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.
Based on what I’ve seen, that seems to be how it’s always gone within an individual business (and also not exclusive to tech). Maybe right now we’re calling it an era within tech because it’s happening simultaneously to some big players, and that’s the difference?
For a lot of businesses, things start out small, stressful, and maybe a bit grindy while folks are trying to get things off the ground. If that works out, then there’s usually a huge push to grow. Business moves into the “great places to work” phase, basically dream job, though depending on the business and industry this can sometimes also be the “we don’t pay the best but we’ve got an onsite arcade and mini-bar” phase. It’s usually an economic boom time, best numbers ever type situation. And then the tiniest little bump, and that all comes crashing down. Cut backs, more stringent rules, everything has to be measured, lay-offs or mass exodus, place becomes a low morale corporate hellscape and suddenly every thing is “we’re a family”.
Been around the block more than once, I’ve seen the process and know the signs.