> Still more time passed and then came the depression. I found myself increasingly demotivated in all aspects of my life. I could hardly even muster the energy to play video games (my usual haunt). Some evenings I would literally sit and stare at a wall. My sleep went to shit.
I'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.
This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.
I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.
With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.
Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.
Big tech is very much a function of your team and manager. Any job is a function first of your manager, second of your team, third of your ability and fourth of your project. I always select teams in that way, within a company and outside, and this has been incredibly helpful.
Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.
I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.
Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.
Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
> On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck
How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.
It's not quite random, the goal is to bias the errors towards false negatives (bad rejection) than false positives because bad hires are so expensive to recover from.
I don’t know if it’s “we hire at random” more so “we hire based on intelligent guesses/calculated risk”. It’s not completely random because there’s a resume and a rigorous process.
It’s not randomness it’s a bias towards consistency and avoiding false positives at the expense of false negatives. There are more qualified candidates than roles, generally speaking. If that changes then I suspect process will change too, as the cost of a false negative will become higher.
The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.
Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You're a saint for staying any longer.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
Sleep is a definite signal. If you've eliminated diet, medication, and personal relationships (tough one) as causes, you're left with professional obligations.
Note too that "chronic fatigue" is NOT "lack of sleep".
The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant "fight or flight" mode for too long. Psychologically, you've been doing WWI "trench warfare".
What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.
All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.
I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.
Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.
Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.
Yeah this is why I sometimes miss the jobs I had in my early 20s, working at bakeries/ice cream shops/etc. Obviously the pay wasn’t great and the working conditions subpar, but there is a genuine psychological benefit to making a simple thing, giving it to people, then finishing work at the end of the day and being done, without an ongoing to-do list, sprints, daily meetings, and all the other requirements of contemporary white collar jobs.
It’s led me to wonder how one could structure a knowledge work job in a similar way. The tough part conceptually is how to make progress long-term while still only keeping your focus on a day at a time, max.
I couldn't find it after searching, but I remember reading about a company where they just relaxed and got done what they got done. To me, this would be the ideal workplace.
With any form of investor expecting a return I dunno how possible this is, but I’ve worked for one family owned business (non-tech industry but had a small tech team) and it was super relaxed like you mention.
No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.
That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.
I often find that even investors can be reasonable.
Most of the problems in tech are of the employees own creation. Unreasonable requirements and unreasonable timelines, often coming out of thin air for no reason other than some middle manager's political interests.
It is super hard to fight against it, and it's even harder to demonstrate how forcing tech to work more than necessary is bad for business.
Small businesses deal with it by being small. Big companies are just chaotic complex systems where you don't have much of a choice.
> finishing work at the end of the day and being done
You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning.
Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.
That's definitely possible, but in my experience it's not the same thing as actually being done when you're working at a bakery or wherever. Then you don't need to turn off your phone, avoid company messages, think about what project you have to do tomorrow. You don't need to care about the job at all until your next shift starts.
I work in IT and I don't need to think about that project that's running late or whatever. Yeah, I have to turn off my work laptop, but that's more akin to taking off my apron if I worked in a bakery.
Sure, it sometimes happens that I'm working on some interesting project, and I may find myself thinking about it after my workday is done. But it's because I generally love what I do. It wouldn't surprise me that, say, a pastry chef would possibly think about combining ingredients in some different way, too.
I think the only job where you absolutely wouldn't have to think about it is if you don't have any kind of agency and only do what you're told. I'm not sure that I would enjoy that kind of job.
Indeed. And I think this is both a case of managing expectations (if you're always available, people will learn to expect it) and also of realizing what is and isn't expected of you.
Where I work, a normal workday is 9 AM to 6 PM with an hour lunch. There's some flexibility as to the actual hours, I usually do 8-5, others do 10-7. Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason, complete with gulping down a sandwich in front of their computer for lunch. I'm not sure what gives them the impression they have to do it, since it's clearly not expected from our common higher-ups.
> Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason
Guilty. The reason was living with abusive partner and not being brave enough to end the relationship. Things were bad, but not bad enough to do something about it.
> some people always put in very long hours for some reason, complete with gulping down a sandwich in front of their computer for lunch. I'm not sure what gives them the impression they have to do it, since it's clearly not expected from our common higher-ups.
This is just how I like to work and approach problem solving. I can take breaks when I make the effort, but, when work starts, I rarely think about anything except climbing whatever mountain I find myself on, helping others at my company, or exceeding my own (or others') expectations. That intensity helps me think deeply and solve problems effectively.
There are people in my company who do good work but draw boundaries clearly and sharply. I respect that. I just love what I do and find it interesting and absorbing partly because I love the intensity of striving and struggling, constantly refining, improving, growing, and exploring.
My company generously rewards good work, too. That also helps; my effort never feels wasted, unacknowledged, or unrewarded.
I don't think you're talking about the same thing as GP. I've had spells like you describe, and I did enjoy them. And I don't know about you, but I never felt like this was expected of me by the company, so there was no pressure involved. I think that this actually being my choice made all the difference.
This seems quite distinct from what is discussed in this thread, which is people feeling some kind of pressure to work long hours, or to be available after work hours when they're supposed to be doing personal stuff. And, usually, the reasons for being called up don't seem to be some genuinely exciting problem that it feels invigorating to tackle. Instead, it's typically some form of TPS report that needs pushing around.
I’ve had a chance recently to moonlight doing the work I did the first half of my 20s almost a decade after I left it for tech. Despite its dead end nature, I’m seriously thinking about returning to it.
The work amounts to super overpaid (thanks unions) retail using antiquated software that it modernized could eliminate at least half the jobs, but since there are union staffing minimums and salaries the employer has no incentive.
There’s something nice about helping customers for a couple hours, doing some other mindless work which could be done in half the time if automated, and then going home.
And the group of folks in the industry are mostly great to be around. Particularly after nearly 5 years of working from home in roles that are increasingly more isolated and less collaborative.
Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?
I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...
I would say that anything that is opposed to Marx’s concept of alienation would fit the bill. Work should feel impactful and your decisions should lead to some tangible output.
It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.
Work satisfaction is a meme. Yes, there are people satisfied with their work, but realistically, this is not going to happen to you. Stop giving a fuck about your work, slack off as much as possible, and look for coworkers with whom you can build real human connection, instead of corporate NPCs.
I don’t know if that’s sustainable. We’re all stuck with this work-thing being one third of our life for the foreseeable time, so spending 33% of like, everything I’ll ever experience on something I don’t give a fuck about seems like both a lot of dull time and a bad decision overall.
I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.
Sure. I was specifically talking to people browsing hacker news, which have a high probability of working a job in the capitalist economy. Of course there are other ways of life, but the predominant part of humanity does not choose those. So I still think it’s appropriate to talk about ”all of us“ in this case.
Exactly... if you want to be miserable at work, by all means, "slack off as much as possible".
I think we forget the big picture that "no one gets out alive" and that it's up to each of us to spend the time we have in a way that makes us happy. If you can afford to not spend 1/3 of your time at a job in order to fund the remaining 2/3 of your existence, lucky you! But if not, choosing to slack off at a job you hate is essentially choosing to throw 1/3 of your life away being miserable. (Not judging if that's your choice, but its baffling to me.)
That’s my opinion, too. I also find that by taking this attitude, you guarantee that you’ll only end up working jobs that confirm your worldview. I have friends who think my work experience is a wild fluke.
And it makes your colleagues miserable because they have to carry the load or slack off too, which inevitably means the whole team is disfunctional and should be let go
I agree completely. I’ve had periods where I just slacked off and I was miserable, leading to a negative feedback loop. The only way to break out was ironically to actually work more, which led to more enjoyment of it. Cognitive dissonance is powerful.
>What you are experiencing is the symptom of working in a large company where no matter how well you perform, you can not significantly move the needle yourself.
You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team.
Also, people skills always trumps technical skills. Being aware of that helped me immensely on my career, much more than anything else I could have done.
This is an extremely important piece of advice. To drive change in a large org, you will need support, which will either come from management, or people on the ground - this is purely people skills. Just writing amazing code and shipping it isn’t enough.
hmm surprising because I had mentioned how to win friends and influence people book by dale carnegie in some other comment on this post and one of the most sticky / remembered lines of this book is that even in a highly technical post , much of the success (approx 70% IIRC) can be because of having people skills.
People skills matter , But I suppose in large organisations. I don't think people skills matter "that much" in open source (other than documentation and hey not messing up like attomatic and being a little bit nicer in general)
Hell we should all try to be a little nicer in general , not just in open source.
Well, I’m not sure that the Linux kernel would have been that successful without Linus’ people skills - granted some it is slightly subpar, but his ability to organize a large number of people and have them follow his lead ( that’s the tricky bit ) is actually quite striking.
Now, you might say that the Linux kernel is a large project, and you’d be right
In some sense, you don’t solve it. You are correct to perceive you are at a crossroads. And the hard part is knowing that either choice may foreclose some possibilities on the other path.
There’s still plenty of time to change gears, or move back and forth between the two choices. There are also other paths; see my comment above.
Important part is to not ignore the discomfort. I suggest reading Charity Majors’ blog posts around leadership vs engineering roles.
I’m in early 40s and going thru a minor midlife crisis around this. Feeling that I’d wasted time in my 20s building technical prowess only to see myself still be viewed as mostly fungible.
I think my future is moving towards consulting and building my own products. If people want to fight each other to get a seat at the table, be my guest. I see it as a waste of life. I can already build significant projects on my own, and it’s long overdue for me to reap all of the profit that those efforts generate.
Don't feel bad about the technical prowess part. Just consider you are "done" with growing the tech skills and start stacking other skills on top and you'll do great.
Many companies have parallel IC tracks. And even though higher level ICs do need to “herd” more you’re still doing a fair amount of technical work (maybe at least until director equivalent).
The director equivalents I know ("distinguished engineeer") still do plenty of individual work if they want to; it's simply expected that they know how to do things in a way that has the same leverage as a director. And yes, that can include temporarily recruiting people to do work outside their team.
I agree and this is good advice that works well. My counterpoint is that if you are very good at:
finding things that could be better or tools that should exist but don’t, and that if materialized would solve multiple problems at once instead of just one; and
explaining why that’s important in a way that everyone can buy into and dealing with naysayers who’ll want to cut you down and doomers who will say it’ll never work; and
have the focus, discipline and grit to make it through a 10k LoC project and land it on the other side while ekeing out code review along the way and not tripping over loose cables and uneven steps of your initial design / architecture / model that was either flawed from the outset or not malleable enough to fix after a month of entrenchment into your code; and finally
once you’re ready, to then go over the entire codebase and lift the old code up into your new way of doing things so that there is no split brain between the old way and your new tool:
then you can make it as a 10x engineer. It is exhausting but so is running up and down a football field, cycling laps around France, or serving tennis balls at 90mph for three hours at a time. Taking the elite-coder staff-engineering path isn’t for the faint hearted.
first i think what you’ve presented is a fiction, in most environments such large projects are surely going to involve multiple people if not multiple team. and then why? unlikely you’re be financially compensated for all the impact you’re really delivering. anything less is just exploitation
My experience is that this is quite common. Especially at startups but also at fortune 500s there exist staff engineers who have no team and just exist working on whatever catches their fancy that day/month. The grandparent talked about a month long project which is where these engineers tend to live in my experience. Its not that they get no help more that they jump around and maybe grab someone from the team when theyre almost done to integrate the new feature with the existing codebase.
I wouldn’t say people skills “always” trump technical skills. Some projects require strong technical chops such that no amount of people skills will be sufficient. If everyone thought this way we wouldn’t have made so many of the recent major tech advances.
Now given a fixed level of technical skills it’s obviously always better to have more people skills, perhaps that’s what you meant.
Or sometimes the needles you can move seem unimportant to the org, even if they have objective value. You get a few pats like OP but no real recognition.
Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.
People have wrong priorities when working in big corporations. If you want to make an impact you should work towards creating your own business and working in big corporation is just a mean to achieve that. Focus on growing your bank account, good credit history, live lean and in your free time nurture the idea you have, make steps to make it happen.
In some jurisdictions you need to check your employment contract as company may feel entitled to your idea you are developing outside of work hours. Ensure you don't have any such stipulations in the contract.
There are absolutely a lucky few at even the biggest mega-corps that are seeing their work make huge impacts. But most people won't find those projects or there won't be space in them.
"Just find high-leverage projects to work on" is a truism. Of course everyone would love to work on high-leverage projects - finding them is precisely the challenge that we're discussing.
As someone who has been on a journey from a 6 man startup to a larger company going through a merger I’m really feeling the pull of creating/joining a new startup. If nothing else for the joy of being a small team on a mission and work with people who are really invested.
I’ve seen this pattern repeated so many times that I feel like it can be generalized:
when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.
Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!
Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)
Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)
Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this!
