The hidden costs of a fast-paced environment

I’ve personally been working in the tech industry for over 15 years now—time does fly! But if you’re just getting started or are looking for a new challenge in your career and are considering pivoting, the following could be relevant to you.

Work-life balance

When you have to go to the office every day—I’m sorry—you have a very clear boundary of “work” and “life”. That is, as soon as you walk out the door, the work stops. For most people, anyway.

But when you work remotely, it’s harder to set a boundary like that.

Some people have spare rooms at home and set up a home office so that this boundary still physically exists. That does work, but if you work in a company that allows for any kind of self management when it comes to scheduling, which most companies working remotely should, you can end up working more than you should. Believe it or not, it’s almost never the other way around.

The demand for being online all the time or being responsive to DMs immediately often helps blurring the already hard to set boundaries we need to separate life from work. This gets far worse when you need to be available on your phone too. Then all of a sudden you’re in a supermarket line checking your DMs because someone at work needs your help and doesn’t realise you’re in life duty. It’s not their fault, it’s a company policy issue.

Stress levels

Every job will be stressful at some point. One way or another, we will all have a project to deliver and a tight deadline from time to time. The frequency is key here. From time to time might be more than enough. But unfortunately that’s not always the case.

My wife, for instance, has just recently finished a project she has been working on at least since December 2024. We’re in October 2025! That’s almost a full-year project. And I’m no project manager myself so I’m not going to comment on the project specifics. But to my eyes this should have been broken down into several smaller projects. So that you can wrap up and celebrate more often for a successful launch. Instead of creating a humongous amount of pressure on the entire team for almost a year. The burden is real.

Delivering often, not plenty.

Besides, a fast-paced environment often means you’ll have plenty on your plate and will inevitably need to constantly shift from task to task. This is called context switching, and is very costly.

Think about it for a minute, the amount of time one needs to get their head into the task is relevant too.

Now, if you need to go through this process multiple times a day for the same task, it’s not only wasted time but it also contributes to the feeling of ending the day empty handed. Meaning, you look back and can’t pinpoint anything you accomplished, because you wasted time. Now a 1-hour-task isn’t done yet after 2 hours.

Deep work

If you’re not currently working in tech, you may have never heard about this concept. But even if you aren’t, you may agree that having 4 straight hours to work on a feature isn’t the same as having 4 blocks of 1 hour each. This is inline with the context switching issue I mentioned above.

It’s good practice to reserve a big block in your schedule, ideally during the time you know you’ll be most productive, for doing the most important task for the day. For me, it’s usually from mid-afternoon onwards. In the mornings I would usually do all sorts of small tasks and non trivial ones.

Reading new messages from colleagues, helping out whoever needs a hand, reviewing pull requests for other developers, creating issues and updating statuses, are all things I would preferably do in the mornings.
Then I would reserve a big portion of my day where I block notifications and just focus on that big thing I’m working on. At the end of the day I would go for another quick round of message reading just in case someone needs me.

This way, I’m able to focus on my tasks without having frequent interruptions that would hinder my productivity.

Being available all the time should be a red flag.

Having time for meaningful work is just as important as showing up for work everyday. You still read and reply to messages. You’re still present when a colleague needs your help. But when you need to focus, you need to focus.

Crippled innovation

I work in tech, specifically for the web, because I like it. I like the challenges. I appreciate the fact that it’s a dynamic medium. I like the native technologies.

Sometimes I stumble upon a though issue I need to solve. And the good developer in me thinks I should be able to solve it with just CSS if I refactor a bit. But this takes time. So instead, my manager asks for the fast solution. And we all know what that means: inject some more JavaScript and never look back at it. Creating tech debt on purpose without the intent of ever going back to it isn’t something I appreciate doing.

The junior me would take just about any solution, any day of week. Whatever it takes to solve the issue and move forward, really.
But the more mature me knows I can do better, so I’ll thrive for the best solution I can have. Even if that means moving things around and spending a bit more time on it.

Prioritizing speed can hinder deep focus, ultimately weakening your problem-solving abilities and stifling the thoughtful, creative thinking essential in this industry.

Bottom line

This was mainly based on my personal experience over the years and the companies I’ve worked with. Next time you’re looking at a job board, be aware of terms such as “fast-paced”, “dynamic environment” and “quick growing” and remember that:

• It can be hard to separate work from personal life, especially working remotely;
• Constant task switching may lead to burnout;
• Frequent interruptions hinder deep and meaningful work;
• High pressure causes job dissatisfaction;
• Speed over quality limits creativity and creates tech debt;