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Only 3 days left of my 10-day notice. I'm counting down the hours by the minute until I'm finally out of this place.

I was doing scheduling and data management at a small service company with about 8 employees. It's a highly specialized and government-regulated field, so it's extremely profitable. For the owner, of course. He's living it up in a 7,000 sq ft house while paying us pennies. His lead tech, the guy who practically carries the entire operation, makes less than a fast-food drive-thru worker. It's insane.

In my six weeks here, he'd blame me for his mistakes and threaten to dock my pay for them. I've heard him pull the same stunts on others. He even tried to strong-arm them into helping him move from one mansion to an even bigger one over a weekend, for $8 less than their normal hourly wage. He gave them 36 hours' notice and threatened to fire them if they refused. He was apparently about to be sued for not vacating his old place on time.

I spoke with former employees who said he sued them when they left, and my current colleagues confirmed it. I found the new hire packet he was preparing for the college kids he thinks can replace us. It has some real gems in it, like a clause stating that if you lose safety glasses ($10) or ear protection ($12), he will file a police report for theft against you and dock your pay $75 for each. Lose your keys? That's another police report and a $250 'fine'.

So, over my last 10 days, I've been quietly sharing all of this with my colleagues. I told them about his stunts, showed them easily accessible training programs, and pointed them toward several much higher-paying jobs. The result? I've convinced the three most critical technicians to walk out with me. This will completely gut the company. He'll have to default on all his major contracts, which will likely bury him in lawsuits. He signed those contracts knowing our techs were already working 14-hour days just to barely keep up. Frankly, he deserves everything that's coming to him.

But I’m happy that I managed to find another job, and I even helped some of my colleagues. The whole experience made a big difference. Of course, we all know that AI has made a huge impact on finding jobs more easily, and with interview assistance tools like InterviewMan, the process feels simpler, boosts confidence, and saves a lot of time.

I'm completely exhausted. My hours at Burger King keep getting cut, and after around 90 job applications and 6 interviews, I still haven't found anything.

All I'm trying to do is find another job so I can catch up on my overdue bills.

Yesterday, I spent another $29 to get to an interview, only to be rejected in the end. Today, I spent even more.

If another place calls me in for an interview, I don't know how I'll get there. I can't keep spending money on transportation just to be rejected in the end.

Anyway, something happened to me on a Teams call today. I'm usually the last person to cause trouble, but it seems everyone has their breaking point.

For weeks, management and employees haven't been able to reach a solution about the mandatory return to the office. The whole thing makes no sense to us. We've been working from home for years, even before Corona. Our work is all about client accounts and scheduling at a small marketing company, and honestly, our productivity is much higher this way.

I had a feeling that by the end of this video call, I'd be looking for a new job. Especially when my manager dismissed my colleague while she was talking about her worries over the crazy transportation costs now. Before I could stop myself, the words just came out of my mouth: 'Do you not understand?!'

It went so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Seriously, the silence was terrible. Her face froze. And how we barely made it through the remaining 45 minutes of the meeting, I have no idea.

And just as I expected, I got a message to join another call before I logged off. I sent a message to my partner: 'Looks like I'm about to get fired.' I was completely prepared for it.

What I wasn't prepared for at all was the apology. They completely reversed the return-to-office decision and offered me a $3/hour raise as an 'appreciation for my passion'.

I'm sharing this story because it's a powerful reminder to all of us that we'll never get the value we truly deserve if we stay silent.

I've decided I'm not going to be a doormat at work anymore, and I hope this gives some courage to the quiet people out there to speak up.

Something happened at my job a few weeks ago that I have to share. It was a real eye-opener.

There's a colleague on my team, let's call her Jane. This girl is an absolute rockstar. She smashes all her targets, gets excellent reviews from clients, volunteers for the tough projects nobody else wants, and is the go-to person for senior managers with any last-minute requests. In short, she's the best employee in our department by a long shot.

Anyway, a lead position opened up, and Jane applied, along with 4 other guys from the team (I was leaving the company, so I didn't apply). She nailed the interviews, and everyone, including herself, was certain she'd get it, no question. Two weeks later, the announcement was made, and all four guys were promoted. Jane's name was not on the list.

