Hah, I've had an opposite reminder. Every day at 2 pm the phone would remind me that "it does suck, but is only temporary" (I wasn't that long before I could FIRE).

"I wasn't that long before I could FIRE"

If I were even close to FIRE, it would completely change my mindset. I'm only 9 years in (with relatively low-to-average pay). Maybe in 19 years, but even that's uncertain. It's also a lot harder to convince myself to stick it out for 19 years than if it were just 2 or 3.

I do reflect often on that. Unfortunately, most of the things I noticed show a decline. Things like reduction in promotion opportunity, starting outsourcing, using layoffs when they didn't before, and lower pay raises. Then there's the technical problems where tools break more often, we're expected to do more (multi-stack fullstack, combine roles, shared resources), and no opportunities to become an expert due to constant context switching.

Don't stick around hoping things will get better. It most likely won't. Even if the company turns things around financially, it will likely either take too long to trickle down to you or they'll continue thinking they can keep getting away with less.

I've done that waiting game a couple of times before, and regretted it both times.

Job market seems to be super hot right now. Turn on your LinkedIn 'open to work' switch and hopefully it'll be like me and your inbox will suddenly get swarmed with recruiters. I'm not even in a major tech market.

Personally, I keep a list of issues I face daily. From network outages to uncommunicating coworkers. Most of these come with the territory. Others are absolute deal-breakers. Those are the ones I keep an eye on.

Ex. we have a team member that obviously lies about working. Not the results, literally what he does all day. He sets his status to available, logs into his VM (I guess he figured out we were collecting that information) and basically is being deceitful. Management is dragging its feet. This is a deal-breaker if not resolved.