[thot_experiment]

It always surprises me when people don't understand that the employee-employer relationship is an adversarial one. Unless you're in a democratic co-op or similar your employer is the enemy and you should never forget that. The correct move is to try to screw them in every legal way at every turn because that is what they are doing to you. Never divulge any information that increases your attack surface, always try to extract the most money for the least effort. This is capitalism 101.

You must not allow them to fool you into thinking that these aren't the rules they're playing by. David Sirlin's "Playing to Win" is a good treatise on how to be good, and perhaps the most important lesson is to play the game by the rules as written, and not by some other set of rules that exists only in your head.

(Though in this case the victim was senior enough that I suspect he was playing the game to the best of his ability, trying to humanize himself to gain the upper hand in some other manipulation game and misplayed, kicking things into the legal arena, as one does)

[arjie]

Until this present universe I didn’t really care about that because retaining the job wasn’t a top priority. If you got fired over something like this you took it as a good way to go do something somewhere else.

Now of course it’s hard to say if the original employment shape is still valid.

[imposterr]

That sounds like an exhausting way to live.

[DanHulton]

I would say that the more-exhausting way to live would be to be unaware of this, to accept the “we’re a family here” lie at face value, and to be passed over and screwed over at frequent intervals without knowing or understanding why.

You don’t have to go full Patrick Bateman corp-bro, but keeping in mind the phrase “we don’t fire family” and adjusting your approach based on that counter-example can help you to keep things appropriately transactional and not be taken advantage of.

[kube-system]

The least exhausting way to work a job is to find people to work with who are smart, well adjusted, and genuinely interested in cooperating to make money together.

[janderson215]

This sounds like an exhausting perspective on the world. I’d rather be hurt by assholes than never allow myself to be vulnerable with anybody. You can mitigate the potential downside without thinking everybody is out to get you or thinking everything is a power game.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Not at all work cultures are toxic, but many have toxic elements.

It's very culture-dependent. You have to read the room, pick up clues from current behaviour and previous history, and try to calibrate accordingly.

There's a broad correlation between management stupidity and chaotic leadership and toxicity but sometimes you can still end up in pockets of sanity - or insanity if the surrounding culture is good but there are one or more Cluster B types on a team.

[thot_experiment]

I'm vulnerable with plenty of people, just not employers (in general). The incentive structures, especially at a company that's more than a few people are such that it is in their best interest to get as much from you for as little as possible, that's the entire point of the system.

[sleepybrett]

yes, employment is exhausting. To do other that what the poster says is accepting risk.

[unwise-exe]

>>> This is capitalism 101.

No, it's really not.

The entire point of capitalism is free enterprise and freedom of association. The way to apply that to employer / employee relationships is to recognize that you are not a serf bound to a single employer and keep half an eye on your options in case you ever tire of your current relationship.

[thot_experiment]

My freedom to choose an employer is orthogonal to the incentive structures within in that relationship.

[wat10000]

If it's adversarial then why are they willingly entering into a mutually beneficial arrangement?

[thot_experiment]

A mutually beneficial agreement can still be adversarial? If you're getting shaken down by the mafia it's beneficial for you to pay them protection money.

[wat10000]

You’d be better off without the shakedown altogether. Not true for a job you willingly take and stay in.

[president_zippy]

"The man who gives me employment, which I must have or suffer, that man is my master, let me call him what I will."

-Henry George