What do you consider “silent, but toxic” signs in a work environment when starting a new job?

Employees talk of no salary increases, special treatment by upper management on selected people and lots of people resigning or hearing about layoffs.

Hateful posters of a past CIO who quit his first day on the job 5 years ago all over the office. your boss is caught up in an MLM and demands you buy products from him. you're the only person who isn't a 3rd generation employee.

that was my 2nd worst job ever.

@rutee07 You guys have an onboarding process?... Here it's mostly lile "Aight, first of May, xyz is coming. Show him the ropes" End of story

@rutee07 agree on training. Back in the days there were monthly training programs and trainers get some extra money teaching. They removed that too.

I'd like to also add no company sponsored major events like on Christmas and instead you get a cookie that taste like cake while you see other companies get an event with an open bar, company jackets and Christmas goodies bags or monetary holiday bonus

This thread makes me want to update my resume :D

If you are interviewing to replace someone, it's important to understand why they're leaving.

✅ Left for career change, position was not aligned with their interests

⚠️ Didn't perform as expected (understand whether the expectations are actually realistic before taking the job)

❌ Employer shares medical details (They obviously don't take privacy seriously, and psych/stress related leavers are huge red flag)

In your first week, casually ask your coworkers about traveling and how they spent their last holidays

✅ Varied range of hikers, to workaholics who don't take holidays, to people flaunting their instagrams.

❌ Only workaholics, or cynical reactions, or people avoiding the conversation. Even companies with great policies can have harsh social/performance pressure to never take time off.

Also, I've found amount of healthy plants in the office, and quality of coffee and toilet paper to be great indicators of the quality of the employer.

Also check their PR review procedure.

Helpful, humble seniors:

✅ "I feel like this could be made more readable by writing it like this: ..., what do you think?"

✅ "I'm have trouble understanding this, can we have a talk to go through it?"

✅ Using questions instead of commands, and showing communal ownership of code: "I think we could do x here" instead of "You should do x here"

Arrogant, rude seniors:

❌Pointing out pattern violations without explanations: "This violates SOLID principles, please refactor"

❌Personal attacks: "This is dumb", "stupid mistakes", etc

❌Too much hyperbole: "Never do x", "Nothing about this is good", "You're continuously applying x"

@Jilano If only devRant had markdown with tables... No, wait... can we get LaTeX support? 😆

Seemingly nobody caring, so you feel like just another face in a crowded elevator.

Also: people being afraid of hard work.

When nobody seems to know or care what other people are working on

when the manager who hired you puts down the paper on the day you join.
That happened to me once.

@Jilano was hoping to be something more specific in terms of culture.

@bittersweet Ohh come out of your "safe space" already.

If something is dumb, it is dumb. No one will take time to write "I feel that this could be made better" phrase in a PR EVER.

It's GOOD, or it's "OK" Or it needs work, or it's plentty dumb.

It's not an insult, but when people do dumb things you need to point it out.

@NoToJavaScript I'm extremely direct towards people when it's about behavior or management, but I feel like it's good to use a softer approach when it comes to coding.

Within a company, there's guaranteed to be differences in skill. If you berate people for that instead of counciling them, you'll create a very toxic environment.

If someone says stuff like "I don't really care about code quality, someone else can fix that bug", I'll cut out their tongue with a dull rusty knife though.

@NoToJavaScript maybe some constructive criticism would be helpful and it would be farless pressuring to the other person.