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Half of All Tech Workers Surveyed Think Their Workplace Is 'Unhealthy' (wfaa.com)
"Half of tech employees think their work culture is toxic," reports one Texas news site, citing a new survey by Blind:
Blind, an anonymous work talk app, asked more than 12,000 tech staffers to respond to the statement: "I consider my current workplace a healthy working environment." Slightly more than half, 52 percent, said the survey statement was "false," versus nearly 48 percent who responded with "true."
Intel was named the tech company with the least healthy work environment, by 48.5 percent of its employees, followed by Amazon at 46.5 percent, and eBay at 44.5 percent. Employees who consider their workplaces healthier work at LinkedIn, where 17.3 percent responded true, followed by Google, at 23.7 percent, and Uber, at 29.7 percent.
It depends on how you define "unhealthy," of course -- but it'd be interesting to hear how Slashdot's readers respond to the same question. So leave your own thoughts and reactions in the comments.
Is your work environment unhealthy?
Intel was named the tech company with the least healthy work environment, by 48.5 percent of its employees, followed by Amazon at 46.5 percent, and eBay at 44.5 percent. Employees who consider their workplaces healthier work at LinkedIn, where 17.3 percent responded true, followed by Google, at 23.7 percent, and Uber, at 29.7 percent.
It depends on how you define "unhealthy," of course -- but it'd be interesting to hear how Slashdot's readers respond to the same question. So leave your own thoughts and reactions in the comments.
Is your work environment unhealthy?
Clears the sinuses. And the brain. So breathe deep the gathering gloom. Watch lights fade from every room. Bedsitter people look back and lament, another day's useless energy spent. Cold hearted orb that rules the night. Removes the colors from our sight. Red is grey, and yellow white, but we decide which is right. And which is an illusion. Smell the glove!
While half of the tech workers think that their workplace is unhealthy, most of the products resulted from their work is unhealthy.
The question is, "I consider my current workplace a healthy working environment," so a high percentage of true responses means the workplace is healthy. Yet the summary says:
Employees who consider their workplaces healthier work at LinkedIn, where 17.3 percent responded true, followed by Google, at 23.7 percent, and Uber, at 29.7 percent
If a low percentage of people are responding true, then, contrary to what the summary says, that means they find their workplace unhealthy.
I get "Access Denied" when I try to look at the article so it's not clear if the summary has simply been worded wrongly or if Google is the toxic shithole we all thought it was.
Unless they are working on a clearly ill-suited environments or they are experts, how can they know?
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Well, He IS a youtube celebrity living on advert parasitism, and youtube *IS* owned by Google...
Is there a coincidence between google's numbers, and creimer being a youtube star? You be the judge.
Perhaps they are mainly choking on the poor air quality in silicon valley?
If by unhealthy, you mean:
"Our bosses are insane, and keep mandating inhuman and inhumane hours, while simultaneously cutting pay and benefits. They tell us that this is just the market responding to industry pressures, but somehow our quarterly reports remain stellar, and our bosses bring home multi-million dollar bonuses every year."
then yes. That is epidemic. The only real solution is the Pyrrhic option of unionization. (Yes. I know it has real bad sides. There really isn't a valid alternative without legal enforcement from the feds, and face it-- the suits have more money than you do, and will never support such an initiative without a shotgun pointed at them.)
If you mean "There is an unhealthy sexist culture that makes me feel uneasy or victimized."
That is somewhat supported, but it also goes the other way-- "I am afraid to even so much as mention the word "sausage" at the office, lest I be fired for being gender insensitive." This is a situation where a carefully balanced degree of enforcement is the ideal, and management needs to resist the urge to over-enforce to placate vocal minorities at the expense of silent majorities.
If you mean "The building is literally toxic. There is fucking asbestos hanging out between the ceiling tiles, falling on us every day."
that too has a surprising incidence rate. (It combines with the first interpretation, where "employees and their welfare are not worth spending investor money on!" is the pathology.) However, it is ALREADY illegal to provide such a work environment... which brings us to--
If you mean "My employer is abusive, and threatens extraordinary consequences for addressing grievances of any kind. Shit is real here, but if I speak up, I will not only be sacked, but never work in this industry ever again."
That too is a thing, especially in the hyper-connected world we live in today. Sadly, this would require sweeping changes in how HR approaches social media and how it automates its hiring practices in order to prevent abuses in the employer/employee relationship of this kind, as well as stronger penalties for industries that defacto engage in it. This suffers the same problem as the first interpretation; the solution requires the individuals with all the political momentum to work against their own interests, in favor of those with little to no political or financial power.
