Why Do So Many Tech Workers Dislike Their Jobs?

Nerval's Lobster writes: So what if you work for a tech company that offers free lunch, in-house gym, and dry cleaning? A new survey suggests that a majority of software engineers, developers, and sysadmins are miserable. Granted, the survey in question only involved 5,000 respondents, so it shouldn't be viewed as comprehensive (it was also conducted by a company that deals in employee engagement), but it's nonetheless insightful into the reasons why a lot of tech pros apparently dislike their jobs. Apparently perks don't matter quite so much if your employees have no sense of mission, don't have a clear sense of how they can get promoted, and don't interact with their co-workers very well. While that should be glaringly obvious, a lot of companies are still fixated on the idea that minor perks will apparently translate into huge morale boosts; but free smoothies in the cafeteria only goes so far.

Comments

Re:Major disconnect from layers

[geoskd]

Biased opinions like yours regarding millennials is what discourages younger generations from respecting those who are: already established, who didn't have to worry about a great recession caused by the previous generation that is constantly threatening the potential job and stock markets, who didn't have to be concerned with competing against off-shore, who knows that they will at least be able to collect Social Security, who is the generation that put little to no effort in raising their children (these now millennials) other than shoving a TV in front of them while said parent is partying in a garbage can downing beers and listening to Sting.

Forgetting about the reasons for a minute, Millennials are less capable, less motivated, more self important and harder to manage than any generation in the memories of any one alive. We have two openings for developers (read as real programmers who can solve problems). We have gotten and processed over 1000 applications so far. The vast majority of the resumes we have received, I would have killed myself before ever submitting such an under-qualified application for a job. Millennials (statistically speaking) seem to have no problem spraying their defective crap on the work force. The ones we have interviewed have almost all ended up not living up to what their resume implied they could do. One of them even admitted in the interview to outright falsifying large parts of his resume. One of them, when we called some of his references, they painted a picture of a typical millennial. He'd been through several manual labor jobs while attending college and hadn’t lasted more than a month at any of them. His former supervisors all stated quite bluntly that the kid felt he was too good for manual labor. He might have even been qualified for the position, but that attitude ruled him out right away, even though there is no manual labor involved. If he wasn’t cut out for it, then why did he keep applying for and taking jobs he knew he would be keeping any ways? Did he think that behaviour was acceptable? Did he think it wouldn't come back to bite him?

All that having been said, once they get on the job, I can fully understand why a lot of millennials don’t give a damn any more. Their whole lives, they have been raised being a precious snowflake. Their parents lived the American dream in a big way (spent us waaay the hell into debt doing it too I might add), and raised their kids to expect the same without having to work hard for anything. Even the school taught the students that they were winners just for showing up. After that wind up, they get into the work force, and except the lucky few, they discover that they have been woefully under prepared for the reality of the working world. Their early performance reviews are mediocre (the first time many of them have even heard negative feedback!!!), and their world falls apart. Its a downward spiral that even a blind man could see coming.

At the end of the day, we have an entire generation that is borderline useless, and the gen Xers have no one to blame for the problem except themselves. The Millennials mark the beginning of the end of the golden age of America, and we can lay it at the feet of the Gen Xers like many of our other problems. After all their self righteous blustering, they turned out to be far worse then the parents they were rebelling against.