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Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

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Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#321

Post by blablabla123 »

pydry wrote: post #237
zackify wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was able to negotiate a 45k pay raise at my current company. After clearly proving my value for about 2 years. I made it obvious that I would accept a role at my friends company if they couldn’t come up. I explained to them nicely that I would rather stay, but I can’t without a large raise. It can be done, but it would have never happened without me pushing them. No company is going to willingly throw out raises th…

I've seen some friends some do this. The time it took to go through, the size of the raise and the headache involved in convincing everybody (like pulling teeth), still, IME, essentially made it a losing proposition for them compared to just hopping jobs. Still others have thrown out raises without being pushed but they were critical organizational lynchpins getting 10% raises when the market would bump them 50% mini…

A friend of mine also at some point disliked his job and convinced everybody to give him better equipment, more responsibility and a significant raise. From what he told it was really justified since they lagged behind tech-wise and then he stayed 1 or 2 years more. But it seemed they've put so much pressure on him that he needed a 1 year break from everything afterwards.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#322

Post by missedthecue »

talideon wrote: post #103
emmo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Move to a different neighbourhood.

Or try to get how zoning fixed to allow for mixed-use.

How's that going to fix the problem of expensive single family homes in walkable neighborhoods?

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#323

Post by varelse »

aksss wrote: post #312
varelse wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have to sign an agreement that gives my employer permission to terminate me at any time for any reason with or without cause, they should not be surprised that it also grants me the right to quit at any time for any reason with or without cause. And yet, all that fuss about these job hoppers. How about creating an environment and culture where sticking around beats job hopping instead? As for the alternative? Ch…

Employment contracts are a double-edged sword that would warrant their own discussion. Also you’re not really signing an agreement that they can fire you, you’re signing an acknowledgement of the at-will employment status so you can’t claim any illusions that you had an employment contract, but that status is typically derived from state law and advertised on the job posting you applied for. That paper you’re signing…

I once had to sign a non-compete that came with paying me my full salary during the noncompete period to do anything but what I was doing. I was great with that. And when I left, they chose not to enforce it anyway, but I felt like that was a fair deal.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#324

Post by lmilcin »

Really?

First rule of asking about why somebody left a job is that people tend to first make the decision and then rationalise it. They will tell a lot of interesting stories about toxic culture and whatnot where in fact the reason might be they wanted to get a raise but their boss did not think they deserved it. It would be interesting to see how many people actually admitted it.

And reality is that most people that recently changed jobs of their own volition did this to a) keep working remotely and b) get better salary. Because they f-n can.

Especially in software development I have seen drastic increase in salaries. You see the offers increase practically daily. What I thought was a very good salary, in the span of less than a year became bottom of the bottom of the ranges I am receiving.

Most of companies are absolutely unwilling to increase salary for their employees. This is f-n stupid because people will find out at some point that their new colleagues with fraction of their experience have been hired for 2 or 3 times their salary.

It has already been a standard that it is easier to get a better salary by changing jobs rather than trying to beg your company to move it by more than inflation. Now that people have gotten used to it they stopped feeling any remorse about it and actually expect to leave the company in a year or two when they can get better salary. Why beg your boss when you are almost certain you can earn more with your two additional years of experience?

It is now socially acceptable to quit your job after a year or two and a lot of people no longer even considers actually trying to do a better job because their plan is to just change it. Why work your ass off when you are guaranteed a raise anyway? Hence the rise of "performative work" that has been described here some time ago. https://www.economist.com/business/2022/01/08/the-rise-of-pe...

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#325

Post by Buttons840 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #153

Perhaps I’ve been unlucky but my experience at big tech has been marred by churn and burn culture - high pressure tactics to get the most work out of employees and discarding them when they inevitably burn out. Average tenure was 1-3 years. Amazon was particularly bad at this. The only modicum of power employees have is in quitting and now that they’re exercising it the employers are acting like their throats have be…

Thanks for the story, would love to hear more.

