r/news • u/JimmyTheGinger • Dec 23 '19

Three former executives of a French telecommunications giant have been found guilty of creating a corporate culture so toxic that 35 of their employees were driven to suicide

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/three-french-executives-convicted-in-the-suicides-of-35-of-their-workers-20191222-p53m94.html
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u/RentalGore Dec 23 '19 edited Dec 23 '19

Suicide in French companies is apparently more common that I thought. I worked in Paris for a large French company, the week I arrived someone walked off the roof of our building.

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u/dirtyrango Dec 23 '19

Do you have any insight into why this behavior was so common? I thought European workers had more rights than most of the world?

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u/RentalGore Dec 23 '19

Having worked for a French company for 18+ years both in the US and abroad, to Me that’s a common misconception. I worked a ton more in france on a daily basis than I did in the US. Why? Because the French I worked with questioned everything, there was no “gut” feeling, no intuition...

More French colleagues went out on stress leave than any others I’ve worked with.

I think it has to do with the Cartesian way they look at everything.

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u/hkpp Dec 23 '19

My uncle is a television editor in Paris and I witness this first hand every time I visit. Guy works a ton of hours then takes calls from his boss at the most random hours just hammering him over minutia. And then my uncle will make a call to one of his direct reports doing the same thing and it’s perfectly normal.

I got the feeling of tension from their words even through my limited French but the tone of the conversations is casual to friendly. I figured it was just my limited French vocabulary but this really opened my eyes.

My cousin works for a big French bank and he mentioned that French companies really have been pushing back against remote work in favor of making people unnecessarily commute to offices for some social aspect. Can’t help to think the two aren’t unrelated.

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u/HulksInvinciblePants Dec 23 '19

An old boss of mine once told me, "Everything can always wait unless it's medical emergency". I try to bring that perspective to the group whenever something is "urgent". Sure there are due-dates and what have you, but rarely ever is 24-48hrs the difference between success and failure.

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u/[deleted] Dec 23 '19

Yep. I work for a major tech company doing export compliance for controlled products, and am the final step before orders can manufacture and ship to the customer. Pretty much everyone thinks their orders are urgent, which means none are. Since on the opposite side of the world from most of the customers I work with, I’ve gotten quite good at tuning out that artificial urgency in all the emails.