Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

newsletter.timber.fm

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–209 of 209 posts

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

#201

Post by hda111 »

bourgwaletariat wrote: post #23
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 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 wi…

I know the situation you describe. It’s debunking when they say they only hire competent people (make the incompetent people feel competent). I mean it’s true that they prefer competent people but they will destroy their mental health, make them quit and then, as you say, take all the credit.

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

#202

Post by heavyset_go »

louwrentius wrote: post #185
heavyset_go wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of assholes who do shitty things because they're just entitled. There's no need to pathologize shitty people.

That's such a convenient and easy answer.

Shitty behavior is just evidence of shitty behavior. "Throwing things at coworkers" isn't a symptom of any mental illness, and without evidence of actual mental illness, pathologizing such behavior is conjecture at best.

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

#203

Post by gabereiser »

kwdc wrote: post #192
username90 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see each vacation is like a trial firing, if they miss you then you get to come back.

Still puzzles me. Businesses are all about relationships. Building a business based on this level of hostility must be exhausting. The level of staff turnover and overall churn due to trust issues must be huge and they must haemorrage employees continuously. So much bad will being created for short term gains. They then complain when they get bad employees or can't find good ones. So strange. But not unexpected. Its…

Conditioning. The US job market is conditioned to fear vacations.

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

#204

Post by hinkley »

piva00 wrote: post #112
lmilcin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this happen to me. Walked out after 2 months before completing 3 month trial period. I had a boss who said he is best developer in the world and he meant it. He caused major outage when the code he developed and brought to the company as an asset failed. The code was to exchange SMS messages with an SMS gateway for Ukrainian operator. The messages were sent using mails. That was 15 years ago and not his fault,…

> - 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). As an immigrant in Sweden, this is one of the instances where I'd love a name-and-shame (but it's just wishful thinking, I don't expect or really want you public shaming companies). Simply because I've heard this happening to other c…

One of my regrets was accidentally seeing the salary of my female Vietnamese coworker and not making a stink about it.

Her ESL was not that great but she would just go around fixing bugs. So. Many. Bugs. And in a place full of architectural astronauts, when I say I generally had no issues with the quality of the code in her fixes, that is saying something.

Turned out she was making about the same as our senior QA folks.

We really should just talk about salaries. But that is partly a zero sum game, which requires the people currently winning to take a hard look at rather they “need” that extra 10% or if it’s just going to make retirement easier or sooner.

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

#205

Post by louwrentius »

heavyset_go wrote: post #202
louwrentius wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's such a convenient and easy answer.

Shitty behavior is just evidence of shitty behavior. "Throwing things at coworkers" isn't a symptom of any mental illness, and without evidence of actual mental illness, pathologizing such behavior is conjecture at best.

That's such a convenient and easy answer.

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

#206

Post by Jefff8 »

DocTomoe wrote: post #73
xwdv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the “chair incident” story I read a long time ago. Maybe someone will know what I’m talking about. It was something in the game industry and I don’t remember the details but I know a chair was broken such that one of the legs was broken off to form a “shit your pants” style point and one person held it while two other guys held the uncooperative victim by the arms and leaned him right over it so th…

Ah, good old Ballmer, I miss that guy... Steve Ballmer, when CEO of Microsoft, was said to have thrown his chair at an employee announcing they would leave the company to work for Google back in the mid-2000s. It is a bit of an urban legend. Ballmer himself denies that has ever happened ( https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-i-didnt-throw-... ) - but he was eccentric enough (just google "developer dance") th…

Well, he threw something else at somebody I know, so there's that.

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

#207

Post by em-bee »

tnzm wrote: post #159
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…

The rational and common reaction is to duck .

depends on the angle the object is coming at you. with a heavy object that's being hurled at your feet the chance that it flies high enough to pass over your head and back if you duck is low.

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

#208

Post by pmiller2 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #182
phicoh wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the cost of living factor in? If I move to a place that has a very high cost of living, then I don't get paid more. Why would the reverse be true?

How difficult would it be to do the following? - rent the cheapest place (smallest, worst, etc.) somewhere on the edge of an expensive area = this will be your official address; - buy or rent a nice large place in a cheap area = you will actually live here; - work from home. Bonus points if you share the cheap place in the expensive area with your friends (no problem, since no one is actually going to live there).

Both of those would have to be in the same state for it to work, due to the way taxes are withheld and paid. Otherwise, you're probably committing tax fraud.

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

#209

Post by phibz »

mateo411 wrote: post #165
phibz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 com…

Code review is not enough. Especially when you're dealing with a culture of "rubber stamped reviews."

Good code reviews are a net positive but may not always be in place. Getting them on a team that isn't doing them is yet another point where you need to communicate with them.

You've got to talk, whiteboard, engage much sooner.

Post reply on HN