I really appreciate that! It certainly helps with a bit of the flak I catch from people with a different point-of-view when something hits Hackernews. And it's great to have team members that you can share this sort of thing with, though I hope you're commiserating about old jobs rather than the current one.
Question, for people who you work with it probably wouldn't be hard to trace who you are. You've said some pretty harsh things, aren't you afraid of backlash?
Ah, not really. I worried about this quite a bit at first, but there are quite a few mitigating factors.
The first is that I have an audience of a few thousand people at this point, and that's enough of a network that I will probably find work if I get laid off. And, you know, they're not going to kill me, the worst case is I've misjudged things and I'll need to enter a new industry.
The second thing is that my writing has reduced my employability at the kind of company I would hate anyway, but increased it at the truly excellent places. I've been in touch with the CEOs and directors at high-functioning organizations, and I'd rather work with them anyway. They wouldn't find work for me instantly, but they might eventually.
The only reason I remain employed at this place is that they agreed to give me a three day a week permanent contract (because they pissed the engineers off so much that four of them left in one week). It's a convenient deal, and it gives me time to focus on my own business, but I'd survive without them. I'm already looking elsewhere but don't want to land in a similarly toxic environment.
But I think, most importantly, I used to be very inauthentic at work (which is almost half my time and most of my daylight hours!), and it made me miserable. I'd rather be who I am and get forced to work at McDonald's for a bit. So I'm a little bit afraid, but I'm more afraid of what happens when I don't say what I think.
