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There is some truth to avoiding whiney echo chambers. But these watering holes also give insights into the dirty. E.g. Amazon, Meta etc. have terrible work cul

There is some truth to avoiding whiney echo chambers. But these watering holes also give insights into the dirty. E.g. Amazon, Meta etc. have terrible work cultures. Their terribleness got exposed via whiney digital watering holes, at scale. This is useful information for anyone considering jobs at these places. Without these insights, you wouldn't know that you are merely being hired to be fired. Avoid whiney watering holes but after collecting required information.

scarface_74 1y ago
Every large company sucks. You are always just a number. They serve a purpose though. They have a lot of money and allow you to exchange your labor for more of that money and publicly traded RSUs than enterprise development or government. Every VC backed company sucks even worse, they work you to death, promise you “equity” that will statistically be worthless and they pay less. I’m not negative. I know the deal - I give a company labor and expertise for 40 hours a week and they give me money. It’s a transaction it’s just that simple - I don’t care about “your mission” and they aren’t my “family”. When that transaction of money for labor isn’t agreeable for either party, it’s time to move on like I’ve done 9x in my career.
- whatshisface 1y ago
  That's one third true. The other two thirds are work experience and networking, which you can't do at a job that's a dead end with a good pay check.
- stackskipton 1y ago
  You had a pretty good career if you have gotten RSUs at your jobs, most large companies outside FAANG and types don't give any stock options outside some pitiful purchase plan.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Just 3.5 years out of close to 30. I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever go back to BigTech. It served its purpose.
    - bravesoul2 1y ago
      Feel the same about small tech companies. You are the guinea pig to them learning how to run a business. No government or enterprise exp tho.
  - le-mark 1y ago
    If traditional large companies do give stock options they’re at the closing cost of the date of the award (strike price). Not the zero dollar purchase price of big tech, which makes the much less attractive and profitable. I was at an insurance company that made a big deal about offering rsus to engineers. We were like is this a joke?
  - rufus_foreman 1y ago
    The stock purchase plans at the two non-FAANG companies I worked for that offered them were amazing. One of them took money out of each paycheck for a quarter and then gave you the better of the price of the stock at the start or end of the quarter. So you got a chance at risk free profits if the stock jumped. I was told that some people put their entire paychecks into it until they put a limit on the percentage of the paycheck you could put in. The other one was a 15% discount off the stock price, again, done quarterly. Which doesn't sound huge until you calculate the annualized return. The annualized return on the first paycheck of the quarter was around 80%, the annualized return on the last paycheck of the quarter was around 3,000%. No lock up period and the smart thing to do would be to sell immediately and pay the short term capital gains tax. I'm not smart, I still have the stock from that one. It keeps going up but it could also go to zero at any time. I don't want to pay the capital gains tax though. I should probably look at put options. First world problems.
    - BeetleB 1y ago
      ESPP programs are great, and I encourage everyone to participate. But do keep in mind that the IRS limits how much you can gain from them. My company allows you to put 15% of your paycheck into them, and almost everyone I know hits the limit. Which means the company is withholding 15% of your pay, but only using about 7-10% in purchasing the stocks. They simply refund the rest at the end of the cycle.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - rufus_foreman 1y ago
        Huh, looks like that was done in 2010, https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/benefits-compensation/irs-issues-final-employee-stock-purchase-plan-regulations https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/benefits-compensation.... The company where people were supposedly putting their whole paycheck in was before that. Some people have to ruin things for everyone. Both of the ones I participated in limited withholding to 10% of your net pay.
    - 1y ago
- badc0ffee 1y ago
  I worked at a huge, non-FAANG but you all have heard of it, tech company, and it actually had a great, supportive culture and great people. The only issue was that the work itself was soul sucking - everything moved slowly, and the product was a joke compared to newer competitors.
