All I Wanted Was to Work in Tech. Be Careful What You Wish For
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thestranger.com
I'm not defending the two-tier system inside many tech companies, just pointing out that it's real and it's maintained by market forces bigger than any one company.
If a big Seattle software company lays off a team of programmers, recruiters are swarming around them by the end of the same day.
But then you acknowledge the economics ("jobs are plenty and demand is high") and also say everyone else is treated worse - so "terrible" relative to what then?
Having been on the other side (hourly clerk and sales) I would say that tech workers are treated really really well.
This is probably the biggest con pulled by tech companies - play on egalitarian tendencies of tech workers to induce more supply and thus gain additional leverage over employees.
Back in the early 1990s, I recall browsing the "open positions" list, posted in the cafeteria at work and being shocked at the variance in starting salaries: Windows (3.0) Programming positions (C & Visual Basic) requiring no more than a high school education were offered at $70,000. Positions for PhD Chemists began at $35,000 and demanded a long list of accomplishments not limited to publications in major journals. "listed as primary inventor on one or more patents, a plus!"
So in summary, one trade could be learnt by a motivated self-directed student in the span of a summer, for no more cost than a short stack of books. The other required at least 6 years of advanced education and likely $50,000+ of debt -- a serious investment not only in time and money but also opportunity cost, as those 6 years are NOT being spent earning. Yet the former paid twice the latter. (And may still, for all I know.)
Obviously, this was a lead-up to the great wave of offshoring efforts. Executives must have noticed this variance as well.
IT for this kind of "Tech" company is not a cost center. There's a closet or a vending machine chock full of Apple magic keyboards and magic trackpads at ~$100 a pop, plus all the USB-C adapters that you could want (because everyone new gets a touchbar mac).
The attitude is that it's not worth anybody's time to sit there to dispense $100 keyboards or mice, and that promotes the feeling that the company just... trusts everybody there. However, it's undoubtedly more expensive to stock Apple mice and keyboards that way, than it would be to have much cheaper wired alternatives and a minimum wage worker to gatekeep - at least in terms of IT's balance sheet. However, if any employee has to taking an hour off working, to replace their mouse (starting with filing a ticket with IT), the company has lost more than the cost of basically giving away $100 keyboards in productivity.
I ended up breaking up with her. I just couldn't tolerate that kind of friction and lack of support when I was already under the pressure of a job transition.
Even when I succeeded in landing a better paying job she was never truly happy for me. From my point of view it felt like a lack of trust.
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I see how I failed to understand the emotional burden I was asking her to carry for me.
> One of the more apparent lessons I've learned during all this is that when working in tech, anyone is dispensable, from the C-suite to the sales floor. (Actually, IT is untouchable, and rightfully so.)
This former waiter then proceeds to land not one but three tech jobs. Based on what qualifications? Apparently just good networking skills. Wow, what a rough industry. Oh I almost forgot they turned down a fourth job because that would have meant relocation.
It sounds like "tech" was willing to give a go-getter chance after chance and either due to their performance or the company's performance it just didn't stick. Maybe despite many people being willing to give the author a chance, he/she just wasn't qualified to do the job?
I started reading the article with skepticism after that. At my previous startup, unlimited vacation time ended up meaning no vacation time. Sounds great in theory, not in practice. When I left, I did not get reimbursed for the unofficial ~15 paid vacation days we're technically allowed.
Since then, I've worked in a large corporate job for a while now as well, and it's different. Here, management and I can look at my PTO sheet and see I've accrued X hours so I can take off Y weeks, and that's earned. It feels more like a contractual obligation at that point, and not just an off-the-cuff spree.
That's too bad. The person who sits to the left of me just got back from a 6 week long vacation and I have not noticed anyone being upset or treating them differently afterwards. We caught them up with the stuff that happened while they were gone and they went right back to helping the team.
The workload is high, but it's very common for engineers to take a week off after a big, stressful project is delivered.
Because the norm for vacation is set high, I don't feel bad about taking as much time off as I feel I need.
It really helps that our CTO also takes at least a 2 week vacation every year and takes time off for himself when he needs it.
Having said all this, I am not too optimistic, in that I don't believe this situation is very common in the industry.
I was initially against it, but my company (or at least my department?) is now very good at making sure people get sufficient time off.
For instance, if I were running/when I run a company I'd offer unlimited vacation with a two week mandatory minimum, which rolls over up to a four week mandatory minimum. So if you only use one week of vacation in year 1 and then leave, you'd be paid for a week's worth of vacation. If you stay on to year two, your new mandatory minimum is three weeks and you'd be compensated accordingly if you left without using it all.
That said - and it's hard not to sound condescending here - halfway through the article I found myself agreeing with his girlfriend when she described his state of mind as "delusional".
Going after what has been said in the article: What did he actually expect as someone with absolutely no experience and no education and/or skillset for the job beyond those transferable from being a waiter? (The often underrated value of those notwithstanding). And the primary motivation being "I want to work 'in tech' and have it made!" (And not, say, being interested in at least aspects of the core field or product of the company.) And the only actual mention of what his work was at those companies being "marketing" and "whiteboard[ing] the shit out of everything." (Because writing with colorful markers on a whiteboard makes you look important.)
