<story><title>Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs</title><url>https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>6stringmerc</author><text>A friend recently got what he thought was a great gig with an engineering firm - turned out it was more of a cult - rah rah sessions, after work bowling, softball - and they weren’t shy about shunning anybody who didn’t want all in right away.&lt;p&gt;He got bullied and saw others bullied too - we figure it’s why they prefer to intern pipeline and hire and retain - a lot easier to brainwash when young.&lt;p&gt;I mean it’s not a bad company, they do strong and good work - but acting like it’s the best place ever? Well, most of them have only worked there. We were like, offhand we’ve each had two better jobs than that one.[0] They used culture as a bait for lower pay too.&lt;p&gt;There’s something really disturbing about a company in 2022 wanting to act like a cult rather than accept the job market is turning more mercenary by the day. Oh well, their choice to fail.&lt;p&gt;[0] - Daniel Tosh “America #1” stand up bit for reference</text></item><item><author>jongjong</author><text>This seems to be a major epidemic nowadays. I suspect that mechanistic, meaningless, purely mimetic pursuit of success has some pretty negative consequences on society. I suspect it might explain why so many people are interested in engaging in politics (or company politics) and zero-sum value extraction schemes instead of just adding value... They&amp;#x27;re not interested in the process at all, only in the outcome; financial success and social approval from authority figures.&lt;p&gt;Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that they don&amp;#x27;t want to do, so of course they tend to look for shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way. They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it&amp;#x27;s all about status, money and power. As people have become more free in their personal lives, on the career-side, we&amp;#x27;ve never been so constrained.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway2037</author><text>This was exactly my experience at Goldman Sachs.  Sorry, I should be posting under a throw-away, but let&amp;#x27;s be real for a moment.  That place was nothing but a cult.  Yes, they make lots of money, but you need to sell your soul.  I never worked in a place with so many sheep (non-believers but scared to speak-up) &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; assholes (believers, only because they profit &amp;#x2F; climb the corporate ladder) _at the same time_.  Fortunately, I escaped after two years of that prison sentence.  (The whole experience feels like Shawshank Redemption when I write about it now!)  All the global investment banks where I have worked, Goldman had the fewest number of mid-career&amp;#x2F;senior hires.  The intern&amp;#x2F;fresher pipeline was &lt;i&gt;so&lt;/i&gt; deep.  Now I understand why!  They are so much easier to brain-wash.&lt;p&gt;Two stories stand out in my new hire training:&lt;p&gt;We had &lt;i&gt;multiple&lt;/i&gt; &amp;quot;partners&amp;quot; (super senior, old-school MDs) tell us: &amp;quot;At Goldman, there is not publically available org chart.&amp;quot;  Fucking dead wrong.  I raised my hand at each of those bullshit meetings and said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m sorry, but this is incorrect.  There is a website where you can view and search the org chart.&amp;quot;  (It was amazing -- no lie&amp;#x2F;joke.)  Each PMD was so &amp;quot;surprised&amp;quot; to learn this.  Not sure if real, or encouraging people to do face-to-face networking.&lt;p&gt;Second, they showed all these weird propaganda videos about how Goldman is closely tied with the US gov&amp;#x27;t, especially during World War 2.  So weird, creepy, and out of date!  Many senior partners leave Goldman and enter US politics.  In American English, they call it &amp;quot;the revolving door&amp;quot; (between private industry and politics).  Many democracies have this problem.  But why celebrate it?  Fuct!  The whole thing felt so sleazy.  Why is this important to non-US citizens?  Many people looked bored and only read their mobile phones during these 90 minute(!) videos.</text></comment>
<story><title>Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs</title><url>https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>6stringmerc</author><text>A friend recently got what he thought was a great gig with an engineering firm - turned out it was more of a cult - rah rah sessions, after work bowling, softball - and they weren’t shy about shunning anybody who didn’t want all in right away.&lt;p&gt;He got bullied and saw others bullied too - we figure it’s why they prefer to intern pipeline and hire and retain - a lot easier to brainwash when young.&lt;p&gt;I mean it’s not a bad company, they do strong and good work - but acting like it’s the best place ever? Well, most of them have only worked there. We were like, offhand we’ve each had two better jobs than that one.[0] They used culture as a bait for lower pay too.&lt;p&gt;There’s something really disturbing about a company in 2022 wanting to act like a cult rather than accept the job market is turning more mercenary by the day. Oh well, their choice to fail.&lt;p&gt;[0] - Daniel Tosh “America #1” stand up bit for reference</text></item><item><author>jongjong</author><text>This seems to be a major epidemic nowadays. I suspect that mechanistic, meaningless, purely mimetic pursuit of success has some pretty negative consequences on society. I suspect it might explain why so many people are interested in engaging in politics (or company politics) and zero-sum value extraction schemes instead of just adding value... They&amp;#x27;re not interested in the process at all, only in the outcome; financial success and social approval from authority figures.&lt;p&gt;Many people are spending most of their lives doing stuff that they don&amp;#x27;t want to do, so of course they tend to look for shortcuts instead of trying to do things the right way. They have no intrinsic pride in the work they do; it&amp;#x27;s all about status, money and power. As people have become more free in their personal lives, on the career-side, we&amp;#x27;ve never been so constrained.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jongjong</author><text>Having worked for many different tech companies, the concept of &amp;#x27;cult companies&amp;#x27; seems like a trend. Though I can&amp;#x27;t say for sure if this is only affecting the tech industry or all industries.&lt;p&gt;One of my ex-colleagues was hired straight out of university by a company and he did not take a single holiday in 4 years because his boss would always try to make him feel guilty or would imply that there would likely be negative consequences for him as an employee.&lt;p&gt;After he eventually quit and changed companies, he had very low expectations and he couldn&amp;#x27;t believe how much better that second company was... It was a startup so it wasn&amp;#x27;t exactly low-stress by my standards; it goes to show how extreme the differences can be between companies that even a job which I considered challenging seemed like a walk in the park to him given what he had experienced before.</text></comment>