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Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles get flagged. Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major ref
by orionblastar 11y ago
Most likely this submission will be flagged as most sexism or racism articles get flagged.
Corporate American needs a major reform. US society need a major reform. Our culture and community need major reforms. The way boys and girls are raised need to be changed, the way they are educated and develop social skills and people skills need to change as well.
As it is Corporate America and the Tech industry has developed a certain mindset based on the power elite of Silicon Valley that controls VC and who gets on the board of directors via shareholders. Everyone has to work 80+ hours a week, and it is hostile to trying to raise a family. Corporations favor the worker who is single over one that is married and has children. They don't like it when there is responsibilities other than work that an employees has. Which is why there is no good maternity leave, or even child care services. Heck in most cases you have to drop your religion and become non-practicing so you don't attend services so you can work more hours.
When I was a young boy in the 1970s it was different, people got the weekends off and spent it with the family with family picnics and they only worked 40+ hours a week, and took off for family matters. The 1980s and 1990s changed that and the Dotcom Boom made the Startups and marathon coding that required more time per week to work. People got less sleep, worked more hours, gave up relationships and family, and put everything into working a job.
For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. I took time off to pick up my son from a babysitter because child care was not offered and my wife worked a different shift, and I got made fun of because I was taking care of my son instead of my wife. I ended up on short term disability and when I returned I was fired for being sick. You see once you become mentally ill they don't want you, even if you were hurt in the line of duty. Which is why so many mentally ill people hide their illnesses and go untreated and then do a suicide later on. I ended up on disability in 2003.
I never made it back to work. But I know of all of the problems in the industry and can talk about them freely without worrying that I'll be fired for talking about them.
In order to make up diversity, many tech companies use the H1B Visa program to hire people from India because they are not white males and because they will work for less money. Being from India gives them a more diverse work force, and they are disposable employees. If they don't do what they are told, the Visa is canceled and they go back to their native country. Then the company hires someone else. It is a big racket.
- gfosco 11y agoI don't know a single person who feels the need to work that hard, and benefits and conditions for parents have never been better. It doesn't make sense for a guy who hasn't worked in 12 years to tell us how it is. Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made.
- dang 11y ago> Sorry you couldn't handle the stress of life and the choices you made. Whoa. Meanness like that is not ok here. Please don't do this again. Kicking someone when they're down makes it 10x worse.
- orionblastar 11y agoThere are a lot of people like that in the workplace when I worked. It is called kicking a person when they are down. Management had it as well which is why I got fired for getting sick on the job. Society in general hates the mentally ill. Every time there is a public shooting they claim the person is mentally ill and that paints all mentally ill people with the same broad brush. I'm non-violent and dysfunctional and could not do a public shooting. I have empathy and compassion that prevents me from doing something like that. The people who did the shootings are sociopaths that lack empathy and compassion.
- simoncion 11y ago> For me it got so stressful that in June 2001 I developed a mental illness from all of the stress I was under and all of the extra hours I worked. It's seriously a damn shame you worked yourself into a nervous breakdown. I can't possibly stress that enough. I've spent about ten years working a couple of tech jobs. Over those years, I've probably put in a few hundred hours of OT (unpaid or otherwise). If we're pessimistic and call it an even 1k hours of OT, this means that I've spent an average of somewhere between 42 and 45 hours per week at work over my entire career so far. I -and others in tech that I know- have never been required to work anywhere near point of burnout, let alone breakdown. Moreover, from what I understand of tech sector hiring practices during the Dot Com Era, anyone who could spell SQL and/or HTML could get a well-paying job in the industry. Maybe those practices also included a near-universal culture of overwork, but -based on what I hear from a few folks who were working in The Valley at the time- I'm pretty certain that that's not true. If management was pressuring you to work those insane hours, you would have very probably found better treatment at another company. It seems like the lower hiring bar would have given a seasoned veteran quite some mobility during the boom. The situation after the bust is another story all together. Since you stopped working in the industry in 2003 and claim over 25 years of industry experience, would you be so kind compare and contrast the work ethic and attitudes of tech company management during the Dot Com boom of the late 1990s to those of tech company management during the PC Boom of the 1980s and very early 1990s? Thanks!