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Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

sloanreview.mit.edu

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Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#371

Post by Nihilartikel »

phil21 wrote: post #370
Nihilartikel wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the American thirst for money is perhaps sometimes greed, but most often it's a gnawing psychological side effect of our relative lack of personal security in our society. A person can have $100k in the bank and still be bankrupted and left literally living on the streets if they have the audacity to get cancer, lose their job, and have unlucky circumstances. (edit) This insecurity is a 'feature', not a…

> but most often it's a gnawing psychological side effect of our relative lack of personal security in our society. This is really it. I certainly have some lifestyle inflation in my life, but not a lot compared to many others in my income bracket. I have no desire to increase my consumption beyond where I've been for some time. Even though I logically know I'm in a great financial position - especially compared to t…

> I'm coming to the conclusion "security" is an illusion and always has been, so I'm trying to take a different approach towards money moving into 2022.

Interesting that you put it that way - a few years back, when I was sort of floating in space the book "The Wisdom of Insecurity" by spiritual-entertainer Alan Watts, though a bit dated, was helpful for me on a personal level.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#372

Post by simplestats »

varelse wrote: post #330
simplestats wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I'm saying it's a step in the right direction. No more starting at zero or even being "under water" like with ISO's. With RSU's they just grant you the stock like they used to only do for execs (with nonqualified options or whatever). As long as the company doesn't get delisted or something you're a stakeholder.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#373

Post by tharne »

Areading314 wrote: post #34

A huge problem with this industry is the inflexibility to pay current engineers LARGELY increasing comp each year. The thought is that there is a market rate for an engineer and that pay can increase with the market rate, but this is a fallacy. An engineer that has been at a largish company for 1 year is worth 20-30% more than the year they were hired because they have specific knowledge of the tech stack. Yet that e…

> So that engineer moves on and accepts a 40% raise elsewhere.

The other thing you see is talented engineers moving into management even we they don't really want to, so that they can get paid what they're worth. In some cases this is even worse than then the engineer leaving the company because, in addition to losing a good engineer, you often also gain a lousy manager.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#374

Post by dhjhdskjsdjkds »

"Toxic culture is overstated" = "I've never sat down and had any serious work discussions with women in tech, but I think I know everything."

Toxic culture in engineering is terrible. I've been in many different engineering and IT work environments for decades, and have seen a ton of women get picked on and bullied, both overtly and just subtly. Yeah it's not all women--some evolve shields, some become passive and numb, some double down on skill to get 1x the credit for 2x the effort--but it's definitely very real.

I also think quitting has been driven by remote work. What happens if person A had remote work during the worst part of the pandemic, erratic petty tyrant boss A decides its time to "come back" or "go hybrid" even though it seems nonsensical to someone with broadband and a remotely accomodatable job--and then person B, who is spouse/friend/relative of person A, has a completely different situation where non-maladjusted boss B is like "yeah man, as long as you are getting your work done, I don't care where you do it."

There is a strong desire to dump "MadMen" type boss A with prejudice. Not always, some people love getting out of the house to work, but for people who enjoyed pandemic remote work, to have to give it up for arbitrary reasoning based on the armchair organizational psychology theories of some dumb manager--those people are going to skate, and they should.

It's like one the one side you have this vague meme of "in person team building" and on the other, real costs like: car wear and tear costs, gas costs, mass transit costs, parking costs, weather related time costs like scraping, increased accident risk from commute, lost work time during commute, different/specialized clothing needs and uncomfortable work clothing standards, prep/logistics time like packing/unpacking/undocking/docking, MBWA/wanderer interruptions and ad hoc "coworker therapist sessions" in the office, less comfortable and ergonomically genericized desks and peripherals, uncontrollable environmental noises and temperatures...all to do something that can be done over a wire.

I'd sooner set an office building on fire than work out of it. I'm a genXer and I guess I get why boomers are like this but if you're my age or younger and you force people into an office, shame on your pathetic fake nerd soul.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#375

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

diordiderot wrote: post #337
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually aggressively promoting "diversity" (like forcing people into diversity trainings) would count as toxic workplace culture to me.

On average unconscious bias training has no statistically significant effect on average.

Unconscious bias has been debunked, anyway. But it is too useful - endless possibilities if you can make a legitimate seeming claim to know better what goes on in people's heads than those people themselves. Peak elitism, too.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#376

Post by thematrixturtle »

wyclif wrote: post #360
thematrixturtle wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as someone hiring engineers in APAC, it's extremely difficult to find developers who are competent, experienced and have sufficient command of English to operate in an English-speaking team. The few that tick all three boxes and have in-demand tech skills (ML, k8s, AWS etc) can command Silicon Valley level salaries even in their home countries. Of course the pool will expand over time and the situation will…

Talk to me! I'm not that experienced, but I'm trying to get into the Junior DevOps space and get some good work experience under my belt while living in an APAC time zone, but the difference with me is that I'm a native English speaker from the Acela corridor in the US with the highest caliber of written and spoken English fluency. If that sounds like something you can accept (i.e., hungry junior guy who is eager to…

Sorry, but it sounds like you're missing the experience bit? But if you speak English and a local language, check out the careers page of your favorite FAANG, there may still be something for you.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#377

Post by wyclif »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #376
wyclif wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Talk to me! I'm not that experienced, but I'm trying to get into the Junior DevOps space and get some good work experience under my belt while living in an APAC time zone, but the difference with me is that I'm a native English speaker from the Acela corridor in the US with the highest caliber of written and spoken English fluency. If that sounds like something you can accept (i.e., hungry junior guy who is eager to…

Sorry, but it sounds like you're missing the experience bit? But if you speak English and a local language, check out the careers page of your favorite FAANG, there may still be something for you.

I have junior level experience in Python, Django, JS, AWS, &c. But what I've found is that most companies are hiring Seniors only.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#378

Post by varelse »

NotVerstappen wrote: post #367
varelse wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paying your full salary is not at all common - though I agree that is sufficient to make a non-compete fair and wish it would become normalised.

So there are a number of people on this site who are not at that level and they get resentful that someone might get a deal like that rather than try to find a path to getting a deal like that for themselves. That's crab mentality and it helps no one.

The way to get there is to refuse to sign non-compete agreements unless they come with an equivalent clause to what I got. When you sell yourself short, you sell everyone else along with you.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#379

Post by magicroot75 »

Areading314 wrote: post #34

A huge problem with this industry is the inflexibility to pay current engineers LARGELY increasing comp each year. The thought is that there is a market rate for an engineer and that pay can increase with the market rate, but this is a fallacy. An engineer that has been at a largish company for 1 year is worth 20-30% more than the year they were hired because they have specific knowledge of the tech stack. Yet that e…

The whole crux of this article is that compensation is incorrectly assumed to be the main driver of turnover.

Re: Toxic culture is driving the great resignation

#380

Post by magicroot75 »

throwaway9952 wrote: post #121

My company recently had a series of townhalls related to a re-org that included a few different open Q&A sessions. I'd estimate that 70-80% of the questions related to what the company was going to do to address current salaries, particularly vis-a-vis inflation. The questions were largely deflected (which is probably okay given the context) but there is very little urgency to do anything outside of the normal review…

It's a weird concept, but a company would rather hire a new person at 30% higher salary than give a current one a 25% raise.
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