6 ms·

> what I'm trying to say is that Big Tech is a big place, and if you find yourself somewhere with bad culture don't take that to mean there aren't other places

> what I'm trying to say is that Big Tech is a big place, and if you find yourself somewhere with bad culture don't take that to mean there aren't other places you would like. Tell that to an H1B holder. You're not wrong to point out that we can't generalize from a single data point, but you're wrong to bring your positive experience as if there is an equivalence between the two. They don't have the same weighing; we are not trying to have a 50:50 split between bad and good experiences. Even a single workplace-driven mental health incident is too many. And unlike other workplace related injuries, mental health injuries are elusive to tracking. One hard metric would be the percentage of FAANG employees that are lost to suicide each year. It would be morbid but telling if some companies have an overrepresentation (I have my doubts but won't voice it here).

exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-death-idUSKCN0XP383 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-death-idUSKCN0XP383
systemvoltage 5y ago
> You're not wrong to point out that we can't generalize from a single data point, but you're wrong to bring your positive experience as if there is an equivalence between the two. I don't think this is how statistics work. Both are one piece of data. In order to make meaningful conclusions, we need more data. It seems to me that all of a sudden we have a mental health epidemic and I am peppered by mental health stories left and right in the media including HN. I'd love to know more if what changed, some hard data, happiness surveys even if they have flaws, it is better than arguing like this. I'll throw one more anedote - I've worked in large tech company and my experience was it was just super chill. No issues with a team of 24 engineers. Everyone left at 4pm everyday and at 2pm on Friday. In fact, people were frustratingly lazy.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying to avoid being painted as the cause (I tend to think the most ironic outcome is the most likely)
- acituan 5y ago
  > it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool I’m not saying this is the best metric but they would find that sort of treatment to be highly ineffective. Lifetime prevalence of depression and the depression at any given time are different things; it would be like trying to weed out all future cases of flu based on symptoms at hire time. Either way it wouldn’t make a dent on flu caused by the work environment itself.
- burnished 5y ago
  How would they do that? Hiring seems like such a ritualized practice anyway, I'm not sure how you'd even determine something like that.
- throw48738 5y ago
  Yeah or the companies get sued like French telecom company Orange because of proper news coverage and labor laws.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help. It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done. That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.
sg47 5y ago
As a H1B holder who's also a cancer survivor and suffering from severe health issues, I can tell you it's hell. I cry at least once a week at the fact that I cannot take a break without having to destroy my life and my family's life and 20+ years of life built up here. Everything this person said is absolutely true. The high compensation comes at a very high cost. It's not just mental or physical but also moral. You follow some arbitrary process since some higher up decided that it's the best way to measure productivity or performance. You underlevel people because you have to have a high bar. So someone with 20+ years of experience with subject matter expertise (not me) is a 'developing' Principal engineer. You have to hit arbitrary dates with moving goal posts and convince your team that they are doing God's work.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  > You underlevel people because you have to have a high bar. > So someone with 20+ years of experience with subject matter expertise (not me) is a 'developing' Principal engineer. If one of your major complaints about work is that some other employees only make $300k while some arbitrary table made by the company says they should be making $400k-$500k, then perhaps you're in a pretty good position overall? In other words - it's a huge organization, of course it's not far from perfect. But, pretty much nothing in life is.
  - rcarmo 5y ago
    Underleveling people with 20+ years of experience depending on their origin or location is a real thing, and one that HR gets away with too often. My experience is that it contributes to so much pain and churn that it ought to be a legal and compliance offense, but there are no liability factors associated with it, so they keep doing it.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    It sounds like they are stringing them along with golden handcuffs, also. I always feared losing my job on my L1B (visa with no job mobility), and now that I was rendered redundant, living my greatest fear, I am genuinely happier than before. Golden handcuffs are a living hell.

exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-death-idUSKCN0XP383 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-death-idUSKCN0XP383

systemvoltage 5y ago

> You're not wrong to point out that we can't generalize from a single data point, but you're wrong to bring your positive experience as if there is an equivalence between the two. I don't think this is how statistics work. Both are one piece of data. In order to make meaningful conclusions, we need more data. It seems to me that all of a sudden we have a mental health epidemic and I am peppered by mental health stories left and right in the media including HN. I'd love to know more if what changed, some hard data, happiness surveys even if they have flaws, it is better than arguing like this. I'll throw one more anedote - I've worked in large tech company and my experience was it was just super chill. No issues with a team of 24 engineers. Everyone left at 4pm everyday and at 2pm on Friday. In fact, people were frustratingly lazy.

jazzyjackson 5y ago

if you start measuring suicides it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool, possibly increasing suicides overall by trying to avoid being painted as the cause (I tend to think the most ironic outcome is the most likely)

acituan 5y ago
> it could just push companies to weed out depressed people from their hiring pool I’m not saying this is the best metric but they would find that sort of treatment to be highly ineffective. Lifetime prevalence of depression and the depression at any given time are different things; it would be like trying to weed out all future cases of flu based on symptoms at hire time. Either way it wouldn’t make a dent on flu caused by the work environment itself.
burnished 5y ago
How would they do that? Hiring seems like such a ritualized practice anyway, I'm not sure how you'd even determine something like that.
throw48738 5y ago
Yeah or the companies get sued like French telecom company Orange because of proper news coverage and labor laws.
pessimizer 5y ago
I've heard (and agree with) a similar argument about guns and mental illness. Taking away people's guns (or ability to buy guns) because of mental illness is a perverse disincentive for them to seek help. It's a simple solution, but a bad one. The alternative is to overwhelm people with complete availability and encouragement of help, and while helping them, convince them that it's not in their best interest to own guns (ideally to agree to give up their right to own guns.) Actually effective change is expensive, so will not be done. That being said, tracking tech suicides doesn't have to track the companies they work for in order to indicate if there's something wrong with the culture. Theoretically, identification of companies would certainly help to figure out what that wrong thing is, though the metric would immediately be gamed in the way you describe and exacerbate the situation.

sg47 5y ago

As a H1B holder who's also a cancer survivor and suffering from severe health issues, I can tell you it's hell. I cry at least once a week at the fact that I cannot take a break without having to destroy my life and my family's life and 20+ years of life built up here. Everything this person said is absolutely true. The high compensation comes at a very high cost. It's not just mental or physical but also moral. You follow some arbitrary process since some higher up decided that it's the best way to measure productivity or performance. You underlevel people because you have to have a high bar. So someone with 20+ years of experience with subject matter expertise (not me) is a 'developing' Principal engineer. You have to hit arbitrary dates with moving goal posts and convince your team that they are doing God's work.

burntoutfire 5y ago
> You underlevel people because you have to have a high bar. > So someone with 20+ years of experience with subject matter expertise (not me) is a 'developing' Principal engineer. If one of your major complaints about work is that some other employees only make $300k while some arbitrary table made by the company says they should be making $400k-$500k, then perhaps you're in a pretty good position overall? In other words - it's a huge organization, of course it's not far from perfect. But, pretty much nothing in life is.
- rcarmo 5y ago
  Underleveling people with 20+ years of experience depending on their origin or location is a real thing, and one that HR gets away with too often. My experience is that it contributes to so much pain and churn that it ought to be a legal and compliance offense, but there are no liability factors associated with it, so they keep doing it.
- zamalek 5y ago
  It sounds like they are stringing them along with golden handcuffs, also. I always feared losing my job on my L1B (visa with no job mobility), and now that I was rendered redundant, living my greatest fear, I am genuinely happier than before. Golden handcuffs are a living hell.