[tpmx]

Awesome.

I'm a software guy who for 1.5 years worked for a hardware company with a relatively strict upwards-only information reporting structure. It wasn't even for secrecy, it's just that the people running it didn't understand the concept of collaboration at all. They were a mix of physicists and economists. Really smart but also, as it turned out, very 'square' people. It was a relatively small company, around 100 people.

It felt quite soul-crushing after a busy week to have to spend mental efforts writing up a report to someone 1-3 levels up... especially if you had no idea if it was ever read. And then do this every single week. If colleagues could read and learn from this effort it would make a lot more sense.

Never again. Went back to the relatively speaking much saner software world after that experience.

[cloudripper]

Thank you for the articulation of the issue and your experience dealing with it. Were you aware of the articulated issue (the absence of collaboration) while you were there? Or did it only become clear in retrospect? I imagine in an environment like this it would be easy to get lost in the feeling of being undervalued and disrespected, without being clear of the source/cause of that feeling (unhealthy organizational culture).

[tpmx]

Thanks for the interest but no.

[VancouverMan]

> It felt quite soul-crushing after a busy week to have to spend mental efforts writing up a report to someone 1-3 levels up... especially if you had no idea if it was ever read.

There are ways to test that.

You could just not submit the report, and see if anybody complains.

Or prepare the report, but intentionally corrupt the file before submitting it, and see if anybody complains.

Or prepare the report, and in it ask if anyone is actually reading it, and ask that they contact you if they are.

[tpmx]

I needed to submit a .pptx file with 1 or more slides that my manager would manually insert into his weekly presentation deck to the exec team.

I admit I never had the guts to submit a slide which asked if anyone was reading it. It did cross my mind.

(It was a Microsoft-by-default-company, as many small hardware/research-oriented companies often are, I guess.

There was also that one week epic fight needed to get approval to run MacOS/Linux in the new "software department".)