This is an easy reaction to have in an internet forum, and of course it will get a lot of support because it resonates with the rank and file, so you'll naturally get a lot of internet points at places like HN and LinkedIn.

But as you rise in the org chart things get more nuanced and complicated. First, you have to pick your battles. You can stand up for precisely as much as your reputation allows, and in a large corporation that is always pretty small when it comes to ingrained culture or explicit leadership mandates.

Second, business realities and the end of ZIRP are something that a whole generation of software developers have been sheltered from, but is nevertheless a real thing that is not purely a result of greedy management. I started working in 2000, and had a decade under my belt leading teams and becoming CTO of a Web 2.0 era startup before I made as much money as new grads expect to earn today fresh out of school.

I am thankful for that time though, because being in a small company truly flattens and aligns things so every single person understands the business stakes because it's an open book. At scale, leadership empathy and rank and file business understanding inevitably break down, and middle managements job is to satisfice between them as much as possible while still recognizing what pays the bills. Ultimately as an employee of a large company you have to see past the cognitive dissonance and corporate speak, and make a call on whether you believe in the leadership or not. If you don't, then your best bet is to move on, grandstanding for the sake of reputation with the burnt out and the jaded doesn't actually benefit anyone.

"I started working in 2000, and had a decade under my belt leading teams and becoming CTO of a Web 2.0 era startup before I made as much money as new grads expect to earn today fresh out of school."

The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.55% per year between 2000 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 87.60%.

In other words, if you were paid 60k in 2000 you would need 112200 to make the same inflation adjusted income (but note that income tax increases as you increase in income in absolute terms, so that new inflation-adjusted income is less net of taxes).

If you reached 100k in 2000 you would need 187k today (and again, tax makes it worse).

I see the general philosophy that people should not protest their indignities as leading to a culture where it is weird to do so which is why it is so hard for everyone to do it---nobody around them does it.

There is supposed to be a baseline amount of respect in an organization that dissolves most of the need for bitterness and power struggles. Tech companies I have worked at and heard about mostly do not have this. The more hypermodern the company, the less they have it. It's the principal reason why modern tech is so dystopian: because whatever happens to you, you are just expected to take it, and you're paid a lot so shut the fuck up. I've worked at several famous tech companies and I have very little respect for any of the management there because of the amount of "shut up and take the money" attitude there is. The organization rots, culturally, and everyone's life is devoid of meaning, and success is proportional to how much you can cope with a life that's devoid of meaning or just bask in the money, but the whole thing is hopeless and at some level doomed. Also, a leaderless organization has no morality, which is why every big tech company just gets progressively more evil, because who would stop them?

It's a horrible equilibrium, and the incentives (public stocks, short-termism, a taboo against conflict). Now I don't think any old person is going to stand up and fight it off singlehandedly. But the first step of doing something about it is normalizing the understanding that people should be doing something. You may not be able to stand up yourself, or maybe not yet, but you should at least agree in principle with doing so.

My feeling is that at an organization where people and leadership don't have mutual respect, everyone lives a hollow and soulless and unfulfilled existence. Maybe that is good for certain psychopaths, I don't know, but everyone would be happier if it was not this way. And almost certainly the company would be more stable and healthy and less short-termist, as well. It is astounding how bad the decision making that comes out an unaccountable organization is. Thing is, money in tech has been so free that even an organization run by inhuman idiots can still be profitable. It shouldn't be; competition should be destroying anything that is done with such mediocrity... but it is, because the whole system is broken as hell right now.

I don't think this is an easy reaction at all, I read it as someone who sees through the BS and has experienced it first-hand.

You call it grandstanding, I call it just being a good person and supporting your coworkers. Maybe a little 'grandstanding' is all that is needed to break a handful of beaten-down people out of their rut to stand up a little more and demand some attention. Shining light on these entrenched issues is the only way to get them to change. Shame works wonders. I agree with the parent post that more and more standing up is the only way to change. Someone just has to have the courage to do it first, job be damned. That grandstanding can go so much further if someone with the CTO title were to push things.

Things don't get more complicated the higher you go, they get easier, precisely because you're in the position of power and the influence, real or shadow, to actually have your words have meaning, and you have the entire body of experience and knowledge held by your people at your disposal upon which to draw. But that goes against the line of the C-suite knowing best and having some hidden knowledge.

> leadership empathy and rank and file business understanding inevitably break down

Because "leadership" are being cowards. Because they kept their teams at arm's length, not wanting anyone to get an up-close glimpse of how bad they're fumbling.

I don't know what ZIRP has to do with anything. If anything, we're in this mess because managers fell asleep at the wheel because they knew they didn't need to do jack diddly, the investments will always keep coming, no worries, no need to actually do their jobs, valuations will always rise, don't ya know!