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Yes but then in the new job you need to maintain other people's stuff, which is even harder that maintaining your own stuff. And over time you get to own that, including all the previous tech debt that you didn't create

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And you don't have that kind of "previous work bank" of stuff you accomplished when something runs late, in a new job. And things always run late. In my new job they said here's this major piece of work. We already committed to it. 2 other teams and outside customers are expecting it. Can you do it in 2 months? I don't know, maybe, I guess? There's a great starting point, they said. Then it turned out to take 5 months. Everyone is mad at me, it was incredibly stressful, I worked 7 days a week. This is kind of a summary of the modern dev job.

At some point in your career, you gain enough confidence to say no, I can't commit to that. If they fire you for not making unreasonable commitments, that's net benefit to you.

Dev shops don't have to operate like that, and all it takes is one person to have the fortitude to say no.

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