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There are at least two things that annoy the hell out of me: 1 Fake positivity 2 Co-workers that are "happy" to work during PTOs The first one is described i

There are at least two things that annoy the hell out of me: 1 Fake positivity 2 Co-workers that are "happy" to work during PTOs The first one is described in the article. The second one is somewhat related to the first one or could even be the result of fake positivity. Working during a paid time off (PTO) is terrible for culture – makes your co-workers feel guilty if they won't spend a few hours at work during their PTO. I almost feel like an employee's access to Slack/E-mail should be restricted to read-only while they are on vacation. If you are one of those two, stop kissing your manager's ass! Enjoy your vacation–forget about work.

458aperta 6y ago
You pretty much described Vancouver, BC. One of the lowest average salary in North America, expensive housing, and normalized exploitation of labor. Fake positivity is just the cultural fact of life here and I think it hurts productivity. We all know that because housing is so scarce, having a job or not can mean you have a roof over your heads or not. It's really disgusting the way they treat workers here. So of course there is going to be a Stockholm syndrome effect here. Won't pay the market price but want the best. From what I've heard from insiders, they all do "surveys" with each other to fix wages since the 2000 dot come bubble collapse. The Vancouver Model is essentially: underpay your workers, demand the best and increase margins. Then they wonder why we can't be like Silicon Valley. Most startups here get acquired by pre-primary market and very few ever IPO thus rendering stock options worthless. It's no wonder that there is a massive brain drain going on and that startups here consist mostly of immigrant workers. I'm sure in some scale the exact same thing is taking place in SV but at least Indian engineers are making far more than what they would here in the Florida of Canada.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  I found a lot of this behaviour in Victoria BC too. Similar enough and geographically close enough I guess. Funny you should mention Florida though, because I recently was working with a team from there and their culture was also absolutely the "work on weekends and PTO" variety. I wonder if it's a coastal thing.
  - 458aperta 6y ago
    My theory is the instagram effect. People actually believe what they see is real and so the people living in those instagram photos believe i the "fake it till you make it" toxicity.
conanbatt 6y ago
I straight up thing its non-sensical to have PTO at all. IF you need time off, you take time unpaid time off and that's it. Why would the employer need to worry about your leisure at all? It's a vestige from another era. The people that dont have bargaining power do not get PTO, and the ones that do get some sort mandated vacation time or economically punished otherwise by lower wages or higher taxation. Working during PTO is bad, but it would be better for everyone to not have PTO at all, just TO.

458aperta 6y ago

You pretty much described Vancouver, BC. One of the lowest average salary in North America, expensive housing, and normalized exploitation of labor. Fake positivity is just the cultural fact of life here and I think it hurts productivity. We all know that because housing is so scarce, having a job or not can mean you have a roof over your heads or not. It's really disgusting the way they treat workers here. So of course there is going to be a Stockholm syndrome effect here. Won't pay the market price but want the best. From what I've heard from insiders, they all do "surveys" with each other to fix wages since the 2000 dot come bubble collapse. The Vancouver Model is essentially: underpay your workers, demand the best and increase margins. Then they wonder why we can't be like Silicon Valley. Most startups here get acquired by pre-primary market and very few ever IPO thus rendering stock options worthless. It's no wonder that there is a massive brain drain going on and that startups here consist mostly of immigrant workers. I'm sure in some scale the exact same thing is taking place in SV but at least Indian engineers are making far more than what they would here in the Florida of Canada.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
I found a lot of this behaviour in Victoria BC too. Similar enough and geographically close enough I guess. Funny you should mention Florida though, because I recently was working with a team from there and their culture was also absolutely the "work on weekends and PTO" variety. I wonder if it's a coastal thing.
- 458aperta 6y ago
  My theory is the instagram effect. People actually believe what they see is real and so the people living in those instagram photos believe i the "fake it till you make it" toxicity.

conanbatt 6y ago

I straight up thing its non-sensical to have PTO at all. IF you need time off, you take time unpaid time off and that's it. Why would the employer need to worry about your leisure at all? It's a vestige from another era. The people that dont have bargaining power do not get PTO, and the ones that do get some sort mandated vacation time or economically punished otherwise by lower wages or higher taxation. Working during PTO is bad, but it would be better for everyone to not have PTO at all, just TO.