Poor Work-Life Balance

Working in Big Tech offers prestige and high pay, but it often comes at the cost of personal time and mental well-being. The demanding environment, peer pressure, and ambiguous policies can lead to overwork and burnout.

• Competitive Culture Fuels Overwork: The intense stack ranking and peer comparison systems push employees to work beyond normal hours to maintain high performance ratings and avoid being ranked at the bottom.
• On-Call Stress and Burnout: At scale, systems often encounter issues, and engineers may feel pressured to respond even during vacations, especially if they are domain experts.
• Peer Pressure to Match Hours: Engineers often feel compelled to match their teammates’ late-night work habits, contributing to a cycle of poor boundaries and collective burnout.
• Unlimited PTO Backfires: Policies like “unlimited vacation” often discourage time off, especially when company leadership sends contradictory messages about taking breaks.
• Regional Differences Exist: The culture of overwork is more intense in Silicon Valley compared to other parts of the world, such as Europe, where vacations are taken more seriously and work-life boundaries are better respected.