Honestly, I kinda’ disagree with this. My first job was nowhere near this messed up, nor did anyone have such expectations.
Started off as QA in a large game producing company 13 years ago. This Agile bullshit was still half a decade away from being adopted as IT’s religion, we worked Waterfall. We had at least 2-3 days per build, a team of 20-30 people testing at once, and a couple of months per update. Procedures were clear, we had to pester management if anyone wanted overtime for whatever reason (and always had to justify it with concrete risks), nobody expected anyone else to kill themselves over the job. Hell, you didn’t even have to speak to anyone as long as you completed your tasks…
To add, every single project on which we worked received top ratings, users praised the stability and reliability, the company never had to internally boost app ratings for anything.
Edit: and this benefitted the Devs as well! They had so much time to work on figuring out bugs and to develop mind-bogglingly complex features which actually worked!
Hell, I remember being called over by one of the Devs, so that I would repro a nasty math logic bug with them and we could both work on figuring out the cause. My guy was patiently looking for flip-flops on the internet when I got there, and told me to chill, go grab a coffee, smoke a cig, because “this’ll be our task for the rest of the day.” Sat down with him after 30 minutes of chillin’, bug was fixed and the fix deployed to Staging within an hour and a half after that… No pressure, no stress, no anger, just two people calmly working on fixing a problem together.
I hear what you are saying but that’s not an example of a systemic degradation of corporate culture, that’s an example of one company vs others. I have been working since the mid-90’s and there are a lot of rules, processes and procedures that are now widely adopted by default across the industry. These rules were not always there and from conversations I had in my early years it used to be much worse in the 70s and 80s. Don’t get me started on how bad it was for women, queer folk and minorities.
Well, I saw that systemic degradation with my very eyes, in every company I’ve worked… Quit my first job because they reduced team sizes, started demanding more speed, and basically told us “you’re on your own.”
Same happened at my second job, a start-up. Then, at my third, these unhealthy dynamics were already present, then got even worse…
I find it very hard to change my opinion that things have been getting worse and worse and worse over time. Capitalism may not have changed in itself, but people’s approach sure has… Faster for less money, always. And with every iteration, the goalposts keep being moved farther and farther from anything sane…
Honestly, I kinda’ disagree with this. My first job was nowhere near this messed up, nor did anyone have such expectations.
Started off as QA in a large game producing company 13 years ago. This Agile bullshit was still half a decade away from being adopted as IT’s religion, we worked Waterfall. We had at least 2-3 days per build, a team of 20-30 people testing at once, and a couple of months per update. Procedures were clear, we had to pester management if anyone wanted overtime for whatever reason (and always had to justify it with concrete risks), nobody expected anyone else to kill themselves over the job. Hell, you didn’t even have to speak to anyone as long as you completed your tasks…
To add, every single project on which we worked received top ratings, users praised the stability and reliability, the company never had to internally boost app ratings for anything.
Edit: and this benefitted the Devs as well! They had so much time to work on figuring out bugs and to develop mind-bogglingly complex features which actually worked!
Hell, I remember being called over by one of the Devs, so that I would repro a nasty math logic bug with them and we could both work on figuring out the cause. My guy was patiently looking for flip-flops on the internet when I got there, and told me to chill, go grab a coffee, smoke a cig, because “this’ll be our task for the rest of the day.” Sat down with him after 30 minutes of chillin’, bug was fixed and the fix deployed to Staging within an hour and a half after that… No pressure, no stress, no anger, just two people calmly working on fixing a problem together.
I hear what you are saying but that’s not an example of a systemic degradation of corporate culture, that’s an example of one company vs others. I have been working since the mid-90’s and there are a lot of rules, processes and procedures that are now widely adopted by default across the industry. These rules were not always there and from conversations I had in my early years it used to be much worse in the 70s and 80s. Don’t get me started on how bad it was for women, queer folk and minorities.
Well, I saw that systemic degradation with my very eyes, in every company I’ve worked… Quit my first job because they reduced team sizes, started demanding more speed, and basically told us “you’re on your own.”
Same happened at my second job, a start-up. Then, at my third, these unhealthy dynamics were already present, then got even worse…
I find it very hard to change my opinion that things have been getting worse and worse and worse over time. Capitalism may not have changed in itself, but people’s approach sure has… Faster for less money, always. And with every iteration, the goalposts keep being moved farther and farther from anything sane…