News Former HR VP Says IBM Wanted to Look 'Cool' to Millennials, Fired 100,000 Workers

[King_V]

I work in the US at a financial company as a software developer.

For the most part, the rule is what the boss/owner says to new employees: "When you get out of here Friday, don't worry about this place until Monday."

The exception of course is the infrastructure people, who update the systems on the weekends, since that's when they're not in use.

There are times when, for a crazy project, we'll put extra time in, but that's the exception rather than the rule.


I do know, however, when I've searched for jobs, it seems like the prevailing attitude is "of COURSE you're willing to put in extra time frequently" or "why, of COURSE you can pick up and move across the country for a temp position - you couldn't possibly have friends, a spouse, children, or any local attachments."

 

[bit_user]

Although to be honest, it seems to vary a lot even within my company based on position and what team/project your on. E.g. all the managers I've had seem to work late/on weekends on a semi-regular basis, at least based on some of the timestamps I see on emails they send out.

A former coworker who spent a couple years at a US-based defense contractor, fresh out of school, remarked that a couple of overworked individuals seemed to carry the whole team.

Generally speaking, there's a problem you have with bigger organizations, which is that the distribution of employees starts to resemble the distribution of the overall population. It's difficult to have a really large team of really good people. I think this is why Google, for example, is famously particular about their hiring.

Defense contractors often seem to take a different route, which is to add layers of often overbearing process. While it drags down the stronger performers, it also makes it much more difficult for a few outliers at the end of the spectrum to mess things up too badly. Or so I've heard.

 

[bit_user]

I do know, however, when I've searched for jobs, it seems like the prevailing attitude is "of COURSE you're willing to put in extra time frequently"

It makes a big difference if you have equity or stock options. But, without significant upside, it's just exploitation.