
The ethics of digital disruption (why top tech companies are the most TOXIC) - alicam
https://www.squareweave.com.au/blog/2015/10/21/the-ethics-of-digital-disruption/
======
SomeCallMeTim
I'm 1000% in support of work-life balance, and of employers treating employees
as humans.

But given that the Amazon that I worked at for a year and a half (in the AWS
tree) emphasized work-life balance, and among the dozens of workers I knew
personally, none had complaints anything like the one in the article (or the
many in the previous Amazon-is-evil article) I do wonder about the other
examples given.

Bezos sent out an email company-wide after the story about the stillborn child
broke and said that is _not_ something that should ever happen at Amazon, and
to email him personally if anything like that ever happens again.

I also have reports from an Apple employee who has worked there for years that
he's not particularly overworked, and that he has plenty of time to spend with
his family.

All of the referenced companies are big. In any big company you'll have
pockets of crappy management. It's no more fair to describe the _company_
culture based on the experience of an individual than it is to describe a
_human_ culture based on the actions of an individual.

That said, I'm sure there are companies where the culture is cutthroat all the
way down. But I'm also sure that trait is not confined to tech start-ups --
and I would hope that the trait isn't highly correlated with company success.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's sad that the amazon work environment kerflufle started from an article
that was so flawed and focused on the wrong things. The "work life balance" at
amazon isn't as horrid as it could be but it's not good. There's more to a
good work environment than simply avoiding horrendous overwork. Amazon has a
lot of very serious problems including a toxic company culture that treats
people like cogs. I've known a lot of people who have worked at Amazon in many
different areas (including myself) and the overarching story is one of people
who have not been happy and left quickly. There are some exceptions in
specific groups and teams but the overall situation is very problematic and is
a big competitive disadvantage for the company (though it's not obvious yet
because they have so few capable competitors).

~~~
kabdib
"Leaving quickly" seems to be common. The guy I'm sitting next to spent two
years at Amazon (he left there a year ago) and said that at 18 months he was
one of the longest employed in his group.

I don't know how you get any semblance of a team with that kind of turnover.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
The way my offer worked, at the end of the first year some stock grants vest
come due, and I would end up working for less money per-month for the next
year unless I stayed for my next stock grant a year later. I am _not_
generally happy working in a corporate environment, but that's more about me
than about Amazon in particular (I prefer being an entrepreneur; that's why I
read HN). And I wasn't willing to work for another full year, even though the
compensation was amazing. But it wasn't because of poor working conditions;
instead it was pretty standard fare for big corporate salary jobs, like not
being able to work on my own projects in my free time without restriction.

After one year as a full employee I was deluged with job offers from just
about every other major company. I'm sure many of them would have offered to
increase my compensation. I said no to all of them because I wanted to go back
to consulting. I assume that after your second year, you probably get a
similar set of offers.

A typical employee in AWS sticks around for about 2 years. But at the same
time, tenure at tech companies is getting short just about everywhere these
days -- and I knew people in my group who had been at Amazon for 4-5 years. My
own personal tenure at companies rarely exceeds two years, with one exception
where I stayed for nearly six. So again, I don't see how Amazon is terribly
different on this axis.

One of the most annoying things at Amazon is the "on call" policy where _all_
developers need to put in time "on call", which includes answering a pager in
the middle of the night, sometimes for poorly designed alarms that are poorly
documented. I knew one developer who quit, with no notice, right after the
first week he'd been on call. The frustrating thing about it was that my team
did _client_ work: Android, iOS, and Windows clients for an AWS service, so
none of us knew the first thing about how to fix anything on the server side,
so it was particularly painful to be put on call.

So no, not everything is perfect, and I'm sure that some managers are
downright awful. But not everything is "Work harder! Damn your family!" and
"We'll be watching your performance after having a personal tragedy strike!"
either, which is what the articles _imply._ I did really feel that if I'd seen
something like that I could have taken it to HR and it would have been
addressed.

~~~
kabdib
I've heard that the one thing an Amazon employee can buy without getting
manager approval is a pager. Which tells me pretty much everything I need to
know about working there.

------
Animats
Union, yes! The tech industry needs to unionize. It's the only way to push
back against this sort of thing.

