<story><title>We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?smid=tw-nytmag&amp;_r=1&amp;</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>psn</author><text> I&amp;#x27;m a employee of a large tech company that&amp;#x27;s being parodied here, and I found this really disconcerting. The scenes with the boss and HR are completely different to my experience. No  one cares what I do at the weekend. No one cares about my social media presence. No one cares if I use the company&amp;#x27;s products or not.&lt;p&gt;A few clear examples: one of my grandparents passed away, and the company was as supportive as possible. I asked if I could work from my parents house to be with my grandmother, and I got back &amp;quot;You can work from another country for an open ended period. If you aren&amp;#x27;t getting anything done, let me know, and we&amp;#x27;ll call it compassionate leave&amp;quot;.   There are people who go out socializing, but I&amp;#x27;ve never felt pressured to go along. There are people who work long hours or the weekend, but again, I&amp;#x27;ve never felt pressured to do that either.&lt;p&gt;Edit: When the company was newer, the employees worked very long hours and weekends. They worked, mind you. Everyone I know from that era is remarkably well off. The vast majority of the early employees have retired to spend more time with their wealth. I&amp;#x27;m much more concerned, as a person, about either the big companies that do massive crunches (see ea spouse) or the startups that fails despite everyone working really hard, the employees don&amp;#x27;t get the 100 million dollar payday.</text></comment>
<story><title>We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?smid=tw-nytmag&amp;_r=1&amp;</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>creamyhorror</author><text>Perfect. A much friendlier, much more social, much more &lt;i&gt;corporate&lt;/i&gt; 1984.&lt;p&gt;(Another heartbreaking work of staggering genius?)&lt;p&gt;edit: Yes, it&amp;#x27;s pretty transparently a reference to Google. Zings sound more like tweets, though. And monitoring everything has turned out to be primarily the NSA&amp;#x27;s job, but I guess he finished the book before that scandal came to real light.</text></comment>