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by codeonfire 3829 days ago
In reality managers do stuff like hide their opinions so people will stick around so they can burn them at review time. If someone quits too soon, the manager may have to burn someone they like. How did working get to be so dumb?
1 comments

Work battles are kinda dumb, but in a way, they aren't dumb-- they're a much smarter and less-deadly form of primitive warfare. We're not perfect today, but ideas like enforcing openness+honesty in a safe environment will drive us even further away from the stone age mentality of physically harming someone who displeases you.

Michael Jensen has been doing some research on the benefits of honesty-- you should check out his controversial research on integrity [0]. I think he'd support the idea of calling out managers who hide their opinions from you. Further, Google has done some HR research[1] that has called "psychological safety" the #1 driver of team effectiveness.

[0] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1511274 [1] https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful...

> I think he'd support the idea of calling out managers who hide their opinions from you.

I suspect even the managers would support that... until it's their turn in the barrel.

One of the problems with "treat others how you wish to be treated" is that a lot of people have very funny notions of both how they are treating people and how they would wish to be treated.