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One of the most depressing, nihilistic realizations I have had in my 30s is: * People don't care about the work you do, they care about how you make them feel.

One of the most depressing, nihilistic realizations I have had in my 30s is: * People don't care about the work you do, they care about how you make them feel. * People will steal the work that you do, or imply that they were a part of it, when they weren't. * Those people will employ what I had though were high school tier manipulative tactics by sidechanneling communications, or in the way they talk in meetings to imply that they are more useful they than actually or, or to imply they had a involvement in things they didn't. * "Middle managers" love this stuff, and will promote and hire people who also play this stupid game. I have seen people share into our slack channels, or start meetings out by playing the most absolutely useless, tik-tok-level, linkedn-level garbage fake bizbro videos as if they are important useful business information that we need to incorporate into our philosophy. I've seen companies then go to hire these absolutely useless borderline pyramid-scheme bizbros, incorporate their useless vocabulary cancer, and bring them into our meetings and make us defer to them on things. This stuff is incredibly demoralizing. Loyal, good workers get exploited by these parasitic people because they care about the company, they care about their good coworkers, and they take pride in making good products. Obviously this stuff is all easily exploitable by the people I'm describing.

lambdasquirrel 3y ago
It’s not just work. It’s social scenes and people in general. It’s an uncommon person who does right by other people.
anotherhue 3y ago
Been there, seen that. I feel like culturally we're told that this behaviour is unusual so we are constantly surprised. Some scepticism and school-of-life in our earlier education might be for the best, no matter how disappointing it would be to hear.
turtledragonfly 3y ago
I see your "People X..., People Y..." language, and I just want to note that over-generalization can be a path towards depression[1]. I don't mean this directed at you specifically, but it's fairly common for people to take their bad experiences in a handful of places and extrapolate that to all places everywhere, and end up feeling depressed/nihilistic, as you mention. I find myself doing it too, from time to time. So, maybe this is more directed at other readers who might see your comment and take it as validation of their "everyone sucks" suspicions — grain of salt, and all that. But I agree that what you describe is genuinely demoralizing and a crap way to be treated (: I hope you get to experience a good work life, if you haven't already. [1] There's a good amount of research on this topic (search for "depression, over-generalization"), in addition to my personal experiences.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
> People don't care about the work you do, they care about how you make them feel. this is true, but also keep in mind having a project that delivers engenders a lot of good feelings. it sounds to me like the parent poster doesn't get that politics and maneuvering is everywhere, from restaraunts to FAANGs. Some places are definitely worse than others, for sure, but it's an inevitable facet of human nature, and you can't ignore it. Not playing the game or picking a side still means you're picking a side, and side that is one that will often has less say.
jcomis 3y ago
I worked for a large consulting company and this sort of behavior wasn't just present, it was actively sought out and rewarded. I was part of an acquisition that was slightly removed from it, but watching these absolutely toxic dynamics take place was really eye opening.
Culonavirus 3y ago
Aaaah yes, middle management. The successes are always of their own making, but the failures are always blamed on the devs. Shit rolls downhill. The worst is the situation when there's no buffer between IT and Business (ideally a person well aware of the constraints and requirements of both) and the person you report to is a "bizbro". I once had such a manager, who managed our small dev team, but he was not a coder, he didn't have any IT background, he was a dude with business background... and the depth of which he was able to understand the business logic of our systems was on the "typical user" level (i.e. he used the systems, but had no idea what amount of work would additions and changes in these systems require). This person reported directly to our CEO. So of course we would spend obscene amounts of time on trash features which were complex to incorporate into the existing structures and most of which provided questionable business value in the end (i.e. a feature took 6 "man months" to develop and integrate, but its added monetary value to the business was probably similar or lower than that). Because of these bs jobs coming from the top, we were swamped with questionable work and our core systems and features stagnated. At the same time, hiring more people - adding to the IT team - was out of the question because we were already "so expensive". And so this person came up with a genius idea of offloading one of our core systems to an external entity (so we have more time to spend on his questionable tasks). I mean, fair enough if you do that while being well aware of all the business logic and make a calculated decision, but this person (and I don't want to be too specific here) basically went behind our backs, told the ceo something along the lines of "hey, we're gonna offload system X to entity Y for Z amount of money, so our IT has more time for other important stuff" and then, once everything was a done deal, came to us that we're going to integrate Y. Long story short, we spent about 2 years (on/off) on replacing our X to work with Y, tightly integrating it with Y's api (and that company in general), having around a dozen of 2-5 hour meetings, Y updating their system like 10 times so it even does what our system X did 5 years ago and spent a crap ton of money on all of this (easily more than new hires would cost). Why would it take two years, why wouldn't we cut our losses? Because sunk cost fallacy and because the manager couldn't admit fault to the ceo. We were going to do this because it was his idea.
silenced_trope 3y ago
> I have seen people share into our slack channels lol I had to do this at my last job. My manager would say I need more visibility, share it with X team since it touches on their work. Then I'd have to be like "Hey we just launched this project/feature, look at it!" And nobody in that team's channel would comment on it. I felt the exact way you're describing - I'm sharing something into a channel just to seem important. I'm not sure how to reconcile the need for visibility, there's probably more subtle ways. Or alternatively being in the channel for a while and being part of discussions there rather than popping in just to give myself visibility when there's something worth showing.
- betenoire 3y ago
  I share your feeling. Here are some answers I've come up with for myself. If you want engagement... Your manager got you to share it by directly asking you to. You will have better luck receiving feedback if you follow that lead. You asked them to look at it, and got discouraged by the lack of any reciprocity. Ask for engagement, if that's what you feel like you want. One effective way for me to do this is to share my assumptions. :) If you don't want to feel like you are playing that "importance" game... Play it on behalf of your team, instead of you. Give kudos to everyone around you. And be genuine about it.
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
toxicity starts at the top. upper management hire bull-shitters who tell them what they want to hear or who will execute the unpopular things they don't want to do....and so on down the chain.
hintymad 3y ago
I'm not sure if this is avoidable in a big enough company when the density of talent keeps diluting. It looks the only exception is when the CEO was so strong that he hires only sharp managers, like in the early days of those explosive startups. On the other hand, individuals can avoid the trap by joining small enough companies when each person's scope and contribution is clearly visible and measurable.
mbrochh 3y ago
Holy shit, my wife is working for a mega corp and is currently experiencing EXACTLY this. This is the reason why I will never join a company that has more than 100 employees. Once they get big, they all turn into cancer.
mvncleaninst 3y ago
> This stuff is incredibly demoralizing. > Loyal, good workers get exploited by these parasitic people because they care about the company, they care about their good coworkers, and they take pride in making good products. Obviously this stuff is all easily exploitable by the people I'm describing. Imo if you frame things like "the bizbros are the problem", you're defining it in a way where the solution falls outside of your control. Ofc the bizbros are the problem, but there isn't much we can do about them. That sort of defines them, right? They can be stupid, because no one is requiring them to be smart. They aren't required to make any sense. So they don't. Not having to make sense is a privilege Personally, if the stuff is demoralizing, I let myself get demoralized! If the culture is fucked, why should I care? Let it crash. But a broader point here: the bizbros and their behavior, it isn't just limited to the corporate sphere. That personality is a sign of rot