There are unions in creative fields. One of the relevant ones for tech is The
Animation Guild, Local 839, I.A.T.S.E., which represents artists and
technicians in Hollywood animation. Here's their standard contract.[1] It's
not spectacular, but it has time and a half after 8 hours in a day or 40 hours
in a week, plus double time after 6 days. This discourages crunches. There are
also clauses which prevent jerking around employees too much, including a
formal grievance procedure with teeth.

As I've pointed out before, unionization is why film scheduling and budgeting
is a serious discipline. Film projects which overrun their budget cost the
producer, not the employees.

[1] [http://animationguild.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/2012-20...](http://animationguild.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/2012-2015-Master-Book.pdf)

~~~
hueving
I don't want an hourly wage. I want a salary. Punching time cards is a shit
lifestyle that I don't want to go back to.

The way to push back is to quit. Any half competent developer should be able
to pick up a new job quickly. There are plenty of companies that don't require
as many hours.

~~~
Animats
Anyone in system administration or "DevOps" is effectively hourly.

------
grossvogel
I think there is plenty of reason to be concerned about tech giants and
startup darlings being run without a moral compass by sociopathic leadership.
But it seems myopic to focus your concern on their employees, who'll endure a
tough couple of years and then wash out into $100k+ jobs elsewhere.

What about the consequences on society at large of (a) letting these companies
accumulate power and influence and (b) lionizing their leaders' pursuit of
results at all cost?

~~~
alicam
I agree. The wider social consequence is ultimately more damaging. But even
more difficult to deal with, or to hold them accountable for in a "laissez
faire" free market context??

------
iofj
The problem is that in these top tech companies you can actually advance
because you're good. Yes that means "climbing over others", and of course,
it's rather likely that you are not in fact the best.

The alternative is, put kindly, nepotism, put badly Machiavellian political
games. You climb up by marrying the spoiled brat daughter of some senior exec
and keeping her happy.

I've worked in the middle east, where nearly all companies are government
controlled (not "directly" but through family ties) and the whole society
falls into the "non-toxic" category according to this article. Nobody will be
working 1 minute longer than they strictly have to (except the personal
servants - God help those guys). There is absolutely nothing whatsoever you
can do to advance (other than the spoiled brat marrying thing). Everyone who
doesn't report to you is against you in every social relation you have and
people are constantly laying traps for each other, just to gain a leg up in
meetings where the higher ups are present. Truly simple projects get denied
necessary firewall access just so the security boss could tell your manager
that you're over time. You learn to avoid HR and only ever ask them to "make a
contract for THIS guy", because if you ask them to find someone only family
members will be allowed to interview. Things like that.

Given the choices, I think I'll be taking the "TOXIC" company, thank you. A
lot of people tell me I'll change my mind when I turn 50 or so (used to be 40
but that's getting close and (I like to think) I'm still very sure I want to
be in the competitive environment.

------
bruu_
Honestly I could see investment bankers laughing at this article. I definitely
feel like technology is WAY more flexible, where you can do the "hardcore 12
hour days" 200k/yr track and also the "10-5 with lunch" lazy man's 60k/yr
track.

If you want to spend a bunch of time with your family and work 35 hours a
week, guess what man, you can't drive a nice car, own a big house in Los
Altos, or send your kids to private school. Pick a lifestyle and accept the
drawbacks that come with it.

There's seriously nothing wrong with moving to a second tier city and making
60k/yr. Let the people who love stress and success do their thing in the Bay
Area

~~~
ObjectiveSub
This is the most self congratulatory self-justification I've ever heard.
Really? Lazy man's track?

I'm sorry but if you're GIVING away your life for a company that you don't
hold SIGNIFICANT stake in for a regular salary (even at 200k/yr) then you're
the chump. Guess what, your time isn't endless. Your 20s-30s (hell, even 40s)
will pass away. All you've done is provide free labor so some executive can
cash in on his/her 7+ figure income.

This is not even considering the romantic and naive assumption that working
12-hour days will give you success. Or that "stress and success" are in any
way correlated. Oh well. This is how tech companies lure naive people into
such hours.

This is speaking from someone that's had 9-6 with lunch "lazy man's" jobs that
paid 200+k/yr.

