It was indeed a shit agency, but I’ve found almost identical practices in other agencies. It’s the nature of the work and it sucks, which is part of why I won’t work at another agency ever again. Another issue I’ve run into are colleagues that don’t clock all of their time for a task, which makes management say things like “well X did this in 2 hours; why is it going to take you 6?” It took me a long time in my career to arrive at a place where I feel like I have actual control, so I can empathize with younger devs that are feeling crushed under the weight of work.
My role now is all internal product work and I always clock my time spent, but it’s not crucial. I do it mostly to gauge how long things I build take (a lot of which are greenfield projects) and keep the data on hand as a point of reference for myself.
I like what I do but don’t really like that it’s become a big part of what defines me as a person. That’s really besides the point though. I think white collar employees like us have it easier than others in the workforce elsewhere, and that’s somehow with the absolute onslaught of tech layoffs I keep seeing. I have a friend that has been laid off 5 times in the span of 3 years, and I was laid off myself for 3 months before finding a new role. I’m actually shocked at how many times previous employers have tried to take advantage of myself or others. Those things are the reason wage theft in the US is a 50b dollar industry and it’s just going to get worse as capitalists try to squeeze as much value out of things as they can.