I hope you’ll find your joy again.
This is a great post and I'm glad the author was able to share it.
I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.
I don't know if the author is "burnt out" or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
Great blog, but reading it gave me deep secondhand anxiety and even exhaustion. It’s strikingly clear this person is a people pleaser to potentially unhealthy levels, maybe due to low self-esteem or something else, and it could be contributing to the depression. Legitimately, therapy might be the right call here. But on the positive side, they do seem like a good person who wants to build good things. That’s commendable.
100% agree. Please OP consider therapy or at least a next job that you can't give too much of a shit about. Care about the quality of the work you're shipping because it's fun. Be a human but keep your personal life personal.
People pleasing, approval seeking makes you the battery in somebody else's flashlight. You will always find yourself used up by others. Don't give others control of your joy.
Totally, I think it also comes with a healthy detachment of the identity from work, because its only worth it in a personal context when working for yourself, not for another company.
I've been in this position a few times now. God is it hard to explain to other people, especially when you know how success is metricized by others and silently judged. But at the same time, the collection of life experiences gained by doing stupid, impulsive things has made me happier than I could have expected in the long run. And has shown me a lot of things I would not have seen otherwise.
Big companies are great for job security, not so much for meaningful work (unless you’re senior, it seems). I’ve been at a massive company for four years and my work is uninspiring. Can’t wait to get back in the startup life.
Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—"Treating it just as a job", "finding happiness elsewhere", "just get shit done"—but nothing works. For a long while, I only found myself to blame. I felt idiotic for not having the energy to work like everyone else does.
Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.
Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.
I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.
So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
> Every company I have worked at I have hit this point of mental health collapse, just like OP. At this point, I can try everything—"Treating it just as a job", "finding happiness elsewhere", "just get shit done"—but nothing works.
Sure, because that's too late. Once you've already collapsed, pretty much the only thing that's going to fix it is quitting and taking a break, possibly with some therapy.
You need to "treat it as just a job" from your very first day there. You need to "find happiness elsewhere" every single day of your life, not just when you're feeling burned out.
Regardless, I'm glad you've now found a path that's working for you!
I think this is the feeling when you realize what you’re doing does not matter. No big purpose, just a mere immortal. I think you need a bigger purpose bro, like really. Reach out.
These symptoms are a classic sign of burn out. One thing I notice in your writing is you’re very tied up in things having meaning and mattering in some specific way. This itself can lead to burnout because if everything must matter you must be emotionally invested in everything. But you can care without it mattering to you. You can do a good job without being totally invested in everything about it. You can love what you do without it having significance in every detail.
In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.
Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.
Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.
FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.
For me I studied vipassana and Buddhism, and did the daily meditations with Gil Fronsdal[0] on his amazing audio dharma[1] which has a lot of resources (and his teachings dating back 25+ years recorded and freely available there). If you’re in the area you can visit the insight meditation center[2] in Redwood City.
I think these things helped me a lot in my recovery but I also don’t think it’s necessary or sufficient. I think my advice above is the real key, but vipassana and Buddhism give a pretty structured approach to achieve the appropriate detachment from what’s not truly real and the appreciation for what is. IMO that’s the basis for recovering from burnout durably. But the other thing is there’s no magic, it takes time.
The way I conquered burnout was by having a life outside of work that isn't computer related. In my early twenties, the only notable attribute of my life was work and computers. I'd wake up in the morning, go to work programming things, then get home and either do programming side projects or play computer games, then I'd go to sleep and repeat it the next day. I had no hobbies, no friends or acquaintances outside of the people I met at work, and nothing to drive me besides the artificial goals at work. Recipe for burnout and it constantly happened.
Eventually, I got married, had a family, found things to do in the community, and do plenty of sports and hobbies that involve shutting off the computer. Even though my jobs after my 20s have been even more soul-crushing than the ones I had earlier, I've never had a hint of burnout. When I'm done with work, I shut off the computer and that's it. I'll go build a piece of furniture, or repair my car, spend time with my kid, anything that doesn't involve office politics, two week sprints, or status reports. Just having a life outside of work has done wonders for my mental health. No meditation or spirituality needed!
Yup, avoiding burnout is all about having rich alternatives for your time. If you find yourself working yourself to the point that you don't have the energy to do anything else outside of work, you need to cut back.
If you do get burned out, the only remedy I've found is time away, sometimes many months of it. That's really tough (or impossible) for many people's financial situations, though.
“A shared fiction in the world to help frame interactions between people”. You sir are a natural philosopher.
I think what’s universally important is to keep active and engaged in what we’re doing. Some of us have to tell fictions that what we’re doing has meaning, whilst others just know what brings meaning to their life.
It feels flippant to say, "stop caring so much about things", but it's actually great advice.
We should think of ourselves as having a limited "caring budget", and be judicious in how we spend that budget. Part of the trick is figuring out what that budget is, since it can be different for different people, or even different for the same person at different times in their life.
I think framing burnout in this way is helpful: you get burned out when too much is too important to you, and you've overextended your emotional ability to give a part of yourself to each of those things, for too much time.
An important thing about that to me is that it doesn't at all consider whether things are going well or poorly with all those "too important" things. Certainly things going poorly will increase stress, but even caring too much about too many things that are all going well can burn you out.
>he asked the team, “for this meeting I’d like us to try and introduce ourselves a little differently. If you’re comfortable, I’d like us to try and be 10% more vulnerable than we normally would in a work setting.” I remember feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement rise in my chest. I sat pondering what I would share. I decided to go for more than 10%. I shared about how my marriage had almost collapsed a couple years prior and a taste of how painful it was. Some of my coworkers shared deeper things I’d never heard in a work setting. It was awkward. It was beautiful.
I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.
If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.
Of course I wouldn't say all that to the manager, but 'I'll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
Well, the manager asked only for “10% more vulnerable”. That seems pretty far from “being forced into group therapy” in my perception.
It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.
I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model
Because you cannot freely say no to that. They have authority over you. Even if they promise it won't affect their opinion of you, you never know if that is actually true. So you are forced to play along.
Asking a question in front of a group, bur adding a "if you're comfortable", doesn't really make the problem go away. There's always a pressure to answer, even if you say that answering is optional. It's not a horrible violation but it's still kind of weird and unnecessary in a professional context.
I promise you I mean this sincerely, and not in a memey internet insult kind of way - are you perhaps autistic?
I ask because this is exactly the type of comment one of my siblings would make, and she is on the spectrum. She wouldn't be able to understand the social dynamics at play here, whereas for other folks it's just common sense. "Optional" is not really optional in some social settings, and that's something autistic folks struggle with being aware of, much less understanding. The activity may be optional in the most pedantic sense; you won't be struck down by lightning if you decide not to participate. But there will be consequences.
All of which is another reason why this whole exercise is an awful idea, considering that the number of autistic folks in software engineering is probably a bit higher than the population baseline.
You are not your code, but putting my code up to be torn apart in a PR definitely feels like being vulnerable to me. It's a good thing for it to be torn apart and scrutinized, so as to make the product better, which is what we're all after, but it still touches a nerve when the reviewer is an ass about it.
Yup. Absolutely zero percent chance a Jr dev's expressed vulnerability that day was "when I see sr dev is sitting at his desk muttering "stupid fucking idiots" and reviewing PRs, I get scared and anxious".
Making high performance teams is part of their job description though, and there is research to indicate that teams with strong social bonds perform better.
Yeah but you don't form strong social bonds through awkward team exercises. The best team I worked on was super high performing and we did end up sharing personal stuff on our spare time eventually (and some of us are still friends years later). That all happened organically.
What didn't work, however, was the office manager's increasingly awkward attempts to force socialising. When at some point we raised the issue (politely!) that this was often distracting, he became offended and lashed out. We later also found out that he was basically spying on us and reporting back to HQ.
It's one of the reasons why I'm incredibly wary of people who try too hard to be my "buddy" at work, especially if they're not peers.
Those teams develop strong social bonds precisely because their manager doesn't request (force) them to be 10% more vulnerable. That's a 1-way ticket to a bunch of people not liking you.
You can achieve that vulnerability via being a likable and honest person. I think often us technical-minded people forget that relationships aren't an optimization problem and don't respond like you think they would. Just being decent and trustworthy will take you there, saying things like "you can trust me guys!" often has the opposite effect.
10% "more vulnerable" for me in a work setting would amount to something like "the eggs I made this morning were a bit overcooked", because I don't share anything vulnerable about myself at work. Especially not with managers. I have a sneaking suspicion that wouldn't be an acceptable answer in that meeting, however.
I’ve heard of exactly these “vulnerability sharing” exercises from colleagues, but luckily have not experienced it myself.
Anyone starting to over-share becomes very problematic, because it forces everyone to conform. One of my colleagues didn’t feel like sharing anything personal, and he was silently outcast for the rest of the offsite and it continued to bite him in the ass for the rest of his time in that team.
The examples were very similar to those mentioned - people talking about their divorces, sex life, etc. I don’t think it’s fair to force colleagues to share such stories with each other.
"I think your question is overly invasive and inappropriate in a professional work setting, and I'm not going to answer it."
Is that more than 10%?
Another option would be what Norm Macdonald did when Larry King asked him "what's something nobody knows about you" and he answered "I'm a deeply closeted homosexual." Just go over the top.
I agree and this wasn't the only red flag in the post for me. The reverence for a company that does, in the end, "just" process payments or the part about "a billionaire liked my project"... I feel like there's something rather unhealthy about that kind of mindset.
All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.
> The reverence for a company that does, in the end, "just" process payments
It is funny how the more unimportant the company is, the more this kind of reverence is expected.
For me there was a stark contrast between two jobs I had:
Consultancy where I worked on software for local government that millions literally depend on? Keep your work-life 100% separate.
Marketing startup that spammed Google with crazy amounts of SEO-spam? Lots of instructions from HR to ask about personal matters in 1-on-1 meetings, weekly 2h mandatory confraternization followed by free beer, random CEO speech about his favorite topic for 1h every month.
It’s pretty nuts, putting out your dirty laundry in public is a surefire way to self sabotage - especially in a work setting. In American culture, there’s a lot of “positive self help” talk about being open about these things. But the reality is - it actually just provides drama and ammunition to people who might not have your best interests at heart. Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
> Some things are best kept between your close trusted friends and family or therapist, no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”.
This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.
I also agree with this sentiment but at the same time I think it boils down to how you interpret these things , for op it was one of the greatest things but to somebody else , this makes boss not likeable.
I think this shows that the boss was going out of his way which I "personally" appreciate.
I don't know what people expect managers / boss to do. Somebody on team expects their boss to X and somebody else on that same team expects their boss to be anything but X.
If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach , I think its good to have some talks like this. I am also much inspired by the likes of charles schwab and dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people so probably there is a bias here
> I don't know what people expect managers / boss to do
What they do should be related to the company work, otherwise they're overstepping. They're not social workers. They have to respect the privacy and independence of their coworkers.
> If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach
Please don't. Coworkers can obviously have social relationships but they should grow organically without being "managed".
You know the best way for that to happen is? Let them work together. They'll build their own relationships. They don't need your help. If they don't work together enough for this to happen naturally then they're strangers to each other anyway and that's ok too.
It sounded like an optional request not a command. I’ve managed and I’ve been managed and the relationship ships I’ve built along the way are deep enough to have conversations like these. We’re doing life with this people it’s not a dystopian novel about capitalism. If you have a genuine person as your boss moments like these help form friendships, and don’t feel like a dark Dilbert comic.
Friendships increase team communicability which bolster project success.
Still, you'd rather save your push back privileges - which come with a cost - for something actually important and work-related. Not for random crap like that, being put on the spot randomly in a personal way.
An "optional request" in a public group setting like that is not optional. You were non-optionally forced to respond to the challenge one way or another. If you don't share, then you're the guy who opted not to share. It turns off the touchy feely types who like it and don't understand the problem and can be "not a team player" fodder for anyone who wants it.
The actual respectful and considerate way is not to put people in such positions in the first place.
Like asking something from someone where it would be some unusual imposition or favor (like something that would be ok to ask a friend or family but not a mere aquaintance) and telling them it's ok if they say no. That is an empty statement. You were not supposed to put them in the position where they had to say no.
You can allow for people to not be robots without putting other people into awkward positions they didn't deserve to be put in.
It's definitely favoring some people at the expense of others. Like the gp comment, now they not only have to do their normal job, they also have to generate bs for their manager. The manager should be the one who has to figure out how to work with their different people, not the other way around. That is the managers explicit role that they supposedly get paid more for and what gives them the authority to manage and judge anyone else. That's their actual job rather than coding or whatever. Instead, they are making their team members all conform to them, on top of their actual jobs which are supposed to be something other than managing people.
