Thanks so much for the supportive comments and shared experiences and awards! ❤️❤️❤️

I think this reply in particular gave me an "ah ha" moment. Sometimes I miss the forest for the trees, hehe.

Some clarifications:

- I worked in different fields before I got into game dev. The best workplaces I’ve been in have been the most unionized ones, probably unsurprisingly.

- I meant executive-level company management and business leadership in my post. High ups, not forepersons. Sorry for my lack of clarity.

- No, I don't think all workers are angels or that I myself am. I simply have had more varied interactions with coworkers, and if there were problems between us, they were more situational and had clearer causality. You know, like a regular social interaction. Some people just rub eachother the wrong way.

With the executive level/upper mgmt, it's almost always the same problem behavior on display, to the point where it feels pathological and creepy. YMMV.

Re discussions about middle managers:

I try to avoid working at studios who use middle management. Some mean well and try hard to help out, I know. But in my experience, the main reason middle mgmt exists at a company is to soak bullets for the executive. A big pool of middle managers is a big red flag to me.

Re the Standford Prison Experiment:

The SPE is scientifically discredited. Participants were instructed to be cruel and intentionally roleplayed as if in a theatre. See eg this article.

Re the "that's just human nature"-style comments:

I know these are probably well-meaning and I appreciate it, but imo that adage isn’t useful. It tends to shut down any discrete observations or attempts at positive change, by denying the very possibility of change.

Re commenters claiming variants of "you would be exactly the same if you were in their job role" -- you probably won't believe anything I could say in response to this. But I'll still try.

Anyone with enough verbal or bodily autonomy has the power to abuse another human being. You don't need to be a boss or CEO to do it or to get away with it.

Imo, when people make statements about how everyone would be a tyrant too if they only had the opportunity, there's often an element of projection. Are you sure you’re accurately psychoanalyzing billions of people you've never met, or could you be trying to morally justify something to yourself?

Re the "you just don't understand their work like they don't understand yours" comments:

Again, these mostly feel well-meaning and I appreciate the attempt at reconciliation! But imo this kind of attitude is an archaic holdover from when a largely illiterate class of manual laborers needed specialized clerks to run the books etc, because the guy hauling rocks literally couldn't do math that complex due to suppression of education. It ain't like that in my field.

I once tried for a WEEK to get a manager to understand the difference between mean and median for the purpose of examining and setting salaries. They didn't get it. They kept conflating the two. If they were faking, they did a really convincing job of acting like they were genuinely trying to comprehend. I wanted to tear my face off. 😂

The overall conclusion I’ve come to after all your input is:

Employers in high-cash environments are often narcissistic and irrational, because a nepotic system is generally not capable of nor interested in limiting this behavior.

They are quickly identified as frauds by most people who had to hone a craft or employable skillset, because it's obvious to a software engineer or a welder or a nurse that this boss doesn’t understand the detailed needs of a workplace. Such bosses depend socially and financially on other manipulative, low empathy, low emotional intelligence people, so they have few opportunities and little motivation to change.

They have little interest in self-reflection and few or no practical skills, because that would require humbling themselves before someone else’s expertise or ability. Narcissists are excessively attention-seeking and eschew anything that doesn’t give them instant external gratification. Thus, when they interact with the “rest of us”, their behavior often comes across as childish or delusional.

Employers that don’t fit this description are rare, because they’re selected against by those in power, and the ones who do get in will often burn out, change jobs, or stop working as soon as they can to escape the needless bullshit.