Senior leadership sincerely believes that they are a force for good even when they are doing things to harm their workers, their customers, or society at large. It's human nature to feel that way, and to contradict that is to offend them and risk getting labeled as "hopelessly immersed in Reddit toxicity".
And the easiest way to keep up the act is to fool yourself, because most of us aren't good at faking it. Find the best in senior leadership and emphasize it to yourself; find win-win opportunities (or make them!). Maybe it's even true that the company is a force for good! (I genuinely believe this about all my past employers in varying amounts, but I've been choosy and have made sacrifices.)
But be stern about never putting yourself in a position where you can be taken advantage of, because senior leadership, being weak humans like all of us, will succumb to temptation.
This is germane because while labor and capital may perceive each other as the “enemy” and may in fact act counter to each other’s interests, nearly everyone perceives their own actions as justified.
To the extent that there is “social programming” involved which could conceivably change (unlike “human nature”), it has to do with the acts themselves, not the strong impulse to believe that your own acts are justified.
The better way is to work for a company that doesn't suck.
I can understand what you are suggesting, but the balancing act of assuming they are acting for the best and also ensuring you do not let yourself get taken advantage of is very difficult.
"lie through your teeth 8 hours a day to people you see at least 5 days a week"
That guy was absolutely immersed in internet culture, making him less self-aware and very unpleasant to work with.
I sometimes wish companies were more open to accepting these roles, instead of the up or out model.
There is in many teams a lot of busywork that for various reasons can't be automated (or new incoming busywork that takes over when the older one gets automated).
If an employee is content with just handling this kind of lower level busywork and go home at 4:30pm in exchange of not pursuing raises and promotions, there's nothing wrong with that. That work still needs to get done, so rather than getting a never ending stream of junior new hires constantly having to get trained, I'd be fine with having someone who is happy to stay at that level and take it easy.
But companies live or die by talent / passion density. If you try to only hire talented / passionate people, then many of them will still just be fit for grunt work so grunt work still gets done. If you on the other hand hire for grunt work you wont find much talent at all so company fails after a while.
smashing these two together and pretending they are the same has been a huge source of cognitive dissonance in the industry and serves no one.
As bad as big non-tech companies are at things I quite often see they are better at providing fixes and updates for the little hidden pieces in the background because they have people that aren't fighting their way up the ladder.
Some people simply show up at work solely to put food on the table, doing the minimum amount of work so as not to get fired.
In many countries being a developer is a plain office job just like everything else, and everyone that doesn't want to move into management after reaching seniority is seen as a failure.
The flip side is the terror of an entrepreneur seeing their enterprise struggle.
Go into business yourself for a bit and see the world from an entirely different angle. If you don't make it and come back to employment (most likely) you will be a much humbled and more enlightened person.
The number of absolutely toxic business owners is insane.
I’ve worked for multiple small businesses, led by wonderful humans, which ran out of money. When those businesses went under, it tore their leaders apart to let workers go — but those leaders were still constrained in how the could act by economic realities.
There are both leaders and workers who are too cynical about each other. But it makes sense to be guarded with every company, even if I think it’s debatable how best to act — and how we might dream of improving matters at the macroeconomic level.
But there are some real bad employees too that don't understand how the world works.
Maybe the toxic business owners should work in the coal mines for a bit?
The solution is rewarding people when a company is successful and more importantly not punishing hard workers. Right now people are under the impression that slacking and working hard will be equally rewarded, because that is the truth. Hard workers also get laid off so that CEOs can make a few extra bucks.
The problematic juniors show up to their jobs determined to be uncooperative, sow discontent among coworkers, stonewall progress in meetings, and think they’re just going to job-hop to the next company before the performance management catches up to them. They see the jobs or even the concept of working to live in general as a scam and feel like they’re winning some deep cultural war if they collect paychecks while making life difficult for their manager.
Another large cohort is paid pretty well with salaries from 110k-150k by that same point who have effectively no negotiation power and are given “take it or leave it” deals with the only leverage being to find another job
And even for the incredibly well paid ones, as the other commentator noted, there’s documented proof of organized wage suppression by the corporations
A grocery store I worked at tracked finances and they were available to all employees. The grocery store made $270 per worker per hour. New hires were paid less than 1/10 of the value they provided.
I can only imagine how much more exploitative tech is
The results will surprise you.
“I have altered the deal, pray I don’t alter it further” has been the majority of my career and my peers. Very few people(as a percentage of population) actually have had enough leverage at any point to not have to eat shit if their company says so.
At this point it’s in the corporations court. If you have managed to generate a relationship with your labor force where they are no longer lying flat, but actively trying to cause sabotage like you described then I think you(the companies in question, not you in particular) share some of the onus on how we got here
Edit: and to be clear I’ve been working in tech for over a decade, this is not a perspective from a new grad with only the internet as their source of information. The younger generation has seen their older siblings and cousins getting fucked over more and more each year and we’re reaching the point of societal unrest where a large group of people no longer think the “deal” society is offering them is worth it
Yeah capitalism is sad in a lot of ways - particular the modes of possible value. But we are actually talking about working in hierarchical management organizations which have existed forever and have nothing to do exclusively with capitalism.
I didn't get laid off 3 times because I have a bad attitude. I got laid off because:
1) it was cheaper for the company to move the software department over seas
2) The business got sold to Amazon and as part of that process they had to downsize
3) Company collapsed due to leadership failure
I had a good attitude until I saw how disposable I was to these companies. You're an asset until you aren't.
Product finished? downsizing. Financial crisis that doesn't effect our industry? downsizing. Company about to IPO? downsizing.
Companies have no loyalty, you shouldn't either.
If the work runs out, find another job. Nothing wrong with that.
It's not a self-fulfilling prophecy like claimed above.
You can't complain about people becoming cynical when right now you can see all the tech giants investing ridiculous sums in order to eliminate staff from their payroll.
Second, I seriously doubt juniors ability to "sow discontent" among more experienced seniors. They can latch on existing discontent, but juniors are too low on hierarchy and seniors have too much of opinions for juniors to have much power there.
Eventually they were removed from the team. It should have been sooner, but the manager is very empathetic and supportive of his team. Morale immediately shot up and things are much better now, as well as more productive.
Not every workplace is a dog-eat-dog hellscape. In fact, I’d say they’re the minority. But you do reap what you sow: if you’re determined to see it as a zero-sum game and go looking for conflict, you’ll find it.
Software developers are relatively highly paid. When they start acting like they’re minimum wage workers flipping burgers at a dead-end job, they’re missing the big picture. That’s the problem I’m trying to communicate.
The management culture, anti software/nerd mindset among the population and eastern European competition in the offshoring market have a much bigger impact.
E.g. even though Germany is practicing mercantilist beggar thy neighbour export surplus policies, the country has failed to become an exporter of software or be known for quality software. Anyone who wants to work in the software industry is better off leaving the Eurozone and going to Switzerland where they get paid more in addition to the things you claim are the cause.
> Is this not true to a first approximation though?
No, not at all. The company wants the employee to do well so that the team does well and the company overall does well. If the company was "the enemy", they company would be wishing for the employee to fail, which is not why they spent a lot of time and money to hire you in the first place.
Now, of course the company isn't your friend (or family) either. The employer doesn't exist in the friend-enemy axis, they're just an employer which is a different type of relationship.
Also, who is "the company"? People in upper management and HR, i.e. those who see you as a number on a spreadsheet but don't ever interact with you personally.
But most of your interaction is with your first and second level managers who are specific people. One would certainly be well advised to cultivate a professional friendship with them. Not only will you do better, but work will be a lot more pleasant.
> Also, who is "the company"?
The company doesn't "want" anything other than to become a bigger pile of money — it's an amoral abstract construction, lacking human wetware and all its messy idiosyncrasies. I think I'd express similar sentiments in a slightly different way: the company benefits when it gets maximum value for minimum outlay over the lifetime of the employment relationship.
