I’ve worked in corporate america in multiple roles for multiple companies for over a decade and only recently realized something:
Corporate America has a very tenuous relationship with virtue and reality.
Thus Corporate America is not ideal for idealists and logicians. Generally those who are more pragmatic, sociable, and/or selfish will enjoy the most success and satisfaction.
Let me explain.
Profitless Virtue
Companies are for profit. Employees have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of shareholders. A company’s value is the net present value of all future cash flows. There are many ways to say this, but I prefer clarity:
A company’s highest virtue is profit.
Sustainability, charity, and social justice are only virtues in so far as they are profitable. To a company these virtues are actually just marketing costs and if they don’t result in increased profits (directly through sales or indirectly through improved productivity or retention), the company will eventually slash unnecessary expenses.
When profit is your highest virtue, even vices can be virtuous. If misleading, tricking, addicting, abusing, scamming, or even lying results in profits, then that is good business. Some companies are more notorious than others, but all companies engage in these behaviors to some degree. More benign manifestations are misleading metrics such as ‘9 out of 10 achieve success* (excluding those who do not achieve success)’ or bulshytt statements such as ‘the global leader in x’ or ‘a trusted brand for over x years’.
Such a system of values results in conflict for idealists and logicians:
- Logicians: the problem of how to maximize profit cannot be defined well enough to fruitfully apply the skills of a logician. The assumptions are practically infinite and constantly changing. This is not a problem that can be solved purely or even primarily by logical reasoning.
- Idealists: it’s hard to think of any idealist agreeing that profit should be the highest virtue. Even if one agrees that profit is generally good, it’s usually in service of some higher good such as increasing well-being through the standard of living, healthcare, etc.
These tensions can be significant sources of individual suffering, but there are other major reasons why logicians and idealists may be dissatisfied in corporate america.
Who succeeds in corporate america?
Contrary to popular opinion, corporations are relatively inefficient. There is weak pressure on companies to be profitable eventually, but that is not the same thing as being maximally efficient. There are microeconomic reasons for this such as imperfect competition, but more pertinent here is the human factor.
Non-monetary incentives outweigh monetary incentives for most corporate employees. The individual benefits of loafing, posturing, socializing with coworkers, etc. are far more important than collective efficiency. This is true even if profits were distributed back to employees in a less diluted manner than is typical. Younger employees are more likely to chase wealth, but most come to the conclusion that there are things more important than money at work (and in general).
In such a weakly competitive environment, prosocial traits are paramount to personal success. Likeability, agreeableness, eloquence, and charisma all matter more than the truth. Good ideas from likable people are prioritized over great ideas from less popular people and even bad ideas can be implemented through sheer force of personality and status. Even with ironclad logic, trying to argue against someone more popular is tantamount to career suicide; you may win the battle, but good luck getting that raise or promotion. Logical arguments are especially foolhardy in the realm of business where most facts are open to interpretation (yes, we are losing money acquiring users, but our great product will ensure we acquire high-value users through word-of-mouth).
In other words, it’s not important that you do good work, it’s important that other people value you (which could mean doing good work, but could also mean being highly prosocial and/or making other people think you do good work).
Logically speaking it is best to be a sycophant and always agree with all the important people. That will yield more monetary gain to you as an individual even if it is bad for the collective company.
However, many logicians I know are also idealists and balk at the idea of making their highest virtues likeability and profit. And most idealists also do not hold these principles as sacred.
Functions of refuge
Perhaps it is best for logicians and idealists to exit Corporate America entirely, but that’s not desirable or realistic for everyone.
Luckily, there are a few functions within corporate america that are more of a safe haven for such people. Analytics, data science, data engineering, engineering, R&D, legal, security, manufacturing, distribution and even accounting are generally more focused on objective goals, have a more defined system of values, and closer adherence to reality.
Stay away from sales, account management, marketing, and strategy (‘strategy’ is generally more of a popularity contest than thoughtful analysis, and thoughtful analysis has never been and will never be popular).
Appendix
I’ve avoided invoking Myers-Briggs personality types because I’ve been told that academics prefer other frameworks. Yet, Myers-Briggs is likely the most well known framework of personality and I do find it captures something important that other frameworks do not (primarily Intuition vs Sensing). If you find value in Myers-Briggs, I think the people I am speaking to most closely identify as INTJ or INTP.
I’ve also tried to avoid making negative judgment against the personalities that flourish in Corporate America. I wouldn’t say these people are harmless, but they are generally more ignorant than malicious and may choose to be more rational and altruistic if given the chance. Interestingly, these people are also most likely to flourish in hunter-gatherer societies, which is romanticized by many idealists including myself.