I have been keeping this inside for long time and I need to rant it somewhere and hear your opinion.

So I'm working as a Team Lead Developer at a small company remotely based in Netherlands, I've been working there for about 8 years now and I am the only developer left, so the company basically consists of me and the owner of the company which is also the project manager.

As my role title says I am responsible for many things, I maintain multiple environments:
- Maintain Web Version of the App
- Maintain A Cordova app for Android, iOS and Windows
- Working with pure JavaScript (ES5..) and CSS
- Development and maintenance of Cordova Plugins for the project in Java/Swift
- Trying to keep things stable while trying very hard to transit ancient code to new standards
- Testing, Testing, Testing
- Keeping App Stable without a single Testing Unit (sadly yes..)
- Just pure JavaScript no framework apart from JQuery and Bootstrap for which I strongly insist to be removed and its being slowly done.

On the backend side I maintain:
- A Symfony project
- MySQL
- RabbitMQ
- AWS
- FCM
- Stripe/In-App Purchases
- Other things I can't disclose

I can't disclose the nature of the app but the app is quite rich in features and complex its limited to certain regions only but so far we have around 100K monthly users on all platforms, it involves too much work especially because I am the only developer there so when I am implementing some feature on one side I also have to think about the other side so I need to constantly switch between different languages and environments when working, not to mention I have to maintain a very old code and the Project Owner doesn't want to transit to some more modern technologies as that would be expensive.

The last raise I had was 3 years ago, and so far he hasn't invested in anything to improve my development process, as an example we have an iOS version of the app in Cordova which of course involves building , testing, working on both frontend and native side and etc., and I am working in a somewhat slow virtual machine of Monterey with just 16 GB of RAM which consumed days of my free time just to get it working and when I'm running it I need to close other apps, keep in mind I am working there for about 8 years.

The last time I needed to reconfigure my work computer and setup the virtual machine it costed me 4 days of small unpaid holiday I had taken for Christmas, just because he doesn't have the enough money to provide me with a decent MacBook laptop. I do get that its not a large company, but still I am the only developer there its not like he needs to keep paying 10 Developers.

Also:
- I don't get paid vacation
- I don't have paid holiday
- I don't have paid sick days
- My Monthly salary is 2000 euro GROSS (before taxes) which hourly translates to 12 Euro per hour
- I have to pay taxes by myself
- Working remotely has its own expenses: food, heating, electricity, internet and etc.
- There are few other technical stuff I am responsible of which I can't disclose in this post.

I don't know if I'm overacting and asking a lot, but summarizing everything the only expense he has regarding me is the 2000 euro he sends me on which of course he doesn't need to pay taxes as I'm doing that in my country.

Apart from that just in case I spend my free time in keeping myself updated with other tech which I would say I fairly experienced with like: Flutter/Dart, ES6, NodeJS, Express, GraphQL, MongoDB, WebSockets, ReactJS, React Native just to name few, some I know better than the other and still I feel like I don't get what I deserve.

What do you think, do I ask a lot or should I start searching for other job?

Regain work life balance.
The last few years especially with COVID I've started to do way to much for the company's I've worked for. Working while I was coughing my lungs out when I had COVID. Working during my holiday because it was finally a fun feature to develop. Working in lunch breaks because people would call me all the time (remote there are no boundaries)

I left that company on a good note, started actually healthy as the new company actually understands flex working. However as I gained responsibly more meetings started to appear also causing rushed lunches no more walks of sport activities. Than I was lead in a project and because of some personal circumstances (death in the family) that was running long. Again started to work overtime trying to catch up.

I need to stop doing this. Caring is fine but I just give to much when I feel responsible. Good thing is that my current company actually wants to help me with this.

Jesus christ I need my VP and CIO to get their hands out of Azure and GCP and just let me work.

Yes, governance and security and IAM are big deals. That's why you have infraops people like me to deal with that.

