I’m just now getting started with my new job as a full-time Software Engineer, and one thing in particular has been a huge breath of fresh air for me: people at this company actually want to help me. It’s the simplest thing, and I didn’t realize it until now, but that is the biggest element I was missing at my last internship.
There, it was stressful literally every moment I was in the office. Nearly every interaction with every person I met felt like a competition, even though I doubt either of us wanted it to be in most cases. It was just so baked into the culture that that’s how you interacted with each other that I think it was almost impossible to escape on some level. Every time I asked for help, I felt ashamed. And the help I got was often inadequate, as the giver likely was either a) not interested in helping, or (more likely) b) so busy focusing on their own stressful competitions that they just didn’t have time to spare for me. It made me constantly feel worthless as not just an engineer, but on some level as a person, too. Because my work felt like it was so closely tied to my value, and so if my work faltered, so too did my person.
I’m growing to respect companies that have truly healthy cultures more and more as I realize just how rare it is. To be honest, it’s really possible I still haven’t found a truly healthy culture, but just a step up. But I will say, it is one of the most refreshing things in life to be able to ask your coworker for help and have them genuinely engage with you, when you’re really just expecting them to link you to some documentation that is most likely out of date and written by someone who skips half the actual steps you need.
A culture of collaboration is not a trivial thing to implement, especially in a world of stereotypically introverted engineers. And I think hyper-competitive algorithmic interviews make this problem even more pronounced, where certain skills are disproportionally represented at these companies, but that is a whole extra issue entirely that I’ll probably try and write about another time. But I think that despite it’s difficulty, this is something that is so valuable for companies to invest into for worker happiness and retention. It’s already made my quality of life and productivity at work so much better.
Also, I should note I mean no disrespect to other companies. I understand it is very likely that individual team placements and dozens of other factors can make any company look good or bad. That is why, even though this is about specific companies as I write it, I am choosing to leave out their names for the sake of making this generalizable. I have no idea what my future in tech holds, but as I am just now one week into my transition into the live of a 40-hour-week person for the forseeable future, I recognize just how important it is that I take the issue of culture seriously.