  - bravesoul2 1y ago
    I can guess which one :)
- golergka 1y ago
  > Every VC backed company sucks even worse, they work you to death, promise you “equity” that will statistically be worthless and they pay less. That has been exactly the opposite of my experience with VC-backed companies. Great culture and support. Companies that stand by their employees and their words when it counts. I worked at a company which ran out of runway once. Not the first, not the last time I was in this situation. But before it actually did, CEO decided to close doors sooner so he could give everybody effectively a three-month severance. We were all contractors, not employees. He didn't have to do it at all, and I think that if he wished to, he would have found a dozen ways to safely pocket this VC money himself. But he made a choice to do a solid for his employees instead. This was just the most striking example, but overall it is pretty typical of my experience with VC-backed startups. I'm a cynical, pessimistic person from Russia and Israel, so every time I encounter another super-positive American, my first thought is that they're just phony. But in this particular industry, it just so happens that a lot of them are actually genuinely like that.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Look no further than YC. https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance... YC doesn’t care about the long term value of the companies it invest in. All VC companies want to extract the maximum value out of the company before they get sold to the bigger fool - either acquisitions or an IPO.
    - golergka 1y ago
      That's not the thesis I'm arguing with. You were talking about relationship with employees. Now you're talking about relationship with later stage investors. I am not a later stage investor, I have no knowledge about and no horse in this race.
      - scarface_74 1y ago
        If you took equity in the company in lieu of your market value, you are an investor. Since you probably would also have a lock up period, you would suffer losses. Your employer is beholden to its investors.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  At least YC jobs ads are honest about what you are getting in for. They often spell it out "weekends and nights" plus use every hustle superlative there is and the salary is advertised.
Magmalgebra 1y ago
> E.g. Amazon, Meta etc. have terrible work cultures This is like saying "Switzerland has a terrible work culture". These companies are literally the size of a small country - culture ends up being much more fine grained. Anecdotally - most people I know at Meta love working there - fewer people love their jobs at Amazon, but many of them enjoy it. I've enjoyed all of my own big tech jobs despite much public griping about what it's like to work at these companies. I'm not saying my network is represnative - but my experience strongly suggest the following: - the way you experience work culture at a company is much more determined by your director/vp (e.g. the 50-200 person group you're most closely tied to) than the overall company culture. - many reports of a toxic work culture are really just cultural mismatches. At scale, this means it's easy to read 100 stories of a bad match and treat it as toxicity.
- yodsanklai 1y ago
  I worked only in one big tech company, but my impression is that they try very hard to have a consistent work culture across the company. Everything was super standardized and controlled. There's also a high turnover so even if there's a bunch of senior people that maintain a sane culture, they'll leave eventually. As for director/vp, I barely know mine. I think this guy just wants to keep his cushion job and deliver whatever BS his managers ask him. Just like the rest of us really...
  - Magmalgebra 1y ago
    > my impression is that they try very hard to have a consistent work culture across the company they do - and they fail! A truism is that your manager is the biggest determiner of your work environment. This is just as true for your manager as for you. To that end, your director/vp has a really outsized influence on the people you interact with the most (and thus define the experience of working at the company for you). If you're like me and love talking to people you'll find a huge variation in the lived experience of people working these jobs.
- nine_zeros 1y ago
  > - the way you experience work culture at a company is much more determined by your director/vp (e.g. the 50-200 person group you're most closely tied to) than the overall company culture. > many reports of a toxic work culture are really just cultural mismatches. At scale, this means it's easy to read 100 stories of a bad match and treat it as toxicity. And you get both of these nuggets of actionable info in watering holes - which was the original point.

