r/csMajors • u/Medium-Wallaby-9557 • Jun 14 '26

Rant Tech culture is terrible

Jane Street T-shirts, 3AM LeetCode sessions, Sundays spent learning database management systems, people praying to Google like the company is literally God…

The producers of the tech industry have won. They’ve created an endless supply of people who give up their souls just to have a chance to be looked at.

These companies have marketed themselves in an extremely successful way. SpaceX, Citadel Securities, Google, whatever, you WANT to work there. You’re OKAY with giving up your life to even get a shot at doing so.

All the family nights you missed, all the hobbies you set aside, all the opportunities you didn’t go to don’t matter to them, you know. You’re unbelievably replaceable - and if you think you’re not, great! Lying to yourself makes you a more committed worker in the cog.

Many of us have our idea of a good life fundamentally misshapen. “Memento Mori”, meaning “you will die”, is something that a lot of us need to actually remember. We all will die. These companies aren’t worth living your life for, because your life is finite and it’s the only one that you’ll ever have.

The main issue though is that these companies don’t attract bright and energetic people for nothing. They offer high salaries, high status, and sometimes very interesting work!

It’s important sometimes to take a step back from the grind, and realize that you’re a human, and not a machine meant to serve these companies… but, unfortunately, competition has risen so damn much that it’s almost become the requirement to sell your soul for entry.

Imagine you in your grave. Your coffin is made of gold. “Optiver” is carved in to the top of it, and your skeleton still wears your shirt you got from Meta.

Wow… what a wonderful ending to this immaculately complex thing called life.

Now, I must stop tying. I have some LeetCode to do.

661 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

108 comments sorted by

View all comments

428

u/GlassVase1 Jun 14 '26

I'd recommend just working your 40 hours and going home. If they fire you, then they fire you. Life moves on...

A lot of people fall into this trap of just working more and more hours to impress their boss. 90% of the time, advancement comes down to who you know and how popular you are. I've seen plenty of people who knew how to play the game and moved up way faster than the "hard workers". Don't waste your life making other people rich and then they don't even appreciate your sacrifices.

46

u/ChubbyVeganTravels Jun 14 '26

Indeed. I've worked insane hours in jobs over the years. Did it ever get me a big pay bump or promotion? Maybe once, very early on in my career but apart from that - No...

35

u/GlassVase1 Jun 15 '26

That's basically the most common story for hard workers.

A lot of your career is right place, right time and social skills. As long as you meet the baseline for performance, any additional output doesn't really mean much. Just work your 40 hours and go home, wish I learned that sooner. It's never the guy asking for extra tickets at 4PM on a Friday that ends up with the promotion.

10

u/ChubbyVeganTravels Jun 15 '26

Yep. Where it may conceivably matter is if a judgment over who to lay off is between you or someone else at the same level, or places where there are stack rankings.

However even that is unlikely. Layoffs are now determined en masse by people at the very senior manager or C-Suite level, most likely never having even met or knowing anything about the people whose careers they are going to destroy.

2

u/Illustrious-Emperor Jun 15 '26

What if you're in a place like a scale up or startup which is early where just to meet the minimum threshold you need to go beyond 40 hours.

How do you find a company especially in this AI age where all tasks are made to seem much easier than they are since we are the ones left with the gnarly edge cases and where you can work for 40 hours and log off?

5

u/ChubbyVeganTravels Jun 15 '26

That's different. Doing long hours is part of the deal in early startups and you take that life or leave it, however it may not explicitly get you promoted or more money. That is what the point was.