One of the biggest contributors to job satisfaction is the relationship we have with our coworkers. It makes sense: in today’s 24/7 hyper-connected world, we spend most of our waking hours interacting with our colleagues, even on nights and weekends.
In an effort to learn more about these important coworker bonds, Comparably asked workers across the technology industry to describe their own feelings toward their coworkers. The data, which comes from thousands of employees at small, mid-size, and large public and private tech companies, was collected between March 2016 and July 2017.
Respondents were asked the following:
–Does someone you work with closely make you want to quit your job?
–How likely are you to share your compensation with coworkers?
–To whom do you feel most loyal at work?
–Have you ever dated a coworker while both at the same company?
–Do you have a close friend at work?
–How often do you socialize with team members outside of work?
Check out the results and methodology below.
1 in 3 people say they have a coworker who makes them want to quit
Women are more likely than men to want to quit their job because of a coworker (43% of women vs. 32% of men).
BY AGE
Workers 18 to 25 reported some of the lowest rates of coworker aggravation, with 71% of them saying they do not work with someone who makes them want to quit. Workers on the older end of the spectrum agreed: 72% of those aged 56 to 60 say they do not work with someone who makes them want to quit.
Workers in the middle are much more likely to be frustrated by their coworkers. The peak is for those aged 36 to 40, a time at which many people find themselves at or near the pinnacle of their careers: 60% of them say they do not work with a coworker who makes them want to quit (meaning 40% do). Note: The sample size for workers 61 and up was statistically insignificant and therefore eliminated from the chart below.
BY EXPERIENCE
Desire to quit increases with work experience. Workers with more than 10 years of experience at their company showed the highest rates of wanting to quit – 63% of them say they do not work with someone who makes them want to quit, meaning 37% do.
Workers with one to three years of experience were least likely to entertain that thought (72% said they do not work with a coworker who makes them wants to quit, meaning 28% do).
BY DEPARTMENT
Workers in business development and design roles showed the highest rates of wanting to quit because of a coworker (54% and 55%, respectively, said they do not work with a coworker who makes them want to quit, meaning 46% and 45% do).
People in communications roles were on the other end of the spectrum: 86% of them said they do not work with a coworker who makes them want to quit. Workers in customer support and HR also showed low rates of frustration with their coworkers (73%).
BY EDUCATION LEVEL
The more education you have, the more annoyed you’re likely to be. Workers who have achieved a doctoral degree were the most likely to say that a coworker bothers them to the point of wanting to quit (53% of them said they do not work with a coworker who makes them want to quit, meaning 47% of them do).
Workers with a high school degree were least likely to say they work with someone who quits their job (74% say they do not work with someone who makes them want to quit, meaning 26% of them do.)
Most people are still hesitant to reveal their salary to their coworkers
It’s still taboo for people to reveal how much they earn, though millennials are more open to it than most.
BY AGE
More than 30% of workers aged 18 to 30 said they were “somewhat” or “very” likely to share their salary with their coworkers. Only 12% of workers above 40 said the same.
Older millennials (those aged 31 to 35) were less eager to talk salary than their younger counterparts, though 29% of them said it would depend on the situation. That’s the most in any age group.
Thirty-one percent of respondents across all age groups said they were unlikely to share their compensation details, and 21% said they would never do it. (The 41-45 age group was most against it, with 28% answering “never.” Only 14% of workers aged 18-30 said the same.)
People feel more loyal to their coworkers than to their bosses
36% of workers in the tech industry say their loyalty rests with their coworkers, first and foremost. The next most popular response was “boss or manager,” with 30% of the vote. People generally felt the least loyal to their direct reports (10%).
BY GENDER
Men and women ranked their loyalties in the same order, though a slightly larger percentage of women ranked their coworkers as No. 1 (38% vs. 34%), and a slightly larger percentage of men said they had loyalty to no one.
BY EXPERIENCE
Forty-four percent of workers with 1-3 years of experience in their job said they were most loyal to their coworkers – the most of any other group.
Workers with over 10 years’ experience were the only group to rank their managers above their coworkers. They also had the highest percentage of respondents who were loyal to company mission/vision (15%).