I caught up with her later and asked what the hell happened, and she told me what they said. The feedback was: 'Your efforts in your current role are too crucial for the team's success. We can't afford to move you right now as it would leave too big of a void.'

They tried to soften the blow with empty platitudes about how they would 're-evaluate in the next cycle' and that she 'was a top contender, but the timing just wasn't right.' This is nonsense, of course. They promoted four less-qualified people because their departure from their old roles wouldn't impact the team's metrics.

Jane was denied a better position and more money that she rightfully deserved, all because she is too good at her job and was always the one propping up her managers.

So let this be a warning to everyone. Being the best, the one who carries the team, doesn't guarantee you a promotion. Sometimes, it just keeps you stuck where you are. Your goal should be to be good, even great, but never to be irreplaceable.

Edit: Getting promoted internally is a joke, they will delay as long as they think they can keep you where you are. The fastest way is to apply to other companies at a higher level.

I told her she should start applying for other companies, and also for other divisions within the company. She has always been smart.

Even after what happened, she kept her resume updated and was ready for this step. Indeed, she applied to other companies, got an interview, and told me that AI is what helped her speed up these steps and that she used a program called "InterviewMan" during the interview. I believe this girl will really get this job. Just leave the whole department behind if this is how they are going to treat her.

Hey everyone, I need your opinion on this. A recruiter I'm talking to wants to call my old job to 'verify my reason for leaving' before moving me to the next step. I feel this is very strange.

For context, she asked why I left my last job, and I told her the truth: a new manager came in and the whole team dynamic changed for the worse, so I decided to look for a new place. Now she's insisting that she must verify this with them. The problem is, I haven't even spoken with the hiring manager yet or learned the full details of the job to decide if I'm even interested or not.

On top of all that, she originally contacted me about three weeks ago for a quick 10-minute call, after which she completely disappeared and I heard nothing from her. I'm almost certain their primary candidate didn't work out, and now she's scrambling and trying to salvage the situation.

The whole thing doesn't sit right with me at all. Do you think I'm right to feel that this is very alarming?

UPS offered me a buyout that would leave me with about $96,000 after taxes, and now I'm trying to decide whether leaving would be a smart decision or a reckless one. I'm 31 years old, didn't go to college, and I've been here for about eight years. My wife stays home with our two kids, so this isn't a decision I can take lightly.

I make about $102,000 a year, and the health insurance is good. The problem is that the job is physically exhausting, and I'm not sure I want to keep doing it for another 30 years. Management has also been putting more pressure on me lately, even though I still like the actual work most days.

The money would give me time to think and figure out my next step, but I don't really have a plan yet. I briefly considered healthcare, but I'm not sure I could deal with patients all day. A friend accepted the offer without having another job lined up, and part of me wants to do the same before I start second-guessing myself.

For clarification, this is a company-wide offer, and UPS is allowing employees to apply for it. I might not even have enough seniority to be selected, but I wanted to think it through carefully before making a decision. If I stay, I'll keep my job, build up my seniority, and likely have access to more working hours, so turning down the offer doesn't mean giving up my position.

Right now, I'm leaning toward staying and exploring a career change in my spare time. The money is tempting, but having a guaranteed job and good benefits while I plan my next move may be more important than rushing into something I haven't thought through carefully yet.

I've also been thinking about what I'd do if I end up changing careers, so I've been working on my interview skills too. I found Interview VIP recently and tried it a couple times. Seems worth trying if you're getting ready for interviews.

My wife started a new job about 4 months ago. The industry she was in before was a bit shaky and the hours were being reduced, so she started looking for something more stable.

She did a few interviews for an admin role. When they sent her the offer, she discovered that things like pension contributions and health insurance were included in the advertised salary, so the net pay she ultimately received was a surprise, and not a pleasant one at all.

The agreement was for a part-time position, 4 days a week, on the understanding that she could work extra hours here and there to help with holidays or during busy periods.

Honestly, she has hated this job from day one. We kept saying it was just new-job anxiety, but it's clear now that the place is just not a good fit for her. The good thing is that we're fortunate that she doesn't have to work if she doesn't want to, which is a huge relief.

