Just the title. I’ve been pulling some crazy all-nighters and I’m absolutely exhausted, and I’m remembering a time when I could comfortably say “fuck off” without any mixed feelings. Now I feel some perverse responsibility to kill myself for our project and I kind of hate myself for it.
in my experience, large orgs are where it’s at. more redundancy, more workers per boss, more “bosses” with less institutional power / buy-in, more of a culture of trying to avoid turnover rather than boundary less toxicity to drive away troublemakers.
shitty shit can still totally happen in larger orgs for sure, but some of the most toxic shit I’ve ever seen was in little orgs where there’s no HR, steward or ombud to act as a check on a bad boss by reminding them how much a lawyer costs per hour and how it’ll turn the bean counters against them.
I’m definitely missing my last job at a big firm.
Granted, a job is still a job, and the threat of being fired is always there, but there was a certain ambivalence that came with it when things went to shit that I could cope with.
With this small company I am emotionally invested and it’s hard to detach from it at the end of the day. Shit sucks.
totally. there is no escape. the worst bs I’ve ever seen was working at a “small family business” where the hired in employee has to be an emotional buffer between two spouses who gave conflicting directives and have weird passive aggressive communication issues.
that isn’t a one-off either. I worked in that situation. a friend of mine worked in one almost exactly like it. I also worked in two other tiny operations where the owners were just lame assholes, but we few employees had to pretend like they were cool and hang out with them socially to keep their mood elevated or they’d get depressed and whine about quitting the business. fucking cringe central.
My SIL just left a job like that. It was a wife and husband, and the wife would routinely stiff the warehouse workers and then ghost them, and my sister in law would answer the angry calls from the warehouse and have to pretend like the owners weren’t there.
Fucking awful. Small business owners have this tendency to behave like entitled children.
I’m very lucky that my boss is as respectable/considerate a person as I could hope for, but he’s incapable of telling clients ‘no’ so we’re completely drowning in the shit.
Yeah, I’m avoiding working at small businesses now, I think. Last one sucked ass and I can’t handle some fucking chud owner with $300,000 worth of cars and trucks being too cheap to pay out for a broken bike lock one of his workers mistakenly bolt-cutted and refuses to hire more than the absolute bare minimum of workers. Working nights at Wal-Mart was more relaxing than working there.
I’m very lucky in that my boss is nearly as broke as I am. He didn’t pay himself a salary when I first started, which is fucking admirable, but it also means that I’m not really in a position to ask for my value.
If the guy was a prick I would feel less inclined to work my ass off lol
Although they’re not the same as startups, I’m gonna bring up small businesses. A lot of people who complain about le small business tyrants don’t seem to understand there are benefits and trade offs with both types of exploitation
Big business:
- more scrutiny which often means they want to avoid any conflict as soon as possible
- some are large enough that you falling behind won’t really matter
- possible to start fresh even within the same company
- people are usually more conscience of how companies are against their interest
- but you can become complacent with your exploitation when met with more benefits or more comfortable work conditions
Small business:
- often community based, so people will often look the other way when complaints and exploitation occur
- may actually serve the community without being too alienated from the people or their needs
- likely to exploit undocumented people (ime), though the alternative is much worse
- like a small town, people will remember faces, and controversy is looked down upon, and favors, discretion, and extra work are expected
- people are more hesitant to lump small businesses with every other company that exploits workers and consumers (some warranted, but mostly out of misconceptions about small businesses)
On a related note, never hire your family and friends to do anything lol. If they volunteer, cool, but if you need someone to be liable for damages or alterations, utilize discounts, or ask for additional work without generating drama, go with an outsider.
I prefer larger orgs mainly because I need money, but I’d much rather be closer to my community.
There are good small shops too, but yeah if you find a place that doesn’t really keep tabs just stick it out there. Best advice I can offer.
Definitely not all large companies are like this. The large company I worked for supplied us with enough hours you could barely call it a skeleton crew.
And god forbid someone called out, you would become a week behind in one day.
