Hacker News Reader

Comment by malcolmgreaves | Hacker News Reader

What is your message -- the author shouldn't share their story of a toxic workplace because they made more money than folks in other toxic workplaces?

View on HN

If OP's description is what constitutes a "toxic workplace" then any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is also toxic. From what I read, I would describe OP's team as severely dysfunctional and the bar for "toxic" should be higher (generally, indicating some level of malice).

I think it's damaging to dilute terms like "toxic" by using them to describe a situation that is generally stressful and widely experienced.

> If OP's description is what constitutes a "toxic workplace" then any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is also toxic.

> I think it's damaging to dilute terms like "toxic" by using them to describe a situation that is generally stressful and widely experienced.

This characterization is inches away from an epiphany.

I think every nihilist has the "epiphany" you're implying.

My point is that any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is generally stressful, has unproductive meetings, and callous bosses but this is not my bar for "toxic". I'd raise that a bit higher to apply to Activision, Goldman, etc. where there's a level of malice.

What you are suggesting is "nihilism" would, by people who have not decided to norm bad things, perhaps look a lot more like communalism.

Just because something is widely experienced doesn't mean we must dismiss criticisms of it.

No, but if we're lowering the bar for what constitutes "toxic" to something that is widely experienced then that is inherently dismissive of actually toxic work environments that are not widely experienced.

Toxic work environments are widespread. Their widespread nature doesn't somehow magically make them not qualify as 'toxic'. And if anything, it should prompt wider changes in industry, because clearly it is not an isolated incident.

Share, yes absolutely. But also, keep in perspective, that these are ~$500K+ jobs and the (certainly smart) folks in these jobs can also move to other parts of google that arent as hard to deal with. So, it is understandable that others might not consider this to be a bad deal overall.

I see an emotionally unstable author more than I see a toxic workplace.

It is prudent to err the side of giving the benefit of the doubt to the entity with relatively less power. I see no reason to instinctively jump to Google's defense here, they are more than capable of defending themselves.

The whole team left, so it doesn't seem like the author was a snowflake in this case.

Though looking at the timelines, the team left or had been moved around after a two year period. So it wasn't necessarily an abrupt change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com