Rising anger over widespread layoffs, disillusionment with Big Tech, and threats of mass displacement by AI have tech pros taking a good, hard look at unions.
The other thing is the management and boards of tech companies are incredibly incestuous. Your board is made up the boards of everyone else, they’re all CEOs competing for the same workers.
You’ve got two or three big investment firms that run the boards of all the major companies, which is anti competitive too. They’ll always push for a product they own to their other companies. They know when their other portfolio companies are doing layoffs, what they’re paying their staff, etc. they even share that with other companies so they can “compete” on salaries.
For an industry that cargo culted anti cargo culting, the management and execs all cargo cult the same over hiring and mass layoffs.
Employees get treated like crap now.
10 years ago I’d work overtime near a big release or when there was an outage. But now you get pinged all the time, there are no boundaries, and there’s an expectation. I’ve had CEOs joke about 9-9-6 work schedules and just openly flaunting how much worse they can make your life.
The terminal rot starts when your company brings in some ex Amazon or Meta execs (C suite, VP, director, whatever). They push for an almost pure numbers perspective. Judgement and morality be damned, think of the metric first.
Numbers are what these people know — these people survived the natural selection process at the most hostile and politicking companies you can think of. They’ll do anything to survive and get ahead.
You cut your support team as a cost centre — support doesn’t scale.
Then before you know it you’re 4 years into “we just have to push extra hard this year guys, the pace will slow down next year, we’ll get headcount too”. The whole time your performance reviews are getting more frequent and become more invasive — we’re adding an AI use component, make sure to list your growth areas and the impact (metrics!) of everything you’ve shipped. Remember, you’re competing with everyone we could hire, so how did you get better than them this quarter?
This field used to be good. And no, it wasn’t free lunches that made it good. It was having teams that gave a shit about the customer, it was putting the customer above all else, and it was going home feeling like you worked on something useful and good. You worked hard, you delivered value, and you got paid well.
It was good when it was new and growing and adding to innovation. Once the bean counters figured out the grey beards’ magic it got corrupted.
I grew up with stories of kids my age literally changing the world with new technologies and standards for the tech world. All the way into college, those people were innovating and developing things and having ethical back bones.
We were a generation of Nikola Teslas, but we didnt see the Edisons that were hiding in the wings.
It was having teams that gave a shit about the customer, it was putting the customer above all else, and it was going home feeling like you worked on something useful and good.
That was because there weren’t enough engineers back in the day. Then everybody went into learn to code, visa programs got scaled up, the after covid boom faded and the market became flooded enough to be employer owned.
Yeah, I fucking hate working with people who are those “learn to code for the paycheque” types.
I mean I get it, it paid well. But I can’t stand working with these people — they have no taste, they have no standards, they make it harder to get good jobs.
The other thing is the management and boards of tech companies are incredibly incestuous. Your board is made up the boards of everyone else, they’re all CEOs competing for the same workers.
You’ve got two or three big investment firms that run the boards of all the major companies, which is anti competitive too. They’ll always push for a product they own to their other companies. They know when their other portfolio companies are doing layoffs, what they’re paying their staff, etc. they even share that with other companies so they can “compete” on salaries.
For an industry that cargo culted anti cargo culting, the management and execs all cargo cult the same over hiring and mass layoffs.
Employees get treated like crap now.
10 years ago I’d work overtime near a big release or when there was an outage. But now you get pinged all the time, there are no boundaries, and there’s an expectation. I’ve had CEOs joke about 9-9-6 work schedules and just openly flaunting how much worse they can make your life.
The terminal rot starts when your company brings in some ex Amazon or Meta execs (C suite, VP, director, whatever). They push for an almost pure numbers perspective. Judgement and morality be damned, think of the metric first.
Numbers are what these people know — these people survived the natural selection process at the most hostile and politicking companies you can think of. They’ll do anything to survive and get ahead.
You cut your support team as a cost centre — support doesn’t scale.
Then before you know it you’re 4 years into “we just have to push extra hard this year guys, the pace will slow down next year, we’ll get headcount too”. The whole time your performance reviews are getting more frequent and become more invasive — we’re adding an AI use component, make sure to list your growth areas and the impact (metrics!) of everything you’ve shipped. Remember, you’re competing with everyone we could hire, so how did you get better than them this quarter?
This field used to be good. And no, it wasn’t free lunches that made it good. It was having teams that gave a shit about the customer, it was putting the customer above all else, and it was going home feeling like you worked on something useful and good. You worked hard, you delivered value, and you got paid well.
It was good when it was new and growing and adding to innovation. Once the bean counters figured out the grey beards’ magic it got corrupted.
I grew up with stories of kids my age literally changing the world with new technologies and standards for the tech world. All the way into college, those people were innovating and developing things and having ethical back bones.
We were a generation of Nikola Teslas, but we didnt see the Edisons that were hiding in the wings.
That was because there weren’t enough engineers back in the day. Then everybody went into learn to code, visa programs got scaled up, the after covid boom faded and the market became flooded enough to be employer owned.
Yeah, I fucking hate working with people who are those “learn to code for the paycheque” types.
I mean I get it, it paid well. But I can’t stand working with these people — they have no taste, they have no standards, they make it harder to get good jobs.