[seanmcdirmid]

You aren’t wrong, but having worked in China as well as the states (and a short stint in Switzerland), I think east Asia (china, Japan, Korea) has that even worse, probably due to Confucius. As China is looking more and more like the future, I fear that this gets worse before it gets better.

[piva00]

East Asia definitely has a similar flavour of this issue, Confucianism's filial piety forces unbounded respect to hierarchies, coupled with social harmony as a virtue and criticism of anyone "above" you is highly frowned upon.

I just think it's stranger for the USA's work culture to be so deferential to leadership while its societal values are outwardly quite loud about freedoms, it's more understandable to me for East Asia to be that way. For the USA case it's probably a mixture of the servitude/slavery past with still being quite religious compared to other Western peers.

[seanmcdirmid]

It never made sense to me in the USA, I just took it as it being what it is. I think everyone knows corporate culture is kind of a farce, but no sustainable alternative has appeared to replace it.