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Hard agree. People forget that performance isn’t just about skill. When someone’s struggling, it could be because they don’t like their projects or just don’t fit with the team. I just think it’s sad that so many managers never consider this when judging someone’s performance.

From personal experience, I work best in a "chill" team with a bit of humor. I’ve been in teams where every meeting feels like a battlefield, and I simply can’t perform well in those environments.

I like chill environments as much as the next guy, but I can appreciate why they’re rare. I don’t mind urgency, provided it’s happening for a good reason and isn’t the default way of working. I like working in product focused companies with a strong vision, small team, and steady working culture.

I’ve been both in my career, I know that through introspection and from external feedback. I’ve been employed as a software engineer for 13 years now and come to accept that my biggest motivator, the thing that most drives whether I do a good job or not, is caring about what I’m building.

There are other factors, of course. I’ve cared deeply about products I’ve worked on and still resigned due to disagreeing with the CEOs ethics, or how we were forced to meet unrealistic and artificial deadlines. I’ve also had bullies for managers, which makes it challenging to perform.

In my ~18 month stint being a manager myself, the key thing I focused on was my team’s motivations. One of them had aspirations to take my job one day, another wanted to work on features they could show their mum, another just wanted to learn a new industry through building.