Recognizing Toxic workplaces(Opinion)

Toxic workplaces are somewhat a taboo to talk about. It is also something very much personable. The same workplace can be toxic for one and energizing for another.

There is really no one size fits all situation here.
There is also situations which are not great but should not be considered toxic(at least in my opinion).

Culture and learning opportunities are the two things that I look for in a job. And there have been so many times where I didn’t take the higher paying job offer because of it. So this article is I have written for myself to guide my future decisions.

However over the years I have tried to compile a list of things that I feel I would like to avoid with my future employers.

Disclaimer: This article is purely based on my personal observations and is not a reflection of any organizations I have worked with.

Recognizing and Avoiding Toxic Workplaces

When things start getting toxic, it is okay to leave in short term.

Life is short, and I have learned to respect myself and have confidence in my faith and abilities to find something better.

I think I have given myself permission to leave these places in the short term if I notice any of these in the future.
After working for all these years, I think I have a much more precise definition of what I consider toxic. I think this is highly personal, and what I consider toxic, you might not consider it and vice versa.,

Toxic workplaces often have certain common characteristics, which may include the following:

1. Inappropriate Requests: Work assignments are given inappropriately, either in terms of unrealistic deadlines or the nature of the tasks themselves.
   • Abuse and Degradation: Verbal abuse is commonplace, making employees feel inferior.
   • Fear-based Motivation: The threat of termination is frequently used as a motivational tool, creating a culture of fear and anxiety.
2. Micromanagement: Regular instances of micromanagement, resulting in too frequent check-ins and excessive oversight.
   • I personally consider forcing employees to return to office as a sign of micromanagement.
   • However, I do see the value of meeting in person as well. But I would want to do it on my own accord and not be forced to do it.
3. Workplace Politics: Unnecessary politics often involving management that may lead to bias and favoritism.
4. Discrimination, Bias, and Lack of Diversity: Discrimination based on gender, race, age, or other factors that is not merit-based. I have not seen clear, explicit discrimination anywhere I worked, but I have occasionally seen implicit/subtle discrimination cases. It could be having one gender/race/ethnic group promoted over another, or the team lacks diversity. For eg, all the engineers belong to one particular region in the world, or everyone in the management chain is from a particular race/country.
   • There is a no dearth of folks who can bring diversity to your team(Who would not want a high-paying job?). If you have a challenge hiring diverse folks or folks that generally are not joining, maybe that indicates something fishy.
   • I mean if you are not the one facing bias or being on the other end it might be okay to stay despite what exists. But if you are actively facing it then trust me there are better places.
5. Poor On-Call Schedule: An on-call schedule that disrupts work-life balance, often leading to sleep deprivation.
   • The only catch here is that if you are being brought in to solve these issues by whatever means necessary, that is fine. However, if you are being brought it to maintain the status quo(or just keep it up) then it is not a good sign.
6. Consistent Project Churn: Constant transition from one project to another, sometimes involving unrealistic deadlines. Sometimes it is okay to have a deadline and pull together work on a weekend when we have a high-priority project. However, if this happens too often, you may want to evaluate.
7. Untrustworthy Management: A lack of trust from management, particularly when it comes to taking necessary breaks.
   • We all need breaks some more than others depending on what stage of life we are in. When I had a much younger kid I needed more breaks than I do now.
   • taking breaks ≠ slacking.
   • Remember there are 3 kinds of breaks
     • short 5 minute breaks (in between work or meetings)
     • A half a day , day or two break (health reasons/mental health break/doctor visits)
     • Vacations/Family reasons(Longer breaks)
8. Non-Actionable Blame Culture: A culture where mistakes are met with blame instead of constructive feedback or opportunity to rectify the issue.
9. Process over Technology and People: An overemphasis on improving processes at the expense of technological advancements.
   • A Real life example for me was a fragile deployment that takes 10 manual steps to achieve the desired outcome.There was a good probability to make a mistake. However to be agile (and somewhat hackish) Instead of automating the deployment so it is less prone to errors, the suggestion is to add unnecessary process improvements:
     • The solution proposed was Getting it approved by another person. (now, this is 11th step to your 10-step process) and 10 more steps for the other person.
     • Not only this takes time it also destroys the confidence in releases. Engineers get afraid of releasing anything, which is counterintuitive because engineers are incentivized.
     • A better way would have been to automate it and have fewer possibilities of manual errors.

When it sucks but is not toxic

While certain conditions may not create a great work environment, they don’t necessarily contribute to toxicity.

I still don’t think this demands leaving in the shorter term; however, you may want to look outside for better opportunities if things have not changed in 2 years or so

(PS: they are never going to change, so either live with it or look outside)

Here are a few examples:

1. Stagnant Growth: Your growth is stifled, and promotions seem unattainable.
2. Limited Learning Opportunities: There’s a lack of opportunities for learning and personal development within the team.
   • Ideally you work priorities should be aligned to your personal development goals.
   • • You try to come up with projects to avoid this but if they are shot down,
     then you may want to look into doing side projects or fulfilling your interests elsewhere
3. Lack of Alignment with Management: You find yourself frequently disagreeing or don’t see the motivation with management decisions. You can try getting aligned from your end, but at some point the decision they made is not what you would have made based on your perspective.
4. Purposeless Work: You’re only working for the paycheck and don’t understand or align with the purpose of your tasks.
5. Burnout: Constant exhaustion and demotivation. You become hyper-critical of everything and feel you are in golden handcuffs. You can take a break to come out of the burnout, but if it is happening too often you may be in a toxic work culture.
6. Unrewarding Work: Constantly working on maintenance tasks or solving old problems rather than developing new features. For, eg Suppose you are constantly working on/maintaining a legacy code base fixing issues rather than working on creating new features. Unfortunately these are also the people who are the first ones to let go because it is really hard to show visibility with just fixing bugs.
   • Another aspect of this is if you are working on nontransferrable skills. For eg, if your codebase is in Pascal, Fortran, C++97 etc. I hate to break it to you, but it will be hard to find jobs where those skills will be transferable. You will have a harder time explaining to your next employer how you can bring value to them sooner.
7. Vague Feedback: You receive feedback from your manager, but it lacks actionable items for improvement.
8. Lack of Autonomy and Ownership: You don’t have autonomy in decision-making. The culture is very process-dependent and not outcome dependent. An example (and this is common in big tech)
   • The product manager decides what you work on
   • The engineering manager decides who would work on it
   • How that outcome is achieved should be your thing as a software engineer. Some companies also try to hire an “architect” to tell you how to do it. In this case, if you do not own any part of it, I hate to break it to you “You are not an engineer; you are just a typist”.
9. Lack of Support: Your manager doesn’t assist with your professional development or doesn’t know how to or dismisses your requests for formal guidance. For, eg, denying a request for creating a plan that helps you get a promotion (Often the reason cited is promotions don’t work with checking items in a box, though that’s true, that also indicates management doesn’t trust their own feedback about you or you for that matter to make mistakes and learn from them later on)
10. Favoritism There will always be the manager’s favorites. A bias always exists, but it could not necessarily be bad. And you can survive it knowing you won’t be the favorite child.

Remember, no work environment is perfect, and some degree of unfavorable conditions may exist. It depends on your personal tolerance and the context. However, understanding these signs can help you evaluate your workplace and make healthier decisions for your professional and personal wellbeing.

It all depends on what you are willing to give up and the context of the situation.