The thing about the top tech companies, particularly Intel and other chip companies where postgraduate degrees are more or less required to do anything interesting, is that people there have literally gone though over a decade of intense competition in the educational system to qualify to get their foot in the door. And then, to stay there and rise through the ranks is another decade or more of intense competition, both technical and political, against similar elites. Needless to say, this can have some pretty corrosive effects without proper supervision.

Recipe for a toxic work culture from day one. Your team should never be your competition. Your company should never be your competition. Meritocracy works only in certain markets. Knowledge-based work isn’t one of them.

I really feel for people who are in these companies. Who put in 6+ years of university/higher education and think that “if I could only fight my peers for the top spot” when “top” is relative.

To someone else’s point, I totally acknowledge that there are certain industries that you have to have a degree to do anything meaningful. I also know there’s tons of companies out there that need bright minds to create the next big thing.

I used to think that I was in competition with my coworkers for that promotion, for that top spot, to basically prove to myself that I could and prove to others I should. I stopped wasting time trying to prove what I already know and now focus on what I don’t.

Office politics sucks and I refuse to play the game. If I get passed up for promotion or if I’m unhappy I leverage my rights under my states at-will work laws and go find somewhere else to work.

The best places I’ve worked where this wasn’t a thing (the elite competition for who’s right) were places that acknowledged your contributions, explained why you did/didn’t get the promotion, laid out plans for you to achieve that (or have you on that list for when it opens up) and then actually honors that promise.

Any competition with sufficient rewards attracts this kind of toxicity eventually and that is why larger companies are usually the worst. Getting a promotion at a small company in the EU or in the midwest USA means you get maybe 10k/year extra. Getting to the next rung in FAANG (or Intel, apparently) can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, so it's not surprising people are a lot more willing to backstab their peers in those places.

Yeah, I’m not anti competition. I’m anti in-fighting. I also blame companies that structure their pay so radically that this fighting for next rung because it’s hundreds of thousands more is a thing. It shouldn’t be. Maybe a 10% bump, but higher up the latter should mean more responsibility and more importantly, accountability. If that justifies the extra pay then so be it but getting a promotion shouldn’t mean the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Requirement to be a graduate of a "good" university is not a meritocracy. It's just preferring people who have a diploma, but that doesn't mean the person hired will have other qualities necessary to be effective.

Edit: I know some people with diploma who "gamed" the system, e.g. memorized queries for exam without having any understanding of SQL and passed.

>Requirement to be a graduate of a "good" university is not a meritocracy.

I didn't say it was. Meritocracy in this case was in reference to the company's internal competition (organic or not) for top spots at the company.

I completely understand there are certain jobs where you need a degree. Bar even. A lot of software engineering doesn't fit that mold. I'm 100% behind requiring an advanced degree if you're writing software that controls: lives/property/money in any meaningful way. Money in this case being large capital investments, not consumer payments. I'm a big proponent of hiring people who need a second chance, who maybe are down on their luck, or otherwise have a different path than suburban white America or the H1B visa mills they created (caveat, I'm white). I think there are plenty of opportunities for software engineers without degrees to build web apps, mobile apps, services, integrations, automation, etc.

Mutual cooperation is often spurred by personal and professional competition. I know I've been with teams that I had to drag through projects because they "get paid the same" whether or not it ever gets finished, and well-complemented teams where we forgot everything else while we built on each other's achievements.

There's selfish, winner takes all competition that creates winners and losers, and then there's healthy, productive competition where everyone who engages comes out better off for challenging themselves against a peer.

And obviously, there has to be a culture that provides resources no matter the outcomes. If you starve the 'losers', you're just creating desperate bait dogs in a toxic work environment.

Head Fakes. Learning spikes under the guise of competition are amazing tools. Hackathon's, etc. Competition internally with this cut-throat attitude (because so much money, potentially, is on the line) is toxic and can create some serious mental health issues. This isn't a discussion of competition in the markets, free market and all, it's about competition with the people you work with day in and day out. It can create animosity and anxiety at work. I would much rather work with a genius who's humble than an asshole who is just looking for the next promotion.

