[mateusfreira]

I never correlate my growth with the company I am working for; sometimes, you overgrow the company, and it is time to leave.

"Pays okay; 100% remote; very few meetings; low standards for productivity mean I have great work/life balance" seems like a perfect workplace.

What you need is probably a project outside of work to challenge you. I built my own company 13 years ago as a side project (I still run it up to this day as a side project) because I was a Mobile developer and Would like to keep doing Web development.

Today, I am having fun with my Open-source project https://github.com/mateusfreira/nun-db. When I have too many meetings or fight fewer coding challenges in my work, writing my own distributed database keeps me fresh and challenged. With it, I learned Rust and also distributed systems, which made me read books and papers that would never be needed for my normal work.

I see that as growing, and it has brought me great opportunities. Times these side projects become companies, and you make money; times, they bring job opportunities that you would not have otherwise.

You should leave a company when your growth is faster and more than the company can take in. Meanwhile, use the low pressure to go after other challenges personally; that is my way of dealing with it.