Family of MSFT employee who died warn tech companies not to overwork workers

Upd:

I didn’t mean that this is ok, I’m for workers rights.

You are free to be poor, broke and homeless.

We really need a management class that doesn't insist on continuing the cycle of abuse on their underlings.

I’m all for workers’ rights, though.

This won't happen. Your manager puts pressure on you, they get pressure from their manager and so on until it reaches the CEO who might be getting pressure from investors/board.

Only fix is regulations from the government which seems to be a curse word by many posters on this site.

Maybe I've been farming for too long, but my brain, at least, is wired to push until completion and until things are done it will consume me. If you're going to be up all night ruminating about it, you may as well actually work on it.

Of course, in farming you get a nice long break after you've pushed yourself hard. I've never worked at Microsoft, but I suspect, given what I've seen elsewhere, that as soon as it is done it's already on to the next thing, never giving workers a chance to stop for a while.

Worker cooperatives are to corporations what democracies are to dictatorships.

It gets complicated really fast if you add decades of temporary visa status to it.

Culture evolves and changes. What is acceptable in a culture evolves and changes with it.

Be the change you want to see, apply steady pressure, speak up when the opportunity arises, debate people who see things differently, and with time, many things can happen.

Most progress is hard-won.

Problem is that government is the very same people you just spoke of. If they had the collective will to change things, they could just do it. But as they lack the collective will to see change, government can't change either. I believe they call this the stag hunt dilemma.

We, at least those of us in the software industry, tried that. If you look closely, that's what Agile was all about. The associated Twelve Principles of Agile Software outlines what needs to be considered by developers when there isn't a "boss" to oversee operations.

But I'm sure you know how that turned out in practice: The power structure quickly jumped on usurping the name and bastardized it into something that gave them even more power.

Why are you putting yourself in a position where you're forced to find work as fast as possible or you'll be homeless?

For all but the people on the lowest incomes or those with terrible luck this is a solvable problem

So if you can work 10% more than your peers, you get not 10% bonus but rather 30%-100% more. So it makes business sense to put the extra 10%, until everyone is working at 110% and then again, adding an extra 10% pays off, rinse release, death spiral.

The compensation model is pure evil.

Does it actually? I'd buy that it makes silly arbitrary emotion sense to bask in the nonsensical feelings about an even bigger number. The actual business case is much less clear. There is obviously an opportunity cost associated with that extra 10% and 30-100% is not necessarily the best opportunity. I suspect it is often not.

I've had managers who tried. None of them lasted at these companies that did not care. They were politely told they were not meeting expectations and since they had mortgages and other stuff, they took a hint and moved on.

Again, this fight is political and not corporate. Make tech workers hourly and this will stop. There will also be plenty of tech workers who will fight against this tooth and nail.

I can't agree. I don't think anyone who is diligent about recycling or making environmentally conscious food choices believes it will fix global warming. But doing the things that we can is still important for changing culture over time.

If you're a young person growing up in a home that thinks about these things responsibly, the hope is that more people reaching adult-hood will think about the world through that lens. Is it enough? No. Is it still critical? I think so.

> I've had managers who tried. None of them lasted at these companies that did not care.

I've worked at places where management did not behave in the way you describe. The point being that such places exist, and such an outcome is not so impossible.

One way to guarantee things will not change is to do nothing.

I think the parent emphasizes the wrong side of it, although I agree with them strongly that it is a damaging way to do things. Yes, you get slightly more upside on the top end, but it's more like 30% vs. 10% for an average performer, there's no 100% bonuses here unless you're in the "ruling class" (roughly VP and above).

The actual risk is that if you're on the downside of what they call "differentiation", if you're not the one who pushed above your peers, what used to be called meets expectation is now considered below expectations, and is a path towards pip and layoff. Lack of growth for non-terminal roles is also now identified as a path towards pip and layoff.

Microsoft is intentionally turning up the heat to thin the herd.