How to deal with a poor work-life balance?

Question

I'm a 4+ years experienced Software Engineer working in an Indian startup from last 7 months. I chose this startup because in my last organization:

• the work was highly repetitive
• I wasn't learning anything new.
• Poor increments were there
• I had highly shitty manager who always threatened his subordinates to come to office in Covid days, and hence, few of my colleagues.

In my current startup, things were going well for first 6 months, until my manager left the organization. Now, I'm facing following issues:

• Since, our team is working without a manager, so, people are doing whatever they feel is right, without getting their work reviewed by anyone. E.g. one of my colleagues is storing JSON in MySQL, other one is storing persistent data in ElasticSearch.
• The deadlines of any feature is being decided by Product Manager and Sales guys and that is putting lot of pressure on the developers and the only way left for the developers to get more time for feature development is to fight with the PMs.
• The process of work is extremely bad and many times, the new feature requirements come in the afternoon or evening and is required by the PM to be done by the end of the day from the developers, thus, forcing the developers to stay late at night till 11 pm, 12 am or sometimes even till 3 am. E.g. They always give new requirements in Friday noon or evening.
• I'm in backend team and there are some guys in other teams like FrontEnd and QA (with whom we have to work), who loves to work at night and do nothing in evening and noon. Because of them, we have to wake at late night despite doing our work early.
• I'm not getting time to upgrade my skills as all I can do is work and work and work all day. It feels like I've devoted my life to work and work only.
• There are few guys, who are highly arrogant and think of themselves as Gods of programming and treat almost everyone (except people sitting on top positions) in disrespectful way.
• I can never enjoy a peaceful weekend where I can focus to spend time on my self-improvement, my family or my skills updation.

I feel extremely frustrated by this mismanaged process and I don't want to work in a company, where the only way to work peacefully is by constantly fighting with PMs and other developers for deadlines. I can't leave this organization without an offer in hand because I have loans and EMIs to be paid as I'm the only earning person in my family. But I'm unable to find time due to exhaustion by constant work and no rest.

Answer 1

Start by taking stock of what the other people in your situation feel. If you are multiple people who feel the same way, get together and exert counter-pressure when you feel people are being unrealistic.

When someone asks you of something, raise the request before the group and make it safe for the group to voice concerns. When making that call, don't think "is this specific request reasonable" but try to think "if we accept this request, does that set a reasonable precedent?"

But do it cooperatively. You're in an unsustainable situation, and you just want what's best for everyone, except in a way that can be maintained.

A team of intelligent humans should not require a manager to babysit them and prevent things from spiralling out of control.

If it turns out you are the only one feeling this strongly, that's helpful too! Figure out what the others are doing differently.