It’s a dark time to be a tech worker right now

Technology@lemmy.world – 358 points – 9 months ago

finance.yahoo.com

It’s a dark time to be a tech worker right now::Nearly 300,000 tech employees have been laid off since last year, data shows.

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I work at a large tech company, and the feeling here is unlike anything I've ever felt before. There are a few camps:

Workers on visas that are utterly petrified of losing their jobs, and are struggling to plan for anything long-term, since companies that lay people off can't file green cards for employees.
Workers that are just numb to everything. They don't give a fuck, they are jaded with the bullshit their employer pulls, and work is just work.
People that would happily take a voluntary layoff to GTFO, spend some time with family, and potentially move to something better.

What seems to be the dominating feeling that everyone has, is that they no longer support their leaders. They feel there are too many middle-managers, they realise that their C-Suite staff are fucking useless, and the CEO's are almost universally awful as leaders. Sundar has caused Google to nose-dive in popularity, Jassy is so ineffective that no one even knows he is CEO, Musk is a known sociopath going through a mental breakdown, Zuck bet everything on VR to mask huge privacy/product failings, and alongside all of this are dozens of CEO's that forced employees back to the office or laid people off for bullshit reasons.

My hope from this dark time is that companies arise that focus on the employee first, learn from the mistakes made by big tech, and purposefully manoeuvre around FAANG until they are relegated to boomer tech. Until then, like most SWE's, I'm just hoping things get better soon...

I like your optimism. What would an employee first focused company look like?

I would say it would be similar to Google from the early-ish 2000's. Lots of offices worldwide to facilitate in-office working and immigration issues, while also having freedom to work remotely if desired. Also, a structure that leads with empathy, and managers judged on not just output but employee happiness.

There was a lot of freedom in big tech over the last few years. I could transfer pretty much worldwide within a month, I could work on several different moonshot industries with no worry of losing my job (because I'd just transfer to another team), and the market was good enough that if push came to shove I could take some time off and find a new role with minimal issues. I think an employee focused company would keep that freedom, while also keeping employees happy and without fearing for their job.

Keep in mind the core value of most of these companies is "we have a web page". If only all these unhappy developers could somehow create their own webpage and we could all switch to using the web page of a better company...

(Preaching to the choir here, since we're on Lemmy. I guess nobody is making money or employing people because of Lemmy though.)

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