[question_away]

If I'm reading this right, the crux of the issue was overworked engineers and unproductive meetings that got heated between experts? And the resultant stress led to brain damage?

Personally, I don't know any software teams that aren't understaffed at best. Any project that has multiple stakeholders is going to have some meetings that feel unproductive with key leaders arguing for their best interests. That's just the natural order of collaboration.

These are the kinds of posts that remind me how privileged high-skilled software engineers are. I am the first in my family to not work in some form of construction and can't help but imagine how someone like OP would fare in that environment.

> I spent the next couple years unemployed, working with my physicians to try and recover my health while occasionally writing code. I’m happy to report that I’m partially recovered at this point and being paid to work on open source, but I’ll never be the same.

Being able to take off 2 years to attend to personal health is a luxury pretty exclusive to tech (insofar as how available/attainable it is).

[didibus]

I've worked some construction in the past, didn't find it worse, it actually left me feeling better at the end of the day, there's something positive about the physical activity from it.

My point is, I don't think these comparison judgement are useful. Ever heard: "can't compare two people's pain"?

Think about the purpose of your comment? What's the end goal? To convince people nothing should be done about anything and for everyone to just suck it up? Seems that's a bad attitude to be honest.

If your family's construction work environment is toxic and treats them badly, you should be complaining about it and bring attention to it so hopefully we can all demand better for them. Similarly here, someone stepped up to try and raise the standards by pointing out at real issues faced in some organizations that fail on all front, fails to deliver to the business, the customer, the employees, it's worth talking about in my opinion. How else you get anything to become better otherwise?

[question_away]

My point is that adopting terms like "toxic" to describe this team's culture is over-selling and detracts from workplaces that are actually toxic.

If we're dropping the bar of a toxic workplace to be: trouble sleeping, questioning self-worth and general anxiety then what language do we use for workplaces that involve actual malice? Co-workers sabotaging others, misogynistic comments, abusive messages, etc are all toxic but clearly on a different level than described in the post.

> If you're family's construction work environment is toxic and treats them badly, you should be complaining about it and bring attention to it so hopefully we can all demand better for them.

That sounds nice, but there are workplaces where complaining will make life worse for you. And for certain union jobs, it's very difficult to leave.

[015a]

Both examples are toxic; malicious; whatever adjective you'd like to use.

If the alternative is to worry about devaluing the word, and thus letting less-toxic-by-whatever-definition-suits-me-best workplaces slide, because dontchaknow slaves work for pennies stitching jeans together in bangladesh; that's not acceptable. There's always a greater evil. If you ask me choose the lesser evil; I'd prefer not to choose. It's possible to hold them both accountable.

Moreover, this idea that tech jobs can't be toxic, they must be a lesser evil, because: you're paid so well! You get to work from home! You get free lunch at the office! Job security for life! That's bullshit. Its all, entirely, totally, rooted in society's child-like understanding of mental health. OSHA for mind jobs doesn't exist; it probably shouldn't, because we really don't understand what causes this, why different people react so differently, and what "healthy" looks like. But that doesn't mean the damage isn't real.

I am entirely and totally convinced that in a few decades: we'll look back on comments like your's the same way we look back on the companies who used radium to make measuring cups, or those who lined the walls of houses with asbestos. It'll be overwhelmingly obvious in hind-sight. That toxic workplace behavior can cause damage in people so significant that its net harm is higher than many of the more mundane things OSHA protects against. And maybe more critically to Big Business; that workplaces which operate like this are overwhelmingly low-performing on any timeframe longer than a few weeks.

[disqard]

Your comment will probably age well with time.

I'll add that in this "information economy", we have few (if any) easy-to-learn-and-apply frameworks, analogous to notions of food groups, good vs bad fats, etc.

Thus, not only are we drowning in information (especially as knowledge workers), we're also extremely prone to navigating it in ways detrimental to our (mental) health.

[didibus]

To me, toxic implies something that's bad for you but in insidious ways. That means it's slow and subtle, you wouldn't even believe it, at first you'd think this is great, these people are happy, this job looks great, but years later, you've got memory loss, needed to take physical disability, and the whole team quit... What the hell?

I feel it perfectly describes toxicity. What can cause such a thing? What's the root cause? It seems there are certain things about the human psyche we've yet to understand that somehow can be very damaging to it.

It means that if say there's a person whose the perpetrator, they might not even realize. If a manager causes the environment to make people feel crappy, they might not understand how, why, even if that's not their intent.

