While many of them still provide free food and pay well, they have little compunction cutting jobs, ordering mandatory office attendance and clamping down on employee debate. […] “Tech could still be best in terms of free lunch and a high salary,” Ms. Grey said, but “the level of fear has gone way up.”
Along the way, the companies became less tolerant of employee outspokenness. Bosses reasserted themselves after workers protested issues including sexual harassment in the workplace. With the job market flooded with qualified engineers, it became easier to replace those who criticized. “This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts co-workers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, said in a blog post last year.
I worked for Unity until recently. They have spent the last four years shifting from what they used to be into a beurocratic stress factory. I started at the tail end of them clinging to what they used to be and I was sold on that kind of work culture. Half dozen mass layoffs, two new CEOs, and most the old guard deciding to retire or find greener pasture, the place is a shell now.
Everyone left was scared and depressed or thinking they’d be the chosen few by sucking up. The team I was in was one of the last holdouts but hiring freezes and budget cuts meant every one of us that left was a lost headcount. When I left we were nearly 1/3 smaller and everyone remaining had to pick up all that slack plus new work.
Working there used to be vibrant and fun. Creatives and tech coming together to make a tool we were proud of. It rotted from the top down.