It’s been a long and tiring last few weeks at work. A handful of colleagues have left, some voluntarily, others less so. Some new processes have been put in place. A new layer of management has been put into place. It’s been a period where everyone seems to have something to complain and be mad about.

“Feels like almost everyone is grumpy,” a colleague said to me today.

“What do you mean?” I responded.

“Just seems like pretty much everyone in this office is frustrated by something from what I can tell,” he said back to me.

Yeah, that’s probably true. Most of us in this office do our jobs and do it well. When you’re in a remote office, you have to work twice as hard and advocate for yourself three times as much before anyone really cares about anything you do. And that’s been wearing thin on a lot of us lately. Sometimes, you don’t want to constantly yell and advocate for yourself; sometimes, you just want to be noticed for good work you are doing and have someone else call it out for you to the “powers that be” and get you recognition.

In the corporate world, though, even in late-stage tech startups like my own, that can be like pulling teeth. This is the life of being at a pre-IPO technology company.