I'm literally working with one hand tied behind my back because just about every button press or CLI command I need to do my damn job as a professional cloud fluffer requires me to go bother an executive and ask permission to pretty please can I deploy a new container, can you go press the shiny button? No not that one, move your mouse up...up..now UP..ok over lef-no..can I have mouse control? Sigh fine, do you see where it says "Approvers", no that says "Release Pipeline"

Look I actually kinda like this job, I do, in as much as when I have something to do I get left the fuck alone to do it. Meetings are minimal, aside from the odd days when one of our app services decides to yeet itself into the river Styx, there's little distractions.

Yeah, developers do dumb shit but that's probably best left to the notion of job security and never talked about again less they go to HR and complain that the ops guy was very stern and direct and made the developer take some accountability for their work product.

AND YET

It's so intergalactically stupid that I have to go ask permission just to do ops tasks by the same people barging down my goddamn door asking why the ops task isn't done yet.

"Because you won't give me permissions in GCP to actually DO anything".

Okay. Rant over. Time for lunch. Good meeting, see you all at the holiday party.

Oh my... I'm so exhausted and tired of everything. First I got really sick for two weeks and couldn't work. I also collapsed on the floor one night and hurt myself. Well what happens yesterday? You guessed it - I fell down the stairs and hurt exactly the same spots as two weeks ago... (no I was not drunk).

And then I have to work on a holiday today (yes, still with that same fucking shitty shopware project) because I have to attend an appointment in a different country on Thursday (I need Thursday off, but I don't have any vacation left).

So here I'm sitting almost crying in pain because of this FUCKING project, everything hurts, I still can't think straight and shopware is denying my refresh tokens. FUCK THIS JOB. Seriously. Fuck it. I have had the chance to look into a lot of companies and do different things, but this is the worst.

Nobody fucking cared about the project for nearly 8 months, and now that I'm close to leaving the company they begin to act like "oh well it must be done by then". ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! I told them a million times I need help and that I won't be able to finish it in time. That's what happens when nobody plans a project, but accepts it anyways because "it brings in money".

Seriously?! This project has been a waste of money and my energy and nerves. We're already 100% over the budget and will never ever see one cent coming from this shitty project. WHY FOR FUCKS SAKE IS IT THAT THOSE PEOPLE JUST DONT SEE IT WHEN A PROJECT IS GOING DOWN THE FUCKING DRAIN?!

Apart from the fact that I arrived at a good framework at work to play in problem space than in solution space, this post is more about self realisation and a slight progress in my happiness levels.

Monsoons started in India. The vibe somehow had always been melancholic for me triggering SAD (aka seasonal depression).

However, this year I find it cosier than ever. Hot showers, lazing around on a holiday when it's pouring outside, watching my favourite show/movie. I feel very relaxed in the moment, even when work and life is not as expected/under control.

What I realised is that my problem can be solved. I need a bigger house. That would give me privacy, some personal space for hobbies, and put a barrier between me and parents easing the tension and clashes. I could then get married, and with all the money I will save (from not buying a house myself), can be used to pursue hobbies like music, art, travel, etc.

Whenever I relax, my sleep pattern changes where I have longer duration of deep sleep with many dreams (perhaps processing everything). Does anyone else experience such a phenomenon?

Anyway, life doesn't get easy or hard, we just learn to put up with shit.

Why recruiters are sometimes taking so long to answer? I did my final stage of interview with the companie's client (out of 4 stages in total) last Thursday.

Client came back with positive feedback at Monday at the end of workday. Today is Tuesday and internal recruiter was supposed to call me to make an offer and discuss starting date.

Now again workday is nearly over and no contact from her. Tomorrow is a national holiday so she will get back to me at best on Thursday.

Goddamnit why it takes so long, if Im starting next Monday I need to prepare myself. Im seriously getting second thoughts such as even about declining the offer if they will try to lowball me. Previous week they really rushed the process and I had to do 4 stages of interviews and this week they are wasting my time. Am I being impatient or what?