How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one • Hacker News Board

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#191

Post by throwawaycampus » Sat, May 08, 2021, 2:38 AM UTC

sideproject wrote: post #86

I worked in a small startup company (~20) with a horrible founder. As a lead, she would ask me why some people are taking their lunch time after 2pm. I didn't know how to answer. Our standup would last 45 minutes where she would interrogate each person. As a lead, I didn't have the guts to fix it. I stayed for a year. There are many things I should've done and I could've done. That was a truly toxic place.

At my place of employment we do standups on a per project basis. There are 2-5 projects in flight at any given time and this has created an environment where we are attending 2-5 daily standups to read tickets out of Jira and discuss the status of each ticket.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#192

Post by kwdc » Sat, May 08, 2021, 4:19 AM UTC

username90 wrote: post #176

kwdc wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's with the firing after vacation thing? Always puzzled me.

You can see each vacation is like a trial firing, if they miss you then you get to come back.

Still puzzles me. Businesses are all about relationships. Building a business based on this level of hostility must be exhausting. The level of staff turnover and overall churn due to trust issues must be huge and they must haemorrage employees continuously. So much bad will being created for short term gains. They then complain when they get bad employees or can't find good ones.

So strange. But not unexpected. Its obviously profitable, right?

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#193

Post by twman » Sat, May 08, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

moistbar wrote: post #156

qftw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we mandate Huxley's Soma for everyone so all anger is suppressed at all times? Really, this obsessive hunting for displays of anger and ruining people's lives over it and the Schadenfreude makes me wonder who the actual psychopaths are.

> obsessive hunting for displays of anger and ruining people's lives over it The man ruined his own life by being an absolute maniac. He has nobody to blame but himself, and to make it out to be a witch hunt is at minimum obtuse and at worst acting as an apologist for dangerous behavior. If throwing a printer at someone who's pleasantly introducing themself seems reasonable to you, please, I beg of you, never work an…

No one said that throwing printers at someone is reasonable.

However, I've seen many witch hunts that engage in libel, so the story might have been dramatized. How about:

Office worker X carried a printer when Y entered the office without knocking. X turned around, startled, and dropped the printer near Y's feet in surprise. X curses "Don't you ever effing sneak up on me like that".

I absolutely know psychopaths who'd turn that into a defamatory story, which is easy nowadays since everyone is searching for aggressions of all sorts.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#194

Post by smsm42 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

derefr wrote: post #74

MrFoof wrote: post #4

Imagine going into an environment suffering some serious performance issues adversely affecting the day-to-day operations of the business. From initial conversations it seems great. You're asked about how you'd handle, "difficult personalities" a fair bit, but aside from that, seems like you can add a ton of value. In your first days, you exhaustively quantitatively measure the entire operating environment, prioritiz…

> You report the incident to who you are directed to report into and are told to, "man up." Given that you also mention further down a dev getting punched, I think this statement was code for “if you don’t like what they’re saying, you should just shut them up.” Machismo-driven cultures are confusing until you realize that everyone is just expecting you to literally physically assault your way to the top, and is just…

> to literally physically assault your way to the top

I don't think that's the expectation. I think if the author would punch the lights out of the screamer, he wouldn't be congratulated and promoted, but probably fired on the spot and maybe also arrested and sued. In those kinds of companies, the shit usually flows only one way. Some people are "just this way" and you're expected to treat them specially, but you don't get to be "this way".

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#195

Post by smsm42 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

genezeta wrote: post #116

MrFoof wrote: post #4

Imagine going into an environment suffering some serious performance issues adversely affecting the day-to-day operations of the business. From initial conversations it seems great. You're asked about how you'd handle, "difficult personalities" a fair bit, but aside from that, seems like you can add a ton of value. In your first days, you exhaustively quantitatively measure the entire operating environment, prioritiz…

I walked into a weird job environment not long ago. First couple days were not that bad. Not particularly good, but nothing too bad. Like people weren't too friendly but neither too hostile. There was, though, some casual heated discussion here and there. As I met some people more closely I began to see a trend: Everybody hated almost everybody else. One developer openly told me in our first conversation something li…

> I tried really hard and stayed there for more than 1 1/2 years

Was it worth it? Do you regret not quitting after the first 2 months?

