>staff engineer @ research lab
>grind 80+ hour weeks for months straight
>build bleeding-edge embedded demo from scratch
>fly to London, live tech talk in front of 500 people
>demo gods smile, nothing breaks for 3 full days
>audience claps, execs nod like I just reinvented networking
>fly back to the US, dead inside
>performance review time
>"you need to be more visible, anon. 3% raise. try harder next year"
>junior who bricks prod twice a week gets promoted to senior + 15% raise
>manager gives *himself* a title bump to “Distinguished Technologist”
>($300k+ band btw)
>mfw I’m still debugging heap corruption at 2am for $130k
>in a geography where a 1971 single-family crack den goes for $1.1M

now I’m just gonna half-ass everything until my August bonus hits
then it’s full-blown time theft until they have the spine to fire me
I can’t even fake pretending to work anymore lmao
ignoring everyone, replying to Slacks with cryptic emoji reactions and low-effort gibberish
if I’m feeling spicy, I might push a commit or two per week
fuck it

I fucking hate corporate America so much it’s physically unreal