Somehow this pace of low energy, zero initiative and low motivation also crushes your motivation for personal project.
Atm I am in a super demanding job, requiring me to overwork, make decisions on the spot, work on problems etc.
On my free time while I want to sit down and watch some TV, go for running, enjoy a nice dinner or whatever... I FEEL EMPTY!
I am fixated with my work... its not healthy and its creating low motivation for me. It feels like work has taken away all pleasures in life for me. It is not HEALTHY at all (I am currently seeing professionals about it)
Generally anything in moderation is key...
P.S. I do overwork myself for someone else to enjoy the fruits of my labour... sad story.
But well if you are depressed at your job... how bad can it get?
And can really the money you make from a job make back for the depression? My personal opinion is NO!
I'll never forget the launch. I was sick, and sitting on the floor of a war room live-coding a script to give every attendee $1. Python, had tests, and it persisted its state to SQLite so that we could Control-C it if our service got too slow. It didn't get too slow; we did a lot of load testing and capacity problems and the launch was very smooth. Most fun I've ever had while sick. (10-year-older jrockway wouldn't go to work while sick, though.)
Thanks for the insight on why Google makes so many braindead decisions. It's so frustrating I'm ready to abandon them entirely.
And that's why things slowly rot away. Cleanup should be a priority, otherwise it eventually slows down new feature work.
In fact, a project should not be declared finished until its inevitable follow-up cleanup tasks have been completed as well. Just like a party weekend is not finished until you have cleaned up the mess after. Somebody is going to have to do it, and if it's not you right after you're done with your deliverables, then somebody else will have to do it. Possibly yourself further down the road when you actually want to do something else more exciting. Just like doing the dishes. Nobody wants to start preparing a big meal by having to do the dishes from the week prior.
In business, we don't have to be adults.
Strategically, this is called being a Fast Follower. One of GOOG's problems is that it acts in the market as a fast follower, but tells itself internally that its an groundbreaking innovator. Your reaction (which was also my reaction),
> Nothing I ever do here is exciting. Thought maybe working on app with over a billion users would be exciting...
is a form of corporate-wide cognitive dissonance between GOOG's propaganda and reality.
I can appreciate this feeling, because I've been living it for awhile. If I can borrow the original author's metaphor, as my career bucket sprung a leak, my other buckets were filled, and I've been just fine with that. As others have pointed out in this discussion, this is really all about perspective. If the career bucket is really important, then you will tend to that (but, again, here's where the metaphor falls apart, at least for the author -- he noticed his other buckets also leaking, but he focused on the career bucket [which, of course, is fine if it works for him]).
Yes, the constantly changing landscape of my work can be a mental strain at times, but, for me, it's the devil I know. I've invested 15+ years with my employer, and I know the domain well. I don't want my other buckets to lose water in an effort to fill my career bucket, at least right now.
tl;dr;
To each their own.
In an environment like this the incentive is to become a bottleneck for a lot of projects (so you get at least some that get delivered) and then a) do nothing on most to outwait the inevitable cancellation b) do the minimum possible work on the remainder, but make it seem as complex as possible.
Even with low hours of work this becomes a very stressful environment as if you are trying to get something done, you have to be constantly convincing people you are depending on that the project is worthy of category b). While doing the exact thing to the people depending on you. Turnover makes this hard also as a small percentage of coworkers are very valuable to you (you can trust them to prioritize your project).
From my experience this stress stretches into your out of work time, making the WLB worse even with a reasonable amount of "in office" hours.