I think I made a mistake

Hello, throwaway account because my main one has personal info.

In march I got my first gig as a remote UE developer for a very small company that made application for businesses. The position required going to the office, however since they needed someone very urgently we agreed that I could WFH for the first three months, until the project I was hired to finish would be completed.

The WLB was incredible, beside me there was only one other programmer and we mostly communicated through messages. Sometimes I had to join a voice meeting (not even video call) and even then these were very rare and didn’t go over 10 minutes.

The job was also incredibly easy and they had very low expectations. Since I was considered an “external” employee, I didn’t have access to the company drive, so I didn’t know what needed to be done until someone would assign tasks to me. However these were so simple and fast to implement that I would actually spend more time waiting for my coworker to tell me what needed to be done than to actually implement it. At some point I spent a full week doing nothing but just being available at working hours because there was nothing left for me to do.

However, the pay was very bad (~30% LESS than entry level position pay for SWE in my country), the job was boring and there was no career or personal growth.

As my three month contract was expiring, I started looking somewhere else. I wanted to look for remote game dev jobs which are really hard to get, so I “settled” for an in office game dev job for the exact role that I always wanted to do, thinking that I could try my luck again in a couple of years.

At the very end of my three month time there, the old place told me that they were really happy with my performance and were looking forward to continue the partnership remotely in the same manner. This meant that I could keep working for them as a contractor, meaning that I could work at my own pace and at my preferred time; but also that I didn’t have any benefit of being a direct employee such as vacation, pension fund, etc. I would also be payed a lot less than I would be if I had a full-time contract.

I rejected this offer and I am now a couple of weeks into my in office job and I hate it.

The job itself is actually amazing, the workplace is very professional, but the people are laid back and fun. My coworkers are extremely knowledgeable and we work with international clients which are well known in the industry.

But all I do now is work and sleep. I have so much less time even though the hour I work are the same. The office is also 5hr away from where I live, so I had to rent an apartment and spend all my weekends traveling by train just so I can see my dog and family.

I feel like i had my golden ticket and I threw it. The worse part is that I don’t even know if I am gonna find a full remote job again which makes the time that I spend at my new job even worse since it feels like it’s all for nothing.