Do you read the subreddits for the company you work for?

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ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit

Rule 9: No Low Effort Posts, Excessive Venting, or Bragging.

Using this subreddit to crowd source answers to something that isn't really contributing to the spirit of this subreddit is forbidden at moderator's discretion. This includes posts that are mostly focused around venting or bragging; both of these types of posts are difficult to moderate and don't contribute much to the subreddit.

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gomsim@reddit

I've actually never thought about it. Thanks for the tip!

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carterdmorgan@reddit

Most people here probably work at places that don't have a dedicated subreddit. Personally, I prefer it that way. I've worked at Disney, Amazon, and Shopify and it was exhausting having friends and family have personal opinions about the place I worked. In particular, I worked at Disney during the DeSantis feud and I can't tell you how grateful I am today to work at a place that's never in the news.

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damnburglar@reddit

This was my experience too. I don’t know what’s worse, subreddits or hearing breaking news about your company through a BI leak.

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RespectableThug@reddit

Same.

I’m not going to dox myself, but my employer is very well-known and lots of people love to tell me their opinions on it. It’s annoying. I steer clear of our subreddit for the same reason.

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jags94@reddit

I see you work at Palatir.

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mkdz@reddit

Same with me except I do not steer clear of our subreddit haha.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Yeah I know- I’m one of those people, which is why I’m really curious what it’s like for them.

I worked for HBO during the mess of HBO GO->HBO Max->Max-> whatever it is now. And it was so weird being in meetings that were leaked to business insider and Hollywood reporter minutes later

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Blankaccount111@reddit

I've experienced this. I basically stopped reading most news after that. Some of the stuff that was written was so biased and taken out of context I can no longer have faith in nearly anything written in the media anymore. They are all just pushing some agenda with whatever they can find to gas it up.

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carterdmorgan@reddit

Haha, when I worked at AWS, HBO Max changing to Max was somehow my problem too! You guys had a bunch of resources you needed renamed and I had to take care of it during one of my on-call shifts.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Haha I left by that time since I knew the move to WBD would be a clusterfuck. They barely could handle the move from HBO GO to HBO Max where HBO and turner assets were combined. I have… opinions about leadership during that time 😂

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eeevvveeelllyyynnn@reddit

I'm in industry subreddit, but I am not in my company's subreddit because

I don't want to unintentionally do something that would violate the social media or insider trading policy

And

I don't want random Redditors treating me like help desk.

I post everywhere with my real name, I'm not touching it.

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donalmacc@reddit

I work in video games. You learn pretty early don’t read the comments, especially not on the stuff you work directly on. I’ve definitely improved stuff because of what I’ve seen on Reddit and forums, but most of the time you’ll just end up wondering why you even bother.

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drkinsanity@reddit

I always think about game devs when I see something like a 30 min long YouTube video about exploiting some obscure bug and questioning how it works. When some dev out there could probably be like “Oh yeah, there was a todo to solve an obscure rounding error that never came up in QA, here’s the exact way to reproduce” and instantly remove all the mystery.

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arihoenig@reddit

I like to read comments just to see the zeitgeist. The haters are a source of stress relief for me ;-)

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jqVgawJG@reddit

I dont think there are subreddits about my company or even the branch they operate in

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aqjo@reddit

Apple engineer: "Oh shit! How did they know we were going to make something thinner?""

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blueboybob@reddit

They post memes making fun of the product. It's funny when they are just wrong. Most posts are about cost which I don't have a say in.

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lordnikkon@reddit

no, it is almost certainly going be negative because people only post in company titled subreddits to complain about that company. If you get caught commenting by your company you can get fired for making unauthorized statements. If your company is big enough that they made a subreddit for it then it is also big enough to have a PR department that handles posting on reddit

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jnwatson@reddit

Sure do. I mostly lurk, but occasionally respond to comments when I can't help myself.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Im assuming you play dumb and don’t share anything super specific?

