Getting free of toxic tech culture

I have one main gripe, though: The scope limitation to tech.

> "Toxic tech cultures are those that demean and devalue you as holistic, multifaceted human beings. Toxic tech cultures are those that prioritize profits and growth over human and societal well being. Toxic tech cultures are those that treat you as replaceable cogs within a system of constant churn and burnout.

This is __not__ a tech specific problem. This is a systemic aspect of labor in an overly-capitalist society. Not bashing capitalism, either. But, spare me the 'woe is me, tech bros are out to get us'. Sure, some are. But these problems exist in every industry; the service industry, Hollywood and film, architecture and construction, finance, etc.

As I said, I think the rest of the article was well written and on-topic. That, though, is trying to paint rice grains with a broom.

GREAT question.

I've often pondered this. Shooting from the hip I would wager this question is easier to answer if one considers the source of one's income.

I'm a political science graduate, who fell into tech early in his career. For me, tech is just a job that's paying for my continued studies. It's a means to an end. It's why I absolutely loathe talking about work when I'm not at work, and in general talking about what I do for a living. Not for a lack of pride, I am definitely proud of where I am and how I got here given the circumstances, it's just not my passion and no I'm sorry I don't want to troubleshoot your tech issues at 6:30 on a Thursday or any other time.

It's nothing personal, it's just I do this sometimes upwards of 60 hours a week and outside of those hours, I'd rather have a normal life where I can do things that appeal to me. No offers of buying me a six pack or a free dinner can really change that.

Different strokes for different folks, though --and that's perfectly OK if other folks DO want to live this way through their chosen professions.

The answer to your question is probably ultimately answered by YMMV.

Where I work, even though there are some titles that have the word "manager" in, the organization refers to anyone that have people report to them as "people leaders".

They are responsible for the well being of the those that report to them. If you take away the part where you are responsible for your people, what is left?

Even if you take the most clinical and robotic view of the role, you still have to effectively allocate your resources. This means balancing strengths and weaknesses, allocating team members to places they are more interested in to improve performance. All this boils down to getting to know your people and making sure they are happy...

> You should just be able to work and separate yourself from your task in any emotional way.

This is also a crazy statement coming from someone who has people report to them. People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??!

Which rules? There are no rules saying "you can't do marketing" or "you can't claim to change the world".

> Are you implying that the hyperbolic marketing of startups is a feature and not a bug?

I am implying it's a natural consequence of a startup being oriented on doing something new, never done before, and natural consequence of somebody being about to undertake a high-risk/high-reward activity. That requires certain mindset. Wanting to change the world highly correlates with such a mindset. Wanting to improve the cost of fidgelating type A sprockets by 0.1% does not. Of course, if humans were perfect robots, they'd always be exactly as much excited as it takes to be able to do a startup, and not one exciton over that. Imperfect humans frequently get more excited than that.

> there's a cognitive dissonance when 500 startup founders believe they are all changing the world

There's million of traders believing they can make a profit (which is arithmetically impossible) and millions of people believing they all can win a lottery (which is even more impossible since lottery is a negative-sum game). Of course, vast majority of these people are wrong. And 499 of the 500 startup founders will be wrong too. So what? Why is it "toxic"? What's your problem with them believing it? People hold much more dangerous and useless false beliefs every day than belief that you can have positive impact on the world.

> But there are SV companies which provide ample evidence that marketing is all the do. Juicero, Yo, etc.

Didn't I just admit there are some companies that are just hype in the very next phrase, and explained why this admission does not disprove my point?

> This is a very unique aspect of tech culture, and not at all a good one in my opinion.

High risk investment is in no way unique to SV. There are lots of people that invest in all kinds of crazy stuff, from hipster juicers to high-stake poker games. They can afford it, and they are the lifeblood of innovation and invention. All power to them. I literally can't think of anything bad coming from a billionaire spending some promilles of his outsized bank account on some weird innovative project, that may or may not change the world. Some of those would be stupid, so what. You can't make innovation without doing a couple of stupid tries on the way.