Survey: More Than Half of Tech Employees ‘Dread’ Work Each Morning

Feelings of anxiety and loneliness have increased among employees at large tech companies since COVID-19 became widespread in March while productivity has decreased, according to two nationwide surveys.

An early August survey of 2,000 employees from Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google and other large American companies found 56% of them “dread work every morning,” owing largely to issues that stem from the coronavirus pandemic.

Employees at Facebook (78%), VMware (74%), Oracle (73%), PayPal (73%), Intuit (71%) and Amazon (68%) were most likely to dread work, according to the survey. Among tech companies, employees at Cisco (42%), Tesla (43%) and Uber (46%) were least likely to experience the same dread prior to work each day.

The survey was conducted on Aug. 5-7 by Blind, a professional network that frequently polls its millions of users on various employment-related issues. The results mirror a late-June survey conducted by the same organization indicating how harshly COVID-19 is impacting even those employees who’ve retained their positions at tech companies. Polling more than 3,200 employees from the same companies, the survey found loneliness up 11%, feelings of anxiety up 11% and productivity impacted negatively by 5% since March. At Facebook, 70% of employees said their productivity levels were impacted, while 66% and 62% of employees at Google and Amazon, respectively, said the same. At Amazon, 70% of employees reported increased loneliness since March, compared to 67% of employees at Apple and 66% of employees at Microsoft.

Across the tech sector, employees have been reporting increased burnout since April, when most companies and the federal government had transitioned to remote work.