The developer noticed that the generation of "zoomers" no longer has a "corporate spirit" or "sense of common purpose." How other IT workers reacted

«They often do not seek either a 'corporate spirit' or a 'sense of common purpose.' Dedication to work, which they previously considered fundamental, seems to them not to be so necessary,» Yevhen Rusakov noted .

His post garnered over 80 comments in two days. What do IT workers think about ideology in work and what priorities do they set for themselves?

Who is for the money?

1. «How else could it be? We work for money. We exchange our lives for it,» says QA Engineer Vyacheslav Shilin .
2. «For an «idea», I can work on my own projects, surprise,» — Fullstack Developer and Tech&Team Lead Roman Nefedov .
3. «There is work, there is your own separate life. Working for an idea is either a scam or corporate sectarianism,» says Scala/Java/Big Data developer Dmytro Ochnev .
4. «I’m 37, and to work for an idea, it has to be a very exciting idea. I’ve long forgotten what overtime is, with very rare exceptions, because no rate is worth it. I don’t see anything strange in the post and I’m not sure that this is a feature of buzzers,» noted Senior software engineer Nikolai Kondratenko.
5. «There was only overtime on one project. Only because I was the only one who had access to the backend, and I just needed to show the logs to the frontend/mobile sometimes,» recalled Artem Zakholodylo, a developer at Nova Digital .
6. «Working for an idea is, first of all, a scam, an environment where neither the employee nor his life is respected at all. This is an individual entrepreneur who does not know what it is to be a leader, but only knows how to be a commander who believes that what you are trying on is a privilege and you simply have to! This is the «norm», where they can cover you with mats and believe that it is right because «there are a ton of candidates for your place». This is the lack of real development and career as such, because it is in the interests of the business owner to survive on you as much as possible for a minimum in order to increase their profits. This also includes unofficial work because your future does not matter. Everyone should remember that the goal of an entrepreneur is to make the business bigger and more successful. Corporate spirit is a manipulation designed to divert attention from treating the worker as a slave. Only a person who owns a business has dedication to work. «I have seen it all in my 33 years, and my opinion is that young people are doing the right thing now, and they need to gain momentum more so that something changes. Because work is just an employment relationship described in an employment contract,» said FullStack developer Denis Ryzhkov .
7. «I’m 35, but I’ve never worked for an idea,» writes Software QA engineer Elizaveta Tanchuk .
8. «Oh. Enough romanticizing these Soviet ideas. There is no such thing as «for an idea» and never has been. A person will always work for something. For money, for recognition, for being valued as a specialist, for feeling significant. That is the main task of a manager — to determine what exactly motivates his specialist to work and take initiative. And staying after 6:00 pm is, excuse me, what about assessing employee loyalty?» — says Frontend Software Engineer Andriy Voloshchenko .

Who’s up for the idea?

Senior Software Engineer at PreciseMDX Igor Golodnytskyi even presented a graph that, in his opinion, shows that people are willing to work for an idea.

«You can only work for an idea when the company is working on a project that you are 100% interested in,» says AQA Engineer Artem Trebukov .

However, he notes that many Ukrainian companies have a problem because they themselves are not interested in the «idea». «Especially when there are no motivational elements and all that management does is just an attempt to find something cheaper and to plow with a bunch of responsibilities. I really like music, I write music. If I find a project that is related, for example, to the development of DAW or certain vst plugins, and will suit me completely, both from the ideological side and from the side of business relations, then yes, I will work for the idea and do everything possible to bring the maximum positive impact to the company’s product. But I think everyone here knows what the situation is unfortunately in the IT sector in our country,» he gives a personal example of when he is ready to work «for an idea».

In addition, he explains that this issue should not be tied specifically to the generation of buzzers, millennials, etc. «It depends on the person and their goal,» emphasizes Artem.

Instead of a conclusion

As a summary of the approaches presented by the IT experts, several apt thoughts are best suited, in particular:

• «I’ve been hearing this for the third generation in a row. I think it’s normal, we all sell our time and life for money. Some will become part of the system, because now I see people who came young with exactly this attitude, now they have grown in their careers and have more responsibility and workload, they pull as much as they need, demanding the same from others, new young buzzers. And so on in a circle. On the other hand, in our modern life there are so many challenges and problems that it takes more time to solve them, and there is simply no way to sit at work for hours until night or morning,» notes Volodymyr Ivshin, Senior System Analyst at Astound Commerce.
• «I believe that the younger generation is much smarter and more developed, I am counting on them to improve the situation in almost all areas, it just takes time,» said Project/Sales manager Dmytro Fedotiuk .
• «Manipulating people for business purposes has always been popular, but the current generation is more aware of their rights. There are fewer and fewer „handy“ people, and personally I think this is great,» emphasizes Junior UX/UI Designer Olena Pitutin .
• «No, we didn’t work „for an idea“ — we learned and gained experience at the expense of the employer’s resources and equipment. It just looked like we were working late. And then one fine day we came and said, 'Sorry, I’ve grown up and need to pay more, if not, I’m leaving,'» recalls DevOps Engineer Viktor Chmel .

Oleksandr Sosnovsky, Produck Owner, emphasized several points in the context of the discussion:

1. «For an idea» is not free. «For an idea» is doing extra work that is not paid for. A lot depends on the company. Judging by the comments, most people here are hired employees or salaried employees (like me), who look at the situation quite one-sidedly: I do as much as my employer pays me. And there is nothing wrong with that, and this is what happens in most mature companies. But the situation is completely different if we are talking about a startup. Most likely, here you will be underpaid even for your main job and you will have to work really hard «for an idea». And that’s okay… because it is a good experience and great prospects. Who knows, maybe this company will become a multi-million dollar corporation in the future. This is what happened with many companies created in Silicon Valley. But the risks of failure here are also high, but experience will not go anywhere. So «for an idea» has different meanings in different companies, and employees should understand this.
2. «For an idea» for a jun and «for an idea» for a senior are also different things. For example, I believe that if you are just starting your career (which most zoomers do), then you should be ready to work «for an idea» or work extra, because you need experience.

The latter thesis is also confirmed by the comment of Junior UI/UX designer Svitlana Lukyanenko, who personally knows young employees who sometimes stay at work after 6:00 PM and can go to work on their day off if necessary. But she notes that she knows «grandfathers» who have never done this and will never do it. «In fact, it all depends on the person and what results they want to achieve. From time to time, each of us faces a choice — whether to sacrifice our personal life for the sake of work or not,» the girl believes.

Among his best managers, Technical Product Owner Valentin Zakharov combined the most useful of both of these worldviews. In particular, from his own experience, he says that:

• after six in the evening he categorically did not work,
• but at the same time, he worked absolutely «for the idea», extremely conscientiously, and considered himself (not without reason) truly dedicated to working 40 hours a week.

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