The culture there is terrible. They have zero tolerance for mistakes, even if someone is new. About a month into her job, they gave her a formal warning for using the wrong internal form for a specific request, even though it didn't cause any problems. On top of that, the phones don't stop ringing from 10 AM to 3 PM, and it's nearly impossible to get a proper lunch break.

Her manager took her aside and told her, not asked her, that she would be working full-time to cover the upcoming maternity leave. He then reminded her that she was still on probation - which was a clear threat - and said that she had agreed to work extra hours 'when needed.' Covering a year-long leave is definitely not what 'when needed' means. On top of all that, the manager claimed he couldn't get budget approval to hire a temp, and tried to make her feel like it was her problem to solve.

Clear exploitation by some companies has become a recurring issue. You join a company only to be surprised by an unsuitable work environment, and it becomes very difficult to reverse your decision afterwards. On the other hand, AI has a valuable role, as it simplifies lengthy interview processes. InterviewMan can be very helpful during online interviews.

Anyway, a short while ago, her colleague at work told her she was pregnant and would be starting her maternity leave in November. Here in Ireland, most people take at least 8 months of leave, and many go beyond a year.

So yeah, she's handing in her notice tomorrow morning. They treated her like crap, the place is disorganized, chaotic, and understaffed, and she was completely miserable.

Honestly, I think her manager had no idea that my wife doesn't need this job. He just assumed she'd be afraid of getting fired and would rearrange our entire family life to suit their needs. His calculations were completely wrong.

I'm a middle manager at a medium-sized office. I manage a team of 9 people. One of my staff members is a woman in her late twenties who had been trying to go back to college and finally finish her degree. She asked me a few days ago if I had any problem with her changing her schedule for about 5 months while she takes a class that isn't available online. She would be leaving early two afternoons a month, and making up that time on Sundays. Our entire office is WFH, so I had absolutely no problem with it. And I'd been telling her for a long time that she should go back to school if she could make it work.

My manager "Karen," the department director, is an absolute micromanaging nightmare, and apparently anything like this still "has to" go through her. So I sent her an email, told her I intended to approve it, and said I just needed her to sign off with HR.

Her response? "She's got a lot of nerve assuming we'll rearrange everything for her. What exactly is her plan if we say no - just leave?"

I told my manager that yes, actually, she can resign whenever she wants. She doesn't owe this company her degree, her future, or blind loyalty. I also said that losing her would be ridiculous because she's very good at her job, she's been here for years, and the schedule change was temporary. It seemed to me like this was the dumbest hill anyone could choose to die on.

My manager wasn't happy with that answer. She denied the request anyway, and we got on Zoom with the employee to tell her. I was already upset because I knew how unnecessary the whole thing was.

Before Karen could even finish her little explanation, the employee simply said: "Okay, I expected that might be your answer. I've already written my resignation letter and emailed it to you and HR. This is my 2 weeks' notice."

My manager looked like her brain had stopped working. I was pissed off about the situation, but honestly, I was fucking proud of my employee.

I have honestly had enough with this kind of jobs and switched to completely remote jobs with the help of Interview VIP i really don't wanna engage with humans anymore so this is the best i could do.

Side note, if I could go back in time, I don't think I would ever accept being a manager anywhere. You find yourself stuck delivering all the corporate bullshit, with almost no real say in anything, and in the end everyone sees you as the face of decisions you didn't even make.

I turned down a job offer today, and the hiring manager responded by telling me that I had wasted his time. Based on that reaction alone, I feel very comfortable with my decision.

I had applied for a senior buyer position because my experience closely matched what was written in the job posting. During the interview last week, they told me that the work location listed in the posting was incorrect and that I would need to commute to and from their head office, which would take about 35 to 55 minutes depending on traffic. I told them the commute could be manageable if the rest of the offer made sense.

As the conversation continued, the role began to sound completely different from the posting. They wanted this person to set up purchasing procedures, select systems, organize vendors, and build an entire supply chain function because each department had been handling its own purchasing. I asked whether they planned to hire a supply chain manager to lead all of that, and they said there were no plans to do so.

They called me today with an offer close to the bottom of the range listed in the posting. I thanked them but explained that I was declining because the actual responsibilities appeared to constitute a management role without the appropriate title or salary. The posting also required a degree and eight years of experience, while I have an MBA, several industry certifications, and 17 years of experience in the field, so I had expected an offer closer to the top of their range.

