Getting free of toxic tech culture • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#241

Post by illumin8 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:36 AM UTC

xor1 wrote: post #213

illumin8 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

White male, 44 years old. I'm a principal engineer at a big tech company and could get a job at a moments notice paying really well any time I choose. I'm not sure ageism really exists, outside of some toxic startups with a "bro" culture, and in my experience, those are the types of places that nobody wants to work anyway.

Do you mind me asking what languages/stack you're currently working with? Just out of curiosity.

I'm focused more on infrastructure than software engineering lately: AWS/CloudFormation, but I still write some Python/NodeJS/Bash, mostly infrastructure glue rather than actual apps.

The key to keeping yourself relevant is understanding the big picture, and learning stuff that is outside your area of expertise. For example, I started as a network engineer, but got into UNIX because I wanted to know how the provisioning systems worked that ran on Sun boxes. Then I moved into UNIX sysadmin work, and I found that I could run circles around most sysadmins because I understood how the network functioned and could troubleshoot beyond a single box (hint: it's (almost) always a DNS problem... :) After you've stood up a few complete datacenters or soup to nuts web infrastructure for a few medium sized companies, you move into architecture, but you need to keep yourself relevant and current. Here is a rough timeline of what I was focused on:

1990-1994 - Novell Netware, WordPerfect Office (became Novell Groupwise) 1994-1999 - Network engineering at an ISP, got into UNIX. 1999-2005 - Solaris system administration (2001-2002 was rough and was out of work for about 9 months during the dot com crash) 2005-2008 - Linux system administration - got into storage administration and became a SAN/storage architect. Started going really deep on configuration management, CFengine, later Chef/Puppet - automate all the things! 2009-2013 - VMware and private cloud - my skills as a storage architect led me to a natural role as a VMware architect, and automated provisioning infrastructure as a service. 2013-now - public cloud/AWS.

Keep reinventing yourself, and you have to really enjoy learning new things, or you won't last long in this industry. I think that's probably true of any job, though, honestly. Would you want to see a doctor that hadn't learned anything since he left medical school? I sure wouldn't...

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#242

Post by jrs235 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #208

jrs235 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People don't turn off their emotions just because they are getting paid to perform a task !??! Isn't that what we expect professionals to do? I mean yeah professionals still have feelings and emotions but they learn to detach them from their job. Like how we expect police officers to conduct themselves... Like trained professionals.

We expect professionals to manage their emotions; huge difference. As the other poster says, it's a literal impossibility for a human being to not experience emotions. And police offers have to deal with stuff like PTSD and emotional trauma from their job, because of how intense it is. To a lesser degree than that, our (less intense) jobs have an unavoidable emotional impact on us.

Fair point about managing versus not having emotions.

For me the following hits home for me recently

>One easy rule is that if someone says "Only talk to me about work." then the other person has to respect it. No forcing of social acceptance , no shaming the other to believe what you believe, just focus on what you were hired for.

I don't think of my company or coworkers as family. I have my life outside of the office and prefer to keep it personal and private for the most part. Likewise, I not that interested in talking about what happened in everyone's 16 hours out of the office. I am interested in discussing the problems we are facing at work and getting work done, which ironically can involve this very topic and conversation we are having right now. I want to put 8 honest hours in, not 6 honest and 2 talking about outside matters, not 8 honest and 2 talking about outside matters. What sucks is culturally I seem to be a misfit because others apparently think I am anti social. But I don't believe I am. I don't come in in the morning and say hello because I don't believe my arrival is so important that I should interrupt people that I assume are hard at work focusing and concentrating. If you're at your desk, YOU need to say hello to me as I walk in so I know I'm not interrupting you. But also not get mad if I all I say is hi and blow off any small talk. On my commute in I am thinking about what I want to accomplish within the first hour of work so I'm already focusing on doing that. Want to chit chat? Catch me at lunch.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#243

Post by pvg » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

Aloha wrote: post #212

tptacek wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've worked at a company that had a "must wear ties to the office" requirement (yes, those still exist) and came out thinking that their employees were less "docile" than those of the median SFBA startup?

Just my observations and opinion.. but, worked with, not at, but generally about equal in raw numbers - it really depends where the docility comes out - in fortune 500's being weird in general is strongly discouraged, but the penalties for stepping out of line are small usually, the big benefit is, cultural norms are clearly established, and generally followed - in a SV company, being weird is strongly encouraged, cu…

So you're saying tech companies have vague 'cultural values' that encourage a certain degree of non-conformity and then harshly punish/fire non-conformists? That doesn't really make any sense, at least, not in the non-specific form you've put it. Right at a time of a fair bit of tech-company culture examination and critique, this particular complaint seems to come up mostly never. How do you explain that? The docility? It gets a little circular.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#244

Post by kelnos » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

trhway wrote: post #21

>What is toxic tech culture? 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. has there been any factory floor, farm, private or government office where thing…

Your comment is just classic whataboutism. I don't doubt that there are problems with diversity and discrimination in non-tech industries, but that doesn't mean we don't have some serious problems that need to be addressed.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#245