I mean, I am a manager and if I saw another manager doing this type of exercise I would probably report it because it seems extremely inappropriate and they would probably want a heads up that we have a manager trying to be a wannabe therapist rather than trying to foster a safe and productive team environment.
In what way is this ever providing someone with 'ammunition' and how is this self-sabotage? What are you afraid someone would do with this kind of information?
Reading this comment and others feels like people have read a bit too much Sun Tzu and are treating what could be collegiality as warfare.
Maybe you’ve never worked at a company like this. Did you not see the note about his perf review, which had nothing to do with his performance (the actual outcome) but instead had random negative feedback? Like not involving coworkers enough? What if your “confession” indicated that you have a hard time opening up and involving others? Couching your feedback in a personal insecurity makes it far less likely it will be challenged since the person already has a complex about it.
> random negative feedback? Like not involving coworkers enough?
You got the order of events wrong. That was with the first manager, before the "10% more vulnerable" meeting. (Not saying it's a good idea though.) (Or did you mean sth else?)
From the article:
> I told my team I was struggling with depression and took some time off. ...
> no matter how trendy the culture is about being “open”
I've noticed this trend in recent years to be "open about mental health", etc. And I think by itself this is great, mental health is important. But invariably, especially in management/HR settings (or in the entertainment industry), it is done in an incredibly shallow way.
Mental health is hard. Just talking openly isn't magically going to fix things and may even initially make things worse. It may release feelings that need to be carefully managed e.g. by a therapist. Obviously, no company would ever be able to provide that. Instead, they're just looking for "I started running every morning and was able to fix my depression" kind of stories.
"I used to have anxiety over being a good developer, but then I realized that it was about hitting story points, not learning Rust. Now I deliver business value regularly and have been able to cancel my appointments with my therapist."
"Being on-call 24/7 helps me feel like I'm a part of something, fulfilling a deep want for belonging that being kicked off the Girl Scout troop created in me."
"I've always lacked a father figure. When you told me to spend less time browsing HackerNews and more time on Jira, I felt like I was part of a real family."
- secret slack room to help me overcome my depression (wasn't invited of course, I just spotted it several times while looking at my colleagues' screens)
- lowest paid member in the team, while also being one of if not the most productive. 12x: verified. 30x: speculated if I had control over the architecture.
- 70h/week, no vacations, for 3 years. No paid overtime of any form.
- Double bind situation where I was used as a punching ball between the CTO and the #2 employee.
- Excluded from secret negotiations to obtain a raise.
You know what I did ? I quitted, cold turkey. That's when the CEO started to hate on me, feeling betrayed. The #2 left shortly after confiding he wanted to punch the CTO in the face. After realizing hiring someone to replace me wasn't cutting it, they distributed overtime to everybody on the team. Result: unionization. One year after my departure I received a call from the COO telling me he was willing to hire me back at the condition I would behave (since I was thrown at every hot issue, semantic propagation tied in their mind the idea I was also problematic). He was let go shortly after and replaced by a manager from the holding company (if you know what I mean). I haven't worked in 6-7 years. Most colleagues who left have had a similar empty period.
HN doesn't smile on frequent account cycling, but throwaways for sensitive disclosures are possible.
OP could likely walk from their ID easily should they choose. It would be difficult to tie the account to a specific legal / professional identity, though there are some personal-ish details in their history.
I haven't named the company nor indulged in excess in the way I expressed my views. What poses problem goes beyond the aftertaste the loaded and one-sided account of a conflict leaves in the mouth. There is something scandalous in what I said, because it tells a story of contagion, in which what's as stake is not the mere risk of hiring a walking red flag, but of losing your ability to assess risk and becoming one yourself. What could have possibly happened to a manager whose job is conditioned on his ability to hire back someone and who approaches the problem with "you better behave". He lost track of economical reality, passion took hold of him and made him blind to his own interests. Why ? Because we engaged in a symbolic exchange using taboo tokens. The danger doesn't lie on the individual level, and isn't rooted on whether or not we are opened to these topics, but depend on the fact that being taboo, these subjects are not codified enough in social norms to operate in a mechanical fashion. Imagine if someone were to thank you every time you'd do him a favor in a society which wouldn't have this norm. We do it automatically and do not give it a second thought. But in a context like this, it would ring like "I'll think about you", or "mucho gracias", "many graces". "Who is this weirdo ? Is he stalking me ? Is he high or part of some cult ?". It would work up people, they would get cognitively and emotionally involved, it would slowly turn into an obsession as they lose track of other values, in particular economical ones, up to the moment they say "why are you doing this to me after all I've done for you by opening up to your issues ?", completely blind to reality banging on the door.
We are not ready to discuss this kind of things. We are not equipped to deal with the kind of storms this can raise on the collective level and proactive openness on the individual level we're restricted to, no matter how hard we wish for a transcendance, is an enabler of these situations where no isolation of individual responsibility can pin-point the source of the issue. I mean I got along with everyone and the people I had the most temporary conflictual relationships at some point were also those I was closest too. In the beginning we all had good intentions. Nevertheless, double-bind propagated in the group like an epidemic, preventing us from having innocent relationships. Suddenly, invoices were issued, each party establishing accounts in different currencies.
In the end, from a cold-headed analysis of the situation, I still think I was the one that was behaving. If this was a story about my circle of friends, I'd be the asshole, placing economical matters in a central position, as if we were in a corporate setting. But it's my employer who behaved as if we were friends, and started neglecting economical considerations to its detriment.
In short, speaking of mental health made everybody unhealthy. In fact I'm not the one who overshared, my father did. I didn't show up for a couple days and blacked out communication-wise (because of a girl, a half-truth). The CEO phoned my dad who confided I was suffering from bipolar disorder since my teens which just isn't true from a clinical perspective (this is my sister's diagnostic in fact). Shortly after everybody was in the know. I could tell from their terrified eyes when they glanced at me when I came back. They were afraid I'd flip my shit. This is something we can't deal with. You can't just be designated as being a "little crazy". This expands to "a little [very-weird]". There is a perceptual threshold, including among health and sometimes even mental health professionals that makes people assume past a certain point you just flip your shit, that's your thing, an irreducible otherness that sleeps within you. Needless to say this has never happened to me (unlike my sister).
what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you?
The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.
All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.
I don’t know whether you are American or not, but I find it ironic that on a forum who’s demographic skews American, this sentiment of anti-individualism at the workplace is so widely shared.
America is supposed to be this super-freedom, super-individualistic place. Except when you are a worker at a workplace. Then you are supposed to spend at least 40 hours a week (except you are supposed to want to spend more time than that; and most do [except they don’t want to]), you are supposed to leave your politics behind, don’t talk about politics at work, you are supposed to do everything your boss tells you without question, and certainly don’t bring in your morals. Your workplace is a dictatorship (in a freedom loving country) and you are not supposed to complain about it. You are supposed to like your work, so you are not even entitled to your feelings. And suddenly your workplace is supposed to be this communist utopia, where every worker has a task, and the work is supposed to make them happy, and the whole workplace has a comradery of peers. Except you are all making money for your boss (or worse, your shareholders) and only keep a tiny portion of what you produce, but you are not supposed to complain and definitely not supposed to unite in bargaining for better, only unite in being exploited (except you aren’t supposed to see it that way).
The American workplace is probably as far away from the American dream as it possibly could be.
First of all, you should be aware that Stripe was founded by two guys from Ireland and it's based in San Francisco. This is the epicenter of the American political left. This is the side of American politics that cares about worker's rights, treatment, etc.
Ignoring that, your characterization isn't accurate at all for American software companies in my experience. I'm an American and I've worked overseas in Australia. In addition, most of the current technical team that I am currently on is based in the UK.
If anything, I've found other western cultures to be more discouraging of openly challenging management decisions. However, the differences are very very small. Working for a UK/Australia/German company is exactly the same as working for an American company. The day-to-day culture depends a lot on the people who run the company rather than their nationality. Trust me, there are jerks everywhere in the world.
> what kind of dystopian workplace do you go to where people are looking to use things against you?
Any corporate environment. You'll get stabbed in the back sooner or later.
> where colleagues have got each others back.
That doesn't sound healthy if people have to get each others back - usually means there are some bad actors that you'll need to cover up for. Do the job, be polite and leave ego at home. There is no need for politics, gossip and other meaningless activities.
> work for the collaborative pro-social people.
That sounds dystopian to me. I prefer to have social life outside of work, with actual friends that I choose, not HR.
Suggesting people share 10% more of some vague stuff is not coercion by any definition of that word, especially since there is no way to prove how much % you shared.
This isn't and shouldn't be the typical response to such things.
The boss had also become vulnerable asking you to be 10% more vulnerable.
I think I would respect it more than harsh cold calculating boss.
And also the chinese gospel's taking its effect here , the post above this paraphrased it differently and this has taken it to completely different level.
Nobody is forcing you with a gun to tell things or else you are fired
the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This would probably be my approach if I was one of those people who hated boss asking him such thing but I don't. I think I like it.
Trust is earned. A person you don’t know immediately asking you to be vulnerable is predatory. Commonly seen in cults, frats, etc but at least you opt in to those (and can opt out).
Agreeing to work with a new manager is putting you in a vulnerable enough state. Build that trust over time - you likely don’t even need to hear about coworkers failed marriages.
> The boss had also become vulnerable asking you to be 10% more vulnerable.
That's really irrelevant. It's like taking your pants down, showing your privates and assuming your coworkers will do the same.
Absolutely unacceptable especially when it comes from position of power, where workers may think that if they don't engage they'll get fired or won't get promotion. It's coercion.
> the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This is never innocent. If someone's life depends on the job, they'll comply as they don't want to second guess if their refusal will lead to them end up being homeless. They'll share details they don't want to and get injured.
Even if it was indeed fully optional and nobody felt the obligation to share even though they didn't want to (which I find hard to believe), you have to consider that you're also imposing on the people who are listening. They didn't sign up for group therapy either and sitting through accounts of potentially tragic events might be an unnecessary emotional stressor for them (e.g. maybe they were also recently divorced or lost someone to an illness), especially if they're expected to go back to work and be productive afterwards.
I wouldn’t necessarily be worried about them using it against me later, just the fact that they want to force me to open up and be pretend buddies is annoying. It’s a work relationship.
It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.
Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.
Power asymmetry and also group pressure. There is still plenty of tacit pressure to share despite the "optional" caveat. Someone who says directly "I don't like this, no thank you" even in very deferential words will garner some degree of negativity, either from the manager or the group. Same for someone who shares too much and winds up sobbing, or someone who shares a vulnerability inconsequential in comparison to what others share.
I don't even know how I would react if i was caught off-guard with a stupid question like that out of the blue with everyone watching. On a good day, I would probably laugh it off and say something obviously idiotic like "my vulnerability is that i work too hard" to indicate that I don't find this amusing. On a bad day, caught off-guard, I might actually take the bait, "become vulnerable" and blurt out something far more stupid in front of everybody.
Its not difficult to imagine a person saying 'i have nothing i want to share here' be stigmatised in future. As a person who doesnt want to work together and be part of the company culture.
I'm not sure anyone wants to share the work-safe marginally funny story they use around new people as the chaser to someone discussing how they got clean off drugs or recently dealt with a miscarriage or something.
Like will anyone care? Probably not but it's an incredibly awkward situation to toss people into when they're at work.
which would probably even work okay because everyone loves and applauds a success story or something that isn't your fault, but imagine someone sharing their ongoing drug addiction. People who think that workplaces are "safe" spaces for personal issues should try envisioning what the reaction to that would be.
It would be OK to discuss drug addiction with your parents. It would not be OK to discuss steamy night with your wife with them.
It's almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable and what is 10% they can bend the rules if they want to switch the mood a little.
Honestly it's hilarious how supposedly emotionally mature people panic and over-analyse in this thread.
> Almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable [...]
Apparently not because in TFA, the author shared personal facts about their divorce and other people shared even "deeper" things they'd "never heard in a work setting". Quote: "it was awkward".
These aren't things that belong in a workplace context (sure, if you're going out for drinks after work maybe you can volunteer such things - but not during a workplace meeting!).
People are very weird. 10% more vulnerable to me would be a story about “I’m not very good at painting but I like it” or “I have 6 toes on my left foot”. As opposed to divorce, bipolar, etc.
A manager asking a teammate to do something in front of a bunch of other people - even "only if you're comfortable" - always puts them in a position where they feel they have to do the thing. Come on, this is basic social behavior.
Because bosses exist on a scale. For the sake of the argument, let’s use American letter grades.
The boss mentioned above would be a “B” boss - good intentions, but a forced execution that shifts more of the burden to employees. I don’t necessarily mind these types, but it can be incredibly off-putting for those of us who work to live, rather than live to work.
Above that you have the “A” bosses, who invite that level of vulnerability by repeatedly displaying their trustworthiness to you and the team. I’ve had a few of these bosses before, and they’re amazing; sadly, they rarely last long in the face of “maximum profit” corporate cultures that demand everyone be a replaceable cog in a machine.