------
tpiha
Finally voices are being raised about this huge issue, finally!

We don't live to work, we work to live, companies exist to make life easier,
it's not the other way around.

~~~
bruu_
They exist to make life easier for their customers, which is usually directly
proportional to the amount of effort being exerted by the company...

~~~
tpiha
This is simply not correct in the age of automation.

You are basically saying that your apartment does not get vacuumed because
Roomba is doing the job.

And the amount of effort being exerted by the company is not the same thing as
the amount of effort being exerted by the employees. All these companies have
huge profit margins and owners can easily make their employees' lives more
decent instead of treating them this way, like sociopaths they are.

------
AndrewKemendo
This is a sore subject for me because I think that there is a weird
equivalence drawn between two fundamentally different groups: Companies led by
sociopaths of the highest order and Companies with truly massive goals and a
short timeline. There is certainly a venn diagram that would show good overlap
between the two - but nobody is making the distinction. It's the second group
that I think gets a bad reputation because of the first.

Pardon the military metaphor I am going to make, but it's the closest thing
that I know of that can compare.

In the U.S. and most first world nations, you have two distinct groups within
the military: The line military which makes up 95-99% of the force and special
operations which is somewhere between 1-5%.

The line military generally works 7-4, has most weekends off and generally you
can have a normal family life. There isn't much of a selection process for the
troops and you only need to put in a huge effort for a small portion of the
time. They mostly do low intensity training and in a really big conflict a
subsection might see combat twice or three times.

Special Operations has a long selection and initial training process that can
last years. This group is at the top of their game 90% of the time and is
constantly in high intensity training. They see combat constantly regardless
of if there is a big war going and a good portion have significant trouble
maintaining a stable home or family life without significant effort from the
spouse. If they start to fail, they get removed from the unit and sent to the
line (fired). You've never seen "eat your own" like there is in Tier-1 Special
Operations units - because you have to, to stay that good.

In my opinion, high tech, "disruptive" high growth companies by definition are
the Special Operations groups of the business world. It's a tiny percent, but
you have to be at the top of your game 90-99% of the time. That means
dedicating your life to the job. That means hiring "killers" who are intensely
driven.

The rest of the business world is the line and cannot, or do not want to be in
that kind of "always on" 24/7 environment.

I think the disconnect is that there is a large group of people who aren't
special operators, they are line soldiers, but they joined special operations
companies. This is partly the fault of the company for not making it clear to
them before hiring what they would be getting into, and partly their fault for
not seeing the company for what it was.

This metaphor seems to apply to companies like SpaceX, Amazon, etc...

You can have a well run company with empathetic staff that crushes spirits
constantly because they have such a high bar and a subset of their people were
just not up to the task. "Your best isn't good enough" is a constant mantra
during Special Operations selection and I don't see why such a bar would be
any lower in an elite business organization.

This quote was great: "Amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about
themselves.”

This same quote has been applied to Harvard, Stanford, the US Military
Academies, Goldman Sachs, EXXON etc...so it's not unique to tech by any means.

Any relation to Objectivism may only apply to that first group I mentioned
before, but is certainly not a prerequisite for a company which has insanely
high standards.

~~~
clay_to_n
I don't think being a "special ops" company is actually necessary, at all. For
a high growth startup, you do not need everyone to work 12 hour days and fight
each other to move up. It causes burnout, unethical decisions, and corporate
resentment.

Hire smart people, treat them like human beings. If you're constantly working
12 hour days in a tech company, either you or your manager are doing something
wrong.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_If you 're constantly working 12 hour days in a tech company, either you or
your manager are doing something wrong._

Disagree. We have 4 people. We have the money for 4 people. We have the
workload of probably 8 people. If I don't put those hours in, things don't get
done that need to for us to stay alive.

I'm wasting my time right now responding to this because I think it's an
important discussion. That just means I'll get 4 instead of 5 hours of sleep
tonight.

I have two 15-20 slide decks to finish tonight: 1 for our board meeting
tomorrow and another due tomorrow morning for an Angel pitch on Wednesday. I
also just hung up from a technical call, cause we are trying to push a new
release to the app store tonight. I still have to review some cards in leankit
and respond to a handful of emails from today.