Malice can be toxic too, but malice describes the intent, someone could purposefully make the environment toxic, still toxic, but the intent was malicious. I find toxicity describes the environment, it's not because no one was purposely poisoning the well that it can't still be toxic.

Now if people are being abusive, psychologically or physically, in obvious ways, I would just call that an abusive workplace.

That's just the way I interpret those words.

Now if you're simply trying to say we should prioritize our efforts first to workplaces that are really bad in obvious and extreme ways, downright abusive, I wouldn't disagree, but is this really detracting?

That's why I said, if you know of worse offenders, bring them up, don't just deny this particular offense. I know that labor in other countries is much worse, but I can't as easily enact changes in other countries. I know that some jobs treat employees really poorly and pays terribly, and I'm not okay with that and support labor rights, higher wages, and would love to see more paid leave, shorter hours, better safety protocols. Simultaneously I happen to work in tech, so I'm also interested in seeing those jobs improve, they have different kind of issues that seem more insidious, they're also worth talking about in my opinion.

I would agree with you if somehow tech worker complaints was drowning out the voices of other workers who have more obvious abuses going on. I just don't think that's the case.

[015a]

By my memory; not researched, probably wrong, but: one of the early organizations to use the word "toxicity" to describe human behavior was actually (not a joke) Riot Games, in describing some League of Legends players.

I wish I could find the blog post, as it was at least a decade ago at this point, but it described their reasoning as: it's not just malicious behavior, but its malicious behavior which "spreads" between people. Malice creates Malice. Someone yells obscenities in chat, it tilts another player, and that player is now yelling obscenities in the next game; that's toxicity.

Which is only to say that I think it's a good definition and wholly applicable. Corporate politics flows down from the top; the behavior of managers affects the behavior of middle-managers, which can affect the behavior of line workers. Toxicity isn't just a bad apple; its a bad organization.

[question_away]

If you look up any articles about the Activision Blizzard saga you'll find the word toxic being used most often to describe their workplace. Is OP's situation comparable to Activision Blizzard?

[didibus]

We don't have a good way to measure harm, let alone be able to compare it between contexts. So we just don't know to be honest.

All I know is memory loss, and needing to take a 2 year work leave sounds pretty bad. You're only hesitant to recognize this because you don't understand the cause. If I told you it turned out there was lead exposure in the office, now you probably would find it terrible. One day we'll hopefully understand the cause and effect of such thing, and the behaviors or whatever it could be, still might be caused by actual toxins who knows, but when you do, you'll similarly go, I can't believe they allowed this to go on when we know it causes memory loss and traumatic brain disabilities. Even if it's only on certain individuals, you'd be appalled to know some restaurant willingly served peanuts to someone allergic wouldn't you?

[klyrs]

Is woodsorrel comparable to water hemlock? Kidney stones are better than death, but both are toxic. Sounds like the author was directly harmed by their work environment, so it sounds fair to call it toxic even if it could be worse.

[outworlder]

There's toxic workplaces, and there's actually _hostile_ ones. We don't need to be literally abused for a workplace to be toxic.

[ROTMetro]

Had to come back because this upset me so much. Here we have an elite person functioning at an incredibly elite level with the strength to reveal their weakness publically with nothing to gain from it but maybe helping others they don't even know and your response is to attack them as being priveledged or coddled. This isn't a seven year old not wanting to go to school and needing to learn a lesson that sometimes we have to work hard. This person has proven themselves already.

Dude your attitude is the reason people don't talk. The reason people OD. The reason they turn to self medicating or self harm. FU! You want an unacceptable view take a look at yourself. If someone has the courage to tell you they are hurting be a God damn human being and understand that they are hurting and don't respond with saying they really shouldn't say anything.

[ROTMetro]

This sounds like a crabs in a bucket response to me.

I have been assigned physical labor jobs in prison that were actual torture where I finished with hypothermia and shredded hands embedded with fiberglass and complaining would definatlely lead to much worse. I have had the bottom of society post prison jobs, like recycling plant where you sorted shit (actual fesses, also, one time a dead body) out of cardboard off a belt going 90 miles an hour with a 60 piece per minute pick requirement and 10 hour shifts. I have worked on stressful development projects. The development projects were much worse for my health mentally and physically long term, and in fact my coping with that in the dumbest way possible led to the sweet prison gig.

At least in the recycling gig we were all in it together, and the prison one I had a fixed date when the suffering would end.

