Time to unionize.

I’ve been a software engineer for almost 10 years now and lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to doing something else. I went into the field because coding and computing in general are genuine passions of mine but I find it difficult to be the code mill I’m expected to be, especially when getting work done quickly is prioritized over getting it done correctly. I also feel like most of the coworkers I’ve had over the years don’t have any genuine interest or intrinsic motivation, and are just in it because it pays well - which I don’t fault them for, especially in the current economy, but they’re much more likely to put up with being treated like shit.

I just don’t know what else I would do. Teaching high school CS seems fun but I’m pretty sure making that transition would take a couple years, since I gotta get a teaching degree and be a student teacher and all that, and I’m not sure I have the patience for that

I'm kind of LMAO because of course those places have turned into that. Look who runs them and look at the execs running it. These are not college grads literally living there and need to unwind while at work.

A lot of software companies especially the new ones who want young talent are running exactly the same as startups were 20 years ago just a lot more flashy and newer toys.

Rat race culture.

Idk why people think this is news. It's been an open thing for years now

What?

This has always been the case for decades and not even close to a new thing.

Google today is what IBM was to the early 2000s.

10,000 Shakespeares with typewriters doing the work of one monkey.

Nobody competent who's early in their career would go into one of those bloated rent-seeking firms. They'd be looking for an interesting startup.

I posted a similar comment in another post of this article.

The elite 1% students who spent their lives pursuing this are getting exactly what they asked for. They sold their souls for a big paycheck and assumed that it was everyone else's careers that were volatile. They'd have done better to work for a non-profit where at least they could say that they are making the world a better place.

These companies make it about politics themselves when they insist on getting involved in politics...you cant have your cake and eat it too...

Well, you can for a while, but eventually you get a reputation and nobody wants to work for you. Fuck I hate living on this rock some days.

Even the "facilities" they offered before were meant for achieving one objective whilst claiming to have a different purpose, like Google's "relax areas" which the techies never had time to use and whose purpose was actually to attract candidates by projecting the idea that Google was a relaxed work environment (rather than the neverending death march it has been for more than a decade) or their free shuttles to work so that people actually worked during their commute without that being counted as work time which were sold as being to help Google employees with their commute.

I was in Tech back in the 90s bubble and already back then things like the Aeron chairs, office get togethers and pizza parties were just hypocrite ploys to get people to work long hours for free and to make their office the center of their social life so that they would be less likely to move jobs.

Companies expecting you to put in 50, 60, 80+ hours a week, don't actually care about you or your well being and all their non-monetary "benefits" should be examined with a skeptical eye and the assumption that they'll gain from it in some way until proven otherwise: it's not always selfish and sometimes one's direct manager genuinelly wants people on the team to feel good: a good way to spot it is how reacted if you say "not interested, I'll just take that as time off instead" - if they're ok with it, then it's genuine good will, if they try and pressure you or refuse the time off part the whole thing was meant to serve objectives other than what's good for team members - but anything coming down from HR or upper management is certain to be some kind of ploy to directly or indirectly benefit the company.

I was at Google for the end of the good times. I end of life so many failed projects there. It’s astonishing they are still afloat but AdWords really does make them a lot of money.

What I'm seeing is that these trends are also hitting smaller companies whose leadership follows the cues. Now even at smaller companies folks are afraid to speak up and there is no more fun. I saw a huge shift in that direction during the layoffs in 2023.

If you're part of a team that actually enjoys work and has fun while doing it, cherish that every day.

Based on what I've seen, that seems to be how it's always gone within an individual business (and also not exclusive to tech). Maybe right now we're calling it an era within tech because it's happening simultaneously to some big players, and that's the difference?

For a lot of businesses, things start out small, stressful, and maybe a bit grindy while folks are trying to get things off the ground. If that works out, then there's usually a huge push to grow. Business moves into the "great places to work" phase, basically dream job, though depending on the business and industry this can sometimes also be the "we don't pay the best but we've got an onsite arcade and mini-bar" phase. It's usually an economic boom time, best numbers ever type situation. And then the tiniest little bump, and that all comes crashing down. Cut backs, more stringent rules, everything has to be measured, lay-offs or mass exodus, place becomes a low morale corporate hellscape and suddenly every thing is "we're a family".

Been around the block more than once, I've seen the process and know the signs.

All those fun little cultural benefits were only meant to keep people at the office for longer spans of time, away from their families, and always ready for work. These bureaucratic structures are just the natural state of any public company that has to answer to feduciary duty.

Tech isn't dead, nor is it done. It is just going to not be very profitable for a while, which will likely mean that a lot of us won't be working on it for a while.

Not sure why Apples being grouped in here. Since 2020 their layoffs are rounding errors, 0.5% while Google and Meta are 7% and 26% respectively.

Apple has been beaucratic since before Google and Meta existed and never had the perks that Google and Meta offered.

If anything these companies are becoming more like Apple and Microsoft. Which was inevitable.

Those elite 1% students who pursued this life got precisely what they went after. It's too late to cry, you sold your soul for that giant paycheck and now you have to suffer it. You'd have done better working for a non-profit and at least believed that you were making the world a better place.