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Comment by Shaddox | Hacker News Reader

In my experience of working for corporations, all of them tend to be cult-like. Office politics: bringing down others to cut ahead, cutting deals, favoritism, etc. are the norm and your work and quality of it matters very little in the long run as long as you can deliver something on time.

The difference lies in perception. Or to put it more elegantly, if you like (or at least can tolerate) that specific flavor of Kool-Aid.

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This has been noticed for a while now, to the point where there are various theories as to how corporations (and companies in general) are able to persuade people not only to do a service in exchange for money, but to adopt the desires of the company for themselves, to see "a job well done", and go above and beyond, even sacrificing compensation for some time for the company. It's fascinating from a social psychological perspective; Frederic Lordon has some recent work on it.

I've worked in large corporations most of my life. Each is its own ecosystem. The top dogs use their staff as minions. The tough minions get an attaboy. The weak (normal humans with a soul) leave. It is a self cleaning/adjusting system, no need to fire anyone, most people quit for softer/calmer/humane companies.

In these large companies the #1 employee is the one who crushed everyone else on their path. No strange that many high-performers are sociopaths.

> In these large companies the #1 employee is the one who crushed everyone else on their path. No strange that many high-performers are sociopaths.

I often argue with my female colleagues who see this as an aspect of patriarchy culture since these sociopaths tend to be men. I disagree because their victims have no gender, these people simply don't care who they're mistreating. Nevertheless, I met many women who perceive it as a huge gender issue.

Although I'm not sure if what they're saying is true, it's entirely possible to be an aspect of patriarchal culture and affect both men and women. For instance, feminists argue that "toxic masculinity" is harmful to both women and men. Nevertheless, in my experience most people are averse to saying women have masculine traits; if a male is a strong leader, typically he's described as commanding, dominating, effective, strong-headed, whereas women in that position may be described as "bossy".

As such, if it is an aspect of patriarchal culture, it is more accurate to say that it is a patriarchal attitude that both men and women adopt, rather than it being something essentially "manly".

I could agree with you, but why call this culture "patriarchal"? I'd call it "animalistic" if anything. "Patriarchal" involves male/female duality and ascribes certain features to men and women that they might not currently be comfortable having. If someone is dominating, let's just call this person "dominating", not "having male features." If we go down the rabbit hole of patriarchy, in the end sooner or later someone starts accusing men for all evil, and this is one of the greatest misunderstandings of our age.

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