Abuse. Don't take it. Know your worth.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I'm guess I'm lucky to never had encountered abuse. Have you seen it happen or experienced it yourself?
- abuse in the US workplace is (generally) not openly visible in ways you expect
- and yet, sexual abuse is still extremely prevalent in all industries
- US companies can impose a MASSIVE chilling effect just by having your healthcare tied to your employment
- mental abuse can be subtle (a form of psychological warfare) with something as simple as “we’re like a family here” or “you wouldn’t want to let down the team, would you?”
- the first episode of Zom 100 gave a really good example of how far the mental abuse can escalate – between overwork, lack of sleep, verbal abuse, bad diet, you no longer have time to step back and think, you become completely dependent on someone else telling you what to do, you no longer have the strength of will to even contemplate saying “No”
I would consider what my company is doing right now as board line abuse. They've done two rounds of layoffs this year, but the amount of work as not been reduced in the slightest. So everyone is overworked and scared of saying anything in case there is another round of layoffs. Of course this is also having a ripple affect where long-term hardworking employees are jumping ship.
I currently have a backlog that is four years long. That was when I had a team working for me. Now I'm the only person on the team and not a week goes by when I don't get ask what the status of XYZ is. Or have 2-3 more "high priority" things added to my backlog.
Harassment from toxic managers who abuse employees verbally (insults, etc.) It happens a lot sadly.
I was an admin at a company that was borderline psychopathic. Yeah, tons of abuse at all levels. No progression unless you were a member of the executive teams family or married to one of them. Completely dysfunctional workplace.
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Return to office mandate
If they required me to work in office (at minimum, they would need to pay me 30k more, 5-10k just to make up for gas and wear and tear on my car, 10k+ for the commute time, and 10k+ for the inconvenience, stress, clothes, eating out more for lunch, dealing with traffic, etc.)
Also, if my leadership was abusive and/or demanded prioritizing work over family and health.
I don't have the highest paid job in the world, but we're comfortable and I'm pretty happy with my company right now. Those are the things that would make me start looking elsewhere.
funny how here in Italy 30k gross per year is a pretty high salary.
software engineers with required experience in a field can get paid as low as 20k and they also want you to actually go to their office.
Cost of living in the US is 40-46% higher than Italy, and we do not have benefits like free or low cost Healthcare like they have in Italy. My wife's maximum out of pocket costs on her work sponsored insurance is almost 10k a year just for in-network services. If she has to go out of network for anything, her max is 18k for those services (which is in addition to the in-network pool). God forbid something terrible would happen, we could be liable for up to 28k in a calendar year just for her medical needs. We're pregnant right now trying to save 30k just so that we're covered for any medical expenses that will come up. My insurance is better than hers, but far from free.
Moreover, education is not free in the US. My tuition and books for my community college where I did the first two years of my degree (to save money) cost over 6k annually and the tuition at the state school where I finished the last two years of my degree was 10k annually. It would have been double that for both if I had gone to a school out of state.
I know I sound spoiled by comparison talking about needing such a big raise to even consider going back to the office. But it's not a 1:1 comparison, is my point. That being said, I definitely am spoiled in comparison your SE's in Italy and other European counties. Even with your lower cost of living and benefits all citizens enjoy, software engineers are underpaid there, imo. The work we do is highly skilled and lucrative. When put to good use and done correctly, it increases efficiency, bringing in more revenue while lowering costs, and it can create new streams of revenue as well. They should be compensated accordingly.
Edit: Oh, also just want to add that I just had to replace my car recently and we bought a, 6 year old, used, low-trim model minivan and that thing cost 25k after negotiating it down from 27k. And no way to take public transport to my company's nearest office from my home, and it's a 40 minute drive each direction for me is non-rush hour traffic. Would likely be double that each way if I had to make it in there for a 9-5. Just for some context on the cost of a vehicle and transport here right now.
thank you for sharing.
and i'm definitely spoiled too, my previous job paid me 35k gross per year and i want no less than that. i agree with you that software engineers here are under paid, but it is deeper than that. the software engineer job (and derivatives) does not exist in Italy. the contracts are generally or extremely generic (and so the pay brackets are reeeally low) or you have a contract for something totally unrelated (a friend of mine work in IT and have a contract for mechanics).
i got spoiled because my first job was from a German company, and their pay is a bit more fair than the ones in Italy.
All good reasons to reject or quit a job. I think as tech workers, we are lucky to be able to reject in office job offers.
