[dheera]

> unhappy people generally deliver shitty work

The anti-pattern I've seen happen very often in some big tech companies is that shitty work is in fact often what is desired -- by your manager.

The CEO wants good work, but you're too many levels from them for that to matter.

Your manager may be trying to get promoted, and isn't looking for "good work" per se, they're looking for whatever will get them promoted, which can be something shitty that their manager wants, or that the company wants for their broken PR strategy.

And if you, lower down on the totem pole, don't deliver that shit, and instead insist on delivering something good that they aren't actually looking for, you'll be on the firing line. You can't align with the CEO at the cost of disaligning with everyone in-between. The CEO will never know you exist, and you'll be managed out well before they ever knew you existed.

[shanemhansen]

I agree. Sometimes doing good work feels like a curve fitting problem where the objective function is a function not only of "value" but value to <manager, skip level, .... , CEO, business value>.

I learned this the hard way.

[pastamania]

What the CEO says company wide and what the CEO says to middle management and gets them to do are often two very, very different things.

If there's a difficult, unpopular decision to be made, C-suite types often can't just come out and talk about it openly because the very act of doing that will maximise the amount of ill will and damage that decision will cause throughout the business unnecessarily. So the role of middle management is to be the 'bad cop' and pass that message on in a limited way to the affected people, who then blame them for it.

Just because the CEO isn't the one saying it, it doesn't mean it's not coming from the CEO. Part of being a middle manager, maybe even the biggest part, is being the messenger whose paid to get shot.

[freetinker]

Astute observation, and spot-on IMO.