The work culture on my team is pretty bad. There is high burn out, lots of fighting, finger pointing, working 24/7. When I bring this up, the leaders mention that this is just how tech culture is. It is worse at other companies. I haven’t worked at another company so I feel like I can’t counter. What should I say?

I’ve been WFH from a different country for three months without telling HR, and the anxiety is finally starting to eat me alive. My VPN is holding up, and my manager hasn't noticed that my home office background is just a stock photo. The tax implications are probably a nightmare, but my quality of life has doubled since I left the Bay Area. Is it better to ask for forgiveness if I get caught? Should I just keep going?

Does anyone else find it difficult to get another job while you are currently employed? Most people say that it's easier to get a job while you have a job, but that has never been the case for me. What normally happens is I go to an interview with the knowledge that I can mess up the interview and perform poorly. Sometimes I ask questions that I know are going to make the interviewer uncomfortable. This is probably both good and bad. Most jobs I have landed happened when I was unemployed.

What is the most pointless thing you have to do on a week by week basis? For me, I just think about how much time I waste in some of my team meetings that I feel provide no value to the group. Sometimes it feels like the 30 minute meeting I have every thursday could just be an email

I got dinged on my latest review for not participating enough in the team channels, and I feel like I’m back in middle school. Apparently, shipping clean, bug-free code ahead of schedule takes a backseat to not dropping enough memes in the #random channel. My manager literally told me that social presence is a core metric for our remote culture this year. Is this normal? I’m so grumpy about it.