scarface_74 1y ago

Every large company sucks. You are always just a number. They serve a purpose though. They have a lot of money and allow you to exchange your labor for more of that money and publicly traded RSUs than enterprise development or government. Every VC backed company sucks even worse, they work you to death, promise you “equity” that will statistically be worthless and they pay less. I’m not negative. I know the deal - I give a company labor and expertise for 40 hours a week and they give me money. It’s a transaction it’s just that simple - I don’t care about “your mission” and they aren’t my “family”. When that transaction of money for labor isn’t agreeable for either party, it’s time to move on like I’ve done 9x in my career.

whatshisface 1y ago
That's one third true. The other two thirds are work experience and networking, which you can't do at a job that's a dead end with a good pay check.
stackskipton 1y ago
You had a pretty good career if you have gotten RSUs at your jobs, most large companies outside FAANG and types don't give any stock options outside some pitiful purchase plan.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Just 3.5 years out of close to 30. I would rather get a daily anal probe with a cactus than ever go back to BigTech. It served its purpose.
  - bravesoul2 1y ago
    Feel the same about small tech companies. You are the guinea pig to them learning how to run a business. No government or enterprise exp tho.
- le-mark 1y ago
  If traditional large companies do give stock options they’re at the closing cost of the date of the award (strike price). Not the zero dollar purchase price of big tech, which makes the much less attractive and profitable. I was at an insurance company that made a big deal about offering rsus to engineers. We were like is this a joke?
- rufus_foreman 1y ago
  The stock purchase plans at the two non-FAANG companies I worked for that offered them were amazing. One of them took money out of each paycheck for a quarter and then gave you the better of the price of the stock at the start or end of the quarter. So you got a chance at risk free profits if the stock jumped. I was told that some people put their entire paychecks into it until they put a limit on the percentage of the paycheck you could put in. The other one was a 15% discount off the stock price, again, done quarterly. Which doesn't sound huge until you calculate the annualized return. The annualized return on the first paycheck of the quarter was around 80%, the annualized return on the last paycheck of the quarter was around 3,000%. No lock up period and the smart thing to do would be to sell immediately and pay the short term capital gains tax. I'm not smart, I still have the stock from that one. It keeps going up but it could also go to zero at any time. I don't want to pay the capital gains tax though. I should probably look at put options. First world problems.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    ESPP programs are great, and I encourage everyone to participate. But do keep in mind that the IRS limits how much you can gain from them. My company allows you to put 15% of your paycheck into them, and almost everyone I know hits the limit. Which means the company is withholding 15% of your pay, but only using about 7-10% in purchasing the stocks. They simply refund the rest at the end of the cycle.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - rufus_foreman 1y ago
      Huh, looks like that was done in 2010, https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/benefits-compensation/irs-issues-final-employee-stock-purchase-plan-regulations https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/benefits-compensation.... The company where people were supposedly putting their whole paycheck in was before that. Some people have to ruin things for everyone. Both of the ones I participated in limited withholding to 10% of your net pay.
  - 1y ago
badc0ffee 1y ago
I worked at a huge, non-FAANG but you all have heard of it, tech company, and it actually had a great, supportive culture and great people. The only issue was that the work itself was soul sucking - everything moved slowly, and the product was a joke compared to newer competitors.
- bravesoul2 1y ago
  I can guess which one :)
golergka 1y ago
> Every VC backed company sucks even worse, they work you to death, promise you “equity” that will statistically be worthless and they pay less. That has been exactly the opposite of my experience with VC-backed companies. Great culture and support. Companies that stand by their employees and their words when it counts. I worked at a company which ran out of runway once. Not the first, not the last time I was in this situation. But before it actually did, CEO decided to close doors sooner so he could give everybody effectively a three-month severance. We were all contractors, not employees. He didn't have to do it at all, and I think that if he wished to, he would have found a dozen ways to safely pocket this VC money himself. But he made a choice to do a solid for his employees instead. This was just the most striking example, but overall it is pretty typical of my experience with VC-backed startups. I'm a cynical, pessimistic person from Russia and Israel, so every time I encounter another super-positive American, my first thought is that they're just phony. But in this particular industry, it just so happens that a lot of them are actually genuinely like that.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Look no further than YC. https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance... YC doesn’t care about the long term value of the companies it invest in. All VC companies want to extract the maximum value out of the company before they get sold to the bigger fool - either acquisitions or an IPO.
  - golergka 1y ago
    That's not the thesis I'm arguing with. You were talking about relationship with employees. Now you're talking about relationship with later stage investors. I am not a later stage investor, I have no knowledge about and no horse in this race.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      If you took equity in the company in lieu of your market value, you are an investor. Since you probably would also have a lock up period, you would suffer losses. Your employer is beholden to its investors.
bravesoul2 1y ago
At least YC jobs ads are honest about what you are getting in for. They often spell it out "weekends and nights" plus use every hustle superlative there is and the salary is advertised.

Magmalgebra 1y ago

> E.g. Amazon, Meta etc. have terrible work cultures This is like saying "Switzerland has a terrible work culture". These companies are literally the size of a small country - culture ends up being much more fine grained. Anecdotally - most people I know at Meta love working there - fewer people love their jobs at Amazon, but many of them enjoy it. I've enjoyed all of my own big tech jobs despite much public griping about what it's like to work at these companies. I'm not saying my network is represnative - but my experience strongly suggest the following: - the way you experience work culture at a company is much more determined by your director/vp (e.g. the 50-200 person group you're most closely tied to) than the overall company culture. - many reports of a toxic work culture are really just cultural mismatches. At scale, this means it's easy to read 100 stories of a bad match and treat it as toxicity.

yodsanklai 1y ago
I worked only in one big tech company, but my impression is that they try very hard to have a consistent work culture across the company. Everything was super standardized and controlled. There's also a high turnover so even if there's a bunch of senior people that maintain a sane culture, they'll leave eventually. As for director/vp, I barely know mine. I think this guy just wants to keep his cushion job and deliver whatever BS his managers ask him. Just like the rest of us really...
- Magmalgebra 1y ago
  > my impression is that they try very hard to have a consistent work culture across the company they do - and they fail! A truism is that your manager is the biggest determiner of your work environment. This is just as true for your manager as for you. To that end, your director/vp has a really outsized influence on the people you interact with the most (and thus define the experience of working at the company for you). If you're like me and love talking to people you'll find a huge variation in the lived experience of people working these jobs.
nine_zeros 1y ago
> - the way you experience work culture at a company is much more determined by your director/vp (e.g. the 50-200 person group you're most closely tied to) than the overall company culture. > many reports of a toxic work culture are really just cultural mismatches. At scale, this means it's easy to read 100 stories of a bad match and treat it as toxicity. And you get both of these nuggets of actionable info in watering holes - which was the original point.