> 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".
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.
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?
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".
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
This isn't even remotely true. wav2vec alone is the most impactful model in speech recognition in a while and their subsequent work in low-resource languages makes it pretty obvious they're working with limited data...
> 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".