XYZ Company Voted Top 100 Workplaces For ABC City In 2019!
Hmm…I worked there for 2+ years and it really wasn’t that great – what gives?!
Perhaps the culture changed? Maybe, but I doubt it could change that much so quickly. Perhaps the results of these surveys aren’t very reliable? That definitely seems like it could be the case – there’s certainly a lot of implicit (and sometimes explicit) pressure to focus on and only talk about the positives when you work somewhere.
But I’ve also come to realize that one’s workplace experience often depends largely on one’s role. For example, a company might be a great place to work if you’re a salesperson but hell if you’re a customer service rep. Or maybe a company really caters to creatives but doesn’t value more technical roles, often giving those departments insufficient budgets and unrealistic deadlines.
Consequently, it’s probably true that some of my past workplace experiences would have been a lot more positive, even “top 100”, if I’d worked in a different department. It’s just that the software engineering side of things happened to be mismanaged, micromanaged, and bogged down with internal politics and a classic “too many coaches, not enough players” scenario.
So yeah – when you see these headlines, it’s probably safe to assume that XYZ company is indeed a top 100 place to work…just not every department.
