Hacker News Reader

Comment by StudentStuff | Hacker News Reader

Its horrifying how Musk treats his workers, its very reminiscent of what Amazon does to most of its employees here in Seattle.

Unpaid overtime for warehouse workers? Definitely, as long as the worker doesn't squawk to L&I! Work your developers 10 hours a day, then guilt trip them to coming in on Sunday? Amazon does this constantly. Tesla, SpaceX and Blue Origin seem to have the same work culture as Amazon, even Microsoft or Adobe have better work cultures.

Oh, and Musk is all too happy to intimidate employees: https://www.thedailybeast.com/workers-say-tesla-is-trying-to...

View on HN

"even" Microsoft? Microsoft, home of the individual office, 8-hour workday, #7 in Fortune's Best Places to Work?

There's a lot to dislike about bigcorps, but the working environment isn't one of them.

Yeah, have to agree here. From personal observations, as well as other people I know who work there, MSFT work/life balance is hard to beat. Ofc it varies by team, so I can only talk about what I have personally encountered

In the recent past, Microsoft had pretty awful work/life balance. It has improved measurably over the past couple years, but some teams are still pretty bad, and the people I know who are higher up (esp. if they aren't software devs) consistently work over 60hrs a week.

Based on the same type of anecdotal evidence, I have the complete opposite view. I've not met anyone that has enjoyed their time at Microsoft. They all talk about the awful work situation, terrible management practices and the backstabbing politics to the point you can't trust your own co-workers.

With all that said, the reality is that you can't take a single brush and paint companies that have so many employees with it. The experience varies very widely on which part of the company they are in.

I'm sure parts of Microsoft are wonderful to work at. Just like I'm sure parts of Amazon are wonderful to work at (they have numerous awards as well indicating this: #1 by LinkedIn this year, for example). I wish we'd stop taking articles that point out the experiences of a couple people to mean that is the situation at the company. Report the full story, not click-bait articles.

Microsoft ditched individual offices starting in 2014. At least half of the Redmond campus is in “team rooms” now - with mixed results.

That's for blue-badge people. Temps + Contractors... not so much.

This is 100% the "move fast and break things" culture SV has come to adore over the last decade. Things also includes employees and pesky labor laws.

Really? How does Facebook, Apple, Salesforce, Intel, etc. violate labor laws or mistreat their employees? You can’t use a few companies as a proxy for the entire valley.

Wait, seriously? You've never heard about Uber? Or this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-tech-job...

I don't think any of those companies represent the "move fast and break things" ethos at this point either.

Just for the record, while I've heard enough terrible things about Tesla and SpaceX to never consider working there, I know someone at Blue Origin and, at least as of a year or two ago, he reported that the hours and stress were way better than the aviation/rocket industry average. He was very happy. Employee turnover at Blue Origin is low.

Why not cite your claims about Amazon with a news article, just show good faith

I have many friends that work there or have in the recent past, Amazon's practices wrt employee abuse are constantly reported on though.

Take a look through recent articles about Amazon: https://www.qwant.com/?q=amazon overwork employees&t=news&freshness=all

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com