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jnwatson@reddit

Of course.

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Far-Citron-722@reddit

I never comment, but do look at company-related sub regularly. I think it's very important to get the real life perspective of actual users as in my role I am multiple layers away from them. I also know that others at the company definitely monitor subs for feedback and complaints and we investigate issues and bugs reported that way.

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justUseAnSvm@reddit

I never comment when I see my company or product. I'd rather let strangers be wrong then dox myself.

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notbatmanyet@reddit

Yes, on occassion. But I never comment to avoid accidentally revealing something that I shouldn't.

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engineered_academic@reddit

I used to work at a large governmental organization. Anytime there was anything in the news about it my mom would call me up asking what I thought. I had to tell her that I didn't know anything about what she was talking aboutand that I couldn't comment even if I did. Reading some of the reddit posts about it are so hilariously funny because they miss the mark so much.

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arihoenig@reddit

Yeah, it is amusing to see people stating confidently that the product I work on does x,y,z.

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bluetrust@reddit

It's especially infuriating when the public is wrong and blames your product for something that didn't happen.

I once worked on an indie video game where users accused us of stealing art from another game and kept trying to organize mass review bombs in the forums. We tried explaining that no, we did not steal art, both games used the same royalty-free art from the same artist. It was all legit and we paid a lot of money for that art just like the other game. But nobody wanted to read about licensing details or go check out the third-party artist's work, that was too sophisticated and nuanced for them.

I remember one guy posting a comment on our licensing thread, "No, you stole their art."

In the end, we stopped trying to fight against public opinion and just quietly recreated all the art at great expense. Anything to make the negative 10% of our reviews go away. But the game already had those reviews, and so it failed to capture any sort of long-term traction on steam, all because we made the mistake of licensing art that another more popular game also apparently licensed.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

I’m assuming you stay completely quiet on there?

Do you ever post links on slack or whatever with like “ha, look how confidently wrong this person is”

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arihoenig@reddit

I am not permitted to comment publicly about the product. I do not comment because I couldn't establish authority on the subject without violating that rule.

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wting@reddit

I worked at Reddit so... ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

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cppnewb@reddit

Only occasionally to check for rumors of layoffs lol. Otherwise most subreddits are full of miserable and unhappy people who complain about everything.

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rwilcox@reddit

…. infrequently and only a small subset. And never to comment.

Now the one time a previous gig made recruitinghorror I sent the thread to my friend ( in the internal recruiting dept) as a heads up.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Interesting. I know recruiters where I work are SO paranoid and in tune with reviews on Glassdoor. Not sure if they look at recruitinghorror.

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rwilcox@reddit

Only raised my attention because they are, in general, massively conscientious about that kind of stuff. Figured my friend would know if someone internally was having a bad day and needed a talk, or if some candidate was just looking to stir drama.

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forgottenHedgehog@reddit

When I worked for a well-known company we had like 5-10 very common tasks we asked people to do for screening, it's hilarious to see how people who clearly misunderstood the question were saying we are asking leetcode hards (none of that had anything to do with algo whatsoever, unless they meant iterating through a list).

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GuinnessDraught@reddit

Not a dedicated sub, and not a huge company that gets a lot of chatter, but I do see comments in passing in various discussions and I'm continually amused at how off-base and ignorant most commenters are. I refrain from commenting back, of course.

It's a good reminder that most commenters on reddit have no idea what they are talking about no matter the subject.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Honestly that’s a good lesson for life. It doesn’t matter what or how much you know. It’s how confident you seem that really matters 🙃😂

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LeoPelozo@reddit

Yes, but I don’t comment anything since I’d like to keep my job lol.

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tangertale@reddit

Yes, but I never post/comment

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Bobby-McBobster@reddit

I had access to some alphas from Amazon Games and it was indeed quite funny to see people speculate on the subreddit of the games what it would be.

It was also wild to see how the games changed over the years, I played New World 3-4 years before it was released and it had NOTHING to do with what it was at launch.