Okay, so at what point does that become “forced group therapy?” The C-D-F bosses.
C-rank bosses will demand vulnerability because they mistake it for honesty or loyalty. Good employees pick up on this and will placate them with some useless trivia nugget but otherwise have mediocre to bad rapport with said boss.
D-grade bosses are even worse. They’ll push and pull and drag and yank something suitably vulnerable from everyone, and even try to solutionize whatever was shared with the team. This is (in my subjective experience) the most common form of boss, born of MBA coursework and saddled with buzzword-laden articles of “how to be a better leader” from magazines no C-Suite would be caught dead reading.
Finally is the F-grade boss, who literally just wants to know who is going to need replacing imminently. Don’t get me wrong, this is something every other grade is silently doing as well (hence the “forced group therapy” metaphor), but F-grade bosses are bad enough to be overt about it. Got a coworker who mentions they’re trying to have a baby? They’ll make sure said coworker never has a positive review again, so it’s easier to replace them once they’re pregnant.
All of this is to say that if YOU are a boss, and an employee is being vulnerable with you in an unprompted or non-coerced manner, you have won their trust and you better respect that. But if you’re forcing them to be vulnerable somehow, you’re actually harming the trust relationship in the long run and will make your staff wary of your motives.
Prove they can trust you, and they’ll open up on their own.
This is great. I absolutely agree that the best leaders gently invite and lead with appropriate vulnerability. They also don't mind if people say "no" either with words or body language.
Read his description a couple more times, while pretending that you're a therapist. The "wait, what the ?" stuff can give you a better sense of his emotions and mental state, if you don't balk at the objective counterfactuals.
I know I won't be able to convince everyone here, but I didn't feel pressured to share anything deeply personal. Some people on the team didn't. They weren't punished or looked down on. We were a tight-knit team before and after that event.
Interesting to know. Seems people who reply here, a bit assume it's a group of competitive coworkers who mostly don't know each other, in a big cut-throat corp?
I'd been ok with that meeting at my first job (together with my closest coworkers only). It'd been weird at my 2nd job though. I guess it depends :-)
I get an optional ask from a manager is still an ask, but i agree 10% more vulnerable means it's ok to show some weakness like disliking public speaking or imposter symdrome, maybe past/resolved trauma. Strong opposing views seem to focus on sharing big things like a recent miscarriage or drug abuse or depression... That feels inappropriate as way over 10% and indeed should be directed to therapy not a work meeting.
also it makes a difference if there are actual mental health benefits associated and manager training to handle things properly (including confidentially) or if it is one "rogue" well meaning manager initiative in a culture where it doesn't fit.
Sharing may help or backfire case by case even if the culture is open and supportive. I've seen enough FTEs get more benefits but contractors/contingency staff being let go after coming out with similar mental health issues...
Your manager asking you something is never a request. How you "choose" to answer directly affects how they will perceive you, and there is an implication.
I work in manufacturing and we have a weekly safety slide that normally presents a safety based work scenario or learning, this week's one was based on how to be safe while out trick or treating and one of the guys said he didn't appreciate being told in how to behave outside of work hours. I have have to admit that his attitude caught me off guard but I understand where he is coming from even if the intention comes from a good place finding the line between work and home can be a grey area. Saying that I don't thinkmi would appreciate being ambushed with being asked to provide a personal anecdote
I'm thinking maybe this is rather to present an opportunity for the team to put forward their expectations, pain points and desires. Being 'vulnerable' for me in a workplace setting means perhaps admitting that I really don't appreciate people bikeshedding over items I'm submitting for review (rather than being actually constructive) or that I feel the git work flow don't attribute fairly (hiding my contributions). Maybe others feel the same and we could do something about it? And those were only on individualistic side. To evolve the team and team play I'd think this a good time to bring up that I'm actually hating responding to support inquiries and rather have Pete doing more of that. And that I think Sue is doing amazing work with Figma and I'd really like to learn from her. Wouldn't this type of 'vulnerable' make sense in a team?
Paraphrasing Seth Godin: do you want your heart surgeon greeting you before surgery by authentically telling you about the big fight he just had with his wife this morning?
10% more vulnerable than normal is open to interpretation. You don't need to lie or put anyone on a list, it's just an attempt to foster persona relations between a team, the idea being with a little empathy and knowledge of each other people might be more likely to resolve future differences amicably.
So now you have a bunch of people that freely overshared and that would freely overshare anyhow, you have people that invented something like "my cat just died" and everyone is now doling out condolences and asking how they feel for weeks even though they never even had a cat and they secretly hate the boss and the one guy that openly said they don't do stuff like that at work and they're now shunned by everyone.
Worked out great, didn't it?
Now the above is probably a bit over top but it shows the typical American company culture effect. Going through this at work right now since we got bought by Americans and more and more fakeness is coming in.
Imo you're being a bit dramatic. I find it nice to work with real people, I'm work from home right now and its odd to me just how little I know about the people I ostensibly share 8 hours a day with.
See I think there is a huge difference between naturally getting to know your coworkers and this group pressure sharing exercise.
It's completely fine to get to know your coworkers. But let the oversharing ones (the extroverts) congegrate together naturally. We had someone like that on the team. Was likeable enough but wouldn't stop talking about everything in their life. That was their choice tho and I am fine to listen but I'm not "sharing back".
And then there were introverts. Some that spoke very very little and some that were in the middle. They randomly shared some things from time to time in quieter moments with less people around and when they felt comfortable. Very real people and it was nice to get to know the a bit more.
I'm more on the introvert side there and if you group pressure me into this sort of thing I will remember that for a very very very long time. As in we are never gonna be friends. I'm still sour about what an extrovert HR person did 4 years ago and I don't speak to them any longer. They are also showing from time to time that they haven't changed and they'd be the type to use whatever came out in an oversharing session against you.
I'm on the introvert side too fwiw, I just feel like inventing a dead cat is a pretty out there response for the situation, which was a gentle push to be a little more open than usual for those that feel comfortable. Definitely can be taken too far in either direction. Without any place for chit chat being set up for it though, at least in my company, the 'natural' amount of sharing is basically zero, which feels like not enough for me.
It's not a gentle push though. It's setting up a group pressure situation that is definitely gonna make introverts feel uncomfortable (by a probably extroverted person that may genuinely not understand what they're even doing in that regard as it'd feel natural for them).
Now I understand that with remote work there may not be enough space for chit chat. But there are other ways than a forced group pressure situation to set that up.
For example, we decided as a team when Covid WFH started to basically use our daily 15 min stand-up for whatever. Sometimes we just did stand-up and we're out of there after 5 min coz nobody felt like talking. Sometimes it'd be a half an hour of just talking about whatever. We also have a dedicated time each week blocked off on the calendar for it as well and when we have ad hoc working session calls we get in some chit chat here or there as well. It's not all just business but it can be.
RE cat: see this is the internet and it's an anonymous forum. I used that example because our cat actually just died a few weeks ago. You thought it was over the top. Interesting indeed.
I thought feeling compelled to make up a story like a dead cat would be over the top, I'm so sorry that actually happened.
I don't quite get the difference between a blocked off time for chit chat and the way the manager asked for it here but totally, being forced like you have to say something you don't want to sucks.
Feeling compelled to make up a story is part of the whole group pressure thing. Either you overshare i.e. share something that actually happened but that you would never have wanted to share without the group (and boss) pressure situation or you make something up (like many people in the comments here are saying).
I guess the difference is the same what I mentioned about stand-up changing: The team decided to do that. It wasn't a manager saying that's how we do things now.
EDIT: I also just realized you gave out condolences. See if I was in the situation from the article I might not be able to quickly come up with something fake and I'd instinctively just mention the cat thing (coz I don't want to be the guy that gets shunned). And then the next few weeks are gonna be very uncomfortable coz people will keep mentioning it.
It's funny how people in this thread are arguing that the 10% isn't a big deal when we have TFA describing how they shared personal details about their divorce upon hearing this prompt, and that other people apparently shared even more intimate things.
There are ways of lighten the mood that are decidedly less abusive, such as "tell us something funny about yourself" or "what is your hobby?". You don't have to like such questions either but at least they're not open invitations for trauma dumping.
We had a team building exercise, that I wasn't able to attend. The person running it decided that a great ice-breaker would be for everyone to name their greatest fear.
I'm a parent. You can probably pretty easily infer what my greatest fear is.
Would I share that? Fuck no! Not only am I not particularly willing to get that intimate with a bunch of strangers, I also don't want to be a huge fucking downer. What I do want is to recognize that while you can speed-run friendship & bonding to some degree, it's fucking inappropriate to try to do so at work. It's work. I'll make friends if I make friends, but otherwise I'm out at 5, physically, mentally and emotionally.
Neither would I. I can only think of this question having any place in such a situation if you suffix it by "at work" and exclude the obvious things such as getting fired or the company going bust.
Not gonna lie. When these sorts of situations have arisen in the past, I find it really tempting to troll. These prompts are such BS that they just invite a BS response.
“Whoo. OK. I’ve never talked about this, but here goes. When I was 12 I used a Hello Kitty doll to kill a man. Wow. Feels great to finally get that off my chest.”
One time at a corporate retreat, we had to fill out each others' "friend books" (I'm not making this up). One question was about our personal motto. I wrote down "Hell is other people" - I think some people took the hint.
Putting aside the trite "we're cool here" corporate routine, it sounds to me like a hack of a manager gave someone the opening to trauma dump on their co-workers and some by-standers got treated to some drive by group theory. Awful all around.
Yea, this was really disturbing. Your work and manager already have a lot of power over you. It seems really nefarious to ask employees to bring in vulnerabilities about themselves from outside of work. I don’t buy the team building nonsense, which will probably used as the “explanation” here.
Yeah, I would just instinctively make something up. Maybe everyone else does that, too, how would any of us know?
I really don't like this trend of employers trying to act like we're all friends or one big happy family. It only serves to blur the very real boundaries of power in favor of the employer. Engaging with it in earnest feels like self-exploitation to me.
I am the kind of guy who wears his heart on his sleeve. I grew up in a familialy dishonest context so being open and transparent has been my default.
That attitude is a liability at work and I’ve learned the hard way.
We’ve all heard the phrase don’t shit where you eat. In modern workplace cadence that means don’t use your workplace as your source of therapy or friends or certainly family.
The way we present yourselves at work has to intrinsically be a performance because that’s how money works.
Find another place to express emotions and thoughts and find friends. That place should not be the workplace.
You choose your friends because you have shared interests and you make each other feel good. You have family because they brought you into the world and you have shared qualities and bonds. You chose your job because it pays you. You do it for the ducats. Don't get it twisted.
I had a manager do something like this but in a slightly better way. Each week we took it in turns doing our "life story". Some did it funny, some did it really personal and serious, some more of a CV, and some a mix of them all. You could really decide how you wanted to do it, and people got to know you a bit better.
In recent years I had a manager who read a lot of pop-psychology and self-help books. His 1:1s turned into pseudo therapy sessions where he tried to assume the role of therapist. He and I did not get along because I politely changed the subject back to work and the office every time he tried to get me to “open up” about my childhood, my home life, my fears and anxieties, and other topics.
I thought he was a weird outlier, but I joined an invite-only Slack for management a while ago where I’d estimate 1/4 of the topics in the #1-on-1s channel are from managers trying to psychoanalyze their team or act as therapists. The good news is that the Slack is very good about correcting these people about their role and what is appropriate for work. The bad news is that these new managers are getting the idea from somewhere that they need to be some type of therapist and patriarch of the team. It feels like a weird iteration of new-age management philosophies that breed in B-list business books and social media like LinkedIn.
I'm a serious work focused person too and my manager is a little on the mushy side. Exasperating for me, but the younger talent on the team eats it up so it works for him in that respect. I'm still not sure what percentage of it is an act.
This is wild to me. As someone who's done some eng management and has also read a lot of psychoanalytic theory, the only things I would actively ask my reports to "open up" about emotionally are what they like and dislike about tasks and processes, so I can better distribute work that satisfies them and remove frictions. That said if they want to tell me more, I'm happy to listen.
Otoh when dealing with peers at director or C level, things tend to get significantly more psychological, likely because their facility of judgment, which is ultimately psychological and moral, is functioning with far higher leverage due to their organizational authority.
I think the better approach would be for the manager to share something themselves, to demonstrate that a bit of vulnerability is okay, but not even ask if anyone else wants to say anything and certainly not make people feel they should. In other words lead by example so that if someone feels like they want to open up they can and their manager will be supportive.
When these things come up I just share work vulnerabilities like, "Yeah, that project I pushed for was a terrible idea in hindsight." Or "I'm really struggling with this project because I don't know if anyone cares about it".