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#196

Post by smsm42 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 7:32 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #81

bourgwaletariat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is the problem. Unprofessional, low-quality employees think employment is "king of the hill," when really it's "tides lift all boats." It only takes 1 person in a company of a hundred to completely destroy it. Allow one psychopath into your company and it'll go bankrupt or otherwise defunct within just a couple years. These folks are afraid. They know their performance is substandard. They exist by hiding t…

Unprofessional, low-quality employees think employment is "king of the hill," when really it's "tides lift all boats." Very few people believe teamwork is a rising tide because very few companies do. A perf improvement that takes something from hundreds of minutes down to 1.2s does make the person who did the original implementation look bad. Questions will be asked why it was so much worse before, especially if thos…

> A perf improvement that takes something from hundreds of minutes down to 1.2s does make the person who did the original implementation look bad.

Yes, it does. An adult in this situation says "dude, did I write a shitty code! Thanks for fixing it, good job!" A manipulator starts to refer to the code "the code I initiated with X's improvements" or just "our code". An idiot starts screaming so everybody remembers about his failure and tells about it to strangers years after. It's hard to be an idiot.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#197

Post by genezeta » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:11 AM UTC

smsm42 wrote: post #195

genezeta wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I walked into a weird job environment not long ago. First couple days were not that bad. Not particularly good, but nothing too bad. Like people weren't too friendly but neither too hostile. There was, though, some casual heated discussion here and there. As I met some people more closely I began to see a trend: Everybody hated almost everybody else. One developer openly told me in our first conversation something li…

> I tried really hard and stayed there for more than 1 1/2 years Was it worth it? Do you regret not quitting after the first 2 months?

It's kind of hard to tell, actually.

On the one hand I did need a job and I'm at that age where it's not always easy to find one. On the other, ah, maybe I regret it a little, but not too much.

I mean, I'm usually pretty calm myself and I have worked previously with difficult people, so while it was truly a horrible place, it didn't affect me too much[1]. And then again, I did achieve some things. It was a really old project with old code and people with little and outdated knowledge, and I managed to clean up large parts, teach some things to the two or three receptive developers there, and write detailed but practical documentation for all the things I did. So all in all, at some level I do feel like I accomplished something.

But then again... There were other, much larger problems with the team, the project, management, etc, which were just insane. I ended up quitting when, after meeting with management once more, they simply answered that they didn't care and they wouldn't change a single thing at all.

----

[1] I do confess there were days when I thought about quitting, and just this once, on my second-to-last day, I did get angry at someone.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#198

Post by genezeta » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC

__exit__ wrote: post #126

genezeta wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I walked into a weird job environment not long ago. First couple days were not that bad. Not particularly good, but nothing too bad. Like people weren't too friendly but neither too hostile. There was, though, some casual heated discussion here and there. As I met some people more closely I began to see a trend: Everybody hated almost everybody else. One developer openly told me in our first conversation something li…

Wow, 1.5 years of bearing such daily situations, that is something I find impressive given the anecdotes you described. I would probably not have lasted than long in such an environment. Good for you to leave that place at last. Hope you found a much more better environment!

Thanks.

> Hope you found a much more better environment!

Ah, we'll see how that goes.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#199

Post by benhurmarcel » Sat, May 08, 2021, 12:03 PM UTC

Viliam1234 wrote: post #179

benhurmarcel wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Shouldn’t a company pay what a job is worth to them No, they pay just enough for you to accept working there. If your alternatives are worse than your colleagues because you don't have high-paying local options, you'll be paid less.

Imagine a country where most employers would agree that a black developer should be paid only 30% of what a white developer in the same position with the same skills would make. The black developers would have to accept such deal... because it would be the best option they would have. Now somehow when you replace "black" with "Polish", it suddenly becomes ethically okay.

It becomes legally ok, which is all that matters to the company.

Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one

#200

Post by dijksterhuis » Sat, May 08, 2021, 2:02 PM UTC

mbrodersen wrote: post #188

dijksterhuis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dude is my hero.

The guy has no self control and he is your hero? What are the chances that he will loose control and lash out when arguing with his girlfriend/wife? I would think pretty high. Self control requires a strong mind. He is clearly weak and the opposite of a hero.

Cool, have fun with that. I'm going to be over here eating bacon and not beating myself up for not being perfect.