This screams "disposable", or more benevolently "likely one of the first to be let go when things go south", no matter the kind of company or field, or even the type of job at the company.
It seems odd that the same code/infrastructure-y peculiarities of interviewing would get extended to marketing roles - why do you need a 5-person interview loop for things that revolve around communication and people skills? The only reason that those (awful) processes exist in the first place is because it's extremely difficult to judge a candidate's technical skills in a broad swath of concepts and technologies with limited time. But what sort of businessing doesn't require marketers? Is that sort of thing not reasonably figured out?
The author's last contracting stint also smells sort of like the 'gig economy'. Sort of like how nowhere hires janitors anymore - the company which owns the building contracts services like that out to another firm which rarely offers full employment.
Back to the 'rat race', eh?
I don't run a business, maybe I don't want to with this in mind.
[1] http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you...
Ford v dodge bros
Seems to me like its not so much that companies are run by sociopaths but that workers have trouble empathizing with a CEO and understanding that nothing is guaranteed. Rarely are they going to be happy to lay people off, they know it causes problems for people. They're human too. Sometimes there isn't much of an option which preserves their interests. Some might react going "but that's just the problem, they only care about their interests" but...do you really care about theirs? Does anyone work long ours putting passion into a project because they hope to make the executives rich so they can feel good about how rich they made the executives? I certainly don't, I work passionately on something because I believe in what it does/what I'm doing/making, and secondarily for my own gain of wealth. A good CEO runs a company because s/he believes in an idea, and secondarily for their own wealth, and perhaps finally for the ability to create jobs and benefit people that way. But that is a final result of the process, not a primary goal. Of course there are CEOs which just want wealth but in tech space at least they are unlikely to go too far, more likely to fuck up in their greed.
Joint-stock corporations have been around for several hundred years, and limited liability has been a legal concept in American law for almost 200 years.
Employer loyalty may have gone down in the past few generations, but attributing that to shareholder capitalism seems vague and unfounded. Perhaps you mean something else?
I think in the 50s a lot of CEOs would have been embarrassed to announce layoffs while raising their own pay. Now that's normal.
My understanding of the shift that occurred in the latter part of the 20th century was that businesses became less dependent upon fixed local communities.
Part of it was that the communities themselves were dispersing (increased geographic mobility among the populace).
But other factors include:
- a shift from capital-intensive industries like resource extraction and manufacturing, to service industries
- the opening of foreign labor markets
I started hearing about it with Jack Welch ("neutron jack"), GE and others. There was a noticeable change in attitude. "Greed is good". Layoffs were good for the share price.
It started in the 70s. As far as I know GE and Jack Welch were the poster child of this movement.
I think there are real problems with the current economic system, but that it would be easier to discuss solutions/alternatives when people aren't so eager to demonize each other.
I agree with you sentiment regarding whether many line-level employees[1] really understand what is involved in running a company.
[0] https://www.daedtech.com/book/ [1] I include myself in that category
I don't think it's this, but it's that, while a CEO may face troubles, they're nowhere near the troubles that a worker would face. When a CEO fucks up, at the very worst, they're going to get their golden parachute, and land on their feet. They can still get a job if they want, but they likely don't have to. Their families are not going to starve or go homeless.
Compare that to the average worker, who, even if they do everything right, has a decent chance of getting laid off simply because the executives fucked up. Now, they run the real risk of not being able to make their rent/mortgage. Their families might not be able to eat. And, on top of that, the executives will get bonuses.
So I recognize that a CEO is human. But I also recognize that they very rarely face the consequences of their actions, and that those consequences are usually nowhere near as drastic as the consequences that normal people face.
This is terrible advice. Indispensable people are your team's biggest weakness, and your boss knows it. If you become the single point of failure, you're a problem to be fixed.
If you make yourself 'indispensable', the best that can happen is that you're never fired but never promoted. The worst is that you're a target for replacement.
That, and as tempting as it may be to lay it all at the door of capitalism, I'm not sure that's fair. Even in a competition, honor still has some value. I'd put more of the blame on the aphysical conflict-averse types office work generally attracts.
Nothing in the history of corporations has shown any preference for honor on their part
You're talking corporations. "none of these places have any honor" I completely agree with you on corporations.
The one we live in. Honor and integrity are matters of justice. It is honorable to pay an agreed upon price for widgets. It is just. If one deviates from that they are painted as dishonorable and people don't like doing business with someone who has the reputation of being dishonorable (companies that lie to their clients or don't pay their bills).
>The business that is willing to like, steal, and cheat their way to higher profitability is going to outcompete the ones who will not.
Banks can do this unfortunately, but not other companies. You don't build a legacy like Ford, or Samuel Gawith in England by lying, cheating and stealing or treating your customers like trash.
They have zero loyalty yet they demand it from their employees.
This is a natural consequence of our economic systems. Companies that won't burn you the moment that your department's RoI is <1, will be outcompeted or acquired by ones that will.