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software_engiweer@reddit

I work at Meta, so I don't really browse subreddits specifically, yeah the company name comes up a lot. And people irl tell me their opinions too. I don't really work on a specific product though, just internal infrastructure, so I mostly try to change the topics or just not talk about work at all. IMO our jobs are really not interesting to talk about to people who aren't in the industry in some capacity. And even then, I bore myself talking about work to other devs.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Omg yeah that’s the worst. Hey can you work on feature x or y? Uh, no. But I can improve the caching of an internal batch job used for reporting 👍

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flerchin@reddit

Yeah I know we've really messed up when our prod outages make the subreddit.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Ha when I worked for HBO this happened. We were all supporting that intern so much on slack. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hbo-max-intern-test-email-mistake-subscribers-respond/

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its_yer_dad@reddit

I worked mostly indirectly with a famous filmmaker. You really have to tune that stuff out, its such a distraction and rarely useful.

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NeuralHijacker@reddit

Fuck no. Have you seen my post history lol.

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Ch3t@reddit

We don't have a dedicated sub, but reddit's crappy search found several complaints about us on other subs.

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Reddit_is_fascist69@reddit

We'll shit, i do now

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

😂 post back with your initial reaction!

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Reddit_is_fascist69@reddit

Only 2 posts and I'm only a contractor there. Not with my time

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joexner@reddit

Sometimes, but it's pretty dead except for marketers from my company using it as a company blog.

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Lyraele@reddit

No. Not really interested in participating in the tech rumor mill cottage industry. And you'd have to be insane to post on the subreddit for your company unless that's actually part of your job. There's basically no upside for you to do that.

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diablo1128@reddit

I have never worked for a company that you are describing, but if I did I feel I would read it to see what people are saying, but I would never comment on it. I think it would be fun and interesting to hear all the rumors and see how accurate they were.

I have seen a couple posts of past companies I worked for years ago. People would have ideas about products and in those cases I replied to give background information about why things worked they way they did as an FYI more than anything.

For example lost of people would complain about those fancy coke machines and how the line always tasted like the last persons flavor choice. I explained that the line is attempted to be cleaned as the last bit of liquid that comes out is always water.

The large problem is there is a defined ratio with the soda recipes so the amount of water to clean the line at the end is limited since we don't know how long the user intends to presses the button for their soda. I said the best bet was to just dump out the first few seconds and use that as cleaning the line better, people didn't really like that answer. Oh well, lol.

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jbcsee@reddit

We read our subreddits, we have bots that scrap them and bubble up issues as well.

I never post in the subreddits, I never even visit them in a browser I'm logged into reddit on.

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beardguy@reddit

We don’t have a dedicated subreddit but I can find people talking about our products. Found one complaining about a bug I personally did but had fixed long ago (old post). It was a stupid mistake that caused memory usage to spike like crazy. It’s a good exercise to build empathy but keep in mind people are more vocal when mad than when happy and content. I would never interact with these people for several reasons, but it’s interesting reading.

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pineapplecodepen@reddit

I worked for a clothing brand and couldn't stand being on our branded social media.

At the time, I was young and quite proud of where I worked. Having to keep my mouth shut and not respond to complainers made me so stressed.

I also couldn't speak about products till they were released, and again, it was hard to keep my mouth shut, looking at the speculation thread or leaks.

I just steered clear to avoid saying anything that would make me lose my job.

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thecodingart@reddit

Yes

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cwcoleman@reddit

Luckily my company doesn't have one.

If they did - sure, I'd subscribe and lurk. I'd never post/comment. I wouldn't risk losing my job because of reddit.

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ODoyleRules925@reddit (OP)

Yeah, same.

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Noobsauce9001@reddit

I did for my last job, but I definitely never posted on it. It made me sad reading about the negative experiences folks had with the product, honestly made me question how legit our company was. I got laid off a while back either way.