We all have empty places within us that yearn for something more. Your job can and should give you satisfaction, but it’s a dangerous pit of sand on which to build your whole life’s happiness and worth. To anyone considering working for such a company, tossing their head back to swallow the blue pill down: I advise a healthy skepticism. But even when the blue pills are dispensed with care and kindness, the impact is just the same: codependence, exploitation and, almost inevitably, betrayal, with all that the loss of one’s sole source of purpose, identity and belonging may bring. There’s a glimmer of ill-conceived compassion at the heart of treating your employees “like family.” There’s a misguided stirring in the soul that glorifies your work with spiritual transformation. Not every business leader who leads this way does so with conscious intention. It’s power driven by fear, the fear that people may leave your company, may prioritize their balanced lives over your company’s hustle and grind or might ask you for the full value of what their work is worth. It’s a terrible way to lead, exploiting people’s insecurities, promising them something you can’t actually give, the illusion of which you may one day decide to take away. It’s a perilous game, immoral and, in the end, always unleashes self-destructive chaos that even the cult’s creators can’t control. It’s how nationalist autocrats and strongmen rise and hold onto power. You see this repeatedly in world history, even in current events.
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