Though it may seem that way, nothing about this state of affairs has to be immutable.
If there's a solution to this, it seems that the wealth once created should be distributed differently, rather than attempting to kill the goose.
If Musk had not gotten wealthy on paypal, SpaceX wouldn't have been possible. Nor Tesla. If some country had capped his wealth at an arbitrary # (say, $1,000,000) none of this would have happened. Instead, there's a self-driving car in orbit around the sun and thousands of engineers doing amazing stuff.
Opportunity is the natural consequence of a system that maximizes liberty. And yes, that opportunity is for success and failure. But by removing reward, you remove incentive, which reduces effort. Vicious circle. How is this difficult to understand?
Cool, that's about one guy.
I understand that wealth management often includes investing into companies actually doing something, those will most often still be motivated by efficiency (because otherwise they'll be out-competed).
This capitalist system works well, but the humans in the market can be helped out by regulating (oh, the evil word) the companies to give their workers certain rights. This slightly limits wealth accumulation on the higher end not by setting a maximum bank account balance, but by giving money to people who need it (and spend it), thus stimulating the economy further.
This is something all "developed" countries seem to have realised, with the exception of the USA. Or maybe not.
It almost seems like its time for someone to come along and disrupt the disruptors with a little good old fashioned loyalty and a modicum of institutionalized common sense.
Edit: as far as the BigCos are concerned, this is also true of many of their internal teams that are chasing "moonshots" in parallel to the main business model. The "investors" in this case are the profitable parts of the BigCo.
i agree that this has a limit. if one were to want to fix facebook's problems, you'd inevitably have someone tell you no.
And second, what about this story reads you as sociopathic? Sure, there's alot of shuffling in this business, but how much worse is that than any other? Restaurants and bars close down all the time, and no one accuses restaurant and bar managers of being sociopaths.
Every single successful business has the problem of "we have this large amount of money in bonuses that we would like to distribute out to our employees and we want to figure out equitable way to do it". Invariably they end up having the rank and group the employees to do that.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-l...
Now, sure management science has advanced since then, and a lot of the ways that Microsoft implemented stack ranking at the beginning we’ve realized are counterproductive.
But that doesn’t really change the core principle that they end up ranking employees at some point in time
The shocker to me is that such a huge player in our industry applied it to a collaborative task like software development.
Additionally firing the bottom 10% is something that should happen naturally as you discover hiring mistakes. Of course just firing the bottom 10% when they are close to average performers is counter productive.
2.) Go read the comments on the article itself. It’s littered with antecdotes about training your own replacement, being fired before a stock vest, etc.
3.) I would argue that bars and restaurants are a different story all together. The article mentions being a contractor in charge of six-figure decisions which to me reads as a could treat people appropriately chooses not to.
Not saying it does; I'm just saying you should learn some more about suits.
> 2.) Go read the comments on the article itself. It’s littered with antecdotes about training your own replacement, being fired before a stock vest, etc.
I did. The major anecdotes are:
* layed off from a job with one month severance, three months healthcare, because the company realized it needed a different direction
* multiple difficulties with interviewing and attempting to find a new job
* another layoff when a company is acquired and his position is eliminated, where even the author says he considered his severence "more than fair"
* one experience as a contractor where his contract was cancelled with no severence
Sure, it's crappy to have all of those events happen to you, but other than the one contracting gig, I'd consider those layoffs extremely empathic and generous.
Does tech have problems? Sure. But in order for the criticism of it to be effective, we shouldn’t mix it in with general compliants about our current economic system.
Especially since you won't get severance.
My mental image of finance was "bros a'broing", but the reality of the experience was professionals who were fully attuned to the reality of dealing with billions of dollars, and no delusions about how a few lines of javascript will change the world.
Whereas when I went to Google, I was met with a mix of "you're changing the world, selling eyeballs to advertisers" and "It's so great, we get to dress like we're 12 and play like we're 12".
Or the long since pivoted startup I interviewed who was doing their best to break the internet through awful PDF readers while in the office, everyone was ziplining and pogo-sticking around. (I await the mod slap for speaking ill of a YC company).
Edit: They did a follow-up some years later (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v7v51le0lc) and somewhat surprisingly they were still pretty similar! I guess they really know how to balance themselves, since they do seem to be putting out a good product.
They were a darling of HN(YC financed the early rounds) here at first in the late 200Xs following the classic Youtube/Kim Dotcom growth strategy of allowing pretty much any content on Scribd.
The "any content is good content" strategy seemed to work and Scribd grew in popularity but profits remained elusive.
Then Scribd went all dark-patterns on users locking content behind paywalls. This was content that users had submitted themselves.
Finally the inevitable pivot to ebook subscription services happened.
Scribd seems somewhat respectable now although how profitable?
I've heard of other offices where they didn't have the pingpong table, so they just threw the ping pong balls at each other all day.
This is in the midwest, at lower-tier tech companies that you probably haven't heard of but you probably have used some of their work.
The closes we get to "bros a 'boring" is the occasional free beer on a Friday.
Outside of SV it seems like that culture is a minority.