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I feel sorry for anyone who has not had many years of corporate experience who enters a situation like this. Toxic survival politics at a big tech company are

I feel sorry for anyone who has not had many years of corporate experience who enters a situation like this. Toxic survival politics at a big tech company are a triple black diamond ski slope and if you are just learning to ski, you will get murdered by making a single mistake. Knowing what I know now, human beings can behave in shockingly awful ways and politics can become extremely distorted in these environments. The only way to survive a situation like this is to not react emotionally and to take an extremely neutral and objective approach. Do not become a threat or a problem, keep your opinions to yourself, carefully observe the Personalities and structure and understand who they are and why they are acting this way. Do not engage in gossip or any negativity. Do not complain or criticize or raise questions. You do not know the pressures, history or forces causing the behavior of your management and if you become the problem you are cooked. I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research. My peers who remained positive and optimistic and polite and non threatening or competitive survived the environment fine. They made a mental decision to be positive. If you find yourself in this persons situation you had better keep your mouth shut until you can find a new place to go or you will get killed off by your peers and your management.

worker767424 6y ago
> who has not had many years of corporate experience Once you have some experience, it's really nice to know you can get another job, what a good job looks like, have a green card, and have enough money saved up to be able to get out of a bad situation.
throwaway44295 6y ago
Exactly this, this should become common knowledge, especially among the people who actually care to create something great. Work is work and private life is private life. I've also worked in very toxic environments but nowadays I'm not surprised by anything anymore. People ask for uncomfortable/impossible accomplishments? Just explain in a very objective way what needs to be done, where the projects is at and how much effort it is normally. Also I highly encourage people to study the Jira boards (or whatever tool you use), chances are it's full of non-sense but also might contain hard facts how long tasks really take by other more established team members. This will make you confident on what the real metrics are and see what is a nonsense request and what not. When people say slightly insulting things it's also best to not be emotional, say nothing or if you feel creative to respond with a respectful but tough response. In any case, it's normal to switch every 2 years and in larger shops there are enough unexpected but safe opportunities to tell about this nonsense. (E.g. when quitting) Also I strongly agree with not speaking to HR/managers, it usually just gets worse (=stressful) the more you do it.
a_rana 6y ago
>I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research. Any suggested books/readings which helped you gain more knowledge about toxic survival politics ?

worker767424 6y ago

> who has not had many years of corporate experience Once you have some experience, it's really nice to know you can get another job, what a good job looks like, have a green card, and have enough money saved up to be able to get out of a bad situation.

throwaway44295 6y ago

Exactly this, this should become common knowledge, especially among the people who actually care to create something great. Work is work and private life is private life. I've also worked in very toxic environments but nowadays I'm not surprised by anything anymore. People ask for uncomfortable/impossible accomplishments? Just explain in a very objective way what needs to be done, where the projects is at and how much effort it is normally. Also I highly encourage people to study the Jira boards (or whatever tool you use), chances are it's full of non-sense but also might contain hard facts how long tasks really take by other more established team members. This will make you confident on what the real metrics are and see what is a nonsense request and what not. When people say slightly insulting things it's also best to not be emotional, say nothing or if you feel creative to respond with a respectful but tough response. In any case, it's normal to switch every 2 years and in larger shops there are enough unexpected but safe opportunities to tell about this nonsense. (E.g. when quitting) Also I strongly agree with not speaking to HR/managers, it usually just gets worse (=stressful) the more you do it.

a_rana 6y ago

>I experienced a toxic situation myself recently, it caused me to do a lot of reading and research. Any suggested books/readings which helped you gain more knowledge about toxic survival politics ?