- In office - COVID taught us remote works best for me, there's no going back
- Pay - don't pay/offer enough or give a raise at least equivalent to inflation --> 👋
- Micro-management / bad management -👋
- Force windows or mac onto me - first I push back, but I will quit if push comes to shove
You’ve had a job where they let you use Linux on your machine? Every job I’ve had has been strictly windows
Every job I've had as a developer, I've had a Linux box for development. Some I've also had a Windows laptop for specialty hardware vendor programs / portability, and some I've also had a MacBook from which to work.
I'm not going to whinge just because I don't get to use all of my personally preferred platforms, but if my employer ever denied me the necessary equipment or insisted upon the objectively wrong technology for a project - in any way - I'd simply leave if they refused to listen, since I'm not going down on a sinking ship.
I could choose on all my jobs. I'm doing linux since so long, I don't even wanna hear of windows.
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Return to office has made me quit.
Using war metaphors
Requering blind loyalty
Requering acceptance of any task
Disregard for labor contracts
Dumb management
Using war metaphors
What do you mean?
Requering acceptance of any task
You would quit if something were against your morals e.g working on a project for Exxon mobile or something ?
War metaphors real examples:
Literally calling your employees your soldiers, calling starting positions as trenches, brainwashing your employees to a us versus the world mentality, ex-employees are 'dead' or 'on a suicidal path', etc.
Business is not war anyone who think it is has never saw what a single rifle bullet does to human flesh. Freaking psychos.
Task was being discussed, I raised valid concerns, they listened, agreed to the concerns and said 'yeah we still want you to do it'. I say I won't do this. They push harder. I left on the spot. Notice was on director desk the next day. I suspect management wanted me to take on a botched task so to have something negative over me. There may of may not have some level of nepotism there.
My previous job referred to ex employees as traitors or betrayers
Fuck that shit
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There are so many reasons to leave a job. I can only say why I left jobs or rejected job offers in the past:
- Left a bullshit job. I was bored.
- Left a job because I didn't like where I had to live.
- Left a job because the company was unraveling. It went under within a year.
- Let a job because of incompetent management and crappy code.
- Rejected an offer because the place felt like a morgue.
- Rejected an offer because the hiring manager's boss acted like a entitled asshole.
- Rejected an offer because the work spaces for developers were even worse than open plan.
Rejected an offer because the work spaces for developers were even worse than open plan.
I am incredibly curious to learn more
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Toxic managers or coworkers
pay/benefits don't trickle down
shit trickles down
what I've learned is that 2 week notices only gives time for corporations to replace you with another unsuspecting victim so I'm just gonna run as soon as I can tell my work environment is toxic
these toxic workplaces can crumble for all I care
In my field of work, two weeks isn't long enough to pull in someone new, but I do use the period to hand off as much as possible to those who I don't want to set up to fail.
If there's nobody to hand things off to, I just slack off and use it as free money until my next gig.
but I do use the period to hand off as much as possible to those who I don't want to set up to fail.
If there's nobody to hand things off to, I just slack off and use it as free money until my next gig.
both are totally fair opinions/decisions
personally I've been in too many toxic companies that I couldn't stomach staying even a day within the company
I find it's a lot easier to deal with toxicity when your fucks reach absolute zero
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- Culture where you're scared to criticize stuff, because people get angry when you're telling them the truth or even just the elephant in the room. Echo chamber instead of idea lab.
- Management constantly making decisions such that no one decision made ever gets totally implemented, but the loose ends just stack up.
- Management not involving engineers in the and assuming that engineers are incapable of understanding how the business works, let alone contribute valuable ideas to how it might work better.
- Too many layers of hierarchy, competitive, macho male-dominated, title-driven, ego-driven culture where people are fighting they're way up the totem pole instead of working cooperatively together to create a great experience for their users.
- Companies where silly little things that should be doable in hours costs weeks or months or where nothing gets done quickly, because too many people need to sign off on it.
- Mission statement that is bogus and you know that it really is all about money, growth and status. I like companies that are truly trying to adding value to the world, however small that change may be. I am just not interested in your algorithmic trading, crypto non-sense, optimizing ad revenue or getting people to waste more of their time or money with endless bull crap.
- Having to constantly fight to get the time to refactor, test, rethink, work on build/development/observability tooling instead of working on feature after feature endlessly. If I say something needs work I have good reasons for it that I am willing to explain, but do not assume that I like to waste time gold plating code because I am a autistic perfectionist with OCD with no sense for what the business is trying to do.
- Constant bogus deadlines that seem to come from nowhere and are only meant to keep the pressure on the engineers. I work hard and this kind of pressure only means we're going to go fast in the short run and extremely slow in the long run, because nothing gets finished properly.
- Running the server side on Windows. I want to be able to debug issues in depth when they arise.
