I’ve been a software engineer with more than a decade of experience across large product companies across SaaS, telecom, and banking industries; you name it, and I have been there, in places that demand constant learning, adaptability, and scale. When I first learned to code in college, I genuinely loved it. It felt like mastering a new, cool language to converse with machines. When I entered the corporate world back in 2015, I was ambitious, motivated, and high on the sound of coffee machines and free cookies. Over the years, I took steep jumps in my career. And this happened not because I punished myself to work till I faint, but because I loved my work. I loved showing up and taking on challenging bug fixes, production issues, and critical features. For a long time, I truly believed I was thriving. And then, almost abruptly, something changed. My company got acquired. The management changed, and the people changed. The emotional fabric of the workplace changed with them.…