cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/34411807

While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate. […] “Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”

Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized. “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.

  • atticus88th@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I’m kind of LMAO because of course those places have turned into that. Look who runs them and look at the execs running it. These are not college grads literally living there and need to unwind while at work.

    A lot of software companies especially the new ones who want young talent are running exactly the same as startups were 20 years ago just a lot more flashy and newer toys.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      I worked for one of those 20 year startups. It was awful. Basically there was no drive, no vision. The entire place was a lot of faff and only existed to give bonuses to leadership. All of the interesting and motivated employees moved on long ago leaving only the mediocre types who play political games and favorites. I needed A job and took it when offered, but took the next job as soon as I could get out. I watched many others cycle through, some a lot faster than I did (I was waiting for a specific position to open).

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    I posted a similar comment in another post of this article.

    The elite 1% students who spent their lives pursuing this are getting exactly what they asked for. They sold their souls for a big paycheck and assumed that it was everyone else’s careers that were volatile. They’d have done better to work for a non-profit where at least they could say that they are making the world a better place.

    • FenrirIII@lemmy.worldOP
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      19 days ago

      It must be nice living in your imaginary world where everything is black and white.

      • stoly@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Every year I tell my CS/CE/Info students that the market is saturated and that jobs are hard to find. I then tell them that they have to figure what motivates them: a paycheck or service. I then suggest that public service is generally stable while private enterprise can be volatile. I finish by telling them that they have to decide what among this fits them best.

    • cabron_offsets@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      The elite 1% students are going to be the ones fixing shit when AI breaks everything, because they’re the ones who spent countless hours learning math and algorithms and shit.