Reading this brings back some bad memories from working at a place that had something similar going, trying to be very open/transparent and deliberate about culture and processes. That culture and processes that existed on paper was about bottom-up power structures and so forth.
From that context, I can understand how people become very motivated to engage with these kinds of documents and have these kinds of discussions. It feels very empowering when suddenly you get to be a part of these conversations that are normally only had a few pay grades above yours. It's also a welcome change of scenery from the daily drudgery of a software engineering IC who lives breathes and works code, and nothing but code.
The problem, at the place where I worked, was that all of this amounted to nothing more than an "opium for the masses", and the informal/true power structures that lay behind all the decisions that actually mattered was very different from what existed "on paper".
So, all of this pretense of bottom-up-ness provides a motivation boost for new employees for maybe a year or two. But you can't hide the truth for longer than that. Afterwards, if you were naive enough to fall for it, you feel you've been manipulated and abused, and that's not a nice feeling. Also, the whole thing can take on a cult-like dynamic.
Reading this brings back some bad memories from working at a place that had something similar going, trying to be very open/transparent and deliberate about culture and processes. That culture and processes that existed on paper was about bottom-up power structures and so forth.
From that context, I can understand how people become very motivated to engage with these kinds of documents and have these kinds of discussions. It feels very empowering when suddenly you get to be a part of these conversations that are normally only had a few pay grades above yours. It's also a welcome change of scenery from the daily drudgery of a software engineering IC who lives breathes and works code, and nothing but code.
The problem, at the place where I worked, was that all of this amounted to nothing more than an "opium for the masses", and the informal/true power structures that lay behind all the decisions that actually mattered was very different from what existed "on paper".
So, all of this pretense of bottom-up-ness provides a motivation boost for new employees for maybe a year or two. But you can't hide the truth for longer than that. Afterwards, if you were naive enough to fall for it, you feel you've been manipulated and abused, and that's not a nice feeling. Also, the whole thing can take on a cult-like dynamic.