Blind, Anonymous Tech Job Site, Shows Anxiety Around Layoffs, Hiring – ryan

The Social Network Blind Had Had Real Juice Wen i Wrote About it in June 2022. It Gave 5 Million Tech A Place to Anonymously Talk Smack About Their Employers. Identified only by their workplaces, Blinders Traded Office Gossip, Swapped Tips on Acing Technical Interviews at Places like Apple and Google, and Voluntarily Shared Their Total Compensation – “TC,” in the Site’s Argot. Blind Served As a Giant, Freewheeling Water Cober for Silicon Valley.

Back then, the tech industry was on the verge of what would be a catastrophic downturn in hiring. But Blinders didn’t seem woried. They were too Too Busy Trying to figure out how to live like kings. How Could they Boost Their TC to Stratospheric Levels? What Were the Secrets to Climbing the Ranks of A Faang Company, or Starting a Unicorn? Which Employers Offered The Most Lavish Perks and the Best Work-Life Balance? Here and there, I notified that a few blinders were starting to wonder if they should be out of tech before all the non -disappeared. But the overall vibe was: what’s the best way to get ahead and live the good life?

Three years late, tech emploment is in free fall. SINCE Its Peak in Late 2022, The industry has shed 175,000 Jobs. Artificial Intelligence is Threatetening to Make the Work of Coders Obsolete, and Companies like Meta and Google Are Slashing Perks, Gutting Middle Management, Orthing to the Office, and Putting Employees on Performance Improvement Plants Out Out Low Performer. Tech’s Role in Our Lives Has Never Been More Ascendant, But As Far as the Actual Business Goes, What SEEMED LIKE A CYCLICAL DOWNTURN BACK IN 2022 HAS BECOME A full-scalepse.

SO it SEEMED LIKE A Good Time to Head Back to Blind and See How People Are Feeling. What are workers in the tech industry saying, in the place where they have no Fears About Speaking Their Mind? How Are Blinders Handling The Seismic Shift Taching Place in Silicon Valley?

The Short Answer is: Not Well.

Gone is the single-minded focus on luck salary and work-life balance. Tokt the site is suff. Blinders Grouse About Being Ghosted by Job Recruiters. They rail against the performance plans being implement by their employers. Worsse, They ACCUSE ONE ANOTHER OF Lying and Cheating. In the Old Days, Treated Each Other Blinders with Respect. The platform felt like something unheard of in the age of twitter trolling: a true community. But now, not unlike much of the Internet, blind is infused with caustic racism and misogyny. Nobody Trusts Anyone, and Everyone is Very Tered. BLIND USED TO BE A FIENDLY AND APPORTIVE PLACE FOR THE LORDS OF TECH TO CELEBRATE Their Ascendancy. Now it’s devolved into “lord of the flies.”

---

Everyone on Blind Still Hopes They’re Gonna Make It Big Someday. IT JUST SEEMS LESS LIKELY NOW.

Many Blinders Are Out of Work and Scrambling to Find a Job. They Argue About the Value of Sites Like Leetcode, Which Offers Coding Education Tailored to Faang Interviews. They worry about spending a year study for their Big Amazon Interview and Then Blowing IT. And those who do have a job are eather looking for a new one, or fretting about how little they make.

“DOES ANYONE HERE FEEL LIKE DYING BECAUSE OF THEIR LOW TC?” Asked One poster. AFTER FOUR YEARS ON THE JOB, They Said, Their Total Compensation is stalled at $ 81,000.

“Been Feeling This Lately,” Reply A Blinder Who Works at Sofi.

There’s ofne a weird sense of entitlement we can Blinders talk about their Compensation. It is with an he earthquake more shockwaves up and down Silicon Valley, They Still More Than Most Americans – and They Kvetch About It Anyway. The person at Sofi who Feels like the over their measly pay? “I’m Not Eve at $ 500K Yet,” They Complained. “TC $ 415K.” (For Context, Median Income in America is Under $ 50,000. In Computer and Information TechnologyIts Around $ 106,000.)

