I have about 20 years of experience, with 11 of them spent in two solid companies and the rest spent kind of job hopping - always for better scope and compensation. Took a job as Sr. SDM at a FAANG company and, although not liking the job, had a good performance over about two years. Received an insane (40%+) offer to join another company, and, attracted by working in a faster environment with more (all cash) comp, jumped ship (after a little less than two years).
Relocated with family and now I am deeply regretful. New place is rich but a total clusterfuck, complete with one-liner people evaluations ("Low throughput", PIP), SDEs getting sick due to stress, a reorg on my first week cutting 80% of my team (now I'm down to KTLO subsistence budget and having to jump in as SDE as well), and there's more but if I elaborate, I will be identified, probably.
I did thorough research before joining, going as far as interviewing other joiners who assured me it was an immature but responsible company. The org chart presented to me was entirely false (impossible for me to know beforehand) and the way of working was also misrepresented grossly (again, can't elaborate because it's very specific to this company).
Now I am at a strange place with family and down on my luck. Yes, I am well paid but with this kind of leadership, it's bound to be short-lived as well. I would be laughing at myself few years back, would take it on the chin and move on, but with family, I can't.
My options are: to suck it up - in which case I probably blew up my career since I'm learning nothing and they refuse to believe their way of working is wrong, even with developers hitting hospitals and asking for leave of absence; change teams (though I heard most teams are like this anyway); resign at the end of probation (90 days) and try to relocate back - I'd have to pay back all relocation benefits, and I doubt any company would take me seriously leaving FAANG to join a company for 90 days then applying again - as I said above about 50% of my career is 2 year tenure (startups, exits, bankruptcies, etc.) so doing this ultra-short tenure will definitely hurt my ability to get another job.
Apologies for not elaborating more or using a "stream-of-consciousness" writing style - I guess it conveys adequately my state of mind after having made this massive unforced error. I can give more details for good advice in return.
My learnings from that last job that I will carry forward to my next interviews are:
* How do you conduct test automation?
* What is the standard process to manage risks for a refactor?
* How would you describe the central architecture of your primary application? (I expect to hear about a few deliberate decisions, not something about a framework or obscure business logic isolation)
* When a defect arises is the solution or code location expected to come from memory, as in will I be expected to memorize a significant majority of the code base?
* How do you monitor for regression?
* Will I be expected to regularly manually copy code from one environment to another?
* How do you make determinations about performance? (I don't want to hear some nonsense about doing it one way because JavaScript, or whatever, is slow when you have measured neither approach and especially when you have no idea how one or both approaches actually work)
If the employer cannot answer most of these questions there are only two options:
1) Empower you to address these concerns
2) Don't work there. I would rather change careers than be hired as a senior, treated like child, and then get punished for the result.