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Ask HN: Do you feel psychological safety at your job?
And if not, what’s your plan? I’m currently at a FAANG, and been in tech for almost two decades, and I’ve never felt such a huge loss of camaraderie and safety.
- zensavona 4y agoI’m not exactly sure what you mean by “psychologically safe”. Could you elaborate please?
- par 4y agoLike do you feel job security? Do you think that doing a good job is enough? Can you do your job without feeling like you’re going to get fired all the time? Do you trust your boss and coworkers and feel safe being open with your leadership chain?
- Swizec 4y agoPsychological safety and job security are different. They may have correlations. Job security comes from career capital. You are seen as a key contributor and the company does its best to retain you. If you leave or are left, you can pick up a new job quickly. Psychological safety comes from mutual respect. You don’t make fun of people for making suggestions you disagree with, they don’t think you’re dumb for making a mistake. That sort of thing. Having each other’s backs basically. While management can work on promoting psychological safety, they do not have direct power to implement it (outside of firing/coaching toxic people), you and your team have to do the implementation. Funnily, your job security may come at the cost of psychological safety to the team, if you’re the problem, but also a critical high performer.
- clarkdale 4y ago"Physchological safety" is a buzz word common in MBA circles. There are many articles written about it, shared on HN even.
- bastijn 4y agoI'm torn between down voting this for being unnecessarily condescending and letting you feel safe to speak your mind on HN. Take my down vote with the knowledge it's OK to share you disagree or find the topic a nuisance of late, but you can be a little more thoughtful on how to voice that.
- thrill 4y agoThis seems like an example where someone takes unnecessary offense. I didn't feel any arrogance from the post. Perhaps a good portion of sources of fears of "psychological safety" is everyone is getting constantly told how they're a "nobody", without ever thinking that if it was so, then they already wouldn't be there.
- moomoo11 4y agoWhat was offensive about it? Or do “MBAs” trigger you? Because then I totally understand I find them offensive too.
- jrs235 4y agoI've always taken it to mean: Do you feel safe speaking up? Particularly when you disagree. Or do you feel safe voicing your opinion, particularly when it goes against the majority?
- sebastianconcpt 4y agoOf course not. We're in a culture war with cancel culture normalized. If you dissent you are toasted.
- eh9 4y ago… cancel culture is about holding people accountable… It’s not about canceling employees because of dissenting at work.
- whythre 4y agoThat is probably the most charitable interpretation of the phenomenon possible. I do not think it is about holding people accountable at all, I think it is a new way to enforce shifting social norms that allows people to judge others without being ‘judgy.’
- eh9 4y agoPlease name a single instance of an individual being “cancelled” for anything but bigotry, hatred, violence, or dangerous rhetoric. I’ll wait. People aren’t being cancelled for speaking their minds. They’re being cancelled when speaking their minds is literally offensive to small and large groups of people. Almost every time someone is complaining about cancel culture, what they’re really complaining about is being held accountable for the dumb shit they say or want to say. Also, “shifting social norms”, lol, from what to what, if you don’t mind me asking?! Edit: you can downvote me but you can’t produce a single example.
- throwaway675309 4y ago
- greenyoda 4y agoFrom Wikipedia: > Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
- ugh123 4y agoCan you explain how specifically you feel unsafe psychologically? Sounds like a bloated term without context or specifics.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 4y agoI can guess which FAANG you're at. "psychological safety" has been floating around the office recently. I mostly feel secure because (a) my ratings have been good, and more importantly (b) I don't think my team is going to get axed because we maintain a pretty core feature. I think if you're in the bottom 6-8% or whatever they set the low ratings at, you're in danger. And if you're on a team that doesn't generate money/keep users on the app longer, you're in danger. Neither of those apply to me, so I feel only very mild danger. Also, I just got my green card, so at least I won't get booted out of the country if they fire me now. Downside is that there isn't much promo opportunity on my team either. If I want to be promoted based on technical ability instead of leadership/management (which I very much don't want, I'd have to switch to a more algorithm-heavy team but then (b) above might apply, and also I like my current team. No camaraderie though. People don't properly communicate in general. A crapton of meetings, but no one goes out of their way to actually help eachother.
