"Big Tech" or "Apple"?
Mental health impacts of a big tech job
61–70 of 191 posts
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#62As somebody who recently gave up a faculty job at a top-tier CS program, this a) doesn't mirror my experience at all, and b) is still significantly better than the faculty life!
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#63We all get to points in our careers where we forget to set boundaries. We forget the considerable power we wield. Most crucially: the power to leave.
But before that the power to disconnect from work, to not have slack on your personal phone, and to simply say “no” and set boundaries. You could get fired, true, but thats their loss. You’re lucky in tech that you’ll almost certainly land on your feet.
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#64I’ll add that the content of the work, especially around the but not-limited-to the advertising business, can be soul-grinding on its own. As a young person it’s easy to buy into almost any business model, but when you find yourself an instrument of exploitation it can create cognitive dissonance and anxiety. Whether it’s deceiving users, getting them to spend more than they can afford, or creating a wake of environment damage, it’s hard to justify getting paid to do certain kinds of work, regardless of how much you’re “making the world a better place”. Getting paid extremely well to do it makes it feel somehow worse.
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#65Big Tech is hundreds of thousands of employees across thousands of teams with a wide variety of work environments. The author's experience sounds really rough, but it also doesn't make sense to generalize from there to this whole piece of the industry. To give another data point, I've worked at a different Big Tech company since 2012, on two different teams, and haven't experienced anything like this. There's no pres…
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...
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#66> but the big difference between then and now was that when I was home, I was home. Work stopped, and I could do something else for a bit and didn’t have to worry about anything until the next work day. I didn’t feel much of the mental fatigue I do now. This really has nothing to do with Big Tech and is a nearly universal characteristic of any job that requires mental effort instead of physical. Yeah, if you're getti…
A friend of mine is a pilot on long flights. He said that the great thing about his job is that he can totally switch off from work as soon as he leaves the plane. Feels like the best of both world. High paid job without the stress.
For the other curious:
https://epicflightacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/maj...
https://epicflightacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/car...
It's way higher than what I expected.
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#67There are a few things which makes this culture worse.
Depending on your luck if your manager is someone without kids, or has grown up kids, they might be totally OK working more hours than you, and as a result, the culture can totally become what the author is describing.
Mix the whole interviewing process of Leetcoding with this, and it becomes a sad worklife, and even if you want to escape that, switching careers can only happen if you put in extra hours.
Life is too short to make this sacrifice.
My strategy has been to create good relationships with people in companies and then if they want to hire me, tell them clearly I don't work overtime and I don't do Leetcode. Has worked well for me so far. Relationship building and networking is still the best way even in this industry.
The present company I am working at, I didn't even have to do a coding test. Just a chat.
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#68Not really my experience at Google tbh. I've been at Google for a little under 4 years and been promoted twice but only work about 4 hours a day. Sometimes I don't do shit for weeks at a time and things seem to pan out ok. I'm not trying to humble brag that I'm 10x or anything--im not, I'm a B grade engineer at best. Sure it can be stressful sometimes, but I'd say that 80% of the time it's really chill.
> Not really my experience at Google tbh.
That's what I thought! Amazon sure, Apple maybe.. but Google seems like a pretty chill place to work. There's a reason it's like one of the hardest to get into, right? :D
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
A friend of mine is a pilot on long flights. He said that the great thing about his job is that he can totally switch off from work as soon as he leaves the plane. Feels like the best of both world. High paid job without the stress.
For the other curious: https://epicflightacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/maj... https://epicflightacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/car... It's way higher than what I expected.
I’m hardly an expert, but I understand it could take 15-20 years of a flying career before you reach the point of being a “first-year captain” at a major airline (the first column in this chart).
Re: Mental health impacts of a big tech job
#70I’ll add that the content of the work, especially around the but not-limited-to the advertising business, can be soul-grinding on its own. As a young person it’s easy to buy into almost any business model, but when you find yourself an instrument of exploitation it can create cognitive dissonance and anxiety. Whether it’s deceiving users, getting them to spend more than they can afford, or creating a wake of environm…
I'll second that. I was once hired as a "developer" in customer service for an old software product of a big company. My whole day consisted just of reading through log files. It didn't help that the company didn't invest anything in getting me familiar with the product. In the last months I sometimes got the feeling like my head was literally going to explode. Must have been panic attacks. I took a year off after that.