lambdasquirrel 3y ago

It’s not just work. It’s social scenes and people in general. It’s an uncommon person who does right by other people.

anotherhue 3y ago

Been there, seen that. I feel like culturally we're told that this behaviour is unusual so we are constantly surprised. Some scepticism and school-of-life in our earlier education might be for the best, no matter how disappointing it would be to hear.

turtledragonfly 3y ago

I see your "People X..., People Y..." language, and I just want to note that over-generalization can be a path towards depression[1]. I don't mean this directed at you specifically, but it's fairly common for people to take their bad experiences in a handful of places and extrapolate that to all places everywhere, and end up feeling depressed/nihilistic, as you mention. I find myself doing it too, from time to time. So, maybe this is more directed at other readers who might see your comment and take it as validation of their "everyone sucks" suspicions — grain of salt, and all that. But I agree that what you describe is genuinely demoralizing and a crap way to be treated (: I hope you get to experience a good work life, if you haven't already. [1] There's a good amount of research on this topic (search for "depression, over-generalization"), in addition to my personal experiences.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

> People don't care about the work you do, they care about how you make them feel. this is true, but also keep in mind having a project that delivers engenders a lot of good feelings. it sounds to me like the parent poster doesn't get that politics and maneuvering is everywhere, from restaraunts to FAANGs. Some places are definitely worse than others, for sure, but it's an inevitable facet of human nature, and you can't ignore it. Not playing the game or picking a side still means you're picking a side, and side that is one that will often has less say.

jcomis 3y ago

I worked for a large consulting company and this sort of behavior wasn't just present, it was actively sought out and rewarded. I was part of an acquisition that was slightly removed from it, but watching these absolutely toxic dynamics take place was really eye opening.