Everyone at the company probably thinks the well understood and documented and lovely Java version, which never actually worked, is the better version.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#326

Post by q1w2 »

Terry_Roll wrote: post #110
rkangel wrote: post #87

This article does accidentally capture one of the major corporate problems pretty well. The conclude from their data that Toxic Workplace Culture is the biggest cause of resignation, and then they immediately suggest 4 short term things to try that don't relate to culture at all . If you have a toxic workplace culture, the very first thing you should do is to start fixing your culture. This is very hard and not fast…

Most of the posts on here focus on wage/money and yours is one of the few that outright points out the toxic culture in companies. I think for too long the toxic workplace has been hidden behind laywer drafted agreements when employers leave and the rest of the workforce have been captive because they thought they might not get the same job with better conditions elsewhere. But a growing population means this is chan…

I don't think we should look at /r/antiwork as an example of thoughtful understanding of what the problem there is. The average age there is probably 20, and the half the posters are likely in Moscow.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#327

Post by szundi »

rkangel wrote: post #87

This article does accidentally capture one of the major corporate problems pretty well. The conclude from their data that Toxic Workplace Culture is the biggest cause of resignation, and then they immediately suggest 4 short term things to try that don't relate to culture at all . If you have a toxic workplace culture, the very first thing you should do is to start fixing your culture. This is very hard and not fast…

I am managing a company with a quite nice culture, performance oriented but with great emphasis on supporting each other. I like it as it is.

The "problem" with culture change is an extra 40% loss of people if the change is fundamental. Most companies have hard time even surviving this and it takes years for every 0 at the end headcount (like 3 years for some thousand people and 5 for hundred thousands). May not make sense on the short run to roll the dice and even might crash the company.

I would not be able to change this into something else without losing a lot of linchpin people.

If you are the CEO of a company that big (mine is small), you sacrifice a lot for this change. If this is not a matter of life or death for the company, you won't change the culture that much, I am sure.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#328

Post by pydry »

letitbeirie wrote: post #317
pydry wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen some friends some do this. The time it took to go through, the size of the raise and the headache involved in convincing everybody (like pulling teeth), still, IME, essentially made it a losing proposition for them compared to just hopping jobs. Still others have thrown out raises without being pushed but they were critical organizational lynchpins getting 10% raises when the market would bump them 50% mini…

> IME, essentially made it a losing proposition for them compared to just hopping jobs. I think it's weird how hard it is to convince your colleagues and your management that you're worth 50% more than you were yesterday by continuing to work, yet how easy it is to convince the same people of the same thing by quitting. I also think most companies realize how disadvantaged they are in salary negotiations in this job…

I think it's partly that when you ask for a 50% pay raise a year in theyre probably afraid you may tell all your colleagues who are your friends and who know your productivity and then everybody's asking for a pay raise.

Less risk of that happening if you are a fresh face starting out with 50% more. You probably wont share and plus, who knows what kind of hot shot you are?

Plus, your leverage at the point where you decide to take the job or not is at its highest. They'll infer that walking away is much easier for you than it is when you've spent 2 years somewhere and you're settled.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#329

Post by pembrook »

zero41a wrote: post #232
pembrook wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for hilariously illustrating how bubble-y the current moment feels. If you think dramatically increasing compensation is going to continue in the next decade like it has in the last one, I think you might be disappointed. Now that companies are comfortable with remote, HR departments are eventually going to realize that services like Deel exist, and that its not actually that hard to hire employees overseas…

My company has been in the foreign contractor market for a while. I still make a massive US salary. Having been on the hiring team for many of these contractor shops I can tell you that the skill level of contractors in India/Africa/China/Ukraine has another 5-10 years before it even begins to approach the average skill of a seasoned American engineer. For a while my business as an independent contractor was quite li…

I'm not talking about old school companies replacing their "IT" departments with Indian contracting firms.

I'm talking about tech companies directly hiring employees from other countries.

You don't even need to leave the English speaking world to find massive arbitrage opportunities.

If you think there's no React developers in the UK/Australia/Etc who can do leetcode problems...I've got news for you.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#330

Post by varelse »

simplestats wrote: post #302
varelse wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have to sign an agreement that gives my employer permission to terminate me at any time for any reason with or without cause, they should not be surprised that it also grants me the right to quit at any time for any reason with or without cause. And yet, all that fuss about these job hoppers. How about creating an environment and culture where sticking around beats job hopping instead? As for the alternative? Ch…

Well in the past employees got ISO's. Now employees are getting RSU's. And in our lawsuit-happy culture (with a perverse incentive for companies to always settle lawsuits even when they can win), even the most employee-friendly place probably needs such an agreement for CYA reasons. I do agree ecompanies can do a much better job of treating employees like partners instead of "resources" to optimize. Even on HN, we ha…

RSUs happened IMO because Warren Buffett didn't understand tech. But they're fine, really, the same competitive pressures that led to compelling ISOs now lead to compelling RSUs. Not sure what problem that solved though but give me a couple beers and I'll probably come up with one.

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/11/business/stock-options-ar...

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