I don't know. I don't disagree with you, but I think it's sometimes more difficult than it seems initially.
This stuff has been very salient to me the last couple of years. I had a friend who was in a physically abusive relationship, and she was often comparing my behavior, feelings, and thoughts about my job to what she was going through. It's definitely not the same, I don't want to trivialize anything, but in some circumstances a workplace just becomes sort of [emotionally] abusive, extremely dysfunctional, and starts to have tangible harms for spouses, family, etc. in terms of lost time, income, career opportunities, etc. I wrestled a lot with questions like "is it better to not have a job than an abusive dysfunctional one, when it's hurting my family at some level too?"
This isn't the same as putting up with some awareness that what you're doing is existentially empty at some level (which has its own set of issues), but balancing costs and benefits of jobs sometimes is trickier than it seems initially. I think maybe it's the same as the grass-is-always greener you mention, although I think that can go pretty far.
I hear what you are saying and agree with you to a point. I find though that its like this for pretty much all development jobs, just pointless never ending trudging. Only option appears to be getting out of engineering; and taking a 65% pay cut to do so is really not on the table. So because of financial responsibilities (kids, house, etc.) each day is the same and one bleeds into the next.
There's a big difference between pointless drudgery and emotionally abusive, and one of them is indeed pretty normal, the other is things like my manager lying to and about me and setting me up to look like an idiot and pretending it was my fault and literally giving me nightmares and raising my blood pressure 20 points.
This stuff has been very salient to me the last couple of years. I had a friend who was in a physically abusive relationship, and she was often comparing my behavior, feelings, and thoughts about my job to what she was going through. It's definitely not the same, I don't want to trivialize anything, but in some circumstances a workplace just becomes sort of [emotionally] abusive, extremely dysfunctional, and starts to have tangible harms for spouses, family, etc. in terms of lost time, income, career opportunities, etc. I wrestled a lot with questions like "is it better to not have a job than an abusive dysfunctional one, when it's hurting my family at some level too?"
This isn't the same as putting up with some awareness that what you're doing is existentially empty at some level (which has its own set of issues), but balancing costs and benefits of jobs sometimes is trickier than it seems initially. I think maybe it's the same as the grass-is-always greener you mention, although I think that can go pretty far.