- whitemary 4y agoWhere is that paren supposed to close?
- bigdict 4y agoThe rest of HN is part of the parenthetical until there is a stray close paren.
- owlglass 4y agoI think I might be able to close it here)
- unsupp0rted 4y agoThank you. My HN linter was going nuts.
- thrill 4y ago"The function 'which' is undefined."
- orzig 4y agoYes but my manager makes it an absolute top priority. It takes a lot of work and other managers who were basically OK but balancing priorities ultimately let that safety get off the rails.
- gardenhedge 4y agoWhat do you mean by balancing priorities?
- orzig 4y agoEverything else for the manager might prioritize culturally, like getting the team to move to a new tech, integrating across geographies, or hitting some big corporate level goal
- Blackstrat 4y agoJob security does not exist, regardless of how well someone performs one’s job. Big Tech has had a good run. Those in the other sectors learned long ago that there isn’t any job security.
- User23 4y agoAnyone that's been in tech at the FAANG tier for two decades and doesn't have at least one to two years of runway not including retirement accounts is observably terrible at managing money.
- woodruffw 4y agoPeople live paycheck-to-paycheck for all sorts of reasons, including long-term medical costs or family support. FAANG salaries certainly make that less common, but I think we can probably be a little more empathetic about life's vagaries.
- scarface74 4y agoAnd what type of “long term medical costs” aren’t covered by the insurance you get from your job?
- woodruffw 4y agoThe kind that affect your non-immediate relatives, or require long term physical therapy (many plans will only cover the bare minimum), or really anything else. Medical insurance is not uniform in quality.
- scarface74 4y agoWe aren’t talking about non quality plans. We are talking about the plans offered by major technology companies. “My non immediate relatives” can’t be my burden to bare. You have to put your own life jacket on first - my wife and my children
- woodruffw 4y agoEven plans offered by major technology companies vary significantly: I know of at least one person with 5 figure out-of-pocket annual medical costs at a FAANG. I think it would behoove you to think more generally: not everybody has the same familial structure as you. Some people live with their distant relatives because they act as (or need) caretakers, or come from cultures where a single familial household is the norm. "I only care about my and mine" is not an attitude that "works" for billions of people on this planet.
- whitemary 4y agoI am an American, so of course not.
- buzzert 4y agoYou know we do have welfare/unemployment/rental assistance too, right?
- Jtsummers 4y agoUEI took nearly 4 months before it started paying out for my wife last year (Colorado). Make sure you have emergency savings. If she had been single or the sole earner for a household, she would have been screwed.
- eh9 4y agoI would argue that a disproportionate number of FAANG employees have lifestyle crept outside the realm where existing social programs could be helpful. Healthcare in this country is still practically tied to your employer (or super expensive cobra) and in this industry that employment is likely at-will, so that assistance doesn’t feel sufficient. At least not for a country that purports to be the world’s primary economic engine (maybe at exporting exceptionalism).
- buzzert 4y agoWe have universal healthcare too (at least in California): https://www.medi-cal.ca.gov https://www.medi-cal.ca.gov
- red-iron-pine 4y agoYeah and it's paltry, not easy to get, and often not applicable if you made above $X dollars. Gap health insurance (COBRA) is also absurdly expensive. By comparison, I live in Canada now and I'm covered by provincial healthcare no matter what, and I had "transit insurance" aka COBRA Canada through the same provider who did our healthcare and dental stuff which was billed at the same rate I paid before, albeit with slightly less benefits. Maybe $110/month CAD. Was also eligible for COVID AID just by having any sort of job impact. Covered my half of the rent for 3 months.
- a538058b 4y agoI did not, so I took an offer at a different company.