Post by itronitron » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

finnthehuman wrote: post #123

tlb wrote: post #44

I predict people will claim "our culture isn't that toxic. Some of those things happen, but they don't bother me much." If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out. So don't ask "would this bother me?" Ask "would it bother someone?" And since you can't predict this from inside your head, you have to rely on firsthand acc…

>If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out. I used to think like this. After years and years of refining my own behavior, a non-work, non-"tech" friend let it slip that my fiends though I had turned into a non-confrontational, lawyer-sounding, people-pleaser. He wasn't wrong, I had gotten in the habit of always walking…

If the person chiding you was a co-worker and not your manager then you can just tell them that you feel like they are harassing you and that you would like them to stop. If they don't stop then go complain to HR.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#246

Post by adamsea » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

geofft wrote: post #190

adamsea wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read his memo, the Wired article explaining his poor interpretation of existing science, the Quora article explaining his poor interpretation of existing science, and the recent Gizmodo article about the lawsuit. I glanced at your twitter link; once I saw it was about his lawsuit I shifted gears to the root of the issue. I thought Damore's comment in footnote 9, when discussing compensation in the workplace, that "…

(FYI, I agree with your views but I think that shifting this thread to the merits of the Damore memo is off-topic and unproductive - it's months old, and everyone who knows about it has made up their minds about it already. I think there's room for productive conversation about the blog post this comment thread is supposed to be about, and I think re-litigating the Damore memo is just going to push this thread in the…

Good point :)

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#247

Post by xya3453 » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

staunch wrote: post #239

> white, male, nerds who’ve dropped out of Harvard or Stanford," Literally 99% of white, male, nerds don't fit this description. Every day in Silicon Valley people show favoritism to individuals that, for purely economic reasons , got into Stanford or Harvard. Investors that went to Stanford invest in founders that went to Stanford because their own investors (LPs) that also went to Stanford will favor them. This is…

This goes against the narrative and against the hedged interests of SV elites.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#248

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #237

majormajor wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's take that "biological difference in choices" as premise A, and then take premise B to be the company professing a policy to want a more even split. The result of that might be an action C, where you lower the standards required to hire people who are in one group to get the numbers more even - otherwise A will cause there to be not enough people of your usually quality for the numbers you want in B. And that…

This second premise, that Google hires under qualified candidates of they're diverse, is also incorrect. He claimed that Google made the false negative rate higher for non-diverse candidates. Here's the relevant quote: > "Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for 'diversity' candidates by decreasing the false negative rate. In other words the bar was only lowered in the sense that diverse candidates di…

Ah, good point, I do remember that false negative bit. That was actually the first thing that jumped out at me, because it seems incredibly implausible and ridiculous!

Here's why I think he's full of shit on that one. Reducing the false negative rate without lowering the bar is an unambiguous positive. He's asking me to believe that Google invented a better interviewing process that will save them tons of time and money in recruiting, and chose not to use it widely.

I simply can't believe it. Not with the salaries they and their competitors are paying. If they had a magic bullet to get more just-as-qualified candidates through the pipeline, they'd use it everywhere.

And in a world that loves to write articles about interviewing / click on those articles as much as this one, I think we'd have heard about it by now.

(Yes, the media coverage contributed to everyone else thinking he was judging them, but so did the text itself. But, in turn, you (and he) are missing the most likely explanation for why Google says they want a diverse workforce: not to discriminate against men, but to look good in the media without intention of actually making major changes to follow through, as their actual recruiting policies appear to be stuck in the same place they've been for years, based on the recruiters I've talked to there. Lotta algorithm questions, lots of years-of-experience and existing-knowledge-of-language-details crap. All stuff that's gonna favor a certain typical profile at the screening stage. PR BS is PR BS, in other words.)

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#249

Post by malvosenior » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #157

malvosenior wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-white male who has succeeded in this industry based on talent alone, I couldn’t disagree more. I also take offense to people suggesting I need some sort of handout or special attention. Feels infantalizing and quite frankly terrible.

It's never my intent to offend anyone; I apologize. I wasn't trying to suggest there that anyone needed a handout. However, yeah, I do think affirmative action has its place, and also that it can be challenging to implement well. Same with diversity programs in the workplace. Personally I don't think it makes sense to characterize these program as a handout, since it's a particular policy meant to try and make up for…

> I am genuinely curious - do you think it makes sense to extrapolate from your own individual experience to all other nonwhite people, or to women?

I'm speaking of my own personal experience but you seem to be speaking for all of these other groups (nonwhite people and women). There's no way we're going to agree on things like affirmative action and diversity programs but I hope you can at least understand how some people may see that as condescending and racist/sexist in its own right.

Re: Getting free of toxic tech culture

#250

Post by malvosenior » Fri, Jan 19, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #201

Aloha wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jesus Christ. Google seems to be infested by wingnuttery on both sides - nearly every example there is an example of left or right crazies. But they do seem to show a pattern of left leaning wingnuts being more accepted than right leaning.

It's a company of 72,000 people where employees are encouraged to speak their minds. Get any group of 72,000 people together and have them say what they actually believe and you'll find a lot of wingnuttery. Just look at the comment section of any blog, news story, YouTube video, or Internet forum. The alternative viewpoint is that humanity actually holds far more diversity of thought and ideology than you had ever c…

> encouraged to speak their minds.

Damore was fired though.