~~~
blackguardx
No one is talking about limiting high ranking employers/founders to 8 hours.
They should work as much as they want because their efforts directly lead to
financial gain for themselves (due to large stock holdings, etc).

The problem comes when the bottom of the barrel people are working those same
hours. Working 80 hour weeks doesn't really help them unless they really like
doing it. Some people legitimately like work. That's great. They shouldn't set
the bar, though.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
This is exactly the point though, don't hire "bottom of the barrel people"
into such an organization.

They should be working someplace where they can comfortably be marginally
talented.

~~~
saryant
> This is exactly the point though, don't hire "bottom of the barrel people"
> into such an organization.

The corollary of this, in a startup, would be don't expect great employees to
work 10+ hours a day for 0.5%.

If you expect people to put in that same level of effort, compensate them to
the same degree.

Meanwhile those of us who've already been through that meat grinder will be
enjoying our 9-5 and large salary, regardless your baseless slight about being
"marginally talented."

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_The corollary of this, in a startup, would be don 't expect great employees
to work 10+ hours a day for 0.5%._

Can't agree with this enough - it's the same reason Special Operators get a
shitload of incentive/hazard duty pay and signing bonuses.

 _Meanwhile those of us who 've already been through that meat grinder will be
enjoying our 9-5 and large salary, regardless your baseless slight about being
"marginally talented."_

I was simply responding to the OP's "Bottom of the barrel" comment.

------
oldmanjay
The article makes some interesting points, generalizes quite badly about
things outside its ken, and overall is not really saying anything all that
interesting. It's sort of like a fact-free fluff piece in favor of being
deliberately less competitive. I guess it's a fine message, but in a very
direct way it feels like a nonstarter. Good to have ideals though.

------
purpled_haze
I'm all for a push for ethical treatment at top companies.

If I were able, I'd like to work at one of them. But, since I'm not at the top
of my game, I won't end up working at one of them. Instead, I'll continue
working at my B.S. company. Here's what happens there: many of the leaders
completely suck. They make decisions like the smart, driven, type-A leaders at
<top tech company here>. The difference is that those decisions are often
idiotic and/or ill informed. Their IT will buy software and hardware that is
just wrong. Their architecture will be completely scattered and unthought.
They will hire college grads, because no one with experience will work for
them. Some days, I'd almost rather cry coming out of a meeting if I were
challenged, at least. At least my career wouldn't be in the toilet. The grass
is always greener on the other side, I guess.

~~~
rokhayakebe
This is why when you go home you work on your tiny SAAS aimed at a specific
group of people who will shell out some money each month for it.

~~~
purpled_haze
If someone is working for one of the top tech companies, they should
appreciate that more. If you're doing the best you can and they are still
challenging you, that might not be a bad place to be. If it almost doesn't
matter what you do, the IT infrastructure and code is a mess, and when you try
to change that, you can't do it significantly, then that is much worse for
your career. However, it's where I personally need to be right now- safely
making income for my family.

As for writing a SAAS app and making money- that's not some kind of magic
recipe. I'm much older now with a family. It has been my dream of "making it
big" for years and partially chasing dreams that has been holding me back from
getting things done that I should be doing. It's fine to offer that as a
possible solution, but too many believe it is the option for them and leave
that as a lingering dream that only serves as a time trap. I've had dreams
before that could have been made reality if I only had the people and
resources to make it happen, but that opening didn't happen and I got
distracted quickly. Sure, I didn't _make_ it happen, but I have limits.
Sometimes the resources just aren't there, personally or externally. If you
talk to a number of people that make it big, I think some chance opportunity
will have come into play in their history 100% of the time. Sure, they gave it
their all, or had a lot to give. But when trying to get started, sometimes the
spark doesn't ignite a fire. I'm a rusty piece of steel and worn flint- the
actual process of writing a SAAS app doesn't excite me anymore. I'm still
sitting on top of a domain waiting to get inspired, but getting into iOS and
Android development is really not as easy as it would seem I've found, and
even just writing a web-based app to do what I want is a struggle since I suck
at JS.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Perhaps dreaming smaller should be considered. In the end $1000 in recurring
income can still make a difference, and is better than almost-billion-dollar-
idea.

