Don't Work For A Tech Company If You Want A Stress-Free Job
Tech companies are notorious for being fast-paced work spaces that produce stress-induced workers.
New information from PayScale confirms that big tech companies cause their employees the most stress.
We recently published a list of the 50 Best Employers In America based on data from our partner, PayScale. Among other criteria, PayScale looked at job stress to determine where the companies ranked. They generated a "stress score" based on employees' responses to the question "How stressful is your work environment?"
PayScale found that even the top companies can have stressful work environments. Of the top 200 companies on the Best Employers list, tech companies were among the most stressful places to work. Intel (39%), eBay (36%), Apple (33%), IBM (33%), and Amazon (27%) have the most stressful work environments, with employees reporting poor scores on the "low job stress" scale.
In another survey, PayScale asked employees at notable tech companies to rate how stressful their work environments are, and they found that Monster.com is the most stressful tech company, with 82 percent of their employees reporting high stress levels. Samsung (74%) came in as the second-most stressful tech company, and Salesforce.com (73%) came in third.
People clamor to score a job at these big tech companies, but once they're there, they find a highly demanding and stressful work environment. Amazon was ranked as one of the most stressful companies to work for. Peter Beckman claimed on a Quora board that he worked for Amazon Web Services for over a year and said that his job was extremely stressful.
"You are expected to work hard at AWS. You will always have more work than can ever hope to complete. There is a buzz, a constant sense of urgency to deliver a great product and service to our customers," Beckman wrote.
Apple is also known as a stressful place to work. Employees are often kept in the dark about company developments, according to Fortune's Adam Lashinsky.
"The hubbub is disconcerting for employees," Lashinsky wrote. "Quite likely you have no idea what is going on, and it's not like you're going to ask. If it hasn't been disclosed to you, then it's literally none of your business. What's more, your badge, which got you into particular areas before the new construction, no longer works in those places. All you can surmise is that a new, highly secretive project is under way, and you are not in the know. End of story."
However, not all tech companies produce stressful work environments: 44 percent of the employees at Google and 46 percent of the employees at Yahoo reported low job stress. Google (#2) and Yahoo (#8) both took top spots on the list of Best Employers — perhaps because of their awesome perks.
Google, for one, is constantly urging employees to relax at work by stocking up their offices with toys, video games, foosball tables and even nap stations. Companies like Google are willing to invest in their employee's happiness because they know a happy worker makes for a healthy thriving company.
And despite the stress — or perhaps because of it — tech workers seem to thrive in these demanding work environments.
Robby Stein, a director of product management at Yahoo, believes that Yahoo employees stay because they know that they can contribute to today's changing technological landscape.
"The thing I like best about Yahoo is the freedom I've been given to create new mobile technologies," Stein told us.
Employees at Apple, too, admit that they stay because they want to be a part of this historic experience and work on the world's most innovative tech products.
"I think working at a company like that [Apple], and actually being passionate about making cool things, is cool," Frederick Van Johnson, a former Apple marketing employee, told Fortune's Lashinsky. "Sitting in a bar and seeing that 90% of the people there are using devices that your company made — there is something cool about that, and you can't put a dollar value on it."