I've already got an offer by a startup and am currently weighing my options of staying vs leaving. The problem is that I'm not in California, so it's a bigger move than anything I've done before. But to answer your question, my boss is not preventing honesty. I don't have much experience with this but it appears to me that the corporate environment prevents it unless you are too valuable to lose or are respected there. The first time I made a mistake that annoyed our project manager we had a team meeting specifically to complain about my work, yet everyone was there and the statements were generalized. I was shocked that this is how it was handled instead of simply asking me why that had happened. I don't understand how to communicate without honesty because I've never attempted to do it before. I can't bring up issues like this without doing a private 1:1 and made the mistake of attempting that at the wrong time with depressing results.