Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by finnthehuman | Hacker News Reader

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>If any non-zero subset of reasonable people are so offended by a behavior that they'd leave the industry because of it, we have to cut it out.

I used to think like this. After years and years of refining my own behavior, a non-work, non-"tech" friend let it slip that my fiends though I had turned into a non-confrontational, lawyer-sounding, people-pleaser. He wasn't wrong, I had gotten in the habit of always walking on eggshells, navigating every conversation like a minefield and letting myself be treated like a doormat. I did. After all, if I hadn't, I'd be one of those "bros" that only people who have never met a bro say are filling up the engineering departments.

The very next day I got chided about not being empathetic enough or whatever the buzzword was at the time. Maybe I could have kept up the facade if I was simply guilty by association. But it was specifically my behavior that was "toxic." That was it. And I'm out. I'm done.

The never-docile-enough nature of "tech" is what's toxic. I hadn't been able to feel comfortable in my own skin for years out of fear of being off-putting to anyone else. The people who's behavior is worth changing aren't listening anyway, so I'm done letting it be my fault, and I'm never over-correcting to make up for it again.

edit: Want to complain about something in "tech"? Why don't you (not you, specifically, parent poster) start with the ethics of your employer's products/practices.

You've confused "nice" with "kind". Nice is about social performance. That includes things like being a conflict-avoiding people-pleaser. Docility, as you put it. Being kind, on the other hand, involves having empathy and working to help others.

The two are somewhat correlated; kind people are often nice. But it's easy enough to be nice without being kind at all, and sometimes being kind requires being visibly not nice. As an example, if you see a coworker being abused, confronting the abuser is a kind thing to do, but you probably can't be nice doing it.

As someone who has worked through a lot of social anxiety, I definitely encourage you to throw off the yoke of your fears about not being nice enough. But that doesn't entitle you to be unkind.

> confused "nice" with "kind".

Possibly. However, when it comes to companies what they claim is that they want "kind" when what they actually demand is "nice".

As I said, "nice" is about social performance, so if somebody is demanding something, "nice" is all it could be. Companies, though, don't want anything. People do. And people vary.

If you're saying that some people with power use that to demand conformance to social codes, sure, I agree. But I disagree that always prevents us being kind.

As a consultant whose client portfolio used to include F500's in health, insurance, and NY finance, and whose portfolio now includes nothing but startups, and having had the pleasure of whiling away many languorous afternoons in the cube farms of those companies, I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that the average startup tech employee is "walking on eggshells" and being performatively docile compared to the day-1 baseline expectations of, to a first approximation, every non-tech company with more than 1,000 employees in the US.

The idea that tech employees are docile compared to the accounts receivable group at a major US insurance company seems pretty hard to support with evidence.

OK. Then why not be more specific. If "tech" and "the industry" means one corner, of one business domain, with one financing model, on one peninsula... maybe I just haven't landed any jobs with the boorish worklife yet. But I certainly feel the blowback from what apparently happens there.

Reading posts here often feels like I'm in bizzaro world where I've never actually worked in "tech". Yes, my current job is more laid back when I'm not on site at a multinational client's office, but it's not that much. It's still a desk job in software. The scale I use to judge workplaces extends into back into my time in restaurants, retail, admin, music, and mechanics' shops. Now, if you want to talk culture, I could tell some stories about those places (and pardon that expression, I could obviously never tell those stories here).

Having been around F500's and tech companies - one accusation of violating norms at a tech company can be a career ender - one accusation of same violation of norms at a Fortune 500, is usually deal with thru a discipline process.

You've worked at a company that had a "must wear ties to the office" requirement (yes, those still exist) and came out thinking that their employees were less "docile" than those of the median SFBA startup?

Just my observations and opinion..

but, worked with, not at, but generally about equal in raw numbers - it really depends where the docility comes out - in fortune 500's being weird in general is strongly discouraged, but the penalties for stepping out of line are small usually, the big benefit is, cultural norms are clearly established, and generally followed - in a SV company, being weird is strongly encouraged, cultural values are somewhat more nebulous, and the penalties for stepping out of line are often much more harsh.

So you're saying tech companies have vague 'cultural values' that encourage a certain degree of non-conformity and then harshly punish/fire non-conformists? That doesn't really make any sense, at least, not in the non-specific form you've put it. Right at a time of a fair bit of tech-company culture examination and critique, this particular complaint seems to come up mostly never. How do you explain that? The docility? It gets a little circular.

