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Generally employees put the responsibility on management. As everyone has a higher up they answer to, no one feels personally responsible. From the top down, the concerns of how things are actually implemented are often too abstract. Combine these dynamics with institutional echochambers and group-think.

Employees just want to make it to the weekend. Execs want to hit their targets. Sales dept. needs their bonuses. The board wants to pump valuations.



Yes. Was my same first thought. Same thing that happened in Germany: "The banality of evil" how Hannah Arendt described Adolf Eichmann's excuse that he didn't bare any responsibility since he was just doing his job...


Not Meta but I once got yelled at not by a real manager, but by a PM because I said I wouldn't let the team do something shady without legal signing off. I'm in Europe so it was GDPR related.

The PM tried shopping the task to other teams, but nobody took the bait after I raised it publicly, and both legal and the external law firm sided with me after about three months of delay.

In the meantime I raised the topic of yelling with HR but every step of the way the company made me feel like I was the one in the wrong for not complying.

I believe if I were meeker I would probably have complied right there.


Eh, software engineers throughout the ZIRP had the choice of working at plenty of companies. People chose to work at Facebook for the money disregarding all other concerns. That's it.




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