That model allows for companies which act in ways wildly counter to the interests of their workers. For example, the private equity firms asset-stripping Toys 'r' Us and KMart mostly "cared" that the workers at a given retail facility not quit before they could be let go.
In 2009 I worked for a really chill company with small but nice management. The owner/CEO wanted to turn it into a worker-owned co-op.
But one of my coworkers was so stuck in the "management is evil" mindset that he became hard to work with. (Although he also radicalized politically; I think he went from SNP to UKIP.)
The trap is when they see everything as a false dichotomy between friend and enemy. Enemies are something you avoid or even work against. When someone starts seeing their employer as the enemy and they don’t want to do things that help out their enemy, they trick themselves into poor performance out of spite.
Which leads to performance management and eventually firing if they don’t get a handle on it. This makes them even angrier, confirming their belief that their company is out to get them, leading to deeper spiraling into spite and poor performance.
Breaking someone out of that mentality is hard but everyone is so much happier once you’ve cracked them out of the “friend or enemy” dichotomous thinking.
Something like the analogue to the “Reddit-infused worker” archetype, where leadership is inappropriately cynical about their workers and see them as “the enemy”?
Of course. If you don’t see that, you’re missing the point.
In your world, is there such a thing as a bad employee? Or do you assume all employees are inherently good and do appropriate work for their pay and don’t need constant performance management to simply do their job?
In my posts I’m not talking about all juniors. I’m talking about a problematic subset. You seem to be assuming I’m generalizing to all of them. I am not. This is a phenomenon specific to a subset of juniors that is unfortunately a repeated pattern where they all share some very common and obvious characteristics. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to break them out of that mindset and have them join their much happier peers, but to be honest once someone is that deep into the cynical mindset it’s hard to wake them out of it.
Of course — I implied as much via the “inappropriately cynical“ characterization.
The tension between capital and labor is inescapable and ancient.
I didn’t think you were generalizing to all juniors. Rather, what caught my interest was that before this last message I perceived the perspective of capital in your words.
Yes. My employer has gone all in on the AI bandwagon. To achieve this, they lay off around 10% of the workforce every February to free up capital for whichever AI fad they wish to pursue that FY, all the while spouting the usual bullshit about being a "family".
I could make a lot more money elsewhere working 12 month fixed term contracts, with possible extensions, than I do as a "permanent" employee doing effectively the same thing.
Or to hijack Bryan Cantrill, do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing your employer.
They are not your enemy, you are far too small for them to care.
That's completely different than being your enemy.
What you want to avoid are work environments where most workers are focused on gaming internal politics to get ahead. Those environments are soul destroying.
But that's not all work environments. And most work environments are some mix of internal politics and wanting to actually create good and useful products.
Employees (middle management and down) are explicitly structured to use salaries (to reduce costs/earnings from going to them).
Salary is generally a flat monetary incentive, and bonuses aren't big enough typically. You make more money by promotion up a rigid hierarchy: so that is the true motivation.
And that is politics.
If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them.
Engineering workers are often idealistic, which is a different set of motivations to exploit by management for monetary advantage. But idealism/creation leads to turf wars and emotional investment in "your code", which is another entire axis of politics.
This is not true at all. Far more important in upper management is ego - they will lose money to improve their legacy or beat a competitor.
> If you have salaries, you have politics, and a downward trend towards more of them
Nobody said politics do not exist.
So let’s take what you said at face value - management is paying for jobs but they are looking to cut costs, etc.
Is that arrangement something you can use to benefit your life for a season? Or an inherent war zone?
It’s just business. You have something they want, they have something you want. Try to take advantage of places where your incentives aligned and watch out when they are not.
Is this not true to a first approximation though? I mean you do have to "hide your power level" in some way, but the fact that the employer isn't your friend or family is a good working model to keep in the back of your mind. It's a prisoner's dilemma type situation, and defect/defect seems to be the equilibrium we've converged at.