Culonavirus 3y ago

Aaaah yes, middle management. The successes are always of their own making, but the failures are always blamed on the devs. Shit rolls downhill. The worst is the situation when there's no buffer between IT and Business (ideally a person well aware of the constraints and requirements of both) and the person you report to is a "bizbro". I once had such a manager, who managed our small dev team, but he was not a coder, he didn't have any IT background, he was a dude with business background... and the depth of which he was able to understand the business logic of our systems was on the "typical user" level (i.e. he used the systems, but had no idea what amount of work would additions and changes in these systems require). This person reported directly to our CEO. So of course we would spend obscene amounts of time on trash features which were complex to incorporate into the existing structures and most of which provided questionable business value in the end (i.e. a feature took 6 "man months" to develop and integrate, but its added monetary value to the business was probably similar or lower than that). Because of these bs jobs coming from the top, we were swamped with questionable work and our core systems and features stagnated. At the same time, hiring more people - adding to the IT team - was out of the question because we were already "so expensive". And so this person came up with a genius idea of offloading one of our core systems to an external entity (so we have more time to spend on his questionable tasks). I mean, fair enough if you do that while being well aware of all the business logic and make a calculated decision, but this person (and I don't want to be too specific here) basically went behind our backs, told the ceo something along the lines of "hey, we're gonna offload system X to entity Y for Z amount of money, so our IT has more time for other important stuff" and then, once everything was a done deal, came to us that we're going to integrate Y. Long story short, we spent about 2 years (on/off) on replacing our X to work with Y, tightly integrating it with Y's api (and that company in general), having around a dozen of 2-5 hour meetings, Y updating their system like 10 times so it even does what our system X did 5 years ago and spent a crap ton of money on all of this (easily more than new hires would cost). Why would it take two years, why wouldn't we cut our losses? Because sunk cost fallacy and because the manager couldn't admit fault to the ceo. We were going to do this because it was his idea.

silenced_trope 3y ago

> I have seen people share into our slack channels lol I had to do this at my last job. My manager would say I need more visibility, share it with X team since it touches on their work. Then I'd have to be like "Hey we just launched this project/feature, look at it!" And nobody in that team's channel would comment on it. I felt the exact way you're describing - I'm sharing something into a channel just to seem important. I'm not sure how to reconcile the need for visibility, there's probably more subtle ways. Or alternatively being in the channel for a while and being part of discussions there rather than popping in just to give myself visibility when there's something worth showing.

betenoire 3y ago
I share your feeling. Here are some answers I've come up with for myself. If you want engagement... Your manager got you to share it by directly asking you to. You will have better luck receiving feedback if you follow that lead. You asked them to look at it, and got discouraged by the lack of any reciprocity. Ask for engagement, if that's what you feel like you want. One effective way for me to do this is to share my assumptions. :) If you don't want to feel like you are playing that "importance" game... Play it on behalf of your team, instead of you. Give kudos to everyone around you. And be genuine about it.

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

toxicity starts at the top. upper management hire bull-shitters who tell them what they want to hear or who will execute the unpopular things they don't want to do....and so on down the chain.

hintymad 3y ago

I'm not sure if this is avoidable in a big enough company when the density of talent keeps diluting. It looks the only exception is when the CEO was so strong that he hires only sharp managers, like in the early days of those explosive startups. On the other hand, individuals can avoid the trap by joining small enough companies when each person's scope and contribution is clearly visible and measurable.

mbrochh 3y ago

Holy shit, my wife is working for a mega corp and is currently experiencing EXACTLY this. This is the reason why I will never join a company that has more than 100 employees. Once they get big, they all turn into cancer.

mvncleaninst 3y ago

> This stuff is incredibly demoralizing. > Loyal, good workers get exploited by these parasitic people because they care about the company, they care about their good coworkers, and they take pride in making good products. Obviously this stuff is all easily exploitable by the people I'm describing. Imo if you frame things like "the bizbros are the problem", you're defining it in a way where the solution falls outside of your control. Ofc the bizbros are the problem, but there isn't much we can do about them. That sort of defines them, right? They can be stupid, because no one is requiring them to be smart. They aren't required to make any sense. So they don't. Not having to make sense is a privilege Personally, if the stuff is demoralizing, I let myself get demoralized! If the culture is fucked, why should I care? Let it crash. But a broader point here: the bizbros and their behavior, it isn't just limited to the corporate sphere. That personality is a sign of rot