People in power who are aware of this and still make these decisions are the worst. I’ve seen abject examples in my career.

And what happens when you complain about burnout, repeatedly?

- “Yeah it happens. Why not take a vacation?”, but dropping last minute work on you or calling you when traveling

- “Yeah but we’re all under so much pressure. It’s a team effort and we need to all pull through”, and again dropping more work on you when teammates who don’t care don’t have to work half as hard

- “Oh yeah? Maybe you should focus more on your work life balance” and then calling you in the weekend for that “super important customer call on Monday we need to prepare for”

I came to realize 1-1 meetings with management are designed to manipulate and keep you under control, just how HR’s real objective is to protect the company. This and other instances left a lot of scars and tainted my perspective about salaried work.

I can’t drink the Kool-Aid anymore and even as a founder this is among my top priorities in how I treat people working with me.