[sfink]

Based on your other comments, it seems your main complaint is the use of the word "toxic". Which I agree is overused and has been expanded to cover more ground than it used to, but the OP is far from the first to apply it more broadly. This is well within the range of how the word is used today, especially when referring to "toxic work environments".

As for the rest, I'm having trouble interpreting your comment any differently from "paper cuts aren't that bad, so why is this person complaining about a stab wound?" Understaffed is common and not in itself that big a deal; working in an environment where the system is visibly working against you, where you lack agency and people are forthright about how your well-being doesn't matter? That even the quality and success of your project doesn't really matter to them? That's not a paper cut.

I used to work in construction as well, and am from a family of carpenters stretching several generations. I've also worked directly with the OP, though briefly. But I also know a fair amount about her work. So I think I have a relevant perspective; whether you respect it or not is up to you. But my experience is that Katelyn is very good technically. She's no whiner, she's persevered through quite a few tough situations that I know of, and what happened with the rest of the team kind of backs up her perspective on the situation. I agree that we software people are privileged, but we also have pressures that people in construction don't have and it's worthwhile looking at them seriously instead of invalidating them because some things are easier. (Construction and carpentry have their own distinct pressures, but also their own benefits. I would far rather be a software developer personally. My dad would far rather be a carpenter. I work on interesting problems and make more money. He works outside and directly improves people's lives, and becomes long-term friends with many of them.)

[question_away]

> Based on your other comments, it seems your main complaint is the use of the word "toxic". Which I agree is overused and has been expanded to cover more ground than it used to, but the OP is far from the first to apply it more broadly. This is well within the range of how the word is used today, especially when referring to "toxic work environments".

I've seen it used as broadly but very rarely - generally, "toxic environments" are ones where intentional malice is involved.

> people are forthright about how your well-being doesn't matter

Where in OP's post is this said? This would actually constitute malintent for me and elevate the situation to toxic but I can't find where this is said. It's possible given your experience that you know this happened, but I don't see it in the post itself.

My main issue is the use of "toxic" coupled with the post's advocacy for helping others recognize when they're in a toxic workplace. My concern is that anyone identifying with the general stress described could then accuse their coworkers/managers of manufacturing a toxic work environment. God forbid I have a meeting that someone else thought was unproductive and then accuses me of creating a toxic workplace.

[joepie91_]

> My main issue is the use of "toxic" coupled with the post's advocacy for helping others recognize when they're in a toxic workplace. My concern is that anyone identifying with the general stress described could then accuse their coworkers/managers of manufacturing a toxic work environment.

And they should.

A workplace is not supposed to be baseline stressful - and it's your manager's job to make sure it isn't. If stress is a constant part of your work environment, then your manager (or their manager, etc.) isn't doing their job, and that absolutely does create a toxic work environment.

[commandlinefan]

> the word "toxic". Which I agree is overused

I found it refreshing (and surprising!) to see the word here used in a way that referred to near-universal experiences.

[rektide]

Most software frankly isn't really important. It might make or break a company, but that's a pretty limited fault domain; humanity will be fine.

This post is about something that is glaringly more obvious & important than that. The pressure here is immensely real, the need & overwhelming desire to do better, to make it good is flashing in bright neon signs to me, is extrinsically vital. I don't see any of that recognition written in to your privilege-call-out. To me, it's really hard hearing something so vital to the entire technology world (https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wasm&sort=byDate shows 32 submissions in the past 22 days, and misses all those posts using "webassembly" instead of wasm) is a poorly supported train-wreck, rampant with infighting, with garden-variety shitty management not doing much to support this vital endeavor. The typical salt-of-the-earth engineers being left to their own devices & expected to just chug along is not a "normal" I'm comfortable with for such a vital cornerstone of modern technology.

You're making this out to be a story about software development & privilege. But I have a very very very different view of this as a much more indicative tale, of how core common capacities humanity is building have a very hard time making it along. I think we all have challenges, for sure, but this is a work that so much hope & aspiration is pinned upon, that so much else is launching upon. Focusing on dis-empathy for the individual is not my take here.

[question_away]

From the post:

> My hope is that this story will help people recognize toxic cultures in their own workplaces

This is the part I'm commenting in reply to. I simply don't see the justification of "toxic" in the environment described (I think it's definitely dysfunctional and callous) and took issue with the stated goal for others to use this experience as an understanding of what constitutes "toxic".

[ncmncm]

Causing brain damage is as toxic as anything needs to be.