To truly grow as a company you need to grow as teams. Cooperation, trust, empathy for your customers as well as your coworkers. Positions of leadership should be given to those who show an aptitude to lead through problems to desirable outcomes, regardless of who/where they are. Flatter org structures to prevent this chasm of salary difference which creates this toxicity in competition for those spots.

Netflix pays their engineers a ton, because they provide the value. Everyone is compensated at a level that everyone is happy working there (for the most part, happiness is relative, I digress). Companies should be providing everything they can to those who provide value to the company. If an individual wants more responsibility, they must provide more value as a result.

> people there have literally gone though over a decade of intense competition in the educational system to qualify to get their foot in the door. And then, to stay there and rise through the ranks is another decade or more of intense competition

Two decades of requisite grunt work will also encourage your best junior talent to seek out start-up opportunities.

Bingo! After a few tries one will always look inward (healthily or not) and seek out other opportunities.

> "Two decades of requisite grunt work will also encourage your best junior talent to seek out start-up opportunities."

For silicon and hardware in general, the job market is much, much smaller, making that decision significantly more difficult.

> Needless to say, this can have some pretty corrosive effects without proper supervision.

And half the time the supervision is the exact opposite. Concepts like stack ranking are a sure-fire way of making the workplace more contentious, politicised, and publicised.

Because that's the thing about

> intense competition

95% of the time it's about visibility, the technical excellence only matters if it's visible and publicised to decision-makers, which means self-aggrandisement and a mastery of office politics not only can compensate for lacking technical skills, but will usually edge out technical skill entirely.

One value that cuts through most of elite society is the thought that competition produces better outcomes. So “competing” instead of collaborating with another office is good, actually, because competition will breed excellence (or something).

When you’re small all that competitive energy is directed at your competitors. When you’re king of the hill that competitive energy turns inward.

It's actually both, a competition that relies a lot on collaboration.

They should compete against the odds instead.

Indeed, for we computer geeks are known for our lack of ego...

Absolutely, not. Seeing my 4 years old son experiment with social skills I’m learning soo much about the most inexplicable conflict situations I’ve been through in 15 years of IT

I completely agree with this. I’ve been in software since ‘98, but many of the valuable tools I apply to interpersonal interaction were learned on the path of raising my 5 year old.

Natural consequences, timely feedback, parallel modeling, Socratic questioning, mirroring...

If you want to know how to handle the politics of a large organization, try interacting with children. The parallels are amazing.

Yup, I'm considering offering to help with programming extracurriculars at what will become his school just to get a sneak peek at how the older children deal with unfamiliar abstractions. I've been living in a bubble of tech savviness and contempt for as long as I remember, I need to reset.

And he's actually 3, so I can't really sit around and wait another 5-6 years before I get to figure out the perfect "business customer" :D

Totally, children are a wonderful display of human nature and a chance to understand ourselves better, I’m feeling amazed by my interactions with a niece, 1.5 years old. She so cunning already, for example she accidentally puts a toy on a side of the bed so it falls over, I get it and she immediately starts to again put it juuuuust on the edge so it would look like she did it accidentally and it fell over. I think I finally stopped getting microgrudges towards people behavior that day :) We just like to play

Super super interesting and I'd love discuss - drop me a note (contact info in my bio) :)

Same observation, from my cats, as I do not have kids. Whenever they come, the cats will meaow right away, as they do not have delayed gratification. They also want fairness, otherwise they will attack each other. The food has to be given at the same time and same portion to each of the three cats.

Pardon me but I'd consider semiconductors experts different from computer geeks. Seems like I'm wrong.

You don't use computer science to make sure people are properly incentivized.

Tech nerds are some of the least objective (and unknowingly too) groups of people I have ever known.

Maybe the feeling of being on top of the trendy tech and above the norm .. hubrys in a word.