That way I tick the participation box without making it therapy.
I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.
If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
I think the author had unrealistic expectations from working at a large company.
He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.
But things don't work like that.
If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.
So it's better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.
If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
The flip side of that is that if companies make "passion" a hiring criterion, they'll end up hiring people who care about making a difference, which may serve them poorly if the position doesn't actually fit that.
Of course not. They got 4 years of fantastic work out of the guy before he burned out. That serves them just fine. The only requirement is that you have no morals.
I don't see it that way. He wanted to work there. They paid him for his time and from his account all of the passion was his own. I'm not speaking against those who just want to do what's required, but is it really wrong to hire someone who is passionate about the work?
Sorta, yeah. Working for a largeish enterprise I actively select against too much passion. Those people will come in, go WTF constantly for about half a year, spend another half year doing less and less, before eventually leaving for greener pastures.
I mean, I get them, as I went through the same thing.
> a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it.
Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own business based on the idea. Otherwise forget it.
I mean, brilliant ideas can still be fun to work on. Who cares if you don’t get appropriately rewarded for saving the company $50k/month, it was time well spent.
As opposed to working on that pointless crud thing your boss likes.
I agree with you. But not everyone will. Some people have jobs to pay for their lives outside of work, and that's it. And that's fine.
I take the stance of, the job I do for 8 hours 5 days a week might as well be something I actually enjoy doing above and beyond the financial incentive. Working on something I think is really neat is enjoyable, and I'm lucky to work in an industry doing things not so far from what I would spend my time doing anyway if I were retired.
There might be ideas that work only in that particular context and you can't implement on your own outside of that. Otherwise, I agree with you.
>Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
That's why I said to get allies from the higher ups. Not your boss or your peers. Preferably business people. And you don't need to give them all the details. Just let them know if would make them look good, have their approval and use them as a shield.
It's not "more" work; it's "different" work. I quite enjoy low-level optimizations, and all I have to do to work on that all day instead of coordination, meetings, and drudgery is convince people a few levels up the chain that the cost savings are huge and that the extra speed enables cool new features.
It's corporate America, so I'm going to be unceremoniously fired eventually anyway, but in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself, impress my coworkers, snag a promotion or two, and get a "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr" line item on my resume.
> start your own business
Probably eventually, but starting a business is very different from being at a place big enough that I can profit my salary many times over just from faster code. If I start one, I'll write fast code there too, but "fast" isn't a business idea by itself, and I don't see anything wrong with doing a good job for whoever happens to be writing my paycheck.
> the cost savings are huge and that the extra speed enables cool new features.
Been there. The savings were never passed down, but you could always enjoy photos of boss's new sports car or their month's trip to Borneo to "recharge" and think of new challenges. Ah sorry! I got an iPod once as a thank you.
> "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr"
That may backfire. Nobody likes a new kid on the block that has tricks up his sleeve that could jeopardise someone senior's career.
Sure, that's the game. I get an extra bonus or raise or something with promotions, and more when I switch jobs, but nearly all the profit goes elsewhere. If you want to leave the upper-middle class you'll need to set out on your own eventually.
If you don't have a solid plan and life circumstances for building your own business yet though, why would you not do things the business likes, especially when it means your day-to-day is more palettable, it doesn't actually require any more work, and it has some moderate career impacts in case you never set out on your own?
> this may backfire
That's the same sort of logic that leads people to have asphalt roofs instead of white roofs in southern climates. You do, absolutely, alienate a significant fraction of buyers (employers). You command a premium at every place that's left though because they want you _because_ of the things that make you different. So long as you don't shrink the pool too much, each individual job is more lucrative.
This has not been my experience. I’ve seen people rewarded for ‘brilliant ideas’ (though really more like brilliant execution, let’s be honest, ideas are worthless in their own). Now could they have more reward starting their own company? Perhaps. But it’s certainly more risky. In a regular job if your idea doesn’t pan out you haven’t lost much, maybe you get a slightly smaller bonus that year or something.
This story of his would have fir just fine in a much smaller Stripe, back when you could actually know everyone, and Patrick interviewed every programmer. A time where making a difference wasn't all that hard, as everyone fit in one cafeteria in the Mission.
It was always a pretty competitive place, with a lot of smart people working a lot of hours, and a culture of attention to detail that left many people with impostor syndrome. There were pretty good expectations of being nice to each other: No infrastructure team giving your request the cold shoulder, because that was just not OK. So people working really hard and burning out to try to meet every growing expectations was common.
The post also had the other weakness of the culture: A lot of management changes, along with a culture of performance among managers that would be fit for Amazon. So a manager might change teams, and the person that used to get exceed expectations would end up with a PIP with the next manager, often by surprise. You can imagine what it does to morale to tell someone how they are the most helpful person they've worked with, and then see them gone two weeks later. It was a great place to work in many ways, but the negative parts took their toll.
So, if anything, the story showed me that even though it's been many years, a lot of Stripe is still recognizable.
My big company strategy is to troll internal chats/forums for things that seem like interesting problems. Do something to fix them or make them suck a little less.
Always be building solid, interesting things and make sure that if someone, for some reason finds them, that they would say "wow, this is cool, who made this?"
Then I casually share links to those things in the right context. If I get a 10% hit rate then I'm happy.
Do this all day every day between assigned projects 9-5 and you'd be amazed at the network you can build outside your own team. Keeps the options open for lateral movement.
This reminds me of a side project that got me multiple peer bonuses from strangers at Google. At some point the company decided to switch software for the performance eval system, and decided that everyone would have to copy their past review manually, piece by piece, into all the form fields of the new tool. In the FAQ they said that people asked if they could do this automatically and it wasn't practical to automate this process.
So I took a few hours one day and made a Chrome extension that did it for you. Wasn't hard to write. Saved people maybe 5 minutes. Some folks appreciated that so much they spent the 5 minutes nominating me for a peer bonus! I never really capitalized on that in any lasting way though.
I think it might help to focus on staying grounded and regulating your emotions, especially when it comes to thinking about Patrick and his success. While it’s natural to admire someone who has built an impressive company and achieved significant financial success, remember that people are often respected for being authentic and secure in who they are, rather than for how much they admire others.
I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.
The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
I completely agree. I didn't talk about it in the post but I have done a lot of therapy over the last couple years. I'm painfully aware of the ways I've projected my past pain onto my present.
My attempt with the article was to simply reflect how things have felt and leave analysis largely absent. I realize it's left folks with a lot of questions and rightly worried about me.
I'm in a much better place now.
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment.
Ways I found that helped me the most dealing with this kind of situation:
- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.
- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.
- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don't like the advice of "slacking and collecting your pay check" (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 289 ms ] threadI'm sorry for that. I went through something similar and I managed to bounce back up but it took longer than I anticipated. Years, not months.
Be gentle with yourself and forgive yourself.
This is so hard for people like me who have high standards and are hard on themselves. I always wanted to buy a home - I graduated at the right time but I never got a job at big tech. When I did get my full time job it paid a good chunk below market, provided no equity and now post-pandemic whatever was at my fingertips is at least an arms length away.
I have not done poorly for myself but I continue to rent in my mid 30s whereas my buddies at FAANG are much farther ahead in life. I was/am not kind to my past self in the current phase - constant thoughts of should have done this, should have known that, etc.
With the current economy I feel like another chance might not come for another 5 years at the minimum, so I’m trying to learn my lesson and go to therapy, and accept it gracefully. I can’t even type “life isn’t a race and I shouldn’t compare myself” without putting it in quotes.
Point is, don’t be like me. Yes it’s good to be driven and ambitious, but unmoderated it can be destructive.
Stripe is a great place to work in some ways but judging from the writeup they had a ton of context switching preventing their productivity and the needs of the team didn’t align with what they did best. I’ve seen this feedback many times in many jobs.
I’ve been there myself! No doubt this person will find something exciting in no time.
Apropos of nothing as interviewers we do not put any weight on your submitting solutions after the window closes because we have to evaluate candidates consistently for business and legal reasons. We can’t give one person extra time because that’s not applying a consistent bar. Smaller companies may be more flexible but big tech won’t be. On the plus side big tech knows interviews are often a function of luck and setting and will generally always invite you to apply again without prejudice a few months later.
Being in a position to recover by getting bored and hacking on stuff you’re passionate about without pressure is something we’re really lucky to have, and I always try to do this between jobs.
How does this not mean "we hire at random"? It's especially egregious after explaining all the reasons you can't give a candidate extra time, because you're so precise and consistent. Which is it? Consistency and luck are opposites.
The one thing that immediately pissed me off was you doing something awesome, then having management attack you for reason X, where X attacks everything but the results. The reason never really matters, the real reason is that you threatened them in some manner and they need to justify their job.
Honestly, I would have just quit at that point. You're a saint for staying any longer.
This sounds like an absolutely terrible company to work for.
The manager sounds classically awful and I hate that the world rewards such people w power over others.
Note too that "chronic fatigue" is NOT "lack of sleep".
The brain fog is the net resultant of the body being in a constant "fight or flight" mode for too long. Psychologically, you've been doing WWI "trench warfare".
Coupled with the fact that, as you yourself pointed out, there is a literal endless amount of work to do, forever. This is also due to the nature of the company being so big.
All companies always has work to do, and no one is ever «done», but in a giga-enterprise all meaningful deadlines and deliveries sort of tangentially rounds down to zero in terms of impact.
I almost burned out from this myself working in Microsoft. I was succeeding in my work by most metrics, but I am motivated more by my work being MEANINGFUL and having impact more than anything. That is almost impossible to achieve in any large enough company.
Jumped off to be a startup CTO and life started smiling again instantly.
Take time away from work, but not too much time. Comments such as «it takes years» can be true if you have ground yourself down to a nub, but trying (and being ok with failing) to do some work that lets you feel like you mean something and contribute back to society is an understated and important part of the healing process.
Good luck!
It’s led me to wonder how one could structure a knowledge work job in a similar way. The tough part conceptually is how to make progress long-term while still only keeping your focus on a day at a time, max.
No investors, no board of directors, just a woman and her son who owned the business. They wanted to grow it but were very reasonable about it.
That being said the salary was probably 20-30% below market. At the time I wanted to make more money so I chased that for a while instead.
Most of the problems in tech are of the employees own creation. Unreasonable requirements and unreasonable timelines, often coming out of thin air for no reason other than some middle manager's political interests.
It is super hard to fight against it, and it's even harder to demonstrate how forcing tech to work more than necessary is bad for business.
Small businesses deal with it by being small. Big companies are just chaotic complex systems where you don't have much of a choice.
Companies that can kind of do anything and it’s fine. Like Google with AdWords. Whatever they do, AdWords goes to work every day and pays the bills.
Other companies get high on their own supply and invent things like “Holocracy” and claim it is responsible for their success.
You can try to find your own thing that you'll focus on after work. After 5 I would switch off any company equipment, phone etc. Make sure that there is never an expectation that you could be available outside of your work hours. Feel free to forget anything you worked on after 5, you'll catch up next morning. Some workplaces will be against that and make fuss. Find another job then and if it is not possible, just deliver as little as you can without being sacked. If manager is unhappy, but not unhappy enough to let you go, then you are doing great.
Sure, it sometimes happens that I'm working on some interesting project, and I may find myself thinking about it after my workday is done. But it's because I generally love what I do. It wouldn't surprise me that, say, a pastry chef would possibly think about combining ingredients in some different way, too.
I think the only job where you absolutely wouldn't have to think about it is if you don't have any kind of agency and only do what you're told. I'm not sure that I would enjoy that kind of job.
Where I work, a normal workday is 9 AM to 6 PM with an hour lunch. There's some flexibility as to the actual hours, I usually do 8-5, others do 10-7. Yet, some people always put in very long hours for some reason, complete with gulping down a sandwich in front of their computer for lunch. I'm not sure what gives them the impression they have to do it, since it's clearly not expected from our common higher-ups.
Guilty. The reason was living with abusive partner and not being brave enough to end the relationship. Things were bad, but not bad enough to do something about it.
This is just how I like to work and approach problem solving. I can take breaks when I make the effort, but, when work starts, I rarely think about anything except climbing whatever mountain I find myself on, helping others at my company, or exceeding my own (or others') expectations. That intensity helps me think deeply and solve problems effectively.
There are people in my company who do good work but draw boundaries clearly and sharply. I respect that. I just love what I do and find it interesting and absorbing partly because I love the intensity of striving and struggling, constantly refining, improving, growing, and exploring.
My company generously rewards good work, too. That also helps; my effort never feels wasted, unacknowledged, or unrewarded.
This seems quite distinct from what is discussed in this thread, which is people feeling some kind of pressure to work long hours, or to be available after work hours when they're supposed to be doing personal stuff. And, usually, the reasons for being called up don't seem to be some genuinely exciting problem that it feels invigorating to tackle. Instead, it's typically some form of TPS report that needs pushing around.
