My company did a round of layoffs as quickly as possible last March. I managed to get my team through that, and am still trying to help the people I had to let go find new positions on the side. I've seen the impact I've had, legitimately keeping my people sane.
One of my devs actually caught the virus, and broke down to me in the hospital when he tried to explain why he might not be able to come back to work, ever.
I know I have had an impact.
But now that we're through the looking glass, and the adrenaline has worn off, and this is just the new day to day normal, its just frigging hard.
I love getting to spend extra time with my SO. And I love not having a commute. My quality of life has gone up immensely.
But I live in a tiny, 1 bedroom, city-center apartment. The desk I work at all day, is the desk that I also would come home to after work, and unwind/relax at.
There is no other space available in this apartment where I can put up an "office". It is simply too small. The best option I have is to sit at the "kitchen" table 4 feet away, but then i can't use my monitor.
The end result is I am having a horrific time at work.
On my best days, I think I can manage 80% of what I used to do workwise, at the office. On the worst days, its maybe 5%.
I think its compounded by the fact that I relatively recently became a manager.
There are many aspects of my job that I do not like anymore. I have been largely removed from real engineering. My PM was cut for budget/political reasons, so the amount of rote PM work that lands on my desk has gone up significantly, etc. But I was okay with this all regardless, because I derived satisfaction from managing my team well, and learning how to do so.
Now that we are entirely wfh, from a business perspective little has changed (besides the layoffs we just went through). I am capable of managing remotely. But personally, any positive feedback that came with management has evaporated. Where I could previously watch my team interact throughout the day, and see the impact I was making on company/team culture, or at least have a physical/visual reaffirmation that I have created a positive environment for my people (its a small company), I now have no positive social feedback, just lots of 1:1 video calls, which quite frankly, don't cut it on a personal level.
The combination of these two things has been awful and I am genuinely having an extremely hard time with it.
Perhaps, like, a racist police force?