This is still a useful question to ask, but it needs the followup to clarify. Of course, I dont think industry or government really want to know.
He might be a star, but there are stars that require very powerful telescopes to see!
The survey asks for a healthy environment. If the answer is negative, is it necessarily 'unhealthy'? Or could it be 'not healthy', i.e. neutral?
One of our labs has no exhaust ventilation. The guy working there wears protective gear, but this doesn't help the rest of the building...
Surveys are very often phrased so vaguely and inaccurately that it's virtually impossible to answer them in a meaningful way. Which is a real problem when trying to interpret the results. At other times surveys have leading questions.
It depends on how you define "unhealthy," of course
It sounds to me like a more generalised level of dissatisfacton. Whether specifically with the work environment or the company, or the boss, or the pay rates or the amount of holiday.
Or even the weather on the day the question was asked, indigestion, the quality of the coffee, the distance to the car park or any of a multitude of other potential issues.
In short, asking people how they feel about anything is neither a reliable basis for a professional study, nor a robust measure of the actual question asked.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
If we assume healthy is defined as a place that fosters good mind and body health, then most IT work is going to be unhealthy. Sitting all day. Paged and working all night. Broken sleep. Stress of solving a problem, often without a safety net of others to help with the problem. All of that conspires to cause poor health.
I work with criminals and lawyers in the judiciary. It's rape, murder, drug dealing and bad parenting everyday. People in the tech industry are too affected.
Its gotten so bad that no one talk to anybody but their closes friends. One missed step and you end up with HR on your ass (sorry, I said ass. luckily I am an AC here).
Never work with a girl if you can help it.
Never be alone with a girl if you can help it.
Never tell a joke.
Never speak about things that are not work related.
Keep all communications and interactions to a minimum.
Never wear clothing with a message (funny T-shirts have gotten people fired (It had the text "Jesus says ' Don't be a dick!'". Apparently it was offensive on several levels)
Good thing is that we have gotten a price for "most inclusive work place" so I guess we have that going for us...
I bought a Glock 27. The next time an 'Alpha' pisses me off, I'm going to show him the penalty for being an asshole, and he's not going to like it in the short time he understands what is happening to him.
Looking at the list of companies, its pretty clear that its directly related to average age of employees.
Google, LinkedIn, Uber ... Majority of these employees are20-something devs with little real world experience who think that tricks used to make them work more and frivolous/meaningless 'perks' make these great places to work.
Intel - Actual engineers, not software devs calling themselves engineers with 0 certifications from an actual trade group - i.e. average person here has been around longer, worked more and is aware they work is a 4 letter word for a reason, not easily tricked by perks like 'in house cafeteria' which is really just another way to get you to work through lunch.
Amazon - Mostly factory workers who bust their ass doing physical labor in long shifts or older admins making AWS stay green. I.E. they actually work for a living rather than sit at a desk whining about the broken crappuccino machine.
Basically this survey just confirms that manipulating people who don't know any better is still very profitable for business
Ebay - I have no idea here.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You must be the most recent reviewer of "Atlas shrugged for dummies", banana boy.
It is made of workers, mostly. Like most drivers think they are better drivers than the rest, most workers think that they do not contribute to the toxic work culture they bathe into and promote in various ways.
If you want a healthier workplace, work for it.
Heads on pikes. A few examples made. All that pilfered wealth for naught. That is what will change the system without added overhead or rot. The fear of God does nothing. The fear of pitchforks, fire, brimstone, tar and feathers, and a nice stake somewhere...
I mean really. The question itself is designed to give non-meaningful results. Why waste the time of /. readers with something so flawed?
... is probably to get more people to download their app.
Class Action Lawsuit - A good start...
is someone who assembles smartphones in a sweatshop a tech worker? How about someone who works in a cobalt mine?
Tech workers' workplaces are unhealthy because tech workers are unhealthy. Their bodies are ill, their minds twisted, their lifestyle sick. They are horrible people. They deserve their misery.
