Clickbait article. I was expecting more than, "don't be an asshole to your peers".
How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
21–30 of 209 posts
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please share your experiences, also, how do you think(/know) it all started?
My anecdote is that it's all employee #1: the fish rots from the head. The gist of it is that one guy founded a company, company A, bootstrapped it, then disappeared to found another company (company B) and was busy with it for about a decade. In the meantime, company A had a non-owner CEO and went from 10ish people to 60ish and grew revenues many, many times over. Meanwhile company B got huge (though never really go…
> they would do a stack-rank 10% cut to reach the target turnover each year
Does this mean leadership would rank all employees once a year and fire the bottom 10%, so they could hit a statistic? And that was before the owner came back? Obviously your story is insane and I'm sorry you had to go through that, but I can't get over this part. I think the concept of a terrible person owning a business is less shocking to me than the idea of someone giving themselves a minimum quota of people to fire every year.
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#23Oh 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 actually had my friendships with the folks there used against me. If I thought something was wrong or shouldn't be done, my boss would say, "You like your friends here, don't you?"
W.T.F.??
There's really no correct thing to do. I lost so much sleep just trying to come up with something that wouldn't be turned against me.
It's a form of learned helplessness. They force you into a no-win situation, so you'll stop winning. They can't win on merit or competence, so they force you into no-wins. Impossible deadlines. etc. etc.
It's the opposite of "Hire people smarter than you and get out of their way." Their strategy is more like... "Hire people smarter than you, get them to do your job, make their life hell, so they quit, then take all the credit."
Psychos.
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#24Imagine 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…
Which country did this happen if I may ask ?
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#25Can someone name companies that aren't like this? I've worked at 3 places and feel like I'm doomed.
I'm not going to name names, but companies like this that normalise bullying and overwork to the point of staff breaking are not the norm.
Thinking about my own experience and the people I know, this would describe at most 25% of jobs (most of that being overwork).
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#26Can someone name companies that aren't like this? I've worked at 3 places and feel like I'm doomed.
What places did you work?
Orbcomm, ECS (Police work), and a nameless "startup" that made police software.
I don't have an interest in the police or DoD btw. I just pick positions looking for a .NET role.
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
My anecdote is that it's all employee #1: the fish rots from the head. The gist of it is that one guy founded a company, company A, bootstrapped it, then disappeared to found another company (company B) and was busy with it for about a decade. In the meantime, company A had a non-owner CEO and went from 10ish people to 60ish and grew revenues many, many times over. Meanwhile company B got huge (though never really go…
> they would do a stack-rank 10% cut to reach the target turnover each year Does this mean leadership would rank all employees once a year and fire the bottom 10%, so they could hit a statistic? And that was before the owner came back? Obviously your story is insane and I'm sorry you had to go through that, but I can't get over this part. I think the concept of a terrible person owning a business is less shocking to…
Thats a really popular idea, I think it came from Jack Welch at GM. Microsoft used to be famous for it.
https://www.jaywren.com/20-70-10-employee-stack-ranking/
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#28The gist is, be the trusted person who has the backs of the other team mates. Don't have to be the best performer, but be loyal to your team. Be the person who can be trusted with the project work, but also off the team too, like with someone's spouse and money , heh. But, that's not how to survive a toxic workplace, that's how to get a job somewhere else once you're axed. The only way, really, to survive a toxic wor…
> Get a counselor. Talk to someone who has been through it or can understand.... I encourage you to not stop caring
I got a counselor who absolutely thought the problem was me caring whether my colleagues were actively lying to each other. I quit her and the job, thank God.
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#29Imagine 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…
My first day of work many many years ago I did the usual (for me at least) and stopped by each office (before open floorplans were widespread) to introduce myself. The very first office the door was cracked so I knocked and slowly opened it a bit more to give a friendly "hello" and the guy immediately grabbed his desktop inkjet printer (one of those old half dome Epsons) and hurled it at me, crashing at my feet due t…
> the guy immediately grabbed his desktop inkjet printer (one of those old half dome Epsons) and hurled it at me, crashing at my feet
Seems odd… what’s the rest of the story?
Re: How to survive a toxic workplace and how to avoid creating one
#30Yeah I never did the 'take the team with me' thing but I wish I had. I heard great things from people I've met randomly who work as a team and go together to a new gig. Sounds like a lot of fun. Is it too late for me. I am > 40 and tried of the industry. Well, you know, tired of "industry" in general and the workers/company conflict that naturally arises. Reading that linked thread about BaseCamp - and I won't give my opinion on it - but it does show a tension between employer/employee that is always there, even when it isn't.