[heavenlyblue]

>> will fall victim to this culture

The issue with this culture is that using optics to achieve an advantage generally works, but is not a good long-term--big-picture strategy.

So reasonably, of course you need to learn all of these quirks, just to be able to get rid of the vermin in your org.

[selflesssieve]

I agree if we decouple optics from genuine promotion in which an employee "manages upward" their true successes. I know that people are more nuanced than this and it's not black and white. So this will become quite tautological.