- Using the Go programming language. I am not going back to 80's programming and checking for nil all day long, just to see my program segment fault in production anyway. (and yes, I am talking from experience here)
- Only remote companies. I get too lonely at some point and all the best cooperative ideas I've ever had in my career where born at the whiteboard with colleagues. This is just me though.
I'm extremely open to tech stacks and specific industries, though I would die happy if I never had to touch another line of TCL. Go to hell TCL, and take your upvar nonsense with you.
I'm currently between jobs and planning a career shift into a software engineer manager role, so I have been thinking about this quite a bit. A job I would leave - which is really leaving a manager/team, not a company - would rate poorly on these, which I'm polishing into a new "what type of position are you looking for?" answer:
- A team that works cooperatively, as we accomplish more together than in competition. Everyone should strive to be world class at their roles, as being around that is critical for learning from each other.
- An environment where clear and open communication is encouraged, including whatever anyone is struggling with.
- Work that takes on difficult problems and strives to work through them with the highest standards.
- A position that enables me to grow down my desired career path, which as of this writing means reporting to a software manager who is willing to delegate project management tasks and eventually people management as well.
Something I wouldn't reveal during an interview, though critically important, is a work environment that I can arrange such that it best enables me, and not be boxed in by someone else's conceived ideas of how software engineers should act or work. I've felt like a square peg in a round hole my entire life. Turns out it's a concrete objective fact (ADHD). I am so goddamn tired of feeling bad or apologizing for things that are actually just the scaffolding that I need to survive.
Left two jobs in the last 3 years because they offered remote and then tried to claw it back. If I ever set foot in an office again it'll be too soon.
I also tend to check in with myself on Sunday nights as I'm lying in bed. If I feel like I'm walking into a good situation the next morning, with good problems to solve and a decent chance of actually solving them, then I stick around. If I'm filled with dread awaiting the next off-hours disaster, I brush up my resume and flip the flag on LinkedIn.
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Every engineering job I've left has been because of bad leadership.
The first, they hired a lead with no business being a lead. Not only was I much stronger from a technical perspective even though I had only been doing it professionally for about 3 years, but I was a better leader to the rest of the team as well. I had been sort of filling in in the interim before they were hired. They were let go not too long after I left.
The second, they hired an EM. I had been asked to work on setting up the code base for replatforming our web app and begin migrating pieces of it over. I was basically doing this on my own and working with timelines that I had given to leadership and providing weekly updates. This EM started micro-managing everything. This not only slowed my progress to a crawl, it was demotivating and stressful. They were let go not too long after I left.
My current position, I was moved to a new team during a company reorganization. The EM on this team is completely psychotic. Micro-managing to a degree that I've never seen before. They're convinced that what we do Agile SCRUM, but we take in large projects each quarter, plan and scope them at the beginning, and then spend the rest of the quarter executing on them. When I or the team make suggestions that align better with agile, we're gaslit and told our ideas "are waterfall not agile".
We usually don't take on projects that go longer than a quarter. The project that I'm on currently is bleeding into Q4. I warned about this from the very beginning, but the result was just more gaslighting, that I took too long on planning. I would have left, but the job market isn't as friendly to hopping around as it was previously. Thankfully, I'll be switching teams once this project is over.
Overall, all of these places had their problems beyond leadership. These are things that I can tolerate however, and with good leadership, can work towards improving. Once leadership turns to shit, it's time to gtfo.
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At my previous company, they started forcing us to go back to the office, first once per week, then at least 8 days per month. I hated it but I could take it. Then, they said they had to replace our workstations with an SOE Laptop (some standard hardware and software configuration that is usually completely locked down, and you need to open a ticket to install anything). I hated this more, but I could still take it.
The last straw that made me quit was that my boss forced me to work on a project using a dead technology only because there was no one else that could do it. But I had absolutely zero experience with that technology. I was the only one who knew how to build a good user interface, so that's why the task fell on my lap.
You took enough abuse. Glad you respected yourself in the end and quit.
I usually check in with myself:
- Am I growing in my career?
- Am I happy with my current workplace: people, culture, flexibility?
- Am I valued to the company, i.e. my opinions are considered and regarded to some certain?
If one or two of these conditions failed, I would consider moving. After all, if I went to a workplace and I didn't find any joy or recognition, the paycheck wouldn't make me stay.
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I worry that some rocket magician with an MBA will decide we can just use FreeCAD and stop paying for these silly Solidworks or Autodesk licenses.
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@onlinepersona Left because of crappy management and no perspective as a not-that-junior-anymore developer.
I will quit if I don't feel happy anymore, which most likely because of people. If colleagues I like are all gone, I probably go somewhere else.
Sometimes it might be the salary which causes people to leave.
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