But now starting as full-time has changed a few things. More things are at stack, my livelihood and work visa depended on the job. The worst thing that could have happened in the internship was just bad experience and no referral.
I am theorizing that no matter how well someone perform, the leader will keep pushing them to the limit. So I could either give 80%, have a balanced life, but always feel bad and pressurized because I am falling short constantly (but still performing OK to not be fired); or I could give 110%, sacrifice personal life, but might still feel pressurized (although probably less) by the team lead.
Changing company is not viable option for the short term (at least in the order of 6 months).
Would like to know how other people handle similar situation :)
*for cultural context, this is a south-east-asian based company.
So what does that mean? Often those modest/weak hands mean the worse that will happen to you is that you will fall out of favor.
If you go into the bet like that, and can live with that, you won’t be scared. If you were matched up against the strongest hand like a royal flush (you will be fired for sure), realize you were up against the strongest possible hand to begin with and weren’t going to come out of that alive.
Usually, if someone has a very very strong hand, they will try to conceal it from you so you don’t even know what you are walking into. It’s the weaker hands that need to convince you that you should be scared and back off from the bet.
The takeaway here is that in each of those situations the pressure is contrived (e.g someone’s got you convinced there’s a ton of pressure, or more scarily, that there’s no pressure, neither of which is ever true).
In your specific situation, it would be good to give 80% to 90%. Not take the haranguing personally, see it as the managers trying to impress their bosses by being relentlessly demanding.
Use whatever time and resources you have to research and line-up your next job so as soon as you are able to move on, you have a far better job to go to.
Good luck and take care of your mental health, making sure you have time out for some quality personal life. Hopefully you will have even more of that in your next job.
I'm speculating a bit - but the fact that you perceive this job as a pressured environment, suggests that it's not right for you.
Very simply, brace your self for 6 months and then find a environment that suits you better.
But that's an ideal. Many jobs are transactional; they squeeze what they want from you, and you squeeze what you can from them. In situations like this, you'll have to give it 80%. There's tricks to look like you're working more than you are. If the boss expects you to work at nights, you slack off in the day. You complete a task, read HN for a couple hours, then commit the code later to pad your effort.
But this 80% will make you mediocre in the long run. Going at less effort than you can will decrease your energy. Find something that's closer to your pace. They'll seek to punish you for doing well, so find someone who appreciates your efforts.
It sounds like you already established yourself with a good reputation there since they hired you from an internship. Maybe the culture there is always giving all to the company? Based on observations, one option is to make the perception of 110% but fluctuate the performance so you are not stressed. When you are stressed your work will show it.
Just remember how little of your software will be around in five to ten years to get some perspective