[LordFast]

Me thinks it's a common misconception for strongly opinionated people to believe that companies want to hire them in order for them to "fix things and make the company a better place".

In reality, what every company/team/management wants is someone who will give them some constructive criticism on small mistakes here and there that are easy to fix, but ultimately act as a supportive shield for the company against /other/ criticisms. The more credible that someone is, the better, and the more sophisticated that act of supportive shielding is, the better.

In exchange, the company provides support, financial or otherwise, for that someone's personal career ambitions in becoming rich and famous themselves.

Anyone else see it this way? Or am I just too jaded these days?

[jcheng]

That's pretty jaded IMHO. I would think most management wants positive change, not just to be shielded from criticism.

But reasonable people can disagree about what the status quo is, how good or bad that status quo is, what counts as positive change, what timescale positive change needs to happen at, and what costs/tradeoffs they are willing to accept to accomplish positive change.

[visarga]

Probably Timnit and the management disagreed on "what timescale positive change needs to happen at, and what costs/tradeoffs they are willing to accept to accomplish positive change".

[thu2111]

Not jaded. I think that's actually a very insightful way to put it. Heck I wouldn't even mind if a boss I had put it like that, as it's at least honest and not really unreasonable. I mean, if you go into an organisation and decide the entire premise of the organisation is irredeemably flawed then at some point your feedback is going to no longer be useful, even if some of it is on point, because "this entire enterprise is worthless" is not really an actionable view most of the time.

[hef19898]

Sums it up pretty well. Same reason consultants are hired.

[blaser-waffle]

Quite jaded but not wrong per se.

Usually is a reason they hire consultants and contractors to do say the unpleasant truths. They can be ignored, reframed, bribed to say whatever, and have the luxury of saying ugly things and then fucking off not long after.