The work amounts to super overpaid (thanks unions) retail using antiquated software that it modernized could eliminate at least half the jobs, but since there are union staffing minimums and salaries the employer has no incentive.
There’s something nice about helping customers for a couple hours, doing some other mindless work which could be done in half the time if automated, and then going home.
And the group of folks in the industry are mostly great to be around. Particularly after nearly 5 years of working from home in roles that are increasingly more isolated and less collaborative.
Do you have any guiding star for what work gives you meaning?
I thought getting closer to the users/customers would help me. After all, software is for humans. But I found the social aspects of that, handling bugs, setting expectations for features, was tiresome and not meaningful. The only happiness I did find was when I saw my client/users flourish without me with the software I made tailored as best as it could be for the money. But that doesn't make a business unfortunately...
It helps to be close to your users, or to build software that has a clear purpose. It’s good to work on a small team where your input has a clear influence on the quality pf the product.
Like, I’m not going to work overtime for free or anything, but the time I do work gets my best effort.
I think you are rationalizing your choices by thinking everything does the same. It is not true, some are not stuck anywhere, some choose to live a simpler life that needs less money, fewer compromises, etc. etc. the world is a big place.
I think we forget the big picture that "no one gets out alive" and that it's up to each of us to spend the time we have in a way that makes us happy. If you can afford to not spend 1/3 of your time at a job in order to fund the remaining 2/3 of your existence, lucky you! But if not, choosing to slack off at a job you hate is essentially choosing to throw 1/3 of your life away being miserable. (Not judging if that's your choice, but its baffling to me.)
Is it reasonable to accept/leave a job based on no interesting connections?
You can't move the needle unless you are part of management and learn how to do politics. Large companies mean lots of politics being done. And you want to position yourself on the part of the winning team.
Also, people skills always trumps technical skills. Being aware of that helped me immensely on my career, much more than anything else I could have done.
People skills matter , But I suppose in large organisations. I don't think people skills matter "that much" in open source (other than documentation and hey not messing up like attomatic and being a little bit nicer in general)
Hell we should all try to be a little nicer in general , not just in open source.
Now, you might say that the Linux kernel is a large project, and you’d be right
I’ve been trying to make that switch as it’s the only career prospect I have, but…
Would love to hear how others have solved this
There’s still plenty of time to change gears, or move back and forth between the two choices. There are also other paths; see my comment above.
Important part is to not ignore the discomfort. I suggest reading Charity Majors’ blog posts around leadership vs engineering roles.
I think my future is moving towards consulting and building my own products. If people want to fight each other to get a seat at the table, be my guest. I see it as a waste of life. I can already build significant projects on my own, and it’s long overdue for me to reap all of the profit that those efforts generate.
Hence the issue xD I’m at the top of what my track offers, but it feels silly to stay in the same place for the next 30 years.
finding things that could be better or tools that should exist but don’t, and that if materialized would solve multiple problems at once instead of just one; and
explaining why that’s important in a way that everyone can buy into and dealing with naysayers who’ll want to cut you down and doomers who will say it’ll never work; and
have the focus, discipline and grit to make it through a 10k LoC project and land it on the other side while ekeing out code review along the way and not tripping over loose cables and uneven steps of your initial design / architecture / model that was either flawed from the outset or not malleable enough to fix after a month of entrenchment into your code; and finally
once you’re ready, to then go over the entire codebase and lift the old code up into your new way of doing things so that there is no split brain between the old way and your new tool:
then you can make it as a 10x engineer. It is exhausting but so is running up and down a football field, cycling laps around France, or serving tennis balls at 90mph for three hours at a time. Taking the elite-coder staff-engineering path isn’t for the faint hearted.
Now given a fixed level of technical skills it’s obviously always better to have more people skills, perhaps that’s what you meant.
Though maybe that’s why you can move those needles; nobody is guarding them jealously.
In some jurisdictions you need to check your employment contract as company may feel entitled to your idea you are developing outside of work hours. Ensure you don't have any such stipulations in the contract.
Thankfully I'm not ground down to a nub. I've found a lot of support over the last few years outside of work.
when your mental health collapses nothing else holds value, it really doesn’t matter if you achieved your dream job, got all the prestige and income you initially desired, being mentally healthy is the basis of the pyramid.
Something I learned based on that is to really prioritize it!
Even if someone considers their career to be everything, realize that spending some of your earnings seeking professional help (therapy) is even a cheap investment considering that if you break and have to quit, you’re going to lose hundreds of thousands, and to recover it will suck (I’ve heard of people trying to quit tech altogether after burning out)
Sneaking something else related to mental health: sleep should be #1 health wise, when you’re consistently not getting quality sleep for months, there’s nothing you can really do to get around that, it will eventually just break you (your body won’t care if you’re coping with coffe or exercising!)
Btw that’s great writing and I really appreciate your courage in sharing this! I hope you’ll find your joy again.
I feel like I had a similar experience. Start working at a new job, hustle for several years, get promoted, projects do well, then ended up feeling bored and unexcited. Not exactly burnt out, but burnt out on the current pattern of life. I quit and moved to another country.
I don't know if the author is "burnt out" or not. This is a privileged take, but sometimes it feels like a full time job is a leash. Life becomes so defined by your job it can feel suffocating. You can take a few weeks off, but a few weeks a year is hardly enough to have your own life.
People pleasing, approval seeking makes you the battery in somebody else's flashlight. You will always find yourself used up by others. Don't give others control of your joy.
Past one and a half years, have been years of self-discovery. I have been hacking on projects full-time (hopefully, I will make sustainable money soon). And it's been so fun, and relieving, and joyful to direct your creative energy to projects, with no authority to answer to. It's not without difficult times though. Sometimes, I feel blocked to the point of abandoning months of hard work, but I am slowly learning how to avoid those situations.
Honestly, everything I was advised was a lie (or at least, didn't work for me). I like being able to shape things, and use my creative energy to do useful things. Politics, and bureaucratic processes, drain my energy to an extent that I simply can't function. And no matter how hard I try, I can't ignore it with the mindset of "it's just a job." I can't find happiness in "being promoted" or whatever rating I am given.
I just want to ship good software. When I am driven, I will forget about everything and just dive in to solve the problem. Sadly though, it's not an easy ask in a modern-day corporate environment.
So, I would say what you're experiencing is normal in many ways. Don't kill yourself over it. If you have a list of fun projects, attempt them. For many of us, creative energy is precious, and needs to be directed well to keep ourselves sane.
Sure, because that's too late. Once you've already collapsed, pretty much the only thing that's going to fix it is quitting and taking a break, possibly with some therapy.
You need to "treat it as just a job" from your very first day there. You need to "find happiness elsewhere" every single day of your life, not just when you're feeling burned out.
Regardless, I'm glad you've now found a path that's working for you!
In a complex job with a fast pace, a fair amount of tech debt around every edge, a relentless pace of innovation happening, and - yes - growth, there’s too much to be invested in everything. It doesn’t have to matter that much. The parts you really care about, the craft and quality of your work, your relationships, mentoring and growing the people around you, seeing things get better one piece at a time, and a few things - they can matter. But everything can’t. And even those you have to at some very deep level realize don’t matter really.
Stripe doesn’t really exist in this world. It’s a shared fiction to help frame the interactions between you and a few people you actually interact with in a day. The real truth is the only thing that happens in your days is you type on a computer and talk to a few people. It actually doesn’t matter in any meaningful way what you typed or some higher purpose around humbling honesty or exothermic curiosity or PMEs or whatever stories we tell ourselves to create some sort of reality out of the fiction. The only important things you really do is how you shape the lives of the people you interact with, and how you shape your own life.
Burnout is hard. Adopt a daily meditation practice. Let your mind heal by letting go of meaning and practice enjoying the moment you’re in with whomever you’re with, but most especially yourself. The joy will come back faster the faster you let go of things needing to matter or have deeper meaning, especially when those things are a fiction like a company or a career or any of the other small and big lies we’ve been told and we reinforce to ourselves daily. I know I’ve been there man, and I know exactly - exactly - the sensations and experiences you describe. It gets better, but I think once you get there it never totally goes away and it’s easier to slip back.
FWIW I don’t think burnout is the same as depression. I’ve felt both and burnout is different. It’s that loss of ability to engage - which overlaps with depression - but usually doesn’t come with the thoughts of hopeless despair and desire for life to be over. It’s just more of a deadness and inability to initiate what you think you should want to do but can’t, and it pervasively impacts everything.
It gets better.
Of the many many hours I've spent on this website, this comment probably made me feel more relaxed than anything else.
Please continue your kind and helpful words on the internet:)
What books/resources do you suggest to follow more on this path of meditation (possibly also stoicism)?
I think these things helped me a lot in my recovery but I also don’t think it’s necessary or sufficient. I think my advice above is the real key, but vipassana and Buddhism give a pretty structured approach to achieve the appropriate detachment from what’s not truly real and the appreciation for what is. IMO that’s the basis for recovering from burnout durably. But the other thing is there’s no magic, it takes time.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Fronsdal 1 https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 2 https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/
Thank you for pointing it out.
Eventually, I got married, had a family, found things to do in the community, and do plenty of sports and hobbies that involve shutting off the computer. Even though my jobs after my 20s have been even more soul-crushing than the ones I had earlier, I've never had a hint of burnout. When I'm done with work, I shut off the computer and that's it. I'll go build a piece of furniture, or repair my car, spend time with my kid, anything that doesn't involve office politics, two week sprints, or status reports. Just having a life outside of work has done wonders for my mental health. No meditation or spirituality needed!
If you do get burned out, the only remedy I've found is time away, sometimes many months of it. That's really tough (or impossible) for many people's financial situations, though.
I think what’s universally important is to keep active and engaged in what we’re doing. Some of us have to tell fictions that what we’re doing has meaning, whilst others just know what brings meaning to their life.
It feels flippant to say, "stop caring so much about things", but it's actually great advice.
We should think of ourselves as having a limited "caring budget", and be judicious in how we spend that budget. Part of the trick is figuring out what that budget is, since it can be different for different people, or even different for the same person at different times in their life.
I think framing burnout in this way is helpful: you get burned out when too much is too important to you, and you've overextended your emotional ability to give a part of yourself to each of those things, for too much time.
An important thing about that to me is that it doesn't at all consider whether things are going well or poorly with all those "too important" things. Certainly things going poorly will increase stress, but even caring too much about too many things that are all going well can burn you out.
I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy. I owe the company some work hours and they own me money.
If I want to have personal relations with someone from my work, befriend somebody, share personal things, that is my choice. My personal life is not the company business.
Of course I wouldn't say all that to the manager, but 'I'll put him on the list of people I should be careful about, and fake some confessions.
It was the author and colleagues that decided to overstate, and seemingly did not regret. Groups of humans sometimes have connections like these, whatever the environment they are in.
I am sure other similar meeting with the same prompt only generated people saying they have two cats, they I am anxious about learning a new programming language or that they do not quite understand Stripe business model
And they have absolutely no right to do that. "Being vulnerable" is not part of any job description.
I ask because this is exactly the type of comment one of my siblings would make, and she is on the spectrum. She wouldn't be able to understand the social dynamics at play here, whereas for other folks it's just common sense. "Optional" is not really optional in some social settings, and that's something autistic folks struggle with being aware of, much less understanding. The activity may be optional in the most pedantic sense; you won't be struck down by lightning if you decide not to participate. But there will be consequences.
All of which is another reason why this whole exercise is an awful idea, considering that the number of autistic folks in software engineering is probably a bit higher than the population baseline.
What didn't work, however, was the office manager's increasingly awkward attempts to force socialising. When at some point we raised the issue (politely!) that this was often distracting, he became offended and lashed out. We later also found out that he was basically spying on us and reporting back to HQ.
It's one of the reasons why I'm incredibly wary of people who try too hard to be my "buddy" at work, especially if they're not peers.
Related: [Goodhart's Law](https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority...)
You can achieve that vulnerability via being a likable and honest person. I think often us technical-minded people forget that relationships aren't an optimization problem and don't respond like you think they would. Just being decent and trustworthy will take you there, saying things like "you can trust me guys!" often has the opposite effect.
I'm pretty sure this is not what they are expecting.
Really? If you are too honest, I am pretty sure you can fail spectacularly. Therapy is confidential for a reason.
Playing "I am somewhat therapist myself" in the workplace should be sackable offence.
Anyone starting to over-share becomes very problematic, because it forces everyone to conform. One of my colleagues didn’t feel like sharing anything personal, and he was silently outcast for the rest of the offsite and it continued to bite him in the ass for the rest of his time in that team.
The examples were very similar to those mentioned - people talking about their divorces, sex life, etc. I don’t think it’s fair to force colleagues to share such stories with each other.
Is that more than 10%?