- mrwnmonm 4y agohttps://www.amazon.com/Damaged-Life-Crisis-Psychology-Revivals-ebook/dp/B09M6KFCRN/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= https://www.amazon.com/Damaged-Life-Crisis-Psychology-Reviva...
- djstein 4y agonope. I spoke to HR regarding this after my manager threatened to fire the whole team and said we could not take vacation the entirety of next year. This was after repeated similar comments and hostility. I was promptly let go this week. So to be clear, don’t talk to HR either if you feel unsafe.
- ilostmyshoes 4y agoName and shame
- eh9 4y agoHR is mostly there to reduce risk for the employer.
- grugagag 4y agoHR is never your friend!!
- wereallterrrist 4y agoMan, my gut reaction to this stuff is growing less and less patient. Hi, welcome to the left, or class solidarity if thats more palatable. Every time yall rolled your eyes at unions and labor protections? Protip, a buncha people need to really internalize this -- your boss and management don't give a shit about you (certainly not in any tangible, meaningful way). You're not family and never were any more than my deadbeat dad was family because he made me do yardwork. Yo, your boss totally is gonna "value you" more if you downvote me to satiate the cognitive dissonance! Lol I can't, I really can't.)
- type4 4y agoCamaraderie is an illusion with management or your boss. We're not comrades, we're their subjects. We can have comradeship with our peers, of course, but that's unlikely to provide a safety net where none of us are unionized. So no, I don't feel safe. I smile and say polite things when they mention how great the company is or how the sales are, or what a great year it will be!(how will any of this benefit me, besides more work) I consider this performative act part of what they pay me for, even if it is very painful. I'm not in a FAANG though, just slumming it.
- baronswindle 4y agoI understand that my boss is not my friend, but to describe oneself as a “subject” is not something I relate to. In fact, I think it’s absurdly dramatic.
- flandish 4y agoIt’s not though - when you look at what really “drives” the relationship. You trade your labor for money in a system designed to keep us so anxious, we will accept as little wage as possible, by the same capital owning class. We are subject to their desires as they are bound, by law, to choose profit for shareholders over employees. We are their subjects. “Ain’t no war but class war” applies to us in tech as much as it does to the miners a mile underground in PA.
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoWhat you describe is a trade relationship, not "subject".
- kiviuq 4y agoThe same kind of trade relationship as that between American mining companies and Ghanaian miners.
- baronswindle 4y agoI’m sorry, but your description of a relationship with an employer doesn’t match mine at all. I don’t feel anxious. I feel comfortable. I don’t accept as little as possible. I negotiate with the knowledge that I have options. I don’t toil in the mines for 80 hours a week to barely afford to feed myself. I spend 40-50 hours a week doing something I rather enjoy, and for that, I’m paid a salary that affords a lifestyle few could have imagined even fifty years ago. I understand that my employer would pay me less if they could. Then again, if I could find a plumber who could fix my shower for $200 instead of $250, I’d patronize the former, all else equal. Does that make the plumber my “subject”? I don’t think so.
- xvedejas 4y agoI feel safe only because I'm not afraid of being fired. Not that it wouldn't happen, but that I'm confident I'd find an equally good job without any major pains or setbacks on the chance I am fired. A few months of searching is a slog for sure, but being afraid to do what I think is right at work wouldn't be worth avoiding it.
- lampshades 4y agoLol, no. I have no plan other than tread water until my kids are older and I can retake my destiny into my own hands.
- atlgator 4y agoIt's a bloody job. I have no right to a job. You have no right to a job. I just maintain and grow my skills and demonstrate my value as best I can until the day I'm no longer needed. Then on to the next thing. Psychological safety doesn't exist.
- shellothere 4y agoInterestingly there seem to be (at least) 2 schools of thought popular in the US: 1. I have no right to a job. I should earn one myself, or make my own thing. Pull myself up by my bootstraps. Etc. 2. Business owners and landlords are the ruling class. They have an obligation to support us in the form of jobs or housing. Etc.
