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I spent a decade working in Bay Area tech. I guarantee you the culture absolutely demanded that “personal time” simply didn’t exist. You worked at work, you wor
by tsuujin 4y ago
I spent a decade working in Bay Area tech. I guarantee you the culture absolutely demanded that “personal time” simply didn’t exist. You worked at work, you worked some more at home, you came into the office on weekends, and when you weren’t working you were expected to be studying to keep on the bleeding edge of incoming tech.
I have been verbally shamed for wanting to spend time with my wife and kids rather than work. This is why I refuse to work in any Bay Area tech today.
- Der_Einzige 4y agoHow do we square this circle with the amount of grifting and doing nothing that seemed to dominate some companies? Google and Microsoft were known as tech retirement homes to rest and vest at. We have the stupid TikTok videos to prove it too. How is it that some get so overworked and others do none?
- thesandlord 4y agoI've also spent a decade in Bay Area tech, and have never been asked or seen any of my coworkers feel this pressure, both at big tech (Google/Stripe) and at tiny startups. Of course there are crunch times, but the majority of the time WLB was great. In fact, there are definitely a group of folks who seem to be permanently coasting. There are bad companies and bad teams, but saying all of tech in the bay area operates this way is just wrong.
- kodah 4y agoI would say it's a aspect of Bay Area tech that is uniquely common in Bay Area tech, but exists abroad at lesser frequencies. Downplaying it given the amount of people who come out to talk about this very thing, as you are doing, also is just wrong.
- tsuujin 4y agoPeople feel the need to defend Bay Area tech for whatever reason. I’ve been trying to tell people for years that my experiences at multiple companies, and talking to many, many other devs I met in the area and at conferences, indicate a serious problem in tech that we need take address. There are always people who will come out and say “well I didn’t have that experience so it doesn’t exist”.
- ajkjk 4y agoIt's not really defending Bay Area tech. It's kinda the opposite. I have lot of problems with Bay Area tech, but I'll jump to shoot down hyperbolic criticisms that don't reflect most people's experiences because they' make it harder to _actually_ criticize them, in a 'crying wolf' sense. The top-level post in this thread is just _wrong_ as a general statement (well, at least the bit "you'll need to work on POCs (new products) in your off-time. Most of these companies don't schedule innovation' for instance"), although there may be specific instances where those are true, and pretending like it isn't means that people's criticisms of these companies are criticizing them for fictional grievances instead of real ones, which makes those criticisms far weaker and easier to fend off.
- david38 4y agoThis isn’t standard, even here in the Bay Area. Sounds like you just spent too long in the company.
- tsuujin 4y agoI worked for multiple companies in the Bay Area, and this was standard fare at all of them. Hire young people with no personal obligations and gaslight them into believing if they don’t live and breathe work they’re “not a team player”.
- RestlessMind 4y ago> I guarantee you the culture absolutely demanded that “personal time” simply didn’t exist. I have spent two decades in SV and this is simply not true. My partner has spent a similar time and barring one bad experience for 2 years, the rest of it aligns with mine. Maybe, you got stuck in some shithole?