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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

A management training course I took 20 years ago said when your personal values were out of step with the company then you had to leave for your own mental health. I've thought about that a lot since.

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This had been eating at me for a while before I eventually got fired for essentially being burntout and unproductive. I thought I could persevere through it as the companies values changed to no longer match my own, but I couldn't.

It's better to leave as long as that option is available to you.

I think surely the implied bit is 'enough out of step', and then the whole 'draw the rest of the owl' thing is figuring out where that line is (and what constitutes 'values') and if it's been crossed?

There's so much I would do/have done differently if I had carte blanche, but it's not my startup, and no reason to think I would have done as well nevermind better, it's easy to judge from the position of not being bothered to go out on my own.

I'm certainly not going to be giving any seminars on mental health, but I don't think mine would have benefited from just abandoning anything I didn't completely agree with.

Not to suggest the actual advice you got and the way you mean it was as lacking nuance as that.

The advice went mainly to the command role. You have a duty of care up and down. If you find you're being asked to make command decisions to underlings, despite having advocated otherwise to above, you have to ask yourself if you're in a good place making others do things you don't believe in.

Appreciate that's more nuanced then, but still I think I'd argue the ability to do exactly that is a crucial leadership skill.

Not least because how have you helped the situation by leaving it anyway?

These are fair points. And, "leave" shouldn't be the first choice. The point I think was that some level of "against my better judgement" was tolerable but a sustained, ongoing "I do not align with this decision and I feel sick having to implement it" was not good for you as an individual.

I had to learn this the hard way, unfortunately. After years of my worldview being spat on and openly mocked I got to the point where my mental health plummeted. What made it strange was that management really liked me due to my status as an SME and having global impact. But the daily company culture was completely at odds with me.

So I had to make the decision to leave. Turns out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made so far my in career.

I learned this truth in the School of Hard Knocks, and now I live by it. It's why there's a lengthy list of companies that I will never be willing to work at, and it's also why I'm in favor of probationary periods: you often can't tell if a company is out of step with your values until you start working there.

> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

What that management training course said is true only in a world without camaraderie, solidarity, and collegiality. I wonder if "out of step with the company" necessarily means your peers and colleagues, or shareholders and executives?

If you love your coworkers, but hate your company's mission, should you stay or leave?

Leave. I’ve never known employees to override the company. More likely you are all a bunch of good guys committing war crimes together. Is that much better?

You should probably leave, because odds are good they're not thinking the same way you're thinking. The mutual aspect is critical; it's a Prisoner's Dilemma.

A society of constant, unthinking defectors, on the other hand, is unsustainable.

You can always hang out with them if you're all in the same area. My experience has been that as long as you filter for good work culture when applying for jobs you'll find a place with good coworkers.

Leave. You can always hire them/work with them again later (chain hiring of teams is a very common thing even if you're not at a high level), but if you burn out while you're alongside them they might shift their opinion of you...

They might be friends, but more often than not, coworkers are NPCs you’ll never hear from again after separating from the org. Certainly keep friends, but don’t sabotage yourself for some mistaken idea of collective and shared struggle. It’s just a job.

> NPCs you’ll never hear from again after separating from the org

Isn't this also on you to maintain those relationships if they're people you care about? And on the same note, if you care about those people you can find ways to keep in touch, like starting a regular group activity.

How much effort would you expect in the current macro? Absolutely, effort is required to maintain relationships, and one must evaluate who is and isn’t worth the investment of time and effort. Some are worth it, some are frankly not. Not from an ROI perspective, but meeting you half way in an adult relationship.

Not many people are willing to put the effort in, in my experience. YMMV. I wish others more favorable outcomes.

That quote says nothing about where happiness or health lies.

A corporation is not the world. Only a very few are a vehicle for progress.

No system is perfect, although sitting in the fourth row throughout one's career is a symptom of adaptive preferability.

AI replacing your job has to be experienced with a craned neck - from the front row.

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