- badpun 4y agoMust be infuriating to belong to the first category, build a business out of nothing, and then have a lot of people from the second category come, demanding you support them, because "you're rich!".
- mejutoco 4y agoArticle 23,24,25 of the universal declaration of rights > Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. > Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. > Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. > Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. I know reality often does not match, but if we are talking about rights, surely this document is relevant. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...
- stcroixx 4y ago25 years programming. Not sure I have ever felt psychologically unsafe. Just a job for me.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- johnea 4y agoWhat does that even mean? Do you mean "Do you feel like you're going to be fired?" No, not at the moment... Otherwise, please be more specific...
- hugs 4y agoTwo rules: Rule #1: Have enough savings in your bank account to pay all your living expenses for at least one year. (Obviously easier said than done.) Rule #2: Follow Rule #1. (If you do, you'll have time to figure everything else out. That might mean finding a new job.)
- sys_64738 4y agoThis. Always have an exit strategy from your job. Being fired is often beyond your control.
- eh9 4y agoMost Americans don’t have $1000 in savings.
- hugs 4y agoLike I said, easier said than done. Having at least a year's worth of savings is a path to psychology safety while working in tech, which is what they were asking about. I learned this lesson earlier in my career during the Dot Com Bust when I, too, didn't have $1000 in savings.
- grugagag 4y agoSEs should have more though
- wereallterrrist 4y agoAnd? Thats fking pathetic and nearly every single healthy, unburdened FAANG engineer should be deahtly embarrassed to find themselves in such a situation. But for those reading this who are "crying in bathrooms", what does it say about your lifestyle thst you likely made 2-3x my salary, and yet i walked away from tech for years while youre somehow fearful of making ends meet? I eat what i want, i have money for more weed and booze and casual friendships than i can dream of. I am fucking disgusted with this "trying to make it seem like fired tech workers are as pitiable as average americans". No. No more. You want me to cry for your lost Google salary, i wanna see numbers. This entire shit conversation is privileged and absurd and ignorant of what the left has advocated for for decades ... to a point i pull at my hair. Seriously, this fucking website is gonna cry over fired tech workers when hundreds of thousands of americans who make less than 5% of google salary experience this, regularly, without severance, health care and a halfway decent shot at findinf a new job. Really? Ive seen the attitudes that are popular here. BUT GOD FORBID SOMEONE QUESTION THE SPENDING HABITS OF THE SELF-IMAGINED-AS-WEALTHY TECH CLASS?!
- adenozine 4y agoI think you might be too attached to your daily habits and routines. I'm self-employed, but I've battled that feeling on longer jobs where I started to feel immense anxiety and almost a depression-like state when a job was coming to a close and I was just going to have to find something out. Socializing with people helps, getting involved at my church and back when I was younger I would do things with my neighbors and that sort of thing. Unless you're completely devoted to some mission at the corp you work for, always remember that you bring that money home to your family first, and everything else about work is secondary to that. It's likely you're not saving the world at work, and it's also likely (statistically, not based on you personally) that the company would survive if you were to disappear or quit. It's tough though. It takes a distinct effort to acknowledge this and counteract it, but it is worth doing precisely because of what you're feeling now. It's scary to have your habits and routines and comforts threatened with change. Not every change is good, not ever change is bad, not ever proposed change will always come to, and not every change is announced prior. What is certain, is that you must find a way forward in a world that changes every day, whether you like it or not.
