For many workers, working towards the goal of making the company profitable would be an improvement.

Many workers primarily work towards helping the boss grow their head count, or helping the middle-manager with their emotional state.

It's generally a symbiotic relationship though, as the workers grow their own resume while helping their boss grow theirs (and generally the boss is growing his own while helping his boss grow theirs and so on. Sometimes it goes all the way up where even the founder just wants that lifestyle subsidized by investor money and does not care to actually ever build a profitable product).

This kind of perverse incentive comes up when the rank and file has no meaningful way to profit off the company's success, and so it instead becomes more profitable (in future profits from the inflated resume, or kickbacks/favors from vendors, etc) to act against the company. Just like in security bug bounties, companies should reward their employees more than an external malicious actor would, otherwise they will choose the rational option.

Really sharp reasoning. This can be reversed to define an extra ordinary manager: don't care about your head count and just be a fucking grown up who's emotional state does not depend on his team's performance. IMHO this results in having a high head count and a team performing pretty well. Kinda stoic wisdom. Go and figure...

> helping the middle-manager with their emotional state.

Hah, this is hilarious. So very "The Office".