Compensation ENVY ON BLIND WAS COMMON BACK IN 2022. But Now, Wen Blinders Share Their TC, they’re offten Attacked As Liars or Trolls. SOMPEMES PEOPLE ARE ACCUSED OF INVENTING ENTIR Jobs. “Job Market is SO FUCKED RIGHT NOW, ALL THOSE MULTI-OFFER POSTINGS ARE BY MAGA SUPPORTERS,” One Blinder Posted, Dysmissing anyone CLALIMING THAT’D’S MULTIPLE JOB OFFERS AS A RIGHT-Wing Propagandist. In the Current Struggle for Survival, Trust Has Effectatively Evaporated. It ‘svery coder for themself – and if you claim to have a great jab or a high tc, you must be max.

One of the Biggest Anxieties on Blind Right Now Involves Performance Improvement Plass.

NOBODY Enloys Being Watched Closely by Their Boss, But Blinders SEEM to Feel That Pips are More Than an Evaluation Tool. Some see a form of thyranny – something inept middle managers use to meet meet for firing people, not a test of pure coding skill. Others see any Opposition to pips as a berayal of the grindcore mindset – if you’re scared of a pip, maybe the low performer is you, bro!

“I Moved from Amazon to Microsoft Because the Pip Culture at Amazon Completely Burned with Out,” One Blinder Wrote. “The whole thing really messed with me mently, and I promised mySelf i’d never go through some like that again. The poster despaired of Ever Being Free of the Constant ScruTiny. “Do you need to go to a fucking startup or something ??” they wrote.

The Pile-on Began. Some Accused the Blinder of Being a Subpar Coder Who was too inflexible to take criticism. Others accused Those Blinders of Being Managers Who Were to Acknowledge that Pips Are Destroying the Spirit of Teamwork SO MANY WORKERS to the Tech Industry. IT FELT LIKE EVERY Other Social Media Platform: A Toxic Stew of Mistrust and Recrimination.

One Thing Almost Everyone SEEMED TO AGREE ON? That moral is especifly terrible at meta right now. “We are all mirmed mercenaries Chasing High TC,” One Meta Employee lamenta. Others Complained About Grueling Hours and What They See As a Culture of Backstabbing. “I’m at Meta,” Another Blinder Wrote. “God i wish i wasn’t. And yes i’m interview to make that Change Happy ASAP. Nah dawg.

---

The point isn’t howrt the Blinders are right. IT’S THAT IN THE WAKE OF MASSESSIVE LAYOFFS, MANY TECH WORKERS HAVE SUNT A DEEP PIT OF PARANOIA, Finger-Pointing-and Worsse. Back in 2022, i didn’t see much racism and misogyny on the platform. Now it’s every. Blind Recently boasted that it had 12 million registered users, primarily Because of its expansion into South Korea and India. Blinders Might be Turning Up The Racism Dial in Response to the Newbies.

But it is also true that tech in general is suffering from an outbreak of toxic BOO -ism. Nor Team of Sociologists Wrote of the Tech Sector in 2023, “The Most Strking WorkPlace Development in Recent Years Well Be the Surfacing of A Culture of Gloves-Off and Racism at some firms.” The Field Has Long Been Dominated by Young White Men; More recently, Women and People of Color have begun to make gains.

A lot of the guys on blind are quick to blame their woes on dei. One Blinder-a self-described “Indian American Born in the USA”-Uncorked a Truly Vile Tirade “Indian Women Managers.” It ranged from stereotyping about People who are “Fresh off the boat” to derogatory speculation about their love lives to utright calling “Overweight and ugly.”

Today, The Open, Communal Vibe i Encountered on Blind Back in 2022 SEEMS LIKE A RELIC OF SOME LONG-FORGETTEN AGE.