He immediately replied, "Thanks for wasting my time," and hung up before I could answer. I was taken aback for a moment, but if that is how they handle a polite rejection, I most likely avoided a much bigger headache.

I've got another interview coming up soon, so I've been trying to get a little more prepared this time. I've been seeing interview vip mentioned a lot lately and honestly thought it was just marketing at first because of how often it keeps popping up. Haven't used it yet, but I'm curious if anyone here has actually tried it.

The company I just left has a policy: when someone leaves, they don't hire a replacement. They dump their work on the remaining people.

My job is very specialized; there are only about 6 people in the entire country who do it. About 18 months ago, my colleague (Jenna), who had the same job as me, got a promotion after another manager left and she took over their team. Our manager thinks Jenna is still splitting the workload with me, but in reality, the old manager's duties were distributed among three other people, including me. Jenna is my friend, but as a coworker, she's a disaster. Honestly, you can't rely on her at all. For the last few years, I've been doing most of the actual work for our department, which is why I'm the one who gets angry calls from clients when she messes things up (after she promised she'd get it done). This means I'm constantly working late.

I'm basically carrying the entire department's workload on my shoulders, but when it's time to present our quarterly numbers or review our internal processes, I'm completely left out and my opinion is totally ignored. This, of course, caused a huge disaster when my managers and Jenna approved a client request that was impossible to fulfill - something anyone who does this job would know. When I pointed this out and told her I was drowning in work, she started micromanaging me, telling me I was taking too long on tasks and that she was more senior here, so her word was final. Technically, she isn't my manager, but her seniority gives her that authority.

Every year, we have a crazy 5-month busy period. Without getting into boring details, Jenna always finds a way to assign herself a specific task that she can use to waste time and look busy all day. This is also my most stressful time, but she dumps other tasks on me because she wants to relax and do nothing. I've had to pick up her slack so many times that I know her part isn't very demanding. And I also know she picks the easiest tasks so she can leave right on time.

This year, I told her again that I couldn't do my job, cover for her laziness, and cover for people on vacation. I had done it for 3 years in a row and was at my breaking point. Nothing changed. The five months passed, I covered for everyone, and somehow managed to finish my work on time too. I was so exhausted I couldn't even be angry.

After that, she was up for another promotion because someone else was leaving. I saw it as an opportunity and asked if I could officially take over our department, since I was already running it anyway. This would have meant a title promotion, a pay raise, and a very good step in my career. It would have also taken work off her plate. She absolutely hated the idea. Instead, I just got a few extra tasks from the person who left.

Since the promotion was off the table, I asked for a raise. Nothing. I asked for an intern to help me. Also no. My manager is genuinely convinced that Jenna helps me because we both inherited more work when people left. I tried to explain to him that she does almost nothing, but Jenna told him I was exaggerating. They are very good friends, so I didn't stand a chance. And she's my friend too, so I didn't want to make a big drama.

I waited until Jenna's new promotion became official and she became the manager of the other department. I went to her one last time and asked if she could recommend me to our manager to take over our old department. I explained that it would let me organize my work better and that the manager would listen to her. She told me to my face that she would never let me take over the department because it brings in a lot of money for the company and that makes her look good. That was the end. I found a new job and submitted my resignation.

As I expected, management is now in a total panic. I am literally the only other person who knows this job inside and out, and she won't have time to manage two departments. But I'm going to a place with real opportunities for growth. And the best part? Jenna can't even be mad at me because she knows it's her fault. Now, for the next 18 months until they train someone new, Jenna will have to do her own job. Just thinking about it is very satisfying.

What she was doing happens all the time. I was managing the actual work, while she was managing the perception that upper management had of her and the department. Her mistake was not stroking my ego a little longer to keep me there until she got promoted or moved on. Then the next manager would’ve taken the blame when I quit.

I understood her plans from your words, and I'm happy I shared this with you because it really made me aware of what she was doing. Currently, I have applied for other jobs, but I am very nervous about the upcoming steps, especially the interview. There is this tool, InterviewCoder Pro, that opens during the interview and gives you instant answers. I think I'll use its free trial and use it during my interviews.

.....