They can demand those things either b/c their company has been chosen to be 'a good place to work' as said by the workers there, or the fact that college education (degree) has EXPLODED since/during the crash and many who couldn't find jobs in the 2007+ time frame went on to advanced degrees. Now companies have plenty of choice b/c of # of college grads and go after the ones who have pushed themselves. That said, some companies don't pay the best and rest on their laurels of being "the place people want to work" instead of paying a fair salary. As the salaries have (finally) started to catch-up to the demand, it'll be the companies complaining of the demands from the workers.
Many M's feel they 'check the boxes' and do what their boss has done for a year they deserve the job when their EQ is low and don't realize there are far more 'boxes' to check before they are ready to deal with employee discontent, team issues, deadlines (not just their own), politics, etc. Just because a person can do the, in your face, duties doesn't mean they have the capabilities (and likely not the experience) to accomplish the rest.
There is nothing more distracting or de-motivating than working 2 years on something and having someone else take full credit for the hardest achievements while disregarding YOU as being the crutch behind the biggest shortcomings, AND get away with it.
What am I to do, spend another 2 years at this company to see if my new direct report is going to stand up for me or not? (The last 'took another position' as the company was beginning to realize they had 'delegated' all of their responsibility to myself and one other individual.
The one other individual fought change like his job was on the line.
Then when his job was on the line, he had an epiphany and strongly embraced the change, but then lied his butt off about what my role in the game was.
I know the best advice might be to just leave, but that wasn't the point of the article and OP.
How do you deal with this, short of stooping?
I worked at a big computer company for about 15 years. Along with cost cutting came more and more stupid decisions from management. I led a small team for about 5 years. I kept everything running smoothly. All information my team needed to know was funneled through me. And I reported status for the team regularly (too many status meetings, though!). I left that team before it was moved overseas.
The next team I was on had a team leader who was usually not reachable, and who did about 1/3 of the work I had done as a team leader. On this team I had to report to about five or six different people! One time when one of those people I did not even know was directing my work sent me an email, I blew it off. That led to a major escalation about why I did not do what he had ordered. It was a major reconfiguration and he didn't even bother coming to my office down the hall.
Since my official "team leader" was out of the loop, and since I did not even know I was supposed to do what this other guy said, I was the one to blame.
Plus, coworkers I had spent hours training when they were first hired, giving them my insight and knowledge because I had been there so long, turned on me when I needed to know technical details from them years later. By that point, they just couldn't be bothered giving me information I needed to do my job. I was even a groomsman in one of those guys' wedding. After he couldn't be bothered to help me at work, I was no longer friends with that creep.
In another case, despite all the warnings I and others on our team gave to project management, they still shipped (breaking internal protocols) a computer system which was broken and uninstallable to thousands of stores for a major customer. After that, I quit.
That company had become a total failure, both in terms of work environment and in how it was doing financially.
My last four jobs were placed well inside the gates of hell. Didn't matter that I worked very, very hard, was extremely productive, and had notable successes. All four places were full of idiots and morons, especially management!
I am joyfully retired now, don't miss any part of corporate america. Nobody gives me assignments with goals that can't be met, even if we'd had sufficient resources (which we never had). Good riddance!
Work is unhealthy.
...as self-disclosure on the internet. No likert scale to see if opinions are polarised? No response rates to tell how representative it is? No inverted and paraphrased questions/statements as controls? No open ended questions to see what respondents mean by "healthy"? No follow-up interviews?
Especially if you combine it with eating while working with computers all day
Like "King Size Homer" https://youtu.be/-VHlwcxUUnE
I work in a place that I think is unhealthy.
This article actually cheered me up, because I thought it was almost every place. If it's only fifty percent, I am encouraged for the future!
My old job was pretty unhealthy. Lots of overtime and bad work life balance.
Two of my team leads were very insecure and had very poor leadership skills.
The manager was close to retirement and sticking around since they liked the technical side. As a result didn't want to deal with all the turnover the two team leads were causing.
I left in the summer and transferred to another department that's a better group of people.
You must be a pu$sy.
Many of the buildings I've worked in with my company over the past couple of decades have had levels of mold, damage and inadequate upkeep
that ranged from elevated to downright ludicrous.
Like many large companies, they have their own Health / Hazard / Safety teams that we are supposed to contact about any concerns.
When we did complain ( many times ) about the mold growing on everything ( walls, floor, desks, chairs, etc ) in the locked room next door to us,
they would simply send out a cleaning crew to vacuum, wipe down and otherwise remove the most obvious stuff. The Health Organization ison the
company payroll so it is their job to fix any issues as quickly and cheaply as possible, so keep that in mind.