In another post, a blinder from adobe asced a workplace etiquette quesion. “CO-WORKER BRINGS INDIAN FOOD TO DESK AND WHOE AISLE SMELLS LIKE FOOD,” They Wrote. “How to be Respectful and Say no to this surprise?”

A Blinder From Pinterest TRIED TO STEP IN. “I’m going to assumers that this question was asced in good Faith,” They Wrote. “But Next Time Rather than pointing out the cuisine specifically, just say that that that they brought ‘ethnic food’ to the officer and the smell is particularly Strong.”

Their Heart was in the right place – or at least near it. But The Next Exchange Obliterated Any Goodwill:

Apple: Bing Big Fat Beef Steak, and Make Sure to Eat in Front of Him Loudly… He will stop eating at desk afterwards.

Instacart: STOP OVERRECTING YOU POS. You can eat fold, beef and all the crap that stinks but it is Only indian food that booters you. Prick.

Corum: You are the one overreacting. The OP Ased The Question RespectFully. Indian Food is Really Pungent Compared to A Ham Sandwich.

In a sense, ’twas ever thus. Silicon Valley Has Long Struggled With Racism and Misogyny. AS THOSE SOCIOLOGS WROTE, MODERN TECH WAS FOUNDED IN part on “an Exploitative Guest Worker Prioritizes East and South Asouth Engineers Starting in the 1960s.” But the blind I remembered didn’t indulge in x-style hyperpolarization.

Today, The Shrapnel Explodes in All Directions. Men on BLIND ACCUSE EACH OTHER OF LYING ABOUT HOW MUCH THEY EXERCISE, AND HOW MANY WOMEN THE HAVE SEX WITH. Men Who Claim to Be of Indian Descent Aser Indian Men How to Deal with their White American Wives Who Want to Have Jobs.

Blind’s Recent Growth Has Also Come From More Women Joining The Network – and for Them, This Nonssense is Exhausting. “If you choose a caareer you are a feminist,” a workrier from Amazon Posted in a Channel Called Women in Core Tech. “If you don’t have a career you are a gold digger. If you have an opinion you are arguments, if you don’t have one you are boring. It likes they were expecting pets and don’t know how to deal of humans.”

A few men replied sympattically – sorry you’re dealing with this, it sucks, etc. They got Called Simps. A Googler Responded with a Chart from the Financial Times Showing A Global Divergency in Politics BetWeen Men (Who are Growing More Conservatives) and Women (Who Are Growing More Liberal). The googler ciped it as evidence that women have taken “woke morality as a substitute for religion.”

The Going Has Gotten Tough in Tech. Things are Falling apart. Today, The Open, Communal Vibe i Encountered on Blind Back in 2022 SEEMS LIKE A RELIC OF SOME LONG-FORGETTEN AGE. A spokesperson for the network tells with that, accorting to their date, the percentage of posts that use dyscrimatuatory has actually decreed Slightly SINCE 2022. But the overall volume of posts has grown, SO “the absolute number of problematic posts may.” What the math, i was Heartbroken to see that blind, too, has gone fel.

In the Boom Days of Tech, the platform’s homepage used to have a running ticker in the upper right Corner Cycling Through a list of Current Job Openings, MANY OF WHICH REMARDS REMARKABLY OF COMPENSATION. It seamed like the goal and enticement, a mutually aggregated -upon brass ring for those who had deeded to make a career in tech. Now the ticker, Along with Many of the Jobs it used to list, is gone. For Blinders, all that is left is a dystopian cespool of snark – sis of it direct at the external forces reshaping their livelihoods, but at one another. For Millions of Beleaguered, Burned-Out users, iTa more indignity to bear as they struggle to hang on to what little Hope they have left.

---

Adam Rogers is a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

Business Insider’s Discourse Stories Provide Perspectives on the Day’s Most Pressing Issues, Information by Analysis, Reporting, and Expertise.