In my last full time job I worked for a tech consulting company that rented us out to teams at financial instutions that managed insane amounts of money. This was in 2021 before AI was common. I worked remotely, and the first month didn’t do anything — just waited for the corporate laptop to arrive etc. Then I worked 2 hours a day.

But I had to put 8 hours in the timesheets, and select what projects I was working on. And I always had a feeling of guilt about that, like I was helping my consulting company charge hours that I wasn’t really working. I just kept finishing the tasks I was assigned in the sprints, and then there was nothing more to do. I didn’t aggressively ask for more work, just took on what others did. This went on for a while, and I felt guilty. Working on my startups in the meantime, like those people who work multiple jobs. I didn’t realize this happens a lot.

On one of my calls with my immediate manager I mentioned I had some downtime — and he was like “oh you have downtime? That’s not good.” And then it became his problem. And I didnt get more work but from then on I felt this tension with him, and probably others downstream of it. Nothing concrete, but just the feeling slightly changed, for a few weeks. So I nicely resigned after 6 months, saying to HR that investors funded my startups but they want me to work on them fulltime. So I left on good terms.

I regret it, though, in retrospect. Because of my ethics I missed out on income that could have helped my family and people around me. That was a great salary for remote work 2 hours a day, and I would have invested over half of it in crypto and probably 3xed it all by now. I only left because my ethics bothered me, but I learned later how often “full time” jobs really aren’t. Like, at all!