Finally, someone got OSHA involved and after showing up the inspector ordered the evacuation of the impacted area and the areas adjacent to it.
( Three floors ) The company was forced to rip out everything down to the concrete and steel. Clean up took years.
That was the first building. My doctors seem to think that the time I spent there ( many years ) are why my lungs and sinuses are where they are
today. One of my coworkers always had what we thought to be an Asthma issue as he was always coughing and spitting out crap. After
developing similar symptoms, I wonder just how much the daily exposure to those levels of mold had in his condition.
I heard he died not long after retiring. :|
After moving from the building, anytime my symptoms started to worsen I would ask the Health folks for an air quality check.
I've had to vacate two additional buildings ( three total now ) because of the results showing high / elevated concentrations of various species
of mold.
The most recent building I work in rarely gets cleaned. The cleaning crews show up roughly once a month ( the building only has a few full time
employeesin it ) to change out the paper towels, take out the trash and clean the toilets. They do not sweep, mop, vacuum the floor or wipe down
any horizontal surfaces at all. Where a roach died on the floor, it stayed there for years even if it was the middle of the room.
Once again, I contacted our Health folks and the building manager to come look for themselves and to run an air quality check.
I straight up asked the building manager why the cleaning crews didn't vacuum, sweep or clean up the obvious and his answer was:
" It's not in the budget. "
I then walked them around the building to show them all the dead roaches, the fact that the carpet hadn't seen a vacuum for more than a
decade, the mold growing on the walls of an unused front door entrance, breaks and splits in the walls from previous water damage that was
never fixed, the multi-colored water damaged carpet in one of the hallways and the list goes on and on.
The air quality check produced results as one might expect from said conditions. :| )
( Of course the cleaning crew made an extra effort the next time they were out due to the complaints. They even washed the carpet.
Here's the kicker. This is a Fortune 500 company whose profits were ~$20 BILLION last year.
( Profits. Total revenues in excess of ~$150 Billion in 2017 )
" It's not in the budget. "
I've debated bringing OSHA back into the picture as there is a clear pattern of incompetence on the part of the company I work for.
The company owns thousands of buildings across the country alone. Many more overseas. I could probably keep OSHA inspectors
busy and employed for the next decade just inspecting the buildings.
The problem is, we all know what will happen if I do.
I won't get fired for reporting it ( that's illegal ), but they will certainly find something ( anything ) they can fire me for eventually.
So the conundrum is this:
Try to outlive it with the few years I have left before retirement, or report it and risk getting fired which will likely wreak any retirement
plans I had. ( Assuming I don't kee
... and the answer is, "yes" and "no."
"I consider my current workplace a healthy working environment."
Yes:
I worked 18 years at a law firm and my coworkers and I had a good time, laughing and protecting each other from management. When the network fell down, they expressed sympathy instead of bitching and I worked hard and fast to get them back up. We respected each other and the socialization was healthy.
No:
Management was fraught with pure assholes of the idiot kind. Those dumb goddam son of a bitches thought they were being treated with respect when it was actually fear. They didn't know the fucking difference.
One of them asked me how many computers we were buying from Dell. I told her, 20, and she told me to call up Dell and ask for a volume discount.
I went to my office, called my Dell rep, asked him to give me a discount because I was buying so many goddam computers and, after catching our breath, talked about how fucked up management was. I reported to her that Dell said when we got up to the volume-buy of the state of Texas, please try again.
Yes:
The reason I stayed was the managing partner.
He was a gruff bastard He was busy, direct, decisive, dismissive, had a steel-trap memory and was, like me, a military veteran.
I learned one thing very quickly: The roles were: He was an officer and I was enlisted ... roles we both had in common.
He walked in on me one time and I was kicked back, drinking coffee. He said, "Caught you!" I said, "You will never catch me. Whatever I'm doing on your dime is the very best I can do on your dime." He was skeptical and asked, "So what are you doing now?" I said, "Thinking." He asked "About what?" I said, "The problem." He asked, "What problem?" I said, "Exactly! You don't know we have a problem and I'll never tell you we're having a problem because it's my problem, not yours. When I need your help with it, I'll let you know about it."
He asked me, "So what's with the coffee?" I said, "I'm trying to think of a way to fix the problem." He smiled and said, "Carry on."
Lower management would go to him to complain about how I would not process impossible tasks they assigned and he would say, where everyone could hear him, "I don't give a shit about your problems. He does a damned good job for me and you don't matter. Now, get out."
