As someone recently laid off, I strongly ressonate with points #1 and #5 and the amount of platitudes and empty words (but to be honest, some people were truly earnest/helpful on helping me get through this) involved in this makes the whole experience almost feel like being gaslighted by (almost) everyone. I was already quite aware on how unaunthentic and fake things are in the corporate world but this layoff (and several others in the industry right now) was really something else.
And then companies wonder why employees are more and more "mercenary"...
"If you want them to MAYBE change, talk to them directly. If you want them to get stabbed by management, put it in their performance review."
I'm pretty sure that happened to me in the past (and unwillingly done that to others). Having that said I really agree with the modus operandi that's necessary for the clown shows that "performance reviews" are, which are mostly an after the fact plausible justification in order to occlude a very simple thing: on whether a manager likes you or not and if you scratched his back properly.
I'm so glad I've found this comment. It's REALLY strange to me that this is the first time I've read someone talking about this phenomena and on how exploitative it actually is and, like other comment noted, this is a very convenient co-opting of the Peter principle in order to get more senior people for cheap in the guise of "trials" and similar.
When exactly did this extortionary tactic started? There are so many things that go unquestioned...
I think it's quite a difference whether your boss already knows (or thinks) you can do the other job and still tries to not pay you the bump and you doing the extra work to get noticed.
In my case it wasn't even to get noticed. I just care about stuff. My current boss is actually trying to make me 'care less'. Like I can't leave it alone if I see the PMs do a crap job and I try to fix it. I can't not say something when I see the DevOps guys not taking care of the dev envs and dev experience.
Also when did this start? Like hundreds of not thousands of years ago. Why?
I also happened to time track my time this year, although in a more automatic (and less detailed) way. For that I used ActivityWatch on my personal laptop (which I use for all non-work related matters) in order to have an automatic way to track my time and, at least for me, figure out how much time I'm wasting on time wasters like social media, Youtube, Hacker News and so on. It was interesting to see the difference between the time I think I'm spending and the time I'm actually spending.
This is a topic that I've been thinking about strongly this year and I strongly relate to what you're feeling as well. As for books on this, apart from the more mainstream ones, an example would be "Business without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know", which has some interesting ideas.
But the general gist of all this is essentially to "fight fire with fire", as awful it may sound. But do note that there are some cultural aspects to this as well, companies with a strongly American culture are way more subject to that "dishonest harmony" phenomena compared to companies with a German or Dutch culture for example (other countries with a more honest and direct culture apply as well).
