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All I Wanted Was to Work in Tech. Be Careful What You Wish For

96 点作者 monsieurpng大约 7 年前

16 条评论

ef4大约 7 年前
What nobody told this unfortunate person is that working for a tech company is not the same as being a tech worker.<p>I&#x27;m not defending the two-tier system inside many tech companies, just pointing out that it&#x27;s real and it&#x27;s maintained by market forces bigger than any one company.<p>If a big Seattle software company lays off a team of programmers, recruiters are swarming around them by the end of the same day.
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RichardCA大约 7 年前
Back in my 20&#x27;s I had a girlfriend who simply could not handle the opportunistic, hit-or-miss nature of finding work in tech.<p>I ended up breaking up with her. I just couldn&#x27;t tolerate that kind of friction and lack of support when I was already under the pressure of a job transition.<p>Even when I succeeded in landing a better paying job she was never truly happy for me. From my point of view it felt like a lack of trust.<p>With the benefit of 20&#x2F;20 hindsight, I see how I failed to understand the emotional burden I was asking her to carry for me.
anonacct37大约 7 年前
I don&#x27;t have as much sympathy for this person as I probably should. So someone decided being a waiter sucked and they wanted one of those cushy tech jobs. Without much self awareness as to why they exist or which jobs are valuable. Later in the article they almost figure it out:<p>&gt; One of the more apparent lessons I&#x27;ve learned during all this is that when working in tech, anyone is dispensable, from the C-suite to the sales floor. (Actually, IT is untouchable, and rightfully so.)<p>This former waiter then proceeds to land not one but three tech jobs. Based on what qualifications? Apparently just good networking skills. Wow, what a rough industry. Oh I almost forgot they turned down a fourth job because that would have meant relocation.<p>It sounds like &quot;tech&quot; was willing to give a go-getter chance after chance and either due to their performance or the company&#x27;s performance it just didn&#x27;t stick. Maybe despite many people being willing to give the author a chance, he&#x2F;she just wasn&#x27;t qualified to do the job?
alephnan大约 7 年前
&gt; They got unlimited paid time off (yes, you read that right—some companies offer unlimited vacation time to compete for talent).<p>I started reading the article with skepticism after that. At my previous startup, unlimited vacation time ended up meaning no vacation time. Sounds great in theory, not in practice. When I left, I did not get reimbursed for the unofficial ~15 paid vacation days we&#x27;re technically allowed.
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dahauns大约 7 年前
Yes, I can empathize with getting frustrated both facing the superficially hyper-positive, but in reality severely opportunistic and ruthless nature of startup culture, and with being treated like a freely interchangable, faceless number in a large company. Been there both, and it was harrowing.<p>That said - and it&#x27;s hard not to sound condescending here - halfway through the article I found myself agreeing with his girlfriend when she described his state of mind as &quot;delusional&quot;.<p>Going after what has been said in the article: What did he actually expect as someone with absolutely no experience and no education and&#x2F;or skillset for the job beyond those transferable from being a waiter? (The often underrated value of those notwithstanding). And the primary motivation being &quot;I want to work &#x27;in tech&#x27; and have it made!&quot; (And not, say, being interested in at least aspects of the core field or product of the company.) And the only actual mention of what his work was at those companies being &quot;marketing&quot; and &quot;whiteboard[ing] the shit out of everything.&quot; (Because writing with colorful markers on a whiteboard makes you look important.)<p>This screams &quot;disposable&quot;, or more benevolently &quot;likely one of the first to be let go when things go south&quot;, no matter the kind of company or field, or even the type of job at the company.
leggomylibro大约 7 年前
A good reminder that &#x27;tech&#x27; is more than the people sitting in front of screens [mis]mashing code together.<p>It seems odd that the same code&#x2F;infrastructure-y peculiarities of interviewing would get extended to marketing roles - why do you need a 5-person interview loop for things that revolve around communication and people skills? The only reason that those (awful) processes exist in the first place is because it&#x27;s extremely difficult to judge a candidate&#x27;s technical skills in a broad swath of concepts and technologies with limited time. But what sort of businessing doesn&#x27;t require marketers? Is that sort of thing not reasonably figured out?<p>The author&#x27;s last contracting stint also smells sort of like the &#x27;gig economy&#x27;. Sort of like how nowhere hires janitors anymore - the company which owns the building contracts services like that out to another firm which rarely offers full employment.<p>Back to the &#x27;rat race&#x27;, eh?
ngngngng大约 7 年前
It seems obvious to me that companies are inherently amoral. I&#x27;m not saying this is good, but does it really take a full blown sociopath to prioritize business goals over the repercussions of firing someone?<p>I don&#x27;t run a business, maybe I don&#x27;t want to with this in mind.
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maxxxxx大约 7 年前
Is any this of this specific to &quot;tech&quot;? It just seems to confirm that a lot of companies are run by sociopaths (see Gervais principle) who don&#x27;t care about the impact of their actions on the people that work for them.
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sevensor大约 7 年前
&gt; I&#x27;d always heard growing up that if you make yourself indispensable, you&#x27;ll never get fired.<p>This is terrible advice. Indispensable people are your team&#x27;s biggest weakness, and your boss knows it. If you become the single point of failure, you&#x27;re a problem to be fixed.
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jstewartmobile大约 7 年前
Even if you are in demand, none of these places have any honor. It is a shame too. People are usually ok at rolling with the punches if you just tell them one might be coming.<p>That, and as tempting as it may be to lay it all at the door of capitalism, I&#x27;m not sure that&#x27;s fair. Even in a competition, honor still has some value. I&#x27;d put more of the blame on the aphysical conflict-averse types office work generally attracts.
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nitwit005大约 7 年前
I haven&#x27;t worked for that many companies, but every company I&#x27;ve worked for has fired a marketing department. Usually because they realized their marketing department was useless.
vkou大约 7 年前
Unsurprisingly, modern white-collar work is incredibly anti-human. Blue-collar work is, as well, but in a different way.<p>This is a natural consequence of our economic systems. Companies that won&#x27;t burn you the moment that your department&#x27;s RoI is &lt;1, will be outcompeted or acquired by ones that will.<p>Though it may seem that way, nothing about this state of affairs has to be immutable.
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falcor84大约 7 年前
I stopped sympathising with the writer after &quot;... very smart people who deserved work...&quot;. The way I see it, if you come in with this mindset of the world owing anybody anything, then you are surely in for a big disappointment. The world doesn&#x27;t care about a particular human any more than it cares about a particular amoeba.
noonespecial大约 7 年前
All that churn sounds inordinately expensive.<p>It almost seems like its time for someone to come along and disrupt the disruptors with a little good old fashioned loyalty and a modicum of institutionalized common sense.
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nontechdude1大约 7 年前
wanting to solve a defined problem is a much better reason to join a certain company than on name alone. clearly the author just wanted a better salary. fine.<p>i agree that this has a limit. if one were to want to fix facebook&#x27;s problems, you&#x27;d inevitably have someone tell you no.
awat大约 7 年前
Good read. The sooner that society comes to grips with the concept that sociopathic behavior in a t-shirt and jeans is exactly the same as sociopathic behavior in a Prada suit the better.
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