[ab_c]

I've worked in a place with a "high school" office culture and it was horrific.

At the time, the company had no structured way of determining your work performance so it was all based on people's opinion. If your manager thinks you're amazing and tells others, then that information gets passed up amongst the ranks. Social value (popularity) meant more for your career than actually doing good work.

A former coworker once saw my email inbox and commented that I had a lot of unread emails (over 3000). A few weeks later, I got brought into an office by my manager where he kept stating how vital it was that emails need to be read. I do read emails -- I just don't read Github notification emails.

Any office culture that revolves around rumors and reputations will likely be a dysfunctional one.