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

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

#161

Post by cyberpunk »

I headbutted a PM once, after a meeting it was just me and him in a room and he got right into my face over some comment I had made (presumably about how poorly everything was going) and he pushed me back against the wall with both hands, quite a lot of force abd looked like he was gonna swing, so I broke his nose and walked out.

10 minutes later get a call from the agency saying my services are no longer required, get off the tube and get a call if I’m free for and interview and the next day started a new job ;)

It’s sometimes the right thing to tell a bully to fuck off, and if you’re being threatened physically to use proportional force in self defense, I did end up hurting someone and I don’t feel at all bad for it as it goes.

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

#162

Post by louwrentius »

ianai wrote: post #153
louwrentius wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, if you hurl printers at people, there is something so wrong with you mentally, the only fair response is compassion and pity in my view.

Really? You think the rational and common reaction is to express compassion and pity for the person throwing the printer? I wouldn’t throw printers at people. For one thing, they might throw it back. For two, I don’t violently attack people…

Don’t you understand how terrible things must be for you in your head to get to a point where you can’t resist throwing printers at people?

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

#163

Post by cyberpunk »

giantandroids wrote: post #31
gabereiser wrote: post #19

Oh man, the worst are those that pretend to be benevolent but end up firing you after a vacation. The one who writes memory-bloated code, who keeps state around, that loves to cross types has the gaul to do a single performance review after 8 months to criticize your code quality and fire you. (Recent experience) Or how about the one guy that shouts at people when they ask ANY question on why things work that way, re…

I am very much working class / (blue collar) in my upbringing. Raised by single parent in a very run down area with a fair amount of poverty. I luckily found an early love and curiosity for computers and eventually found my way into software engineering. If this had not have happened god knows where I would be, when I look at where my friends have ended up. I learned quite early in my life, that if someone picks you…

Meh, it depends. If you’re in the right then responding to assholes in this way is acceptable, at least in the UK. I’ve found this doesn’t translate to German companies tho which have a kind of “the emperor is always right” attitude. ;)

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

#164

Post by cyberpunk »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #91
goatinaboat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data scientists seem to be on a level of their own when it comes to disrespecting colleagues. I've been surprised by this recently. Pretty much every developer, when brought in as a replacement, will bad-mouth their predecessor, say their code is junk and needs to be totally rewritten, etc. Managers love it and encourage it, to them it's a divide and conquer tactic. Data scientists just take it to the next level, tha…

I do that too, but the code I work with is objectively shit - I can provide the daily WTF with months of wtfs. Maybe I should, but if the previous guy finds it I may be in trouble (I think he's still a shareholder?). The first thing my colleagues did after he left was replace all the code he wrote in the C codebase (I work on the front-end, there's a few years worth of work yet to rebuild it). I'm talking stuff like…

My eyes! Kudos for sticking with it that sounds like a write off heh

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

#165

Post by mateo411 »

phibz wrote: post #69
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've been in a position where my abilities vastly out stripped those of the rest of the team. I was insecurely seeking praise and adoration by fixing as many problems with the code as quickly as I could. The mistake, in my opinion, that I made was that I did it alone. I didn't communicate with team and work with them at their pace. I blasted ahead and did all the work myself. And it didn't win me any friends. They we…

I've seen this scenario happen at other companies too.

I think this is where a code review process helps. You can submit changes, but you have to work with the team to review them. This way they have buy in on the changes that you make. You'll find developers can get upset if changes were made and they weren't aware of them. In addition to ensuring the code is of high quality, code review also acts as a medium to communicate changes within the team.

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

#166

Post by louwrentius »

JackPoach wrote: post #142
piva00 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every instance I described was something done in the normal work environment, during day-to-day operations, not drunk people at parties or after work celebrations. Verbal abuse as in: a C-level calling one engineer a "dumb motherfucker, lying to my face" and variations of that over time. An IT manager telling his employees (a team of about 6 people) that they should be grateful for having a job, that as stupid as the…

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with verbal and physical things as toxic, never encountered anything close to that. Now, if one team sabotages other - that's clearly an individual or individual making own immoral choices. I wound't put that on the company.

That is always on the company as they incentivized and tolerated that behavior.

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

#167

Post by toomanybeersies »

ianai wrote: post #153
louwrentius wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, if you hurl printers at people, there is something so wrong with you mentally, the only fair response is compassion and pity in my view.

Really? You think the rational and common reaction is to express compassion and pity for the person throwing the printer? I wouldn’t throw printers at people. For one thing, they might throw it back. For two, I don’t violently attack people…

Normal people don't throw printers at other people, because they're aware it's against social convention and liable to get them fired (or worse).

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

#168

Post by toomanybeersies »

qftw wrote: post #101
imperialdrive wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continued: (Was on-site earlier and didn't have time to type the rest as, crazy enough, this was just the beginning of what turned into years of encounters) Before I could react to the printer landing at feet (I was frozen) he yelled almost exactly "Don't you ever fucking walk into my office like that again, G T F O" so I slowly stepped out and shut the door. As I said, it (door) was cracked open, and the entire fron…

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.

> Why don't we mandate Huxley's Soma for everyone so all anger is suppressed at all times?

We tried that with oxycontin and alprazolam, didn't work out so well in the end.

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

#169

Post by anoncake »

lostlogin wrote: post #133
Bayart wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>- when working for a Swedish company, when they extended my contract and said they are very happy to have me but they can't pay me the same rate as my Swedish colleagues (I am Polish). Were you living in Poland or Sweden ? I kinda get that they'd want to pay less if you were living in Poland, considering the cost of living, but in Sweden that'd be scummy as shit.

> I kinda get that they'd want to pay less if you were living in Poland, considering the cost of living Shouldn’t a company pay what a job is worth to them, not based upon what they think the employees costs are? This gets complicated fast as remote work, work from home etc all changes the equation. Does the end customer get to pay a different amount based on their location? From my experience the remote customer usu…

If companies paid what jobs are worth, they wouldn't make a profit.

The same applies to goods: If you are charged as much as a good is worth to you, why bother buying it?

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

#170

Post by kbelder »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #167
ianai wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You think the rational and common reaction is to express compassion and pity for the person throwing the printer? I wouldn’t throw printers at people. For one thing, they might throw it back. For two, I don’t violently attack people…

Normal people don't throw printers at other people, because they're aware it's against social convention and liable to get them fired (or worse).

And because it might hurt somebody. Actually, that's the main reason people don't do it.
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