Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by carapace 2533 days ago
I worked there for about two years. Afterward I described it as, "It felt like I was kidnapped by aliens and have just returned to Earth."

The short answer to your question is simply apathy (no one cares) and/or mild psychopathy (completely in a bubble to a borderline pathological degree.) They're not evil, they are just people.

Here's a dark little anecdote of corporate social psychopathy:

One day I realized I hadn't seen Chad (not his real name) in a few few days. Checking email lists, I discovered that his last email was ten days earlier. I went to my immediate boss and asked him about it and it turns out Chad had suffered a stroke and dropped at his desk one evening after most people had already left.

No one mentioned it.

He eventually came back to work after a couple of weeks with as little fanfare as he had left and went right back to work.

I was pretty freaked out that a coworker having a stroke was treated as no more of a big deal than someone dropping their coffee on the floor.