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Mental health impacts of a big tech job

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Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#111

Post by acituan »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #101
acituan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I'm trying to say is that Big Tech is a big place, and if you find yourself somewhere with bad culture don't take that to mean there aren't other places you would like. Tell that to an H1B holder. You're not wrong to point out that we can't generalize from a single data point, but you're wrong to bring your positive experience as if there is an equivalence between the two. They don't have the same weighing; we…

if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying to avoid being painted as the cause (I tend to think the most ironic outcome is the most likely)

> it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool

I’m not saying this is the best metric but they would find that sort of treatment to be highly ineffective. Lifetime prevalence of depression and the depression at any given time are different things; it would be like trying to weed out all future cases of flu based on symptoms at hire time. Either way it wouldn’t make a dent on flu caused by the work environment itself.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#112

Post by tylerhou »

120bits wrote: post #38

Blog like this makes me wonder if I even want to work for FAANG companies anymore. I have never worked for a big corp and never for FAANG companies in particular. >What I found was that the decent salary and excellent benefits came at a much greater cost. I know you can get in with a big paycheck work your ass for 10 years and get out with lot of money in your bank. Maybe it my early 20s. Now I'm 35+ I don;t have the…

This blog post is a huge overgeneralization of large tech companies. You can't extrapolate from one bad experience at one team at Apple to say that all teams at Apple are bad. And you definitely can't then also conclude that all of FAANG is bad.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#113

Post by carnitas »

yolovoe wrote: post #97
120bits wrote: post #38

Blog like this makes me wonder if I even want to work for FAANG companies anymore. I have never worked for a big corp and never for FAANG companies in particular. >What I found was that the decent salary and excellent benefits came at a much greater cost. I know you can get in with a big paycheck work your ass for 10 years and get out with lot of money in your bank. Maybe it my early 20s. Now I'm 35+ I don;t have the…

I work at Amazon and the work-life-balance is pretty chill. I do my 35 hours a week (7 hours a day--8 including lunch) and completely disconnect outside of that. Manager has been chill so far, expectations couldn't be clearer and are pretty reasonable. A lot of my friends work at FAANG and finance in SWE roles too and their wlb is pretty good as well, with most working under 40 hours a week--some well under. And we'r…

Do you get paid full time salary or hourly only for the 35 hours a week?

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#114

Post by deadmutex »

snek_case wrote: post #44
deadmutex wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps... but I think companies like FB also get (total guess) thousands of resumes per day. So, for every engineer that walks away, many more are knocking at the door. So, I think in management's eyes, very very very few people are irreplaceable.

That's not true at all where I am. Yes, I can post on twitter and get tons of CVs, but most applicants aren't that good. I may only want to interview 40% of the candidates I get, and I would really only want to hire about 1 in 5 people I interview. Interviewing takes time. Then after that, onboarding people on the job takes time too, it can take people several months to become effective on the job. Skilled, effective…

Everything you said about most applicants not being hireable, and the amount of time needed for onboarding, etc. is true.

And yet, from where I sit, it's not obvious that managers (at multiple companies) show that they care that much. I think the exception was when I was at a startup, but I think that was due to combination of two reasons: The amazing manager, and the fact replacing a specialist on our team was even harder.

Disclaimer: My views are my own.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#115

Post by ook »

mathgladiator wrote: post #2

So, recently I achieved happiness because I just don't care about the job anymore. I didn't even do my performance self review, and I wrote a poem instead. I got a Meets-Most, and I've never been happier. I'm writing my final proposal as one final swing at the bat and the title is "XYZ or Bust" where either I get buy-in or I'm leaving. I've never felt better in my entire career. This is made possible because I'm old…

At a previous company I asked to be a Conscientious Objector from the performance review process as I was just going to get an On Target rating anyway (I did).

(Not retired yet, I knew I was quitting a week or two later. Amazingly my boss was surprised when I gave my notice …).

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#116

Post by deadmutex »

georgeburdell wrote: post #43

This seems like mostly an Apple problem. I have not heard similar issues with Google and Facebook (I don't know anyone in the other "A" or the "N")

Apple may be worse than others.. but also know that people move around, and bring a part of their old culture to the new team. If they're in a senior position, and they have a bias towards people from their old employer while hiring, they could start hiring people from the ex-employer. Mix that in with a fast growing team, and now there is a risk of a subset of the company acting like they're at the old company.

FWIW, I have heard these types of stories before too, and they are definitely NOT unique to Apple.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#117

Post by Aunche »

dcolkitt wrote: post #50
semitones wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet that you're not on one of the profit center teams... And that you don't have an oncall rotation. I worked in one of the ads teams at Google. I quit a few weeks ago, with reasons similar to the ones described in the article. I was giving just way too much of my life away for that work...

Interesting… Out of curiosity, do people in profit centers get paid more to compensate for the stress? I’m thinking in terms of Wall Street banks, where for example traders might have very stressful jobs but receive huge bonuses that far outstrip what the more relaxed back office roles get.

Compensation at FAANGs are more or less fixed by level and location. However, people with more stressful teams tend to get promoted much more quickly.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#118

Post by burnished »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #101
acituan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what I'm trying to say is that Big Tech is a big place, and if you find yourself somewhere with bad culture don't take that to mean there aren't other places you would like. Tell that to an H1B holder. You're not wrong to point out that we can't generalize from a single data point, but you're wrong to bring your positive experience as if there is an equivalence between the two. They don't have the same weighing; we…

if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying to avoid being painted as the cause (I tend to think the most ironic outcome is the most likely)

How would they do that? Hiring seems like such a ritualized practice anyway, I'm not sure how you'd even determine something like that.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#119

Post by exBarrelSpoiler »

kyralis wrote: post #94
mgh2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we should not generalize, but these experiences should not be brushed off either - I suspect a bias towards Apple due to their fanbase. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/kpgs1x/my_experience... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25605211

I doubt it's a bias toward apple so much as Apple's a large company with a diverse set of teams. There are definitely some teams at Apple that I would never want to work for; there are also some teams at Apple that are pretty awesome. I suspect it's the same at all of the FAANGs, frankly. (Setting aside companies you may not wish to work for because of general company policy/work reasons)

No, to some degree it is Apple. No doubt any larger corporation has its share of worse offenders. But some of the toxicity that exists within Apple is specific to its DNA. The secrecy, siloing across departments and teams, obsession towards not just customer satisfaction but ironclad schedules, middle managers allowed to act like warlords, maybe even the legacy of Jobs' abusive behavior baked into the corporate DNA- that's all uniquely Apple.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#120

Post by exBarrelSpoiler »

tylerhou wrote: post #112
120bits wrote: post #38

Blog like this makes me wonder if I even want to work for FAANG companies anymore. I have never worked for a big corp and never for FAANG companies in particular. >What I found was that the decent salary and excellent benefits came at a much greater cost. I know you can get in with a big paycheck work your ass for 10 years and get out with lot of money in your bank. Maybe it my early 20s. Now I'm 35+ I don;t have the…

This blog post is a huge overgeneralization of large tech companies. You can't extrapolate from one bad experience at one team at Apple to say that all teams at Apple are bad. And you definitely can't then also conclude that all of FAANG is bad.

It's more that Apple's lows might be lower than those in other big tech companies, because conditions at Apple are permitted to get as bad as they are.
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