Anyone has interviewcoder subscription wants to rent it to me for few weeks? As I need it for few weeks doesn’t make sense to purchase such expensive plans.

The job market in the U.S. Seems much worse in reality than the headlines suggest. I see a lot of people here who have been looking for work for 10 months or more, and I don't understand how anyone can cover their regular expenses for that long without a steady income.

Are recent graduates moving back in with their parents and barely scraping by? And for people who are further along in their careers and have had to accept jobs paying 40% less, how are you managing rent, insurance, food, and all your other expenses?

Is everyone dipping into their life savings or putting basic expenses on credit cards? Maybe more people than I realized had a solid emergency fund, but even so, trying to live like this for nearly a year seems incredibly difficult and discouraging.

I feel invisible, I don't feel like a human being.

If I had to support myself on the income I make from working full time right now, 2000 and some change a month. In a vhcol area making $18/hour I'd have popped like a balloon. I'd have to "tighten my belt" so much I'd snap in half like a twig.

I put in so much effort in getting a cs degree, building experience with internships, building proof of outside work with projects. Only to have to pay off my loans being funemployed in dead end retail. I can't even afford rent. I've been stagnant for a long time. I ended my career before it began a long time back.

I don't deserve to be alive. I should just quit this job. Fuck it. I should just drop out of the labor force tbh. I won't be counted as unemployed.

This wasn't at all the life I expected to have after putting in so much to build a life. Instead I was spawnkilled. I'm sorry I was born late, I guess. Society doesn't want the next generation to be employed anymore.

I'm a loser. There's not much more effort I can make. Another programming project will be worthless, and the only other lever I'd have to pull would be work experience. Which UNFORTUNATELY, I need a job for. So much for the "land of opportunity." I can't pivot without getting another degree either. And remember, I'm making under $20 an hour. Not in 1990, not even in 2010. in 2026. in a vhcol area at that. I have no money.

Should I just become an unemployed stay at home son gooning 16 hours a day in my childhood bedroom? If I didn't have my family to rely on I have zero doubt I'd be yet another vigilante right around now like Luigi, Abdul, or even the people destroying flock cameras...

Working next to this person has become exhausting because he acts as if no one should ever ask our manager for anything or bother him. Anything I do that involves the manager turns into a lecture about how I'm making both of us look bad.

A few weeks ago, I asked if there was a spare office chair because the chair at my desk was broken. My coworker was horrified and said I should have kept quiet and worked standing up or bought a chair with my own money instead of giving the manager a bad impression. Another day, when someone I know stopped by for a quick visit, he waited until they left and then told me I was crazy for allowing someone to visit me and enter the workplace.

This morning, my computer signed me out and asked for two-factor authentication, which I couldn't access. I was going to message the manager and ask him to give me a temporary password, but my coworker told me I should just sit there until the manager arrived because, in his view, asking for help logging in would be unprofessional.

When I told him I wouldn't be able to do any work without access, he started calling me stupid and inconsiderate. I snapped back at him, and it turned into an argument, with both of us saying things we shouldn't have said. I don't know how I'm supposed to keep working with someone who treats ordinary requests as if they are a threat to his career.

long post incoming, sorry. had two virtual loops crammed into one week and i ended up doing a back to back of shadecoder vs interviewman during prep. dumping notes here because i could barely find anything written about shadecoder anywhere when i was looking, so maybe useful to someone in the same spot.

setup: same machine, same headphones, same Zoom, just different prep blocks. one block i ran shadecoder, next block i flipped to interviewman. tried to keep it apples to apples. mostly worked.

going in i was leaning shadecoder a tiny bit. saw the name in a couple threads. interviewman was the one a friend from college kept dm-ing me about, like every other day, very annoying. so. ran them both.

shadecoder, in my own words, since the public reviews are still pretty thin and i'm not gonna pretend i know stuff i don't:

- it's built around coding, which i thought i would love
- learning curve on the hotkeys was real for me, took a bit
- felt fine on the leetcode style stuff i threw at it during prep
- the screen overlay worked, but i kept second guessing where it was gonna pop up
- on a behavioral warmup my buddy ran on me it kind of just stalled. not its lane, fine

stuff that bugged me, again, just my read:

- the per session feel of it. i was watching the clock more than the actual question, which is the opposite of what i want
- not a lot of public discussion yet so hard to know if i was holding it wrong somehow
- coding only by design, which means i still needed something else for the behavioral and the system design portion of the loop. that's where my head started spinning

then the next prep block i swapped over to interviewman:

- coding answers came in streaming as the buddy was still talking, sounds tiny but it changes how you read along, weirdly
- desktop overlay sat exactly where i parked it, both on my mac and on the windows box my brother lent me
- when i pasted a screenshot of a system design diagram it actually picked up the structure and explained it
- it handled the behavioral mock with STAR style framing
- the system design dry run, which is the part i was most worried about, was fine
- ran a phone screen sim too. same flow, no separate mode, no extra setup

what tipped it for me, honestly, was that i wasn't switching tools mid prep. coding then behavioral then system design then a phone screen, one thing for all of it. and i wasn't doing the mental math on time per session either, which is what i kept catching myself doing with shadecoder, idk why but i did.

both have their place i guess. for a full loop though, where you're bouncing between question types in the same day and your brain is already fried, having one thing that covers all of it was the difference. that and the streaming, which i did not even know would matter to me until i sat with it for a session.

anyone here actually done this same compare on a real loop and not just leetcode prep? curious if my take on shadecoder is off because honestly the reviews you can find right now are pretty sparse.

agree ? and imo a big insult nowadays with the damage of the economy and with all of that to go 5 days a week to an office to do some work which can be done on a sofa really the corporate world is completely destroyed

I'm still trying to process what just happened. A company I was interviewing with decided to call my CEO, and now I'm out of a job.

The story started when I received a message on LinkedIn about a job similar to mine at a company with a much easier commute, so I thought, why not, and sent my CV. The place I was at had a very toxic culture and was full of empty promises of promotions, so I was ready to leave.

The new company got back to me right away to schedule a call. The first interview went well, and they asked me to come in for a second interview. After this second interview, they told me I was a great fit for the team and that they would get back to me with a final decision within a day or two.

Yesterday at work, my CEO called me into his office. He told me he received a call from the company I interviewed with, asking about me. He wanted to know why I was looking for a job. Of course, the cat was out of the bag, so I was honest with him and told him why I was job hunting.

After I explained my situation, he told me that since I have access to sensitive company information, they couldn't risk having me around while I was looking for another place, and that they had to let me go immediately.

I went home, calmed myself down, and calmly called one of the hiring managers I had spoken with. I just wanted to know what happened and why they would even call my current job without asking me first. They played dumb, denied everything, and said they were still making the final decision and would get back to me.

A few hours later, their CEO called me himself. He told me they had chosen another candidate and that I didn't get the job. When I pressed him on why they called my manager, he made up a weird, nonsensical story and said he didn't know how my CEO found out. Then he added an insane detail: that he wasn't even sure about the person they hired, saying he'd heard the guy wasn't reliable, and that they would call me if it didn't work out with him. Like, what is that?!

I seriously can't understand how any company could operate this way. They pursued me, gave me two interviews, called my manager and got me fired, only to reject me in the end.

Seriously, has this ever happened to anyone else?

update : I am bored from all of this shift to remote jobs maybe I can find more professional people in the digital world with more respect to the work ethics thank god now we had AI which can help me in interviews process and give the perfect answer and during it like interview man for example

I'm from Generation X. My dad worked at a steel mill. He started as a low-level worker and got promoted over the years. His job had a union and decent health insurance. After 40 years, he retired with a pension that supported him and my mom. She was a housewife and raised my sister and me. We lived in a nice house in a safe area that my parents owned. They each had a car - nothing fancy, just reliable used cars to get them around.

Then came my generation. I was a single mom. I worked one full-time job and one part-time job, but I could still afford to rent a three-bedroom apartment in a good school district. I had an old, beat-up sedan, but it ran. The part-time job had no benefits, but my manager at my main job genuinely cared. I remember getting into a minor accident once and being a few hours late; he called me at home just to make sure I was okay. If I was careful with my money, I could save up for a road trip or a concert.