- kderbyma 4y agoThe amount of derision and defensive comments is kind of interesting. There are two groups it's seems. Yeah, it's hard and unless I am critical to operations or revenue I'm worried. or 2 - what do you mean? Its work, nbd. Why should I. --- the latter seems like the kind of person who probably will be let go imo.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoInterestingly I’m a few years over 30 years info my tech career and it was avoid 10 years ago I could see the fnords at last. There is no safety, there never was. There’s no golden ring, there is no winning, there is no camaraderie, there is no value in promotion, the respect of your peers is meaningless, and it’s all just a sham to get you to expend more of your soul for less money. Once I had pierced the ceiling into ultra senior management of mega corps and was able to see how the system worked from top to bottom, it was obvious. The shared delusion is increasing apparent as you get more senior. You see yourself telling people to tell the lies knowing it’s a lie, and see the lie spread throughout the organization. If you want material substance and human connection you have to take the lie of corporate life out of the equation, the lie of scarce seniority, the lie of compensation for merit, the lie of peer respect, the lie of all the various attachments and see reality for what it is. You may still keep doing the lies, I do, because they’re functionally useful and I’ve got financial commitments and need their money. But I know what it all is now, and my life is much richer for it. If you seek that realizing you’ve been deceived by a massive shared illusion, you will find what you thought you had.
- mancerayder 4y agoPeople seem to internalize and conform to the organizational imperative, either because they're well-compensated, they have family or external dependencies of high salary and stability, or they've numbed themselves to how organizations of people tend to turn into. Whichever of these, it's a self-selection bias of who remains long enough to get promoted upwards.
- musicale 4y ago> it’s all just a sham to get you to expend more of your soul for less money This is a concise and accurate summary.
- BerislavLopac 4y agoIndeed it is. I have lately been thinking more and more about the cooperative model as a viable alternative to the standard corporate model for software companies...
- SanjayMehta 4y agoThere are two bands: too junior to matter, and senior enough to be a replacement threat to an insecure boss. When you're in either of those two bands, you're a layoff target.
- cirrus3 4y agoYes, I do, but I've worked at the same small (relative to a FAANG) company for over 12 years (20+ years working professionally). During that time I've proven myself have good ideas even when they are controversial, perform above average, and admit when I've been wrong or failed. I probably get paid less I could elsewhere, and there is probably some big fish in a small pond effect going on, but part of the the reason I stay is that one thing I don't have to worry about is psychological safety.
- scarface74 4y agoKeep thinking that… Facts on the ground change all of the time. Never get complacent or fall for the “we are family” bullshit.
- moomoo11 4y agoIt’s a job dude. You sign the offer letter for 300k plus TC and you’re just a resource. Do it well and you can leave any time you want for something else. You’re not forced to work for 300k lol. Just hop ship and make 400k. You’re working for a capitalist machination. You want something deeper start your own company or do something else. These companies don’t care about you. The “cool tech” you build is just an icing on the cake to do what? Sell more ads? Exploit labor laws in poor countries? Exploit your own communities? Have teens harm themselves with awful programming and doom scrolling? Wow really changing the world there. Just my $0.02 as someone who lives in the real world. Also pro tip you can make a lot of money not working in big tech. My job involves making sure people are safe and productive, not doing anything fucked up morally questionable that will make me lose my sleep at night. I make a bit less than what I’d make if I sold my soul to work at Meta or something. Btw I’m sure people thought it was “cool” to work on the Death Star too.
- 28304283409234 4y agoOh if only I could upvote this x1000. Watch the documentary "The Corporation". It explains perfectly what is going on.
- greenyoda 4y agoYou can watch "The Corporation" free on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/The_Corporation_/TheCorporation-Movie-Part1.avi https://archive.org/details/The_Corporation_/TheCorporation-... More about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bvoq 4y agoI feel psychological safety from my bank account, but I also get paid well. If you have enough money to bridge a year, worrying about job safety is irrational.
- aklemm 4y agoI reject the premise of the question.
- theGnuMe 4y agoUse your benefits and get some therapy. It will help! Have you been at the same company for your entire career? Sometimes moving companies helps develop resilience because you learn that your skills are still valued and transferrable. It improves your self-esteem and your psychological safety to focus on things you control. And the only thing you control is you. This will help you accept uncertainty and go on living. Outside of your self work the only thing you and your coworkers could unionize to help improve things for everyone.