[kcplate]

I pulled the same vibe from this.

My attitude here is if you don’t like your job and its making you unhealthy AND you work in an industry where just having been at Google on your resume will get you hired just about anywhere else…you should just leave. Why sacrifice health over that?

I have done some shit work prior to tech. My worst tech job in the most “toxic” environment was heads and tails better than working in an industrial laundry washing shop rags, diapers, and restaurant mats.

[Beaver117]

Xooglers aren't just handed jobs. They still have to pass interviews, and have to live up to a higher expectation because of their background. Stress and medical issues still affect them too.

[question_away]

Are we really going to pretend that Xooglers struggle landing jobs in tech? Relative to what the average software engineer goes through, they are "handed jobs".

[kcplate]

> have to live up to a higher expectation because of their background

So you think their background doesn’t give them a leg up in recruiting, interviewing, or hiring, but once they are hired they have to live up to a higher expectation?

Sorry, but they get preference and deference all the way through the process. I have seen it first hand. Also, employers should have high expectations of former Google employees, they are supposed to be the brightest of the bunch.

[malcolmgreaves]

What is your message -- the author shouldn't share their story of a toxic workplace because they made more money than folks in other toxic workplaces?

[question_away]

If OP's description is what constitutes a "toxic workplace" then any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is also toxic. From what I read, I would describe OP's team as severely dysfunctional and the bar for "toxic" should be higher (generally, indicating some level of malice).

I think it's damaging to dilute terms like "toxic" by using them to describe a situation that is generally stressful and widely experienced.

[eropple]

> If OP's description is what constitutes a "toxic workplace" then any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is also toxic.

> I think it's damaging to dilute terms like "toxic" by using them to describe a situation that is generally stressful and widely experienced.

This characterization is inches away from an epiphany.

[question_away]

I think every nihilist has the "epiphany" you're implying.

My point is that any service job/Amazon warehouse/construction job is generally stressful, has unproductive meetings, and callous bosses but this is not my bar for "toxic". I'd raise that a bit higher to apply to Activision, Goldman, etc. where there's a level of malice.

[eropple]

What you are suggesting is "nihilism" would, by people who have not decided to norm bad things, perhaps look a lot more like communalism.

[kibwen]

Just because something is widely experienced doesn't mean we must dismiss criticisms of it.

[question_away]

No, but if we're lowering the bar for what constitutes "toxic" to something that is widely experienced then that is inherently dismissive of actually toxic work environments that are not widely experienced.

[joepie91_]

Toxic work environments are widespread. Their widespread nature doesn't somehow magically make them not qualify as 'toxic'. And if anything, it should prompt wider changes in industry, because clearly it is not an isolated incident.

[1minusp]

Share, yes absolutely. But also, keep in perspective, that these are ~$500K+ jobs and the (certainly smart) folks in these jobs can also move to other parts of google that arent as hard to deal with. So, it is understandable that others might not consider this to be a bad deal overall.

[teakettle42]

I see an emotionally unstable author more than I see a toxic workplace.

[kibwen]

It is prudent to err the side of giving the benefit of the doubt to the entity with relatively less power. I see no reason to instinctively jump to Google's defense here, they are more than capable of defending themselves.

[didibus]

The whole team left, so it doesn't seem like the author was a snowflake in this case.

[SquareWheel]

Though looking at the timelines, the team left or had been moved around after a two year period. So it wasn't necessarily an abrupt change.

[cmeacham98]

What's the point of this post? Because OP is more privileged than a construction worker their complaints are invalid? All jobs should be like your family's experience in construction?

[question_away]

From what I read, "toxic" is an exaggeration of the work environment and undermines the message that OP is trying to convey.

[throwaway675309]

And any worker employed at Foxconn could just as easily read your post about how you and your family were privileged to be able to work in adequately compensated construction jobs with OSHA laws, minimum wage, etc.

Or a person who could only find a job working in a coal mine in the Appalachia mountains, or (insert less privileged position here)...

See how meaningless your comparison is?

[kevingadd]

Your other comments aside, just for the record: I was able to take the time off because I saved my income instead of spending it (also thanks to having paid into disability insurance programs for decades). Between rent, food and health insurance I used up all my savings. Certainly having any money saved up at all is a privilege, and I hope it's one more people are able to have in the future.

[drewcoo]

Wishing that mommy and daddy would just stop arguing is absolutely not a position of privilege.

[question_away]

Huh?