HA! What a guy. What a fucking guy.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
This is what left of the creimertards after creimer made 100+ videos in a year on YouTube? Sad. Fucking sad.
It is stressful and something you do not do of your own free will. No surprise it is generally not healthy.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And this is why we can't have nice things.
They really mean none of the things you mention.
What they mean by "toxic workplace", is people are are too negative. It only takes a handful, and about 30 days they can turn everyone there negative - like a really slow acting zombie plague.
The reason why workplaces have gotten somewhat more negative over the years is that managers have gone a bit soft overall and are not willing to fire people everyone that works there wish would be fired.
It's one of the things that moved me into consulting, after many years working at various size tech companies. Rampant negativity I've seen in companies from 20 people to twenty thousand (or more!), so it's nice to be able to more easily move between companies.
I've also worked in small groups in larger companies and very small companies, that have a great culture and are not toxic because all of the people are great to work with. So it's not like it's impossible, generally people would not like to gripe all the time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Posting anon for obvious reasons.
Most Intel employees work in large open offices in cubes. Some work in fabs in bunny suits. These environments are very different.
For those in cubes - the environment is
A) Bright
B) Loud - They 'updated' the cubes to lighter colored walls which are much lower, so sound travels and bounces around.
C) Not private - They shrank the cubes so your chain is adjacent to the opening. You are visible to everyone who walks by and to the person in the cube opposite.
For food there are cafes
A) There are no low-carb offerings.
B) There are many high carb, high sugar offerings.
So there is a constant background stress while in the office and the food is unhealthy and promotes obesity.
A few times a year they send out emails telling everyone how wonderful the new scheme is, whatever it happens to be.
It's propaganda that will later be used as "justification" for various politically motivated "improvements."
If you don't agree with their methods, you are an evil person who hates progress.
This sort of "study" is actively harmful. We should find out who is paying for this. It got posted here because PR folks wanted it to be--note that it comes from an editor, not the community.
I've loved the internet for a while, but am frustrated by the current limits of many major text based services...including slashdot.
Why can't we focus our comments on a word, or section of words, to clarify where our comment is directed? Then people could say what their unhealthy comment s directed at.
Or link our comments to a direction of replies that seem similar? Instead of just "all replies"? Down is only one direction!
OK, another "million dollar idea" gone to waste as not implemented, but this seems so basic...
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
Well for starters, I work at a steel factory. If I spend more than 30 minutes on the factory floor the black dust from cutting and welding coats my throat making it dry out and difficult to talk. There's also the issue with the factory being spread out over a mile with multiple buildings. The one upside is I have access to a golf cart, the downside to that is the cart is open to the elements which makes the sub-zero Midwest Winter a challenge. It's not too fun dodging semi trucks and forklift in on of those carts either. Then there's the HQ which is infested with, ants, stink bugs and ladybugs. The water is sometimes yellow and the housekeeping contractors don't show up everyday. There's a mini fridge and a 15 year old microwave for us to store/prepare our lunches in though, I'm sure those are clean. There is zero budget for common IT tools like push carts to transport computers and printers on, or any kind of bags or toolcases to carry parts. Thankfully management is understanding when I need to take 1-2 hours to rest my back after lugging a 70lb stacked industrial printer onto a golf cart to at least get it between buildings. The best part of the job is never having to worry about meeting walking goals (step counts.) I don't really like the steep metal staircases in the factory to get to the upstairs offices that overhang the factory floor though, it's beginning to hurt my knees.
Not to mention: blaster building, paint booth, laser cutters, plasma torches, 2,000F-3,000F furnaces, quench tanks, and the brake cable on the golf cart that was broken for nearly 3 years before they finally decided to repair it.
It's certainly been an interesting experience, definitely not a healthy one.
P.S. I still remember the time my manager at IBM asked me to climb onto the rooftop of a power building with a measuring tape to verify the dimensions that were on some old blueprints. My favorite though was the HAZMAT training at Applied Materials where they advised if you smelled a particular smell (it was either brownies or mushrooms, IIRC) to try and fall in the direction of the "big red button" as you collapse to your unfortunate death.
Repeating any mindless activity (or almost mindless) for 7-11 hours a day, is unhealthy.
you're out of your element Donnie!
According to WaPo Amazon is much better with employees who just cry at their desks instead of dying.