The worst part is the high degree of censorship. Everyone is so sensitive now that it's impossible to speak openly
What would you say if you weren't censored?
"I think the demands you are making with regards to how fragile you are emotionally are not reasonable, and if this is how you must be treated in corporate life it is you that needs therapy". In general I think this response is correct and humane (provided you word it properly), because such fragility is not indicative of mental health. It is extremely not compatible with corporate culture to express this, as the prevailing notion is that everyone around such a person needs to conform 100% of the time to what they want.
I’m transhumanist, pro changing your identity, can easily handle gender fluidity, am thrilled that both Haskell and Rust ecosystems are so welcoming of transgender. I used ‘they’ as gender-neutral singular pronoun by default for decades just to not reveal people’s gender arbitrarily. But no language policing, please.
That said, it is a red flag that the company ok with spamming the employees to virtue signal. It is likely that it will be accompanied with other annoyances and has an incompatible culture.
Better to get out before you go crazy or get fired.
Simple expressive language is also taboo. One Italian coworker used a analogy of the product as a beautiful woman in a meeting to get a point across.
Basically all my us colleagues were shocked, because they only use dry corporate speak.
I think it is a big part of imposter syndrome and exhausting to speak and listen to.
I recently worked for an all-remote team where almost everyone is Europe based, and there was no humour at all in their meetings, and very little personal anecdata of any kind. It was very dry and professional, week in week out. I once cracked a light joke (nothing that anyone could find offensive) and it fell very flat. Doing so was obviously out of place. Never made that mistake again.
Not just missing humour, but I couldn't discern any way that people formed work-social connections outside of those meetings, even though most of our interactions were over Discord. It was all about the work, and that was minimal as well. Even on Discord it was interesting to see much of the time, people talked past each other, not appearing to understand each other's point, or just saying what they'd worked on with no replies. Even DMs tended to be dry and would end when the question at hand was answered. My attempts to be friendly and curious led nowhere, metaphorically like the flatness of talking in an anechoic chamber.
I found it quite depressing and difficult, not because I especially needed work friends, but because I couldn't find a way to get to the "informal real talk mode" about work either. It was difficult to forge the kinds of informal links that make work easier and more effective, and I think everyone's work quality suffered for it because everyone was kind of working on little atomised areas. I saw very little evidence that anyone cared about anyone else's wellbeing either.
You thought the Europeans were the dry ones?
Actually yes.
Although the teams I worked with were almost all people in Europe, one was from USA, and another was in Canada (though guessing from their name, perhaps their family came from eastern Europe). Those two were people I enjoyed listening to more, and felt if I reached out it would be feasible to have a bit more depth to the conversation. They managed to sound more interesting and emotionally present than the others, both in writing and verbally, and if I had a choice I'd choose them to work with in future.
It may not be a coincidence that they were among the most technically skilled people as well. I noticed a correlation between high technical skill and pleasant and thoughtful people, though by no means was that universal.
EDIT: After thinking over the above reply, I realised that "dry" isn't the right word for the distinction I'm using. "Humourless" and "entirely work oriented", perhaps. There were some Europeans that weren't dry, they had strongly expressed (but dubious) technical opinions and weren't afraid to say them. But that wasn't humour, and tended to imply someone else was wrong/stupid/incompetent, which imho was unhelpful for fostering prosocial work relationships.
* The vast majority of executives are paranoid, risk averse know nothings. They don’t want to take any business risks lest it harm their comp.
* Because most execs don’t understand their business, their customers, their industry, and they distrust their staff — they can’t formulate clear and concise goals and objectives. This is how orgs end up with that blitzkrieg of murky, pointless, meaningless objectives.
* Quite a lot of people in leadership roles got to where there are by making very morally and ethically questionable decisions. It’s largely due to the stupidity of the investor class that these individuals were never caught. The horrible thing is because these individuals are loaded to the gills with malintent they assume the same of everyone else. They tend to structure their organizations around mistrust.
* This is why management practice, especially in the US, appears to be a bad case of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. All of management’s bureaucratic nonsense and irrational separation of duties creates self-inflicted wounds. management salves wounds (they never get at the root cause). And then management rewards itself with big bonuses for fixing the problems they created.
* The US Federal Government functions way more effectively than most large companies. The reason is that in the govt policies, procedures, and controls are well documented and maintained. In most orgs all three are usually in flux at all times. This makes unity of effort pretty challenging on a good day.
* If orgs cut a lot of their senior leadership they could pay everyone a lot more -and- see a productivity improvement whilst preserving their margin
* Investors think they’re so clever.
And of course one last thing
* most people have no idea what they’re nattering on about