Ramblings
Description: Expletive Inserted -
Brutal honesty has come up several times recently in the context of the NYT “exposé” on the Amazon work environment. I don’t have any first hand knowledge of working at Amazon, and I agree that the NYT piece was strangely vindictive. Highly mobile professionals with 6-figure salaries don’t need our protection from Bezos or anyone else. They can vote with their feet.
But I also think that the concept of brutal honesty is idealized as a way to create an efficient and transparent work environment where information flows without impediment. In my experience of working at two large corporations, the reality was much more nuanced than that.
The ability to be honest is asymmetrical . People with power (positional, political, or otherwise) can afford to be honest. Most often, people without power can not. Or at the very least they have to be much more careful about how they express themselves. This way, organizations that are “brutally honest” often reinforce the power structure, rather than keep it in check. Instead of facilitating a better flow of information, they create different kinds of blockages. Privilege is amplified, not neutralized.
Ramblings