These threads are so wild to me. According to the collective HN hive mind, nobody does any real work, managers are totally unnecessary, offices are inevitably a waste of time and money, companies will try to exploit you at every opportunity, and you shouldn’t try to work beyond the bare minimum to advance your career.

Meanwhile here I am, with a boss who I feel values and respects me and who is absolutely critical to my job performance and happiness, I make tons of meaningful human connections and collaborate 10x better face to face in the office (not to mention like my coworkers and like doing things like go to lunch with them), have consistently tried to go above and beyond my role’s requirements and have been rewarded consistently in my career for that effort, and absolutely do real, meaningful work every day (albeit as a relatively small cog). All while working for a big company that has politics and problems and bureaucracy but still manages to achieve amazing things despite the hurdles that operating at this scale incurs.