Workers with 1-3 years of experience
Workers with 10+ years of experience
1 in 4 people has dated a colleague while they worked together
Twenty-six percent of men and 28% of women say they have dated a coworker while they were at the same company.
BY AGE
Thirty-two percent of workers aged 56 to 60 admitted to having dated a coworker while they worked at the same company. That was the highest rate among any age group.
The lowest rate was among workers 18 to 25, 23% of whom admitted to having dated a coworker. (Note: Data for age 61+ was excluded due to small sample size.)
BY INDUSTRY
Thirty-three percent of employees who work in operations selected “yes” when asked if they had ever dated a coworker they were working with at the time. Only 23% of employees in engineering said the same.
Women in operations and men in legal were most likely to report having dated a coworker (36% for both). Women in legal and men in engineering in were least likely to report the same (19% and 22%, respectively).
Half of workers say they have a BFF at work
Fifty-one percent of men and 55% of women say they have a close friend at work. This is an important figure, as studies show that people who cultivate friendships at the office are happier and more productive at work.
BY DEPARTMENT
Sixty percent of workers in the HR department at tech companies say they have a close friend at work – the highest of any other group. Just 41% of workers in the legal department at tech companies say they have a best friend at work – the lowest of any group.
BY AGE
Workers are less likely to say they have a work BFF as they get older. Fifty-seven percent of workers 30 or younger say they have a close friend at work, the most of any age group. From there, the rate slowly declines, bottoming out at 40% for workers aged 56 to 60. (Responses for workers 61+ were eliminated due to small sample size.)
BY EXPERIENCE
Workers with 1 to 6 years of work experience are most likely to have a best friend at work (55%). Entry-level workers are least likely to say they have a best friend at work.
Most people rarely socialize with their coworkers outside of work
Three in four people say they hang out with their co-workers “once a month,” “once a quarter,” or “never.” Workers under age 25 are most social.
Seventeen percent say they socialize with their co-workers outside of work “once a week” and 9% say they do so “multiple times a week.”
BY AGE
Workers aged 18 to 25 are most likely to spend time hanging out with their co-workers outside of work. About 23% say they do so once a week, and another 18% said they do so multiple times a week.
Time spent with coworkers declined from there, hitting its lowest point among workers aged 56 to 60, of whom 10% say socialize with their coworkers once a week and 3% say socialize with their coworkers multiple times a week.
Ages 18 to 25:
Ages 56 to 60:
BY LOCATION
Workers in New York and San Francisco get together with their coworkers more frequently than anyone else: 29% of respondents in each of the two cities say they socialize with their coworkers either once a week or multiple times a week.
New York:
San Francisco:
Workers in Dallas get together less frequently than anyone else: 81% of respondents say they see their coworkers either once a month, once a quarter, or never. (About 57% of those respondents selected “once a quarter” or “never,” the most of any other group.)
Dallas:
Methodology
–Questions were in Yes/No, True/False, 1-10 scale, and multiple choice format.
–Results are based on 36,000+ responses from workers across the technology sector.
–Employees hail from small, mid-size, and large tech companies (VC-funded, privately-held, and public) to household brands like Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc.
–Data was collected between March 2016 and July 2017.
About Comparably
Comparably is a compensation, culture, and jobs monitoring site with a mission to make work more transparent and rewarding. Employees can anonymously rate their company culture and CEOs, input their salaries, and have their dream jobs find them. As the only platform with comprehensive and structured data that can be segmented by gender, ethnicity, age, location, tenure, company size, title/department, and education, Comparably has over 1 million employee ratings and hundreds of thousands of salary and culture data. Its jobs matching tool, dubbed “Priceline meets Tinder for jobs,” is used by more than 2,500 major companies including Netflix, Amazon, Snap, Tinder, Uber, Intuit, Salesforce, Dell, PepsiCo, Warner Bros, Twitter, Priceline, SpaceX, PayPal, eBay, Airbnb, and more. Comparably launched in March 2016 and has quickly become one of the most popular online resources for employee compensation and culture data.
Website: www.comparably.com | Fair Pay Report: www.comparably.com/report | Studies: www.comparably.com/blog
