| name | value |
| date | 2025-01-04 |
| location | Playa del Carmen, MX |
| author | Anton |
Sometime in the past decade, I worked in a huge tech company out of San Francisco. During one of the nights as an engineer, I got invited to an urgent customer call. No one knew what the problem was, so different people from different teams were called in just in case.
When I joined the call, I saw 30 people. Half of the participants were VPs, Directors, and high-profile managers. The rest were engineers. It was close to midnight, and the customer was screaming on the call. They were the head of some NYC government agency, and something wasn't working.
One of our engineers led the call and tried to: 1) organize work to figure out what was going on and 2) calm down the customer. The engineer was doing his job perfectly.
The customer was upset because it was late, and she needed a fix before morning. She started screaming and insulting our engineers who had woken up to try to solve the issue. Looking around the Zoom call, I saw that all VPs and Directors were muted. They stayed out of it and just listened to the insults. No one tried to step in and calm down the customer. No one unmuted themselves to do anything. No attempts to help or deescalate.
I was shocked. I was shocked that people who were in charge of the company and who were in charge of the engineers didn't do anything. These were people who were supposed to be "leaders", who were "senior" in their careers, who had high-profile educations and MBAs and were paid a lot of money.
The funny part was that this company was all about communicating "family" values - that we were all in this together and that we helped each other. There were countless pages of documentation and emails about this. It was part of the internal and external marketing. Fake, of course.
The next morning, the only thing the manager posted about it was a message: "That was quite a call ;)". With a winking emoji. That was it. No reflection. Pathetic. Few of my younger coworkers were on that call. I felt bad for them. That wasn't a way to experience work.
Reflections:
- I can only work for people who I respect. Otherwise, it's really difficult.
- Hiding is one of the fastest ways to lose respect. If you are not helping and not taking responsibility, then why are you even needed?
- Actions over words. Always. It doesn't matter what a company vision or vision statements are. What matters is what it does.