Yep I used to work for a far better environment before the acquisition and would love to ho back to that kind of company, but it’s increasingly difficult to do now a days.
Comment on Are there any non capitalistic technology companies still around?
theneverfox@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
IDK if this would be viable with an H1 visa and I’ve seen many other options I’ll be looking into, but here’s what I normally tell people in this position: small businesses are built different
They’re harder to find, they usually don’t pay amazingly, but they’re way more human. It’s not all run through spread sheets, you work for humans who get to know you and (can sometimes) actually be like a family…(If they say that phrase it’s a red flag though)
It’s hit or miss, you likely would be working on legacy stuff or have to wear many hats… But it’s work where you know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it for
tpyoman@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
theneverfox@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
Yep… My first “career” job was for a mid sized company. In my onboarding they gave me my employee number but said “you’ll never need this, here you’re a name, not a number”. One time I emailed security saying I forgot my badge because it was with my lunch, and one of the founders called me up and gave me his prepackaged lunch because he said he usually doesn’t get through them all. When we closed a big deal, they called us all upstairs to have champagne during the workday. Our mission was unambiguously to help people
Then we got acquired… They gave me my new employee ID and told me I’d be using it for everything. They just milked our contracts and refused wages until we all left
And unfortunately, mid sized companies can give an equally good experience with much better pay and job security… But they’re being bought out to secure contracts and gutted at an insane rate.
It’s late stage capitalism… If you want to keep growing but you’ve already destroyed your ability to complete, buy them out to take over their contracts
Yaky@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
It really depends on the business.
I worked for two smaller businesses (team of ≤ 10 software developers). One was mismanaged, ran by very unpleasant people, and abusive towards employees, resulting in a huge turnover and a “dead sea effect”. The other company got government grants because the owner’s relative was a politician, and had ridiculous surveillance software on developers’ machines.
Ironically, the most “human” and enjoyable work I did was working on internal legacy software and code rewrites for a huge corporation before and during their move towards agile and modern “conveyorized” approach to software.
theneverfox@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
Oh absolutely… There’s tons of petty tyrants out there too, which is different, but also bad or even worse. They might also be just staffing something just as soul crushing too, so it could just be worse in every regard
But small business means your boss is probably there to stay. Ideally, you meet the owner in your interview, often they’re the same person. But if you find someone loyal to their people, you can actually give them your loyalty and they’ll see you as a person