I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp.
Your managers, or your managers managers, or their managers don't care about you. At all. If you ask them on the weekend, they'll decry that the things they are asked to do are horrible. but they'll still do it. Some gladly.
They are themselves cogs in the machine.
A machine that goes all the way to the executive class, and they really don't care about you. In fact, more likely than not, they detest you.
We all participate in this hostile culture, in various ways. Usually using the excuse that we need to pay rent, eat, find the work interesting, or with some other excuse that justify the means.
It seems like it's hard to do the right thing when you have something you want to buy or otherwise spent your whole life getting here, before realizing what here is.
I feel like its unfair to say every single direct manager doesn't care about their folks. I care about each and every person on my team, I care if they are engaged and if they can do their job. I care if they get sick and give them the time to make sure they feel better. I care about their career and try to help them along. Maybe I'm the minority, but I think that lots of managers of ICs should and do feel this way. As you go up the ladder, i can see that going down as the scope increases, but thats why you have managers, to keep attention to those details. Now i've had directors and stuff that do not care about their managers. I've also had managers that aren't great and don't care.
You are 100% correct though, we are all cogs in the machine. In the end, the people at the top don't care about anything below them if it isn't making them an the shareholders more money. If they do, they are a unicorn and i hope everyone gets to work with someone like that.
When I was laid off from RAX, it was a super emotional time. I had a job where I got to hang out with my friends and good people doing good stuff, and we also did some work (the work we were doing was so enjoyable most of the time, it didn't feel like work). I've never been able to capture that since and it has contributed greatly to my desire to get out of leadership roles.
> its unfair to say every single direct manager doesn't care about their folks
That's not the claim being made, by my reading. The quote was, "Your managers, or your managers managers, or their managers don't care about you" -- which to me means, it's not clear exactly at what level, but at some point people stop caring about you as an individual. This may be at the direct manager level if you have a shitty manager. Or it may be much higher. But at some point up the chain it will become true if you're at a megacorp.
Former racker here. When RAX laid me off, I was told there was no other place for me to go (which was not true). I loved my time there and the people I learned so much from and loved working with. It hurt. I had fantastic managers who did care, but the company changed and looking back I shouldn’t have been surprised. Cog in the machine. When I was a manager elsewhere I tried to show the same care my previous managers did. I cared even if those at the top didn’t.
>I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp. >Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity.
The crazy thing to me is the lack of awareness of these people. Has hiring at Google fallen off that badly? Was there always such a gap between 'smart enough to work at google' and 'smart enough to realize their corpo-we're one big family-speak is total BS' ?
> 'smart enough to work at google' and 'smart enough to realize their corpo-we're one big family-speak is total BS
I have noticed that smartness can be highly compartmentalized.
For many Googlers, this is their one-and-only company so they actually have no frame of reference, including no frame of reference to notice the company culture was shifting over the past decade-ish.
"Smart" and "naive" are not antonyms. Indeed, it is practically a stereotype that the two often go together.
There’s a difference between intellectually understanding it, versus actually seeing yourself tossed aside and cast out, while knowing that all the other cogs are already back in motion and pretty much fully adjusted to your absence.
> We all participate in this hostile culture
You can try to participate less. It's also work, but for some people, it's better than the corporate environment.
Keep your expenses under control. (That alone can be hard to do if you're relatively successful in tech, so I mention it because it's something to really think about.) Network in real life to find projects that have finite durations. Take some time between those projects and use that to both relax and develop new business. Go to a different city for a few days, maybe for an organized meetup or a conference (even if you don't attend) and try to meet people. You're double dipping here. Go sightseeing or something else entertaining, and then try to work a room.
> they really don't care about you. In fact, more likely than not, they detest you.
Hopefully more the former than the latter. You're not getting married. You shouldn't be out to find a new family, and everyone hates that metaphor anyway. You probably will find people you do like, though. Since you're targeting well defined business, you don't have to live with that relationship if it doesn't pan out. You just need to get to your next cycle.
I've found a lot of people that I really do like. Some, I still do business with, and others I just sometimes get together with for dinner or a cocktail. We know we still like each other because there's no longer any money involved.
This is a defensive play also since you aren't all-in on one engagement. You can't get complacent just because you're on a W-2 and it all feels good, as this post illustrates.
I'm aware that this isn't an out-of-the-gate strategy. If you're gainfully employed now, save up. Even if you hate your job, use it to establish a stable position so that you can get out when you want to. Seriously consider what you think are the luxuries in life and whether you actually enjoy them or if you have been convinced that you do for some other purpose, like pleasing others, peacocking, or keeping up with the Joneses.
I feel like this is a very dramatic view of things. Have you ever been in a management position?
I have and this poster is spot on, he needs to go higher up the chain though. Investors hate employees, even founders. Founders are out to get rich. Executives are out to get rich but don't have what it takes to be founders. All of these people detest labor. They are the enemy you must work with to buy food. Treat them as such.
I feel like this is a very cynical way of looking at things.
I know some excellent people in leadership that have been promoted from lower level management jobs. I’m not sure the career change made them no longer care about people.
This is definitely how the capital class views labor. Don’t be fooled, and ignore at your own peril.
I wouldn’t really consider someone that moved from middle management to upper management/executive leadership to be a part of the “capital class.”
Investors, board members, maybe even some CEOs, sure.
If they’re upper management, they are tasked with doing the dirty work for capital. That’s their job.
That doesn’t mean they don’t care though. Now this could come from spending time at a company where the executives were only ~3 levels of indirection from devs.
They would lay you off in the blink of an eye or be instantly fired. “Caring” doesn’t really come into play.
It's not that the career change makes them not care about people. It's that it's practically impossible to get into upper management without eating others. People who don't embrace their sociopathic tendencies don't make it - they get out-competed by those who do. The very occasional exception just proves the rule, and usually doesn't last in any case because once they get to that point, they still have to compete to remain there.
I think his statement could have benefited from and/or implicitly in the list of titles.
I certainly care very deeply about my people, and letting someone go is a last resort after trying to work things out. My boss cares that I care.. their boss.. we're numbers.
> I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp.
yep, you always was.
bigtech and corporate make a good illusion that you aren't. brace, if you let yourself believe in that illusion.
So the key thing here is that this didn't used to be how things were at Google.
People outside the ecosystem disbelieve, but I had the mixed privilege of watching the company evolve from a spicy startup to a megacorp. There isn't one point in time you can put your finger on when it shifted, but the shift happened. And for Googlers who'd been there forever, they were legitimately startled to learn that all their years of work hadn't made them insiders as the lines were drawn and management consolidated into something more approximating a traditional corporation.
If there's a lesson here, I think it's that there is a difference between a company like old Google and a company like new Google, but if you only want to work at old Google, you have to pay very close attention to the signs that things are changing around you. Capitalism, to be certain, incentivizes drift in that direction, from small outfit where everyone knows everyone to 100-thousand-person megafirm with concerns about its tax obligations to Ireland.
>In fact, more likely than not, they detest you.
Engineers, nerds, developers remember this ALWAYS. Do not work hard for ANYONE including your family members unless they reciprocate proportionately.
This reminds me of the demotivator with pictures of cogs.
> Just because you are necessary doesn't mean you are important.
https://despair.com/cdn/shop/files/worth_6b813282-f9f8-41ab-...
This has being like this when that changed from "Personal" department to "Human Resources"
Do the corp that is what you are!
The lower level of hell is definitely reserved of industrial psychologists and advertisers!