams across the globe and we don't regularly have meetings at unreasonable hours (except for employees in India)

This is done by not expecting managers in Europe to manage day to day work going on in Asia, etc.

Your company doesn't value your well being and you should leave.