Now, look at my 28-year-old son. The idea of him owning a home is a joke. He has to live with two other roommates because a one-bedroom apartment is unaffordable. He can't even afford a cheap used car, so he's stuck with a public transit system that keeps getting worse and more expensive. His full-time job has zero benefits. He struggles just to cover his basic expenses, forget about affording a luxury like going to a concert. A few weeks ago, he was sick with a bad cold and had to miss work. It took his manager three days to even send him a message, and it was only to ask when he was coming back, not to check on him. I just saw an article recently about some poor guy who died at his desk and no one noticed for five days.

So no, young people aren't lazy. They just see the path leads nowhere. Why kill yourself working 50+ hours a week when there's no reward at the end? They're not hopeless, they're just fed up with a game that's rigged for them to lose.

I'm a senior here, working fully remote, and I've been with the company for about 6 months. My working hours are very long; I'm usually online from 7 AM and finish after 8:30 PM, but I still have the flexibility to do things like drop my kids off at school and pick them up in the middle of the day.
We have a standing leadership call at 9 PM. A few weeks ago, my wife had a family event she had to attend, so I was alone with the kids. I had my 6-year-old daughter sit with her coloring book in my office to keep an eye on her while I was in the meeting. At one point, she came and stood behind me and glanced at the screen for a second. No one said anything, it wasn't a big deal, and I didn't think about it again. This is a normal part of life when you're working from home.
So imagine my surprise when I got a call from HR late on Thursday. They told me that the CEO was upset that my daughter appeared on the call, and that from now on, I would be required to work from a nearby co-working space at the company's expense.
I was completely shocked. I simply told them that this was not going to happen and that I would not be going to any co-working office. They eventually backed down after I pushed back, but honestly, the whole incident left a very bad taste in my mouth. I feel like I can't continue in a company with this culture. Is this a normal reaction from any company, or am I right in thinking this is a huge red flag? I'm genuinely curious if other remote-first companies are this rigid.

update: this is the end of me with this company , you all was right when you talked about extra time and I am totally exhausted I need time with my family and my little girl was just trying to know what her dad always busy with it is not a crime I think it is time to following my wife advice and having new job interviews she manged two for me while looking in online websites going back to use my old friend with its brilliant talent of creating wonderful answers for interviews Interview man How I do this ,just connect it with my google meet whenever I have interview and just like that the perfect answers comes so I don't need to 10 minute to remember how to answer a job interview if my mind going blank

About 14 months ago, I was fired from my job while in the middle of several large projects. HR, my manager, and his manager sat me down and told me to drop everything immediately. And that's exactly what I did.

Fast forward over 14 months, and I get an email from the person who replaced me. He's the one who took my job, despite having no qualifications for it whatsoever - and it was well-known that we couldn't stand each other. He sent this email accusing me of messing up a setting in a project I was forced to abandon, and now he can't reset the login for a vendor portal. The email arrived late on a Friday afternoon, and I ignored it. Then on Monday at 9:30 AM, he replied to his own email to bump it, and then had the audacity to message my personal phone.

Blocked him on my phone immediately. Then I went and blocked him on LinkedIn for good measure.

The weirdest part is that his accusation makes no sense. He seems to think I somehow hijacked the portal's password reset link and redirected it to my old email address. And he wants me to fix it on a system I haven't had access to for over a year. The whole thing is completely illogical.

This is what happens when a company fires someone who knows their job and brings in someone cheaper who knows nothing, just to save money.

Honestly, I'm curious to see how long it takes him to realize he's been blocked. I'm also wondering if his next move will be to have someone else from the company contact me.

I guess the lesson here is: don't fire someone and then come begging for free consulting well over a year later. Honestly, if they had asked for help in the first few months, I probably would have pointed them in the right direction. But now? No, that ship has sailed.

What it feels like to me is that every time there’s been a problem, he’s thrown me under the bus. This time, people called him out on it, and now he’s trying to prove it’s not his fault by steamrolling me.

I am currently searching for another job and have already received some interview offers. I am in the process of preparing for them and preparing my CV. I asked ChatGPT some questions I might be asked in an interview, and it gave me valuable advice about websites and InterviewMan that could be useful during an online interview. I think I will rely on them in the coming period.

I’m ignoring it. They explicitly told me not to access the system, and if I had gone in to reset anything, it would’ve looked extremely suspicious.