The well defined Fortune 500 culture prevents identity politics from coming into play - the nebulous SV culture does not, there is no line other than 'be yourself' so the out of line issues can violate peoples concept of self, which is clearly bad, and therefor the punishments must be harsh.

To explain further - in F500 Culture, only a narrow band of self expression is possible - but what is and isnt is clearly defined - in SV Culture, a much wider band is acceptable - but the unacceptable is much less clearly defined.

That's an interesting narrative but, again, how do you explain nobody is complaining about these apparent frequent and wanton harsh punishments and firings? My guess is because nothing of the sort really happens, statistically speaking.

I think many of us attribute it to being socially awkward geeks - we just presume we violated another one of those unspoken rules that have been tripping us up our whole lives - it wasn't until I started working around F500 companies that I realized that, that while yes, I'm a socially awkward geek - the cultures I was in before were of little help to me in understanding the unspoken rules.

But that leaves you with the exact same question. These same socially awkward geeks have managed to complain for decades about everything from office plans through software methodologies to equity compensation, hours, the intrusion of work into social life and more recently, diversity issues, crappy interview practices, you name it. And in all that time nobody has piped up about how they're being harshly punished and outright fired for some ill-specified non-adherence to unclear expectations, at odds with what they thought their employers encouraged. There should be crusty USENET threads and brand new Medium posts about this injustice. But there aren't.

How could tech people be more in touch with that, other than by consulting?

Reading and talking to people are generally the best ones. I've learned about conditions in other industries by talking to friends who work in them and also reading articles in more measured publications (I would take anything on e.g. huffpost with a big grain of salt, or a Vox blog for that matter, to say nothing of Fox News or other cable/radio sources :o).

So maybe step 0 is: find people who know about them, before you can do the talking and reading. The New Yorker is my general go-to for measured introductions to new domains: the authors biases are fairly simple to spot when relevant (leftish-intellectual-in-US-terms) and the level of detail is usually high.

Sadly, I don't have a ton more at hand, other than one rule that I'd highly recommend to use as a filter: if you get the feeling the person is trying to make you angry, find something else. Polemics are rarely the best way to be introduced to a topic.

That's an interesting question I didn't see coming. I wouldn't want to recommend actually taking a job at ADP or Allstate! I'd be interested in hearing suggestions here too.

I've found a useful model is to think of your behavior as a selection-bias filter on the people you hang out with. I don't think it's reasonable to expect everybody to like what you're doing. People don't even agree with each other, so if nobody disapproves of what you're doing or how you conduct your life, chances are you're not doing anything important or actually having a life. A group where everybody agrees on everything is a cult, not a culture.

But if nobody likes you and wants to hang out with you, you have a problem. And if the people who like what you're doing are people that you yourself don't really like, you're probably not being true to yourself. You want to be in a situation where there's a core group of people you like and respect who also like and respect you. If you've got that, who cares what other people think?

I worked as a high school teacher, a college instructor (PhD student with teaching responsibilities), and in local government before becoming a software engineer, and I have to say that my experience does not much what you've reported at all. My coworkers in tech companies have always gotten away with expressing more or less whatever they want. This has been my experience in start-ups, mid-sized companies, and big tech cos.

If the person chiding you was a co-worker and not your manager then you can just tell them that you feel like they are harassing you and that you would like them to stop. If they don't stop then go complain to HR.

I wish I could upvote this more than once. This is spot on.

Uber is "never-docile-enough" ?

This article and comment thread was about Uber specifically? Oh, well, then, yeah, no, I didn't come here to say anything in specific about them. I've never worked there, so I obviously can't speak to it, and the rumors don't sound great either.

Yeah the rumors sound pretty bad.

I meant more like, Uber is one particular example (of which there are many) of tech companies or startups where the behavior of their employees is clearly not "docile."

I suppose you could use, perhaps, Google or Github (I'm making some assumptions about what you mean so forgive me) as examples of "docile" tech employees.

Just don’t write any manifestos to your co-workers.

I can't help reading this as "We'll know we have a healthy workplace culture once people subconsciously realise that any time management makes a space available for internal feedback, you should make sure not to express your actual opinions there."

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