I can attest to working for smaller companies.

I also write software, but not for a technophobic company. We are consultants, I guess. We write applications for clients then move on to the next one. Often clients will pay again for extra work on existing projects so we get lots of variety and clients are loyal to us.

We too have a great level of autonomy, they trust us to do the job and we work hard because we like coding and the environment is nice and they have made my concessions for me when I’ve had issues outside of work.

This is counter to almost anywhere else I’ve worked. This is my first software developer role, but any customer service roles I did before, like 40 jobs, all wanted me to work as hard as humanly possible whilst paying me as little as legally possible. Like call centres would try and tell me I can have 9 minutes of personal breaks (toilet, drink, etc) a day. Naturally I would do what I wanted and tell them like it or fire me cause I ain’t bowing to you.

I also want to shout out Apple UK as an awesome place to work, I worked shop floor as a Christmas temp for three months and as a natural introvert who has had a colourful past I am very good at being an extrovert for periods and so excelled at customer service, like it would make me happy just being nice to customers, giving demos to the kids and talking to the kids as though they were adults, as if the product is for them then I’m talking like they’re the main person rather than most would talk to the parent.

Anyway got promoted to the Genius Bar and worked there for three years and loved it, sure it’s hard work at times and some people are fucking assholes, but on the whole it was amazing. Surrounded by very talented people from all backgrounds with all kinds of hobbies. The support from the management was extremely good, the benefits were awesome, the healthcare got me my ADHD diagnosis and literally turned my life around and it’s thanks to that and the support there that I’m not doing my dream job, admittedly for less money than I was on at Apple at the moment.

Finally, I am not absent of the fact that Apple employees or sub-contracted employees in the east are treated a whole lot worse and I actually had these conversations with managers at my store. As I did about green shirts for Earth day being counter to the message, since they had to manage shipping these around the world. And they’re not having pride flags in places where they really should be trying to change things like Saudi and Russia stores.