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Oh man, I kinda start to regret changing this job. Currently I'm employed at as a contractor through a third firm but I work pretty much full time. The initial deal between the client & the consultancy firm is that I would start there after 1 year

cons:
- My previous wage was more optimized and I now earn a €25 more per month after taxes despite earning €600 more before taxes. I did not see the calculations after taxes before starting.
- It seems since I started after July, I don't get the end of year bonus (thus making less money after taxes in 2025 despite switching jobs)
- My colleagues at the new job are friendly but they barely talk even during lunch. And if they do, it's about Pokémon trading cards
- One day work-from-home instead of 3 (I thought it would be great change since my social life is quite bad lol)
- Company kinda glorified that I could learn a lot from a very senior developer but after 4 months, I still haven't had the chance to work with him and there seems to be no plan. As of today, I was always the most senior FE dev in every workplace.*
- No agile development (I thought this was a plus in the start but kinda miss it)
- No project manager or product owner
- Unreleastic deadlines with a visible backlash when failed
- No project specifications to combat unclear expectations and when creating one, it suffers from feature creep.
- Senior dev is a "yes, we will do that by the deadline"-man
- No shops in walking distance
- Shorter lunch breaks
- People can easily see my screen so can't really do reddit
- smaller dev-team: 3 vs 11 (HR said 10 people in the IT-department, it is true but I did understand it as 7-8 devs at least but nope)
- More time tracking
- Technically a 1 year probation period so the legal protection would reset again after I swap jobs officially (like if I get fired next year, I don't have to be paid off for an extra few weeks)
- No testing department
- Was lied to about being able to do some backend work (they said 75% FE, 25% BE work, now 90% FE - 10% design)
- Was lied about the existence of the technical specifications of a project (one was very well, the one with the deadline does not exist, one more was simply not needed)
- more office noise
- no relax room (even when the one at my previous job was only used once a month)
- bus factor of 1

pros:
+ At least the workplace is a 10min drive instead of 25-55 min previously
+ Less meetings
+ free fruit & unhealthy snacks in the office (refilled Tuesday but gone by Friday)
+ AI is not being glorified
+ more privacy concerned (even when this dataset needs less privacy regulations)
+ Working charging ports for EV
+ fresh code base
+ The big boss is chill
+ design freedom
+ Less people are getting fired
+ Less responsibility so far but that will change
+ We stop one hour earlier on Fridays (technically still paid for now)
+ Actually work I could do here (if it is not blocked by the lack of existence of the backend)

Same shit, different company:
- Lack of clear communication with the other developer. (previous company, it was great to work with a few remote developers but sucky to work with an other remote dev, now there is a lack of communication with a dev that sitting across of me)
- No documentation
- No project specifications
- Both companies feel a bit immature
- Both projects are a bit uninteresting
- Still a feeling of not being satisfied with the job

If I go fulltime at the client:
- I would lose 6 extra holiday days (26 vs 32) since the work contract would swap from 40 hours to 39 and thus I would lose 'overtime day' per 2 months.
- The salary would become slightly less optimized
- They don't have to pay the consultancy fee that I do not see so I can ask for a big raise & have more leverage as the only FE dev.

I know I did ignore some red flags since I really wanted a job switch. I thought the lack of agile would be compensated by existence of technical documentation and clearer requirements.

\* not fully true but any senior FE dev either sucked at communication (for example; I had PRs open for 9 months unreviewed) or got fired after 2 months. I had one senior dev that didn't really teach me anything but did learn indirectly from him.

Might delete the rant later