outtatime

This goes against prevailing SV ideology, but man, it's just a job. Don't ruin your health or wellbeing for a company that would fire you in a heartbeat if it made economic or political sense.

Commit to your family, your friends, your hobbies, and charity. Don't commit so hard to a job, because ultimately it's a business transaction. Companies _will_ take advantage of your good will if you let them. Don't give them that opportunity. You owe them nothing beyond what you agreed to in your employment contract.

Because they make enough money not to care and Congress also makes enough money not to care.

This is true. This is the advice I've been following: do your best, but never forget that it's basically random chance. Also consider a career change to a field without hilariously ridiculous interview practices.

Have human voices changed that much in two years?

It's not complicated per se, but the industry makes it complicated. Running a basic web app isn't complicated if you throw up a server, but if you use Kubernetes then you've suddenly made things much harder.

Things are only as hard as we make them.

Tell that to the voters who decided to put in Yet Another Lane on the highway instead of building housing closer to jobs. I'm going to wind up being remote for a year, and my job still refuses to let us work remotely permanently.

So sorry, it's not that simple.

One could always move further south.

We used to have that, and it was dreadful. Every municipality had its own local time. Railroads made that untenable, and led to the creation of timezones.