Another option would be what Norm Macdonald did when Larry King asked him "what's something nobody knows about you" and he answered "I'm a deeply closeted homosexual." Just go over the top.
All the best to the author of the post, hopefully they can find more meaningful work.
It is funny how the more unimportant the company is, the more this kind of reverence is expected.
For me there was a stark contrast between two jobs I had:
Consultancy where I worked on software for local government that millions literally depend on? Keep your work-life 100% separate.
Marketing startup that spammed Google with crazy amounts of SEO-spam? Lots of instructions from HR to ask about personal matters in 1-on-1 meetings, weekly 2h mandatory confraternization followed by free beer, random CEO speech about his favorite topic for 1h every month.
This makes total sense if you have a therapist and / or have friends you can be vulnerable with (and know how to). But there are undoubtedly those who do not have that. For them the risk of career sabotage vs a change of improved quality of life might be worth considering. I don't know where the breakdown is, probably against mandatory sharing in the work setting on the account of an average workspace being pretty adversarial. However, if I could make a call for my younger self I would choose to share.
I think this shows that the boss was going out of his way which I "personally" appreciate.
I don't know what people expect managers / boss to do. Somebody on team expects their boss to X and somebody else on that same team expects their boss to be anything but X.
If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach , I think its good to have some talks like this. I am also much inspired by the likes of charles schwab and dale carnegie's how to win friends and influence people so probably there is a bias here
What they do should be related to the company work, otherwise they're overstepping. They're not social workers. They have to respect the privacy and independence of their coworkers.
> If I ever become a manager , I am probably taking this boss's approach
Please don't. Coworkers can obviously have social relationships but they should grow organically without being "managed".
You know the best way for that to happen is? Let them work together. They'll build their own relationships. They don't need your help. If they don't work together enough for this to happen naturally then they're strangers to each other anyway and that's ok too.
Friendships increase team communicability which bolster project success.
The actual respectful and considerate way is not to put people in such positions in the first place.
Like asking something from someone where it would be some unusual imposition or favor (like something that would be ok to ask a friend or family but not a mere aquaintance) and telling them it's ok if they say no. That is an empty statement. You were not supposed to put them in the position where they had to say no.
You can allow for people to not be robots without putting other people into awkward positions they didn't deserve to be put in.
It's definitely favoring some people at the expense of others. Like the gp comment, now they not only have to do their normal job, they also have to generate bs for their manager. The manager should be the one who has to figure out how to work with their different people, not the other way around. That is the managers explicit role that they supposedly get paid more for and what gives them the authority to manage and judge anyone else. That's their actual job rather than coding or whatever. Instead, they are making their team members all conform to them, on top of their actual jobs which are supposed to be something other than managing people.
I've read that, too, e.g. something from Google about psychological safety.
It seems to me that these "be 10% more vulnerable" increases safety / friendship for some people,
but decreases it for others who don't want to share anything.
Maybe there's better ways to go about increasing psychological safety ... For example, about Psychological Safety on Wikipedia:
> Two aspects of leadership have been shown to be particularly instrumental in creating a psychologically safe team. They are leaders using:
> Participatory management > Inclusive management
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
Here's a nice comment (in this discussion): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42026278
The risk is way too high
Reading this comment and others feels like people have read a bit too much Sun Tzu and are treating what could be collegiality as warfare.
You got the order of events wrong. That was with the first manager, before the "10% more vulnerable" meeting. (Not saying it's a good idea though.) (Or did you mean sth else?)
From the article:
> I told my team I was struggling with depression and took some time off. ...
> My team was extremely supportive.
I've noticed this trend in recent years to be "open about mental health", etc. And I think by itself this is great, mental health is important. But invariably, especially in management/HR settings (or in the entertainment industry), it is done in an incredibly shallow way.
Mental health is hard. Just talking openly isn't magically going to fix things and may even initially make things worse. It may release feelings that need to be carefully managed e.g. by a therapist. Obviously, no company would ever be able to provide that. Instead, they're just looking for "I started running every morning and was able to fix my depression" kind of stories.
"Being on-call 24/7 helps me feel like I'm a part of something, fulfilling a deep want for belonging that being kicked off the Girl Scout troop created in me."
"I've always lacked a father figure. When you told me to spend less time browsing HackerNews and more time on Jira, I felt like I was part of a real family."
- secret slack room to help me overcome my depression (wasn't invited of course, I just spotted it several times while looking at my colleagues' screens)
- lowest paid member in the team, while also being one of if not the most productive. 12x: verified. 30x: speculated if I had control over the architecture.
- 70h/week, no vacations, for 3 years. No paid overtime of any form.
- Double bind situation where I was used as a punching ball between the CTO and the #2 employee.
- Excluded from secret negotiations to obtain a raise.
You know what I did ? I quitted, cold turkey. That's when the CEO started to hate on me, feeling betrayed. The #2 left shortly after confiding he wanted to punch the CTO in the face. After realizing hiring someone to replace me wasn't cutting it, they distributed overtime to everybody on the team. Result: unionization. One year after my departure I received a call from the COO telling me he was willing to hire me back at the condition I would behave (since I was thrown at every hot issue, semantic propagation tied in their mind the idea I was also problematic). He was let go shortly after and replaced by a manager from the holding company (if you know what I mean). I haven't worked in 6-7 years. Most colleagues who left have had a similar empty period.
Very creepy
HN doesn't smile on frequent account cycling, but throwaways for sensitive disclosures are possible.
OP could likely walk from their ID easily should they choose. It would be difficult to tie the account to a specific legal / professional identity, though there are some personal-ish details in their history.
We are not ready to discuss this kind of things. We are not equipped to deal with the kind of storms this can raise on the collective level and proactive openness on the individual level we're restricted to, no matter how hard we wish for a transcendance, is an enabler of these situations where no isolation of individual responsibility can pin-point the source of the issue. I mean I got along with everyone and the people I had the most temporary conflictual relationships at some point were also those I was closest too. In the beginning we all had good intentions. Nevertheless, double-bind propagated in the group like an epidemic, preventing us from having innocent relationships. Suddenly, invoices were issued, each party establishing accounts in different currencies.
In the end, from a cold-headed analysis of the situation, I still think I was the one that was behaving. If this was a story about my circle of friends, I'd be the asshole, placing economical matters in a central position, as if we were in a corporate setting. But it's my employer who behaved as if we were friends, and started neglecting economical considerations to its detriment.
In short, speaking of mental health made everybody unhealthy. In fact I'm not the one who overshared, my father did. I didn't show up for a couple days and blacked out communication-wise (because of a girl, a half-truth). The CEO phoned my dad who confided I was suffering from bipolar disorder since my teens which just isn't true from a clinical perspective (this is my sister's diagnostic in fact). Shortly after everybody was in the know. I could tell from their terrified eyes when they glanced at me when I came back. They were afraid I'd flip my shit. This is something we can't deal with. You can't just be designated as being a "little crazy". This expands to "a little [very-weird]". There is a perceptual threshold, including among health and sometimes even mental health professionals that makes people assume past a certain point you just flip your shit, that's your thing, an irreducible otherness that sleeps within you. Needless to say this has never happened to me (unlike my sister).
You can't just unveil t...
jesus, i don't know how you managed that for 3 years
I would have reported manager to HR for this and if they didn't take action I would take company to tribunal.
This is pure simple coercion into sharing personal data that then other workers could use against you.
I can't see the world where sharing personal stuff at work is ever appropriate, let alone be subjected to peer pressure to share it.
The jobs I stick with are the ones where colleagues have got each others back.
All this zero-sum game playing toxicity is what ruins work for the collaborative pro-social people. Find a work place that doesn't reward that kind of behaviour.
America is supposed to be this super-freedom, super-individualistic place. Except when you are a worker at a workplace. Then you are supposed to spend at least 40 hours a week (except you are supposed to want to spend more time than that; and most do [except they don’t want to]), you are supposed to leave your politics behind, don’t talk about politics at work, you are supposed to do everything your boss tells you without question, and certainly don’t bring in your morals. Your workplace is a dictatorship (in a freedom loving country) and you are not supposed to complain about it. You are supposed to like your work, so you are not even entitled to your feelings. And suddenly your workplace is supposed to be this communist utopia, where every worker has a task, and the work is supposed to make them happy, and the whole workplace has a comradery of peers. Except you are all making money for your boss (or worse, your shareholders) and only keep a tiny portion of what you produce, but you are not supposed to complain and definitely not supposed to unite in bargaining for better, only unite in being exploited (except you aren’t supposed to see it that way).
The American workplace is probably as far away from the American dream as it possibly could be.
Ignoring that, your characterization isn't accurate at all for American software companies in my experience. I'm an American and I've worked overseas in Australia. In addition, most of the current technical team that I am currently on is based in the UK.
If anything, I've found other western cultures to be more discouraging of openly challenging management decisions. However, the differences are very very small. Working for a UK/Australia/German company is exactly the same as working for an American company. The day-to-day culture depends a lot on the people who run the company rather than their nationality. Trust me, there are jerks everywhere in the world.
Any corporate environment. You'll get stabbed in the back sooner or later.
> where colleagues have got each others back.
That doesn't sound healthy if people have to get each others back - usually means there are some bad actors that you'll need to cover up for. Do the job, be polite and leave ego at home. There is no need for politics, gossip and other meaningless activities.
> work for the collaborative pro-social people.
That sounds dystopian to me. I prefer to have social life outside of work, with actual friends that I choose, not HR.
This. Companies doing social thing is nothing but trying to fool employees into feeling like they owe to company.
The boss had also become vulnerable asking you to be 10% more vulnerable.
I think I would respect it more than harsh cold calculating boss.
And also the chinese gospel's taking its effect here , the post above this paraphrased it differently and this has taken it to completely different level.
Nobody is forcing you with a gun to tell things or else you are fired
the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This would probably be my approach if I was one of those people who hated boss asking him such thing but I don't. I think I like it.
Agreeing to work with a new manager is putting you in a vulnerable enough state. Build that trust over time - you likely don’t even need to hear about coworkers failed marriages.
That's really irrelevant. It's like taking your pants down, showing your privates and assuming your coworkers will do the same.
Absolutely unacceptable especially when it comes from position of power, where workers may think that if they don't engage they'll get fired or won't get promotion. It's coercion.
> the boss just said , " Hey if you are comfortable , lets try to be a little vulnerable " and if you didn't like it you could've said " hey boss , I appreciate your gesture but I really really wouldn't like to share it as it would be a violation of my privacy , hope you understand "
This is never innocent. If someone's life depends on the job, they'll comply as they don't want to second guess if their refusal will lead to them end up being homeless. They'll share details they don't want to and get injured.
People bring a lot of context into these conversations and make a lot of assumptions. There is a lot of nuance here and that's tough to sit with.
It could be just me enjoying remote work, but I am not looking to be friends with them 4000 km away. I’m too old for this, I know all my work friendships faded away in a couple of years and even in those years we focused on work and chat about career.
Don’t force me to share personal things with everyone. I’ll share it if I feel like it with the ones that I feel like it.
I find it strange that the same people that ask you “How are you doing?” Without expecting an answer, are so into this kinda fake buddy buddy thing.
This comment: "I'd rather not have my manager forcing me to do group therapy."
How did "if you’re comfortable" become "forcing me", and "try and be 10% more vulnerable" become "group therapy"?
Like will anyone care? Probably not but it's an incredibly awkward situation to toss people into when they're at work.
which would probably even work okay because everyone loves and applauds a success story or something that isn't your fault, but imagine someone sharing their ongoing drug addiction. People who think that workplaces are "safe" spaces for personal issues should try envisioning what the reaction to that would be.
It would be OK to discuss drug addiction with your parents. It would not be OK to discuss steamy night with your wife with them.
It's almost like adult people can understand environment and make conscious decisions what is acceptable and what is 10% they can bend the rules if they want to switch the mood a little.
Honestly it's hilarious how supposedly emotionally mature people panic and over-analyse in this thread.
Apparently not because in TFA, the author shared personal facts about their divorce and other people shared even "deeper" things they'd "never heard in a work setting". Quote: "it was awkward".
These aren't things that belong in a workplace context (sure, if you're going out for drinks after work maybe you can volunteer such things - but not during a workplace meeting!).
What does that even mean? Seems like it triggers people to share very deep stuff.
The boss mentioned above would be a “B” boss - good intentions, but a forced execution that shifts more of the burden to employees. I don’t necessarily mind these types, but it can be incredibly off-putting for those of us who work to live, rather than live to work.
Above that you have the “A” bosses, who invite that level of vulnerability by repeatedly displaying their trustworthiness to you and the team. I’ve had a few of these bosses before, and they’re amazing; sadly, they rarely last long in the face of “maximum profit” corporate cultures that demand everyone be a replaceable cog in a machine.
