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0 pointsduxup5y ago0 comments

It's such a weird dynamic.

I remember visiting the valley for the first time for a big company I worked for at another location. The scale of work life balance was unbalanced so many strange ways...

The tech support team I worked with was in 'building 3'. Nobody ever left that building through out the day. I went to the big cafeteria and the options were amazing. I managed to get some of my peers to go with me, several of my peers from building 3 were equally amazed as ... they never went there, they just worked all day, ate something at their desk, and kept working...

Meanwhile I'd go to the cafeteria each day and sit outside and watch as some folks would play basketball for an hour, then a while later show up and chat it up with coworkers (not talking about work) over lunch for what seemed like forever...

The game room was always full of the same guys, the other amenities, yoga, etc, and it often included people who I simply never could get a hold of. HR couldn't be bothered to get security to take my photo for my badge for weeks ... because the gym schedule changed.

It was a weird, unbalanced, yin and yang.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

Aromasin5y ago· 2 in thread

I noticed this when I worked at my first "employee satisfaction" focused company. Half the employees took every perk they could get, seemingly doing as little work as they could under the mantra of "work-life balance". The other half never left their desks. It created a strange dynamic of resentment between the two parties, where one thought the other stupid, and the other thought them lazy. It was hard to know where to stand.

duxupOP5y ago

I once worked for a team was historically over worked, that had changed recently for the better, but the team culture was still pretty stressed and nose to the grind stone. We were working to bring that down, but it takes time.

The offices were being renovated and our team was moved next to HR.

HR formally complained (apparently there was a process... where HR sent some sort of complaint to ... HR) that the team sitting next to them was not very friendly.

Before what I can only imagine would have been a horrific joint team meeting / culture clash could occur, someone very smart put the kibosh on the complaint / meeting ....

The culture / work experience differences were extreme.

fileyfood5005y ago

I agree, I think this situation fits in nicely with the discussion of how stock compensation doesn’t directly result from the results of your work. Employees who aren’t passionate about or motivated by their jobs seek out compensation in return for retention. And even then, they scale their efforts at work based on their interest. I like the independence of Amazon teams, but the independence is limited when the teams don’t control their own finances.

xyzelement5y ago· 2 in thread

A few reactions to that.

First, there's always a self selecting thing there. For some reason folks from building 3 never bothered to go explore, and it sounds like they didn't keep going to the caf even once you showed them. Nothing was holding them at their desk, they just didn't care/bother.

Second, some jobs are different than others. Some jobs you have to "be there" for. Tech support may be like that - you have to pick up the call/email when it comes in. Other jobs may be more like strategy or research where having a few key insights a year generates millions of dollars for the company and if hanging in the cafeteria helps you do that, everyone wins.

Third, at the end of the day you kinda have to trust the system. What I mean is - if the company is successful it's because it's overall people strategy is working. So in the great net of things, having the caf setup be the way it was may be what was needed, even if some individuals abused it (which you then would hope be detected in their overall output)

duxupOP5y ago

I think it is self selecting ... by every individual. Each makes their choices.

The real challenge is when you value work life balance and ... it starts to hit other people's work.

Like in my case, getting hassled by security every day, multiple times a day ... IMO that should supersede someone's gym class if it was their job to schedule getting me a photo and a proper badge, but it is super easy for those kinda "well we value work life balance" kinda decisions to push important work aside.

JKCalhoun5y ago

A strange work ethic I must have been born with (weird, I know) kept me mashing keys the full 8 hours while some of my co-workers might see fit to stay home one day because a package was due to arrive.

Or maybe I have always felt like I'm an imposter: if the ax fell on the team I didn't want to be the low hanging fruit they culled. Who knows.

But I confess to having had a difficult time across my career accepting the perks, relaxing. It's been a slow awareness that this industry really truly is on fire, they really make boatloads of cash, they really need me more than they compensate me for.

What a strange time to live in for a blue-collar programmer like me.

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6 comments · 2 top-level

Aromasin5y ago· 2 in thread

duxupOP5y ago

The offices were being renovated and our team was moved next to HR.

HR formally complained (apparently there was a process... where HR sent some sort of complaint to ... HR) that the team sitting next to them was not very friendly.

Before what I can only imagine would have been a horrific joint team meeting / culture clash could occur, someone very smart put the kibosh on the complaint / meeting ....

The culture / work experience differences were extreme.

fileyfood5005y ago

xyzelement5y ago· 2 in thread

A few reactions to that.

duxupOP5y ago

I think it is self selecting ... by every individual. Each makes their choices.

The real challenge is when you value work life balance and ... it starts to hit other people's work.

JKCalhoun5y ago

Or maybe I have always felt like I'm an imposter: if the ax fell on the team I didn't want to be the low hanging fruit they culled. Who knows.

What a strange time to live in for a blue-collar programmer like me.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse