> "be kind to others and assume best intent"

The first time I ran into this was working at Meta, where that was one of the core values (it's since been replaced by "Be direct and respect your colleagues"). It was one of those slogans that sounded fine on paper, but in practice, it was almost exclusively weaponised by powerful folks to excuse their transgressions.

Think someone is sexually harassing you? You are clearly not assuming good intentions on their part. Think they are being racist towards you? Same thing. Think someone is sandbagging your promo for personal reasons? Ditto...