[plywoodtrees]

> ... as if she was a brainwashed fool in a startup cult makes no sense. > First, she chose to work there. She was not forced to. She has agency; she could leave at any time.

The whole point of the concept of brainwashing is that people can be manipulated or sucked into making nominally free choices that are not really free choices, or at least not what they would say are in their interests if they were out of that situation.

Whether this is really true for her, I don't know, it's hard to tell from outside, and it gets into slippery concept of free will if you look too closely. But people can be manipulated.