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Googler... ex-Googler

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1114 points namuorg | 3 comments | 11 Apr 25 20:19 UTC | HN request time: 0.478s | source
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spicyusername ◴[14 Apr 25 13:22 UTC] No.43680988[source]▶

    I really was just a fuckin cog in a mega corp.
Yep. One of the most unfortunate realities of modernity.

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.

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1. ssimpson ◴[14 Apr 25 15:52 UTC] No.43682671[source]▶
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.

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2. rsanek ◴[14 Apr 25 16:48 UTC] No.43683264[source]▶
> 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.

3. drewlander ◴[15 Apr 25 17:02 UTC] No.43695591[source]▶
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.