Mental health impacts of a big tech job • Hacker News Board

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#151

Post by hiyer » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 9:49 AM UTC

sg47 wrote: post #107

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…

As a H1B holder who's also a cancer survivor and suffering from severe health issues, I can tell you it's hell. I cry at least once a week at the fact that I cannot take a break without having to destroy my life and my family's life and 20+ years of life built up here. Everything this person said is absolutely true. The high compensation comes at a very high cost. It's not just mental or physical but also moral. You…

Just curious - how come you haven't got a green card or citizenship if you've been there for 20+ years?

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#152

Post by sundvor » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 9:51 AM UTC

scaramanga wrote: post #131

snek_case wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Never underestimate the effectiveness of total denial. You can hire in people who are barely competent to hold a pair of scissors. Sure they'll erode and ultimately destroy whatever technical edifice you've built this far. But by the time your ability, as a manager, to put a positive spin on the most abject of failure comes to an end, you'll have moved on to an even higher paying job at another FAANG, or retired. Loo…

That might just help explain certain recent events...

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#153

Post by burntoutfire » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 10:01 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #137

To me the industry has become so extremely toxic to mental health since agile became a thing. Must "sprint" 100% of the time, keep that velocity up at the maximum sustainable in short periods but forever. A marathon runner can't have the pace of a 100m sprinter but software engineers are expected to maintain sprint pace for perpetuity. And give detailed status reports Every.Single.Day. So there's no possibility of a…

It all depends on the company. My company is seemingly doing Agile, but not finishing tasks within sprint is absolutely no big deal. Sprints come and go while we work on our tasks. The sprints seems more like a way to help PO manage and organize the work than anything that affects the engineers.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#154

Post by zipiridu » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 10:06 AM UTC

ffggvv wrote: post #98

inlined wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends on what division you’re in and what role you have. I was TL of a team in Cloud and I ran myself ragged. I was getting anxiety attacks every day and felt a literal weight sinking into me as the bus approached the building. I took a 6mo medical leave and still haven’t really recovered.

yeah cloud is a differnt beast. basically amazon within google

I don't understand why people leave AWS to join Google Cloud only to replicate the environment they were trying to escape.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#155

Post by semitones » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 11:39 AM UTC

thethethethe wrote: post #35

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...

I am an SRE so I am in a rotation, I'm actually oncall right now. I was in Corp and now I'm in Cloud. I haven't interacted with anyone in ads so I am not familiar with the experience. Do you think your peers had a similar experience as you?

My peers on my team, and on our sister teams (we share the same manager's manager) have all had similar experiences in that: there is so much on everyone's plate, there is so much tech debt, so much to maintain, yet so much to build, so much that breaks, so much surface area to cover, and never enough time or energy.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#156

Post by kevinventullo » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 11:43 AM UTC

ctvo wrote: post #86

> The manager of that team demanded I get the release out, and just ignored anything else I had to say. I pointed out that it took them a really long time to respond to my initial report of the issue and we may have been able to come up with something had they responded. The other team wasn’t buying it. From their perspective, the expectation had already been set, and it was up to us to get our job done no matter the…

As a former manager at a FAANG I completely agree. If this had been my report, I would’ve aggressively followed up with that manager about why exactly an engineer on my team was stressing out on a Friday evening about something they apparently didn’t need until the following Wednesday. If I didn’t get a satisfactory response, I’d be following up with their manager as well as my own.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#157

Post by yodsanklai » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:15 PM UTC

carnitas wrote: post #113

yolovoe wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Nobody counts how many actual hours you work. It's all about your impact and whether you meet your expectations. Some people are much more productive than others, manage their time better and so on... it's a double edged sword though.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#158

Post by yodsanklai » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:18 PM UTC

tasuki wrote: post #145

carnitas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is location-dependent: in some countries (France? UK?), 35 hours a week is full time.

France is 35h but for a SWE, there's no fixed schedule and you're not paid by the hour. You get 10 additional vacation days though (so that would be 35 days total).

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#159

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:28 PM UTC

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)

I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help.

It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done.

That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.

Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job

#160

Post by nzmsv » Sat, Aug 28, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

Here's what's interesting. We take this "projects have deadlines" idea as gospel and if you dare question it you are an immoral heathen with a poor work ethic.

So you have a software engineer at Apple ruining his mental and physical health to chase a deadline. Only to have someone at Foxconn in China destroy their eyesight slightly sooner gluing digitizers to iPhone screens. Then we can all buy the resulting product for a commercial holiday starring an imaginary jolly fat man.

But is the new iPhone really all that different than the last? It has a marginally better camera and downloads stuff faster, but if it came out a year later nobody would be particularly upset.

I am certain that I am not the only one disillusioned with tech, and indeed consumerism as a whole. The implications of this will be interesting to see once more people work up the courage to say this out loud.