I graduated with a master’s in Engineering Management from UT Austin in December 2020.
This page documents my work on Toxicity in Technology Workplaces from Summer 2020 for my graduate studies at UT Austin. The contents of this post were also posted in a blog post on 8/10 that can be found here.
We Need to Talk More About Toxicity in Technology Workplaces
The topic of toxicity in the workplace has come up more and more in my conversations with colleagues in the technology world. Maybe you’ve had these conversations too: someone has a manipulative colleague, someone is afraid to tell their manager they want to switch teams for fear of being blocked, someone dreads going to work, or week after week is unhappy and stressed. I’ve heard each of these stories from my peers in the technology industry the past few months alone.
In a survey done by Blind in 2018, an anonymous workplace app, more than half of tech workers surveyed believed they were in an unhealthy work environment. There are plenty of books describing toxicity in tech companies and startups (Super Pumped, Bad Blood, Brotopia). Toxicity is bad for the people experiencing it and the organization. Toxic employees can affect turnover, productivity, and morale, and they can be harder to deal with than you may think (MIT Sloan).
As a product manager in tech who has previously had toxic colleagues, I wanted to identify what peoples’ perceptions of toxicity in tech were, and the impact it has on the workplace.
So, as part of my graduate studies in Engineering Management at UT Austin, I surveyed 118 technologists who have had a toxic boss or colleague about details of those toxic people (you can find my original survey announcement here).
It is clear based on the survey that respondents want leadership and managers to pay more attention to the issue of toxicity.
Here are some takeaways from the survey respondents:
People Leave Due to Toxicity
35% of respondents with a toxic colleague and 60% of respondents with a toxic boss had a breaking point that made them leave the organization because of them.
These are large numbers. We can assume the boss percentage is higher because of things like the position of power a boss has, and that it could be harder for an employee to avoid a boss at work. You’ve probably heard the phrase before that people leave managers, not companies.
The takeaway is toxicity can cause turnover; bad behaviors can have stronger consequences on employees than positive behaviors that may be present elsewhere at work.
Close to 2/3 of People Aren’t Comfortable Addressing or Reporting Toxicity
Two-thirds? If two out of three people with toxic people around them at work don’t feel comfortable addressing or talking about it, we have some culture issues to address. If we can’t talk about toxicity, it’s going to be hard to mitigate it.
A top write-in answer that respondents included for why they weren’t comfortable reporting toxicity of their colleague or boss was Fear of retaliation. I don’t blame them. If someone is already toxic, and knows you reported them for it, there’s things they can do to retaliate against you. This is especially true if leadership doesn’t have any standards in place for dealing with conflict.
Other reasons people didn’t feel comfortable reporting the toxicity was they were concerned about their job security, that leadership was toxic and wouldn’t do anything so why report it, or that leadership was friends with the toxic person.
Toxic Behaviors/Consequences/Actions Taken
Here are some more things we observed from the survey that technology workers can look out for.
Top Behaviors Exhibited by Toxic Colleagues and Bosses
These are behaviors that management can look out for. If they see it exhibited on their team, they may want to check in with the team members and ask if anyone is having any issues or anything they want to talk about.
Top Consequences of Toxic Colleagues and Bosses
We asked survey respondents about the personal effects that toxicity had on themselves and the effects it had on their team or organization, giving them many choices to select from.
You can see these top selected consequences in the tables. Some top examples for both personal and organizational consequences are lower morale, more stress, and more gossip about the toxic person.
We found out that though toxic colleagues and bosses are different, they can have similar consequences on employees and the organization, as shown here.
Actions Taken to Address Toxicity
We asked survey respondents how successful tactics tried by them, colleagues, or leadership were in mitigating the behaviors of toxic colleagues or bosses. You can see some of the actions we asked about listed above.
We observed that pretty much every action asked about was overwhelmingly more unsuccessful than successful for most.
Something else to note, when asked about other actions taken to mitigate toxicity, a lot of respondents said leadership didn’t take action. They either:
- Didn’t acknowledge or identify that toxicity was an issue
- Or they knew there was toxicity but did nothing about it because:
- The employee was very intelligent/subject matter expert
- Leadership had ‘group think’ with each other
- Leadership was friends with the toxic employee
- Leadership was toxic themselves and perpetuated bad behavior
The way leadership reacted to reports of toxicity and how they continued to let it happen is sometimes the reason people left their company. It is important for leadership to acknowledge their role in why these actions aren’t successful for most.
Conclusion – What Can We Do?
Companies are still searching for ways to successfully mitigate toxicity in the workplace, in tech and many other industries. But it is clear based on our survey that respondents want technology leadership and managers to pay more attention to the issues. I want to highlight: Toxicity in technology workplaces is an issue, and it needs to be addressed. As the analysis shows above, it has huge impacts on technology organizations and the people working there.
So some recap:
- People leave due to toxicity
- People aren’t comfortable addressing toxicity
Leadership and organizations must:
- Identify toxic employees and bad behavior
- Talk/listen to employees
- Make addressing toxicity and conflict part of your culture
Toxicity is something a lot of people avoid are afraid to talk about, but it is not ok for you to be treated this badly at work. Part of the reason for this survey was to start conversations about toxicity.
Let’s start the right conversations in our technology organizations that make them a better place to work for everyone. Please share your thoughts about toxicity and how to get people to start talking about it on this post, or with your peers in general. And feel free to share the infographic below with your technology leaders (please credit it to me if you share).
We need to make it more ok to talk about toxicity!
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Rebecca Paren 