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Comment by ballenf | Hacker News Reader

What's really surprising is that there are no humans at Walgreens who can call out obviously bullshit customer surveys knowing that they're wrong. The company behaves like a zombie with no one really in control.

The emperor really has no clothes, but customer surveys say otherwise.

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There are no incentives for anyone to do so.

One VP introduces this idea, does "case studies" designed to make it look good, rolls it out, distorts the statistics to show that it's a win, collects a bonus, and then moves on.

A second VP recognizes that it's bogus, removes the program, distorts the statistics to show that it's a win, collects a bonus, and then moves on.

If a third VP were to pop up and point out that it's stupid, they would be vilified for standing in the way of progress and eventually ousted, or just leave out of disgust because of the company's stupid ideas.

This insight has caused me to essentially be blackpilled at my BigCorp job: Nothing means anything. No one is even trying to do a good job, and naively trying to do so one's self will probably just result in a PIP aka being fired.

Big tech is BS in exactly the way parent poster described but "doing a good job" doesn't usually get you PIP'd AFAICT. Just means you stay the same level for not rushing out half-baked features and very, very slowly people will realize you don't suck but it still won't help you get promo.

I'm not in Big Tech really, just a standard BigCo. IME doing anything productive in an enterprise environment means pulling out at least some legacy cruft constantly. Anything else means it accumulates faster than you can remove it. Unfortunately, almost every bit of cruft has someone that looks after it, so this naturally makes you enemies. The only realistic way to keep ones job is to constantly add to the pile, never remove from it.

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