Sixteen Months of Unpaid On-Call, Then Two Resignations
Three engineers carried unpaid on-call for sixteen months. Two resigned the same quarter; the third asked off. A stipend would have cost far less.
Angle
Burnout
4 posts
Q2 hit plan. Three engineers paid for it.
Q2 made the number because three engineers worked weekends through May and June. The board called it execution. The CTO called it debt. The bill came due in Q3.
When Quiet Quitting Was Right
He left every meeting on time and stopped taking calls after 6pm. The team called him disengaged. He had stopped subsidizing the company with his evenings.
The vacation you didn't take for three years
He hadn't been offline for more than four days since founding the company. He called it commitment. His team called it something else.