What’s the upside? Can outside observers really make a considered judgement based on the one-sided and incomplete presentation?
A claim of literal brain damage from stress is both difficult to substantiate and difficult to believe, and what are we supposed to do with it?
I work at a similarly sized and positioned company, and all I can think is that the writer of this post seems very unbalanced.
What they described they were doing and tried to do seems like everything I'd expect of a good employee. It's too bad they didn't get the support they needed for it to work and suffered psychologically from it.
They seemed to care deeply about the work and have really high standards for what they were building. They explained that they tried to rally people, bring light to the issue, they stepped in to try and unblock the project, get people moving along, resolve disagreements, etc.
At the same time, all the complaints I've seen before on poorly run organizations. Projects are stalled, spinning their wheels, entralled in forever discussions, decisions are not being made, and when you try to escalate to get things unblocked, the leadership doesn't do anything about it, they just go well I want you all to figure it out ok. And things go right back to being the same dysfunctional. Eventually it hemorrhages talent, people start to leave, quit, switch to something else, and only then does something gets done because now it reflects in actual metrics.
You have to have worked in better run organizations to maybe recognize how badly run that is.
The role of an exec is to maximize output from the resources and assets under their control. Knowing how to best leverage talent, knowing how to properly delegate authority to key people, intervene when there's contention that goes unresolved for too long, allocate additional resources when output suffers from the lack of it, and make decisions about what to invest in, who to invest in, and what/who gets the cut and won't be invested in. All these things are what good management should do.
I think sometimes we talk too much about being a good engineer, but we don't have enough conversation about being a good exec, trust me, like how half of all engineers are below average, and some are outright terrible, this is true of execs as well, except execs seem to get away with it for even longer normally, because there's so many people under them to pick up their slack.
You, on the other hand, are slagging her with personal attacks in multiple comments in this thread. I wouldn't hire you after knowing you wrote them and I don't think you'd be saying the things you are with your name on them.
It sounds like we wouldn’t be a good cultural fit for each other’s organizations and that’s okay.
Thanks for providing an alternative viewpoint to consider.
Not everything has to have an upside. It takes courage to be a whistle-blower.
>... and what are we supposed to do with it?
We are supposed to learn from others experience, so we don't repeat the mistakes of the past.
> I work at a similarly sized and positioned company, and all I can think is that the writer of this post seems very unbalanced.
So what? Why do you think your experience at a different org matters in this case? If everything is working well for you, good, carry on.
You could say a very similar thing about coming out as gay. If a man figures out he's gay, he doesn't benefit from still including women in his dating pool. Maybe his dating pool shrinks by 95%, but who cares, he only wants the last 5% anyway. The hard part of dating isn't really finding a dateable person, but narrowing down the set of all people to a mostly optimal one. Likewise, the hard part of finding a job isn't finding a place that's hiring, but narrowing down the set of all jobs to a mostly optimal one.
Maybe the author wasn't that way, and going through the whole ordeal really damaged them, resulting in behavior that would previously seem unthinkable. Really stressful episodes can leave you very screwed up in the head, call it brain damage our however you like, it's a very real thing that happens.
Earlier in my career, I would sometimes get very annoyed when users would call me to report problems. Thinking about it, I realized that it was me that was the problem. I put a picture of a guy working in a coal mine next to my phone so I could have some perspective.
Operation Overlord was the code-name for the Battle of Normandy. The average age of the soldiers in that battle was 20. Up to 226,000 casualties with up to 39,000 dead.
I don't mean to belittle anyone's experiences, but she is claiming permanent brain damage from the stress of being a software engineer and used as evidence of that brain damage that, "some days I couldn’t find my car in the garage or forgot entire conversations". The first one was literally a Seinfeld episode. The second one - who doesn't do that?
However, many people don't have it, or just get too apathetic about the job if they detach like that, and live very stressful lives. I've personally seen it happen several times.
Then why did you do it? Surely if you’re self-aware enough to write this part, you’re self-aware enough to not write the rest of the paragraph, or to imply that, if it’s not Battle of Normandy bad, it’s not worth mentioning.
She said that she was put on forced medical leave by her doctor. You ignored that in favor of making a dismissive comment about an anecdote.
