The irony in this comment is thick enough you could cut it with a knife.
Like many of the other responses in this thread, you're generalizing a small set of experiences to every company, and not even acknowledging that other companies may not work this way
I suspect this is due to not wanting "to do anything that jeopardizes [your] position in the [anti-]executive group-think."
I have worked for multiple companies that looked for feedback from employees, and claimed to use that information to better the company for those employees. Some actually did, and others did not.
Not all of them are the same, and many actually seek feedback in earnest. Meanwhile, you would have me believe that some of the companies I have worked for didn't exist.
Arent they? If those 'not same's constituted any tangible statistics, the landscape would be different. But it is how it is.
That is like saying "But there were good people among that overwhelmingly vicious bunch too!". Yeah, there may have been a small percentage of good people who never went along with the mainstream even in Nazi Germany, but the majority did and they did what they did. The example is not extreme - you can apply the same logic to every case in which someone tries to acquit an overwhelmingly negative majority by mentioning an insignificant number of positive minority gaming that majority.
But this is assuming that "bad" companies outnumber the "good" by a significant margin, which has been untrue in my experience.
It's entirely possible the landscape isn't different because the "good" companies are inherently uncompetitive with the "bad", but this is not something to be solved by just writing every company off as "bad" and then blaming the resulting system on that.
You have to start by understanding why, to paraphrase you, "the landscape is not different". I think writing off all companies as "the same" avoids answering that question entirely, which really cripples any logic you build on top of that premise, to the point where it leads to contradictory or invalid conclusions.
I disagree that the "bad" companies represent "an overwhelmingly negative majority", because I do not see the necessary proof to support such a statement. It appears to be a generalization driven by motivated reasoning.
The irony of your rant is that you are pointing to the other extreme.
> Not all of them are the same, and many actually seek feedback in earnest.
And many actually seek to retaliate on feedback - as evidence by the parent post.
We can both be right but you cannot deny other's experiences and insight. You yourself are aware and have seen other execs who are more interested in self-preservation. So they exist, and are not a rarity.
So yeah, nOt EvErY eXeC iS lIkE tHaT - but plenty are and that's what my post intends to highlight to the avid reader. My intent is to highlight the truth and present the reality of what exec position is. And that, leadership is not to be expected by default.
"plenty that are" isn't sufficient, though? Comments like yours tend toward the portrayal of all companies as being evil and exploitative. It's trivially obvious that this is not the case, so perhaps you're just trying to claim that the vast majority of them are evil and exploitative?
In my career, I've had fewer "bad" companies than "good", and none of the "good" ones match any of your descriptions of what "companies are like". Am I to believe I've just had incredible luck? Maybe!
However, I reject the notion that the "vast majority" of companies are exploitative. This does not fit with my experience, or the experiences of my peers. I would say "less than half", if I were to really ballpark the number.
This, of course, puts your comments in a pretty poor light, for me. You're outright insulting the "good" companies I've worked for, by insinuating that they were only trying to exploit me for profit. I mean, they were "exploiting" me, if you really want to split hairs, but I understood the nature of the relationship and actively consented to it, because the relationship also benefitted me. I had a good job, good colleagues, challenging work, solid responsibilities, good benefits, good pay, and more. The fact that the "company" was trying to make more from the output of my work than they were offering to me as compensation is not an inherently bad thing. I could not, on my own, build the kinds of things these companies were building, nor would I have thought of the products/services on my own, so there is indeed value in being "a company".
I was also part of said company, and identified as such. My success was its success, and vice versa.
Your outlook on this topic is needlessly pessimistic.
Like many of the other responses in this thread, you're generalizing a small set of experiences to every company, and not even acknowledging that other companies may not work this way
I suspect this is due to not wanting "to do anything that jeopardizes [your] position in the [anti-]executive group-think."
I have worked for multiple companies that looked for feedback from employees, and claimed to use that information to better the company for those employees. Some actually did, and others did not.
Not all of them are the same, and many actually seek feedback in earnest. Meanwhile, you would have me believe that some of the companies I have worked for didn't exist.