Okay, so at what point does that become “forced group therapy?” The C-D-F bosses.
C-rank bosses will demand vulnerability because they mistake it for honesty or loyalty. Good employees pick up on this and will placate them with some useless trivia nugget but otherwise have mediocre to bad rapport with said boss.
D-grade bosses are even worse. They’ll push and pull and drag and yank something suitably vulnerable from everyone, and even try to solutionize whatever was shared with the team. This is (in my subjective experience) the most common form of boss, born of MBA coursework and saddled with buzzword-laden articles of “how to be a better leader” from magazines no C-Suite would be caught dead reading.
Finally is the F-grade boss, who literally just wants to know who is going to need replacing imminently. Don’t get me wrong, this is something every other grade is silently doing as well (hence the “forced group therapy” metaphor), but F-grade bosses are bad enough to be overt about it. Got a coworker who mentions they’re trying to have a baby? They’ll make sure said coworker never has a positive review again, so it’s easier to replace them once they’re pregnant.
All of this is to say that if YOU are a boss, and an employee is being vulnerable with you in an unprompted or non-coerced manner, you have won their trust and you better respect that. But if you’re forcing them to be vulnerable somehow, you’re actually harming the trust relationship in the long run and will make your staff wary of your motives.
Prove they can trust you, and they’ll open up on their own.
Interesting to know. Seems people who reply here, a bit assume it's a group of competitive coworkers who mostly don't know each other, in a big cut-throat corp?
I'd been ok with that meeting at my first job (together with my closest coworkers only). It'd been weird at my 2nd job though. I guess it depends :-)
(But it wouldn't have been needed at all, there. I guess that's related to why it would have been ok.)
I get they are trying to create a sense of psychological safety for people, but this is a bit much.
Worked out great, didn't it?
Now the above is probably a bit over top but it shows the typical American company culture effect. Going through this at work right now since we got bought by Americans and more and more fakeness is coming in.
It's completely fine to get to know your coworkers. But let the oversharing ones (the extroverts) congegrate together naturally. We had someone like that on the team. Was likeable enough but wouldn't stop talking about everything in their life. That was their choice tho and I am fine to listen but I'm not "sharing back".
And then there were introverts. Some that spoke very very little and some that were in the middle. They randomly shared some things from time to time in quieter moments with less people around and when they felt comfortable. Very real people and it was nice to get to know the a bit more.
I'm more on the introvert side there and if you group pressure me into this sort of thing I will remember that for a very very very long time. As in we are never gonna be friends. I'm still sour about what an extrovert HR person did 4 years ago and I don't speak to them any longer. They are also showing from time to time that they haven't changed and they'd be the type to use whatever came out in an oversharing session against you.
Now tell me to "report them to HR".
Now I understand that with remote work there may not be enough space for chit chat. But there are other ways than a forced group pressure situation to set that up.
For example, we decided as a team when Covid WFH started to basically use our daily 15 min stand-up for whatever. Sometimes we just did stand-up and we're out of there after 5 min coz nobody felt like talking. Sometimes it'd be a half an hour of just talking about whatever. We also have a dedicated time each week blocked off on the calendar for it as well and when we have ad hoc working session calls we get in some chit chat here or there as well. It's not all just business but it can be.
RE cat: see this is the internet and it's an anonymous forum. I used that example because our cat actually just died a few weeks ago. You thought it was over the top. Interesting indeed.
I don't quite get the difference between a blocked off time for chit chat and the way the manager asked for it here but totally, being forced like you have to say something you don't want to sucks.
I guess the difference is the same what I mentioned about stand-up changing: The team decided to do that. It wasn't a manager saying that's how we do things now.
EDIT: I also just realized you gave out condolences. See if I was in the situation from the article I might not be able to quickly come up with something fake and I'd instinctively just mention the cat thing (coz I don't want to be the guy that gets shunned). And then the next few weeks are gonna be very uncomfortable coz people will keep mentioning it.
There are ways of lighten the mood that are decidedly less abusive, such as "tell us something funny about yourself" or "what is your hobby?". You don't have to like such questions either but at least they're not open invitations for trauma dumping.
I'm a parent. You can probably pretty easily infer what my greatest fear is.
Would I share that? Fuck no! Not only am I not particularly willing to get that intimate with a bunch of strangers, I also don't want to be a huge fucking downer. What I do want is to recognize that while you can speed-run friendship & bonding to some degree, it's fucking inappropriate to try to do so at work. It's work. I'll make friends if I make friends, but otherwise I'm out at 5, physically, mentally and emotionally.
“Whoo. OK. I’ve never talked about this, but here goes. When I was 12 I used a Hello Kitty doll to kill a man. Wow. Feels great to finally get that off my chest.”
I really don't like this trend of employers trying to act like we're all friends or one big happy family. It only serves to blur the very real boundaries of power in favor of the employer. Engaging with it in earnest feels like self-exploitation to me.
That attitude is a liability at work and I’ve learned the hard way.
We’ve all heard the phrase don’t shit where you eat. In modern workplace cadence that means don’t use your workplace as your source of therapy or friends or certainly family.
The way we present yourselves at work has to intrinsically be a performance because that’s how money works.
Find another place to express emotions and thoughts and find friends. That place should not be the workplace.
You choose your friends because you have shared interests and you make each other feel good. You have family because they brought you into the world and you have shared qualities and bonds. You chose your job because it pays you. You do it for the ducats. Don't get it twisted.
I thought he was a weird outlier, but I joined an invite-only Slack for management a while ago where I’d estimate 1/4 of the topics in the #1-on-1s channel are from managers trying to psychoanalyze their team or act as therapists. The good news is that the Slack is very good about correcting these people about their role and what is appropriate for work. The bad news is that these new managers are getting the idea from somewhere that they need to be some type of therapist and patriarch of the team. It feels like a weird iteration of new-age management philosophies that breed in B-list business books and social media like LinkedIn.
Otoh when dealing with peers at director or C level, things tend to get significantly more psychological, likely because their facility of judgment, which is ultimately psychological and moral, is functioning with far higher leverage due to their organizational authority.
A team isn’t a family. A company isn’t a family.
Both reasonable.
> and fake some confessions.
Could you find some other way to handle it, without lying?
That way I tick the participation box without making it therapy.
So it seems to me that it was voluntary, right? You could be okay sharing nothing, author felt better going proposed path.
I quit trying to find meaning in my work long time ago. And work never depresses me. I work to have food on the table for me and my family. That is enough of a motivation.
If I want to do something meaningful, I either work on a personal project or contribute to one, outside work.
It is too dangerous to attach meaning to a place that can fire you, or push you into burnout.
He expected doing something meaningful that will change the world. He expected to be applauded like a hero for his efforts.
But things don't work like that.
If you work your ass out, don't expect more than a pat on the back. Managers won't care about your efforts, your mental state or your sleepless nights. They care about looking good in front of their superiors.
So it's better to do just that is expected for you, enough to get a good evaluation.
If you come out with a brilliant idea that might help the company a lot don't just do it. Find some allies in the higher hierarchy, explain to them what is their advantage, do a POC or MVP, then let the top management know in a public meeting. That way you get a lot of credits and applause for doing great things for the company and fighting the good fight.
I mean, I get them, as I went through the same thing.
Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
If you have a brilliant idea, keep it to yourself, try to think of a way it could be used outside of the company and if it is strong enough start your own business based on the idea. Otherwise forget it.
Never do more than you are asked to do.
As opposed to working on that pointless crud thing your boss likes.
Yeah, I know this annoys the senior devs, but after 20 years on this grind I totally get why people do it.
I take the stance of, the job I do for 8 hours 5 days a week might as well be something I actually enjoy doing above and beyond the financial incentive. Working on something I think is really neat is enjoyable, and I'm lucky to work in an industry doing things not so far from what I would spend my time doing anyway if I were retired.
If you are that great, it is much better to contribute to Open Source projects than to someone's already fat pockets.
>Never do it. It will never end up benefitting you, even if you find "allies" - who might even stab you in the back and take credit for the idea and then let you go once they get a promotion.
That's why I said to get allies from the higher ups. Not your boss or your peers. Preferably business people. And you don't need to give them all the details. Just let them know if would make them look good, have their approval and use them as a shield.
It's corporate America, so I'm going to be unceremoniously fired eventually anyway, but in the meantime I might as well enjoy myself, impress my coworkers, snag a promotion or two, and get a "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr" line item on my resume.
> start your own business
Probably eventually, but starting a business is very different from being at a place big enough that I can profit my salary many times over just from faster code. If I start one, I'll write fast code there too, but "fast" isn't a business idea by itself, and I don't see anything wrong with doing a good job for whoever happens to be writing my paycheck.
Been there. The savings were never passed down, but you could always enjoy photos of boss's new sports car or their month's trip to Borneo to "recharge" and think of new challenges. Ah sorry! I got an iPod once as a thank you.
> "made a cool new thing increasing profits $XX million/yr"
That may backfire. Nobody likes a new kid on the block that has tricks up his sleeve that could jeopardise someone senior's career.
Sure, that's the game. I get an extra bonus or raise or something with promotions, and more when I switch jobs, but nearly all the profit goes elsewhere. If you want to leave the upper-middle class you'll need to set out on your own eventually.
If you don't have a solid plan and life circumstances for building your own business yet though, why would you not do things the business likes, especially when it means your day-to-day is more palettable, it doesn't actually require any more work, and it has some moderate career impacts in case you never set out on your own?
> this may backfire
That's the same sort of logic that leads people to have asphalt roofs instead of white roofs in southern climates. You do, absolutely, alienate a significant fraction of buyers (employers). You command a premium at every place that's left though because they want you _because_ of the things that make you different. So long as you don't shrink the pool too much, each individual job is more lucrative.
It was always a pretty competitive place, with a lot of smart people working a lot of hours, and a culture of attention to detail that left many people with impostor syndrome. There were pretty good expectations of being nice to each other: No infrastructure team giving your request the cold shoulder, because that was just not OK. So people working really hard and burning out to try to meet every growing expectations was common.
The post also had the other weakness of the culture: A lot of management changes, along with a culture of performance among managers that would be fit for Amazon. So a manager might change teams, and the person that used to get exceed expectations would end up with a PIP with the next manager, often by surprise. You can imagine what it does to morale to tell someone how they are the most helpful person they've worked with, and then see them gone two weeks later. It was a great place to work in many ways, but the negative parts took their toll.
So, if anything, the story showed me that even though it's been many years, a lot of Stripe is still recognizable.
Always be building solid, interesting things and make sure that if someone, for some reason finds them, that they would say "wow, this is cool, who made this?"
Then I casually share links to those things in the right context. If I get a 10% hit rate then I'm happy.
Do this all day every day between assigned projects 9-5 and you'd be amazed at the network you can build outside your own team. Keeps the options open for lateral movement.
I'm not smart or quick enough to consistently do that and my job without it taking a toll, so it ends up not being worth it most of the time.
So I took a few hours one day and made a Chrome extension that did it for you. Wasn't hard to write. Saved people maybe 5 minutes. Some folks appreciated that so much they spent the 5 minutes nominating me for a peer bonus! I never really capitalized on that in any lasting way though.
I think a good approach would be to consider asking for adjustments to your work hours or talking with your team lead about creating a plan to make your work environment feel more manageable. It might also be helpful to discuss with a therapist why Patrick’s success affects you so strongly. Understanding the root of this could help you focus more on your own growth and well-being.
The challenges you experienced at Stripe aren’t unique to that company. These same lessons are likely to come up in future roles if they’re left unaddressed. You have the choice to face these issues now or later, but life has a way of bringing them back until they’re fully understood and resolved. Taking proactive steps now can set you up for a healthier, more resilient future in your career and beyond.
My attempt with the article was to simply reflect how things have felt and leave analysis largely absent. I realize it's left folks with a lot of questions and rightly worried about me.
I'm in a much better place now.
Thank you for taking the time to write this comment.
- Refine your definition of what’s “meaningful”: anything that helps you, your colleagues, helps you to learn a new thing or simply allows you to create something beautiful can be meaningful; there’s a lot of meaning in giving a meal to someone starving, even though you’re not solving any big societal issue or being applauded by many for that single act.
- Don’t take people like the OP’s first manager too personally: with time you realize they’re generally not evil or terrible human beings, they’re just in a different mission. Usually they are also as lost as we are, trying to find meaning and recognition. Just lower the importance you give to them (if you’re really incompatible with their personalities) and focus on your work. If even then it becomes toxic, then move.
- Most importantly: reshape your relationship with work. Who you are and what you do are not necessarily the same thing. I don't like the advice of "slacking and collecting your pay check" (been there, you also feel shit after a while), but I think that going a bit to that direction helps to find balance.
Sure, job is a big part of our life, but it’s better to leave as “just job”, and not focus on it too much.
Wishing the best to the author!