The author wrote a highly personal post about a difficult situation, in effort to advise people to avoid situations that caused her trauma. That takes a lot of courage, and I admire her for it.
We just have different definitions of what constitutes being kind. I think it is kinder to tell people what you really think than it is to coddle them. Sometimes people are better off hearing hard truths.
She described a career filled with unnecessary stress and unsuccessful projects where everyone else is at fault and every environment is toxic. If I were describing my own career in that way, I'd think it was time for some introspection.
But that's not what actually inspired me to comment. The main thing that bugged me about this subthread is that, rather than contributing to a potentially interesting conversation about whether workspaces are toxic, and what to do about it, people are nitpicking whether the author's self-described trauma is legitimate or not. Regardless of whether it's true, it strikes me as a form of ad-hominem... ignoring the content in favor of attacking the author.
That's not so much about you, I have to admit, as the whole subthread. Thanks for a thoughtful reply.
> "...were central to our struggles and the toxicity of the environment. ... two experts in their fields from competing corporations would fail to agree"
> "...at best we had a part-time PM for a brief time who volunteered and then moved on"
> "...our leads were overworked and lacked the power to create change."
>"...I’ve seen managers cry multiple times, and this is one of the places that happened."
>"...and I’ve been blessed with colleagues and leads who have seen the worth of it and supported me."
This does not read as though she is blaming "everyone else". Throughout the post there is a very heavy focus on "we" and "our" for referring to the team and the teams stress and lack of empowerment. I thought she went out of her way to make clear it wasnt the team she worked with, but upper management fostering a negative environment.(ex, not supporting the team needing a PM) Finally recognizing that upper leadership and people outside the project injecting themselves into or blocking change, seems like introspection. Finally seeing that this was not right/healthy, is how one gets out of an abusive pattern. This is more of a retrospective than the sprint
Added the first part of the sentence missing from your example. Prolonged exposure to an unhealthy stressed environment can create physical changes in the brain and body. In this case, chronic stress which had such adverse effects it caused a forced medical leave.
> ...from the stress of being a software engineer
"My two years at Google were spent perpetually stressed, acting as an unofficial PM, helping run meetings and document decisions while dealing with sometimes hostile colleagues." - I can't speak for others, but this is not the 'normal' stress of being a software engineer that I know. That has all kinds of red flags. I have never been asked to perform the duties of an assistant/secretary or help organize a meeting that was not mine. Nor have I had to juggle the actual normal stress of my software job on top of having an unofficial/unpaid PM role (itself a full time job), while also having to deal with hostile colleagues. And, it seems they were not the only ones having to deal with some of this.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/protect-your-br...
https://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495(05)0003...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03064...
You seem to know a lot about this - can you tell me what "forced medical leave" is? It seems to imply that a doctor ordered her to stop working against her will and that she was forced to obey. In what states is that legal? I've googled every iteration of "forced medical leave" I can think of and the only thing I can find is that it is illegal for employers to force you to take medical leave in lieu of complying with reasonable accommodations.
I don't see anything about a doctor being able to order "forced medical leave" so appreciate any help you can provide in helping me understand what that means.
If your health deteriorates to the point where a physician has graduated from gentle advice to very strong recommendations, if things get any worse they may be forced to take that intervention. There are specific symptoms and conditions that will set off red flags and alarm bells where they will begin asking you specific screening questions that may lead to taking drastic action.
Mental health problems can be serious stuff when they get out of hand! Your body will do bizarre stuff it wouldn't normally do even if you're a perfectly healthy individual. In my case it was bad enough things had progressed to very strongly worded recommendations, and given the circumstances I was totally okay with taking the advice even though it would negatively impact the project (and my career).
Sure, everyone knows that. But "forced medical leave" from work seems to be something completely different. I can't seem to find any information whatsoever about it.
If something like this is what happened, I would suspect it would raise HR flags to the point of requiring the note to return to work.
Or are you using a sly way of calling them crazy?
Engineers should never succumb to corporate slavery, here are the reasons:
1) too smart
2) Can find a job elsewhere
3) Google in a resume is literally gold(for her particularly)
Should there never be a competence level after which one can share what they really think.
Are we really free if we can't voice unpopular opinions like hey it's a FAANG but it sucked.