Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gorgoiler | Hacker News Reader

It’s knives out time, I’m afraid, for any activist or negative employee. I am flabbergasted by the number of people I’ve worked with who are flat out ungrateful when it comes to their relationship with their employer either being outright miserable and surly, or constantly virtue signalling about hypothetical problems that just drag everyone down the purity spiral.

They get paid and they push code but they seem to think that’s the be all and end all of the relationship. It would be like living with a partner who takes out the bins and cooks every other night but never gives you a birthday card and constantly complains about your behaviour.

I don’t think there’s anything at all wrong with wanting to have good social relationships between staff because the flip side is that every Eeyore, loner, and whiner chips away at morale bit by bit until they are the only people left.

How have you rewarded camaraderie, positive attitude, leadership, and goodwill today?

Uh... why should employees have a friendly relationship with their work? We don't work because we want to make friends. We work because otherwise we don't have money to buy food or clothe ourselves. This is not a voluntary arrangement. Expecting us to be grateful for it is absurd.

This seems a very hostile attitude towards your employer. If they treat you poorly, you are able to complain and voice discontent.

Is there no inverse to that?

If they treat you well, is there no reason to show gratitude?

I imagine coworkers would feel uncomfortable in such a hostile environment.

Your employer — and particularly your hiring manager when they become your line manager — is grateful for your time, I can assure you of that. You didn’t have to work there and a large part of accepting a role is wanting to work for / with someone.

It’s uncharitable to not bring at least some level of social pleasantry to the office every day.

I mean unless you work for Walmart or something. I assume we are both talking about senior, highly remunerated, creative and specialist technical work here, not breaking rocks.

That same employer who's perfectly happy with laying you off once economic winds shift?

Man, where have you worked? It sounds awful. Is this a SV specific type of personality? I feel like a low output dev who complains constantly wouldn't last 6 months before landing on a PIP.

My experience, most "dead weight" employees tend to be quiet types who never rock the boat. They want to just keep flying under the radar. They say please and thank you, they show up to company events, but just.... don't produce. Which can make putting them in a PIP extremely awkward because you feel like the bad guy.

Meanwhile, the most proactive "complainers" I've worked with have all been median to high output engineers. As a manager, I find my approach for them is to try and get them is to mature socially inside the org and work to break them of their bad habits. Results are mixed, but I've had some success.

Thanks. It has been awful at times. On the whole though my career has been really positive, but every so often a disgruntled employee has dragged me and many others down. You’re right that engineering prowess makes up for it a lot of the time but there is a limit to everyone’s tolerance for difficult assholes.

A lot of the time the people that needed weeding out are the ones who are vocally stepping out of their core role to agitate in company forums. They are easier to identify because they at least do you the courtesy of sucking at their core competency, making them much easier to manage out. Still, it can take months to complete that process, and all the while they will be stirring about how policy X is institutionally Y-ist and a micro aggression against minority Z.

You just sound like you don’t quiet people and are trying to justify it. You don’t need to rock the boat if it’s smooth sailing. Do you want everyone complaining and trying to change things?

Sorry to be clear: most quiet types are excellent hard workers. But most of the “dead weight” devs I’ve worked with or under me also happened to fit this pattern of behavior. The loud and lazy get weeded out fast IME.

What the hell does that have to do with being employed?

My employer gives me money. I give them labor. I am friendly with my co-workers because I am generally a friendly person, but I don't owe the company any more than I give and I don't deserve any more than I demand for myself.

There's no "grateful" to be had here. I'm not grateful to have a job. I have a job because I earn it.

Tech work isn’t just labor though. It’s about deciding what to do, influencing others to agree, and getting other people on board to the extent where they are enthused and compelled to want to see through a new idea you’ve brought to the table.

Regardless of your feelings towards the abstract entity that is The Company, all these day to day issues are to do with relationships with people.

The art of alignment and persuasion is so much more than just showing up to Slack / your desk, cranking out three more UI PRs based on tasks assigned to you, then clocking off at 5pm.

It's still just a job. And at the end of the day, unless the company is giving me stock, the only thing that matters to me is whether the company still exists tomorrow. If I'm learning new tech on my own time, that's for MY personal enrichment, not theirs. Sure, I could spend my personal time dreaming up new ideas for the company, but I'm not inclined to spend a second of my time prioritizing them over my own personal interests.

I've built multimillion dollar success stories online and still been laid off as the only developer because they thought they could go into a "maintenance phase." Nobody ever again will ever get more of my time than I am compensated for.

Your employer isn't your partner, they're your John. They get what they pay for, and that's it. If they want you to perform gratitude to stroke their egos, then they can pay extra for it.

Your employer is not your partner, come on. The employee - employer relationship is just business. Why should you feel grateful for getting your market based compensation?

I would argue that deep-thinking technical work, with unpredictable hours where new ideas that compel you to bust our vim and make a diff can come at any moment, alongside a group of people who are similarly motivated to not just keep revenue ticking over but who want to completely change an whole market sector — that very much is an emotionally embedded relationship akin to a partnership.

It’s not for everyone. It certainly induces ageism when people have kids and start to find their work/life balance no longer aligns with daytime/nighttime. It’s also exhausting and requires physical and mental stamina that provably is lacking the older you get.

These things are real but it just because you don’t align with this kind of business, it doesn’t make it wrong. Perhaps you think these startupesque workers are being exploited? Their graduate salaries suggest otherwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com