It's utterly maddening to me how much annoying doublespeak permeates through corporate American culture.

Even when management does something that seems objectively awful, they always feel a need to try and spin it into something aggressively positive (e.g. treating layoffs as an "opportunity to reorganize"). You can't speak candidly about anything because anything remotely negative will come off as a "bad attitude" or "not a team player".

After a job interview I'm expected to send an email about how I "appreciate the opportunity regardless of the outcome". I suppose that's not completely untrue, but to some extent if I don't get the job it really is a waste of time for both parties. I've been told you're supposed to send a thank you letter even if you're declined, which feels like a punch in the gut. You've already rejected me and decided I'm not good enough to work at your magnificent company, but you still expect me to grovel and suck up to you.

I've told this story before, but at a previous job at a BigCo I made the statement "we all do this for the money" [1]. I end up getting told by my manager that that was inappropriate and indicative of an attitude problem. It was candid, but is it untrue? I don't think so; you might do it for other reasons in addition to the money, but if the job stopped paying you then you would stop showing up, and that's totally fine.

I am sure there are studies saying that being overly candid and honest leads to worse outcomes in corporations, and fine, maybe it's "necessary", but I don't have to like it. I wish I could live in the a utopia where people say what they actually mean. I wish I could live in a society were I'm not expected to pretend that this isn't fucking weird.

"Weird" is the right word for it. It's weird that corporations seem to like being lied to. It's weird that everyone just goes along with it. It's weird that not everyone seems to think it's weird.

[1] To be clear, I didn't bring this up out of nowhere; people were criticizing a potential job candidate trying to negotiate his salary higher, which I thought was a little unfair.

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kirykl 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Look into a job at Bridgewater https://www.businessinsider.com/what-its-like-to-work-at-ray...

	▲	tombert 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I've actually applied and talked to a recruiter once, but never even got to a real interview. Finance is really hard to break into if you don't have a million degrees from an Ivy League, and probably not easy even then. I've heard about it being a bit scary to say anything though, so I don't know if it would be a good fit.
	▲	buildbot 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The pay seems a bit low based on that article for that level of “performance expectation”

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SpicyLemonZest 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I am sure there are studies saying that being overly candid and honest leads to worse outcomes in corporations, and fine, maybe it's "necessary", but I don't have to like it. I wish I could live in the a utopia where people say what they actually mean. I wish I could live in a society were I'm not expected to pretend that this isn't fucking weird.

I've met a few genuinely atypical people who do wish this, and maybe that's you.

What's much more common, in my experience, is people who support the concept of "uncomfortable truths you shouldn't be too candid about" and don't realize that corporate speak serves as a lowest common denominator in that regard. To you and I "we all do this for the money" is a banal observation; to someone going through a midlife crisis, or someone in the middle of a fight with their spouse about how they missed their kid's big soccer game, it's a pretty sensitive topic.

	▲	wat10000 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I really don't think it's the midlife crisis people we're protecting with this language. It's management. Corpspeak comes down to protecting their feelings from their uncomfortable truths. Management didn't tell off tombert for their remark because it might upset a worker struggling with work/life balance. They did it because it upsets management, who is invested in the idea that people come to work for higher reasons, because it makes them feel good and because they want it to be true because it means they can get away with paying less. When companies describe putting a bunch of people out of work as "restructuring" or whatever, who is that for? It's not for the people who lose their jobs, they know what it means. It's not for the people who remain, and who just saw a bunch of coworkers get the boot, they know too. It's ultimately for the people who put out the statement, because it lets them distance themselves from the reality of what they're doing. The people with the power are the ones who set the tone, and they're going to set a tone that makes them happy.
	▲	tombert 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't disagree with anything you said, and I expressed a sentiment not too dissimilar about a week ago [1]. People like the idea of being direct but not actual directness. When I was younger I was more accepting of regular corporate bullshit, but after a certain number of being lied to by startups you end up being kind of inoculated to it. Now I really wish they'd just be upfront instead of making me decode what they actually mean. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47373442