Ask HN: What do you consider unsafe working conditions in a tech company? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you consider unsafe working conditions in a tech company?

If you are at risk of physical harm. For example, working in a data center that’s not properly cooled.

If you are being coerced into doing something unethical or illegal, or something wrong that may follow you in your career.

If you are being verbally abused by a coworker, be it a manager or a subordinate.

Beyond that I’m not sure what else might cause you to feel “unsafe.” A tech company is one of the softest and least demanding jobs in all of human history.

>A tech company is one of the softest and least demanding jobs in all of human history

Then why is there so much burnout and is that not a form of harm?

I believe they were considering the physical aspect of tech. The physical aspect doesn't usually catch up to people until they are much older and have not been taking care of themselves and not taking "walking breaks" and have been sitting all day, staring at screens and eating from the snack foods in the break room. It caught up to me and I made significant changes in my life. Exceptions of course would be if you are Datacenter Operations or if you have to move PC's around all day. That can as difficult as a warehouse worker if the management team do not give you the right tools and enough breaks.

Every company that has humans likely has some management structure and coworkers and all of those environments can wind someone up and burn them out. Company culture and ethics are a big part of it. Changing a culture in a company is not usually possible and that is why folks will usually leave to find what they perceive to be greener pastures.

So one day certain un-named co-workers brought up a box containing a disassembled metal desk and left it in the hallway. This box was maybe six feet long, two feet wide, and two inches thick. And for whatever reason, they left it standing on edge in the middle of the hall. This is not a gravitationally stable position in which to leave several hundred pounds of steel.

So innocent old moi comes down the hall, wonders what's up with the box, and fiddles with it, never dreaming it has that kind of weight in it. Once it started coming over, it was beyond my strength to stop. It landed on my foot.

By luck and/or the grace of God, they also left this low cart/dolly thing in the hallway. It caught the last inch of the box - enough to stop the cardboard, but not enough to catch any of the steel. The steel then slowly tore through the box. But it was enough that the weight slowly landed on my foot, rather than slamming it. It was the difference between a fair amount of pain, and crushing all the bones in the arch of my foot (or so I suspect - I haven't done the experiment).

So, yeah. Falling mass can cause crush damage, even in a cubicle farm.

Installing heavy networking/battery equipment in a rack by yourself without extra help. Cheap furniture that leads to repetitive stress injuries. Being woken up repeatedly at night which isn't good for your heart or health. Exposed wiring or poor grounding. Sharp edges on equipment coupled with trip hazards from poor wiring practices without the maintenance windows to fix it because "everything has to stay up." Replacing components on live hardware with extremely fast spinning fans. "Server rooms" that double as toxic (cleaning) chemical storage. Prolonged working around equipment with cooling systems that exceed the noise level for hearing damage. Stress-induced issues from on-call. Crawling around potential asbestos when running wiring for things such as wireless access points.

Redneck engineered battery bank on the UPS with 288VDC bus bars exposed enough to fry a couple snakes per year. Full rack SPARCs running flat out in a mobile home in the TN woods, in the summer (all summer), without air conditioning. Climbing poles not meant to be climbed to service or replace wireless networking equipment. Stringing 1,000ft of coax cable between buildings at 3am because the previous run was vaporized by a lightning strike and Teh Uptime Demands It.

Wasn't this an invitation to brag?

I'm curious, what were the sparcs doing?

databases and some funky stuff that would be called "ML" now.

Physical: Anything that violates state/province labor laws, OSHA regulations, NEC handbook electrical regulations, building code violations.

Psychological leading to physical: Anything that pushes people over the edge causing them to act out in harm to themselves and/or others especially when they might not see the alternate options available to them and/or may already be suffering an unstable state of mind from external pressures.

>Psychological leading to physical: Anything that pushes people over the edge causing them to act out in harm to themselves and/or others especially when they might not see the alternate options available to them and/or may already be suffering an unstable state of mind.

I agree. The trouble with this is often you don't know that's the case until an incident happens. This happened to me in my last job, and in my current job I've detected the workload is getting dangerously high again and am trying to push back on it given I feel like it's unsafe, but I don't know that I really feel believed.

Sorry to hear that. Have you had a one-on-one with your manager? If so and they are giving preference to company over your well being? Does your company support skip-level meetings? If so, have you kept your CV/resume up to date and been looking for other options?

My direct manager definitely gives preference to my well being. I'm in talks with various parties to try work out where the disconnect is. I have identified one definite disconnect that is at least partially responsible for the current situation, which I intend to address in my 1:1 this week. I haven't had a skip level 1:1 yet, but as a team we had an AMA with our skip level and skip-skip level managers and were told by the skip-skip level manager "we don't have people for you".

I feel like this is such a common theme I see inside tech companies that I wonder why engineers tend to accept the status quo and don't push back on it as much as they ought to. I think since getting burned by it the first time I have developed a lot of skills/expertise to detect the conditions under which it happens and since becoming almost hypervigilant about it my calibration differs so drastically from my peers that I think people just think I'm nuts.

My suggestion is to speak with those involved with health, human safety, and legal liabilities. Not a trivial question to answer because the definition of Safety, Harm, Trauma, and the specific conditions your questioning. Your HR is the primary point, or if you are at risk you can find your states employment rights department.

I'd say main one is unchecked sexual harassment, followed closely by other kinds of harassment, anything that goes unaddressed by HR/higher-ups. Then the usual OSHA stuff...?

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