Pros
If you want to understand how power actually works in this country, forget the books. Just get a job here. Leadership has figured something out that is, genuinely, brilliant: you don't need answers if you can make people feel unreasonable for asking questions. They don't call it that, of course. They call it "vision." They call it "navigating complexity." But the mechanism is the same. It's elegant, honestly. The whole thing runs on perception, not reality. Reality is negotiable. Reality is whatever everyone agrees it is, so if they can get the room to agree on a particular version of events, that version becomes true. That's the game. The resilience training is real, even if unintentional. Priorities shift, sometimes multiple times before lunch, and each new direction is announced with total conviction. You either develop flexibility fast or you don't last long. Natural selection, but for your tolerance for prevarication. The operational backbone is a spreadsheet. Not a regular one. One so architecturally complex it functions less as a data tool and more as a weather system. Something you observe. Not something you control. When it forecasts a win, leadership predicted it. When it explains a loss, leadership anticipated it. Same spreadsheet. It was designed that way. It works exactly as intended. Credit moves fast here. Something goes right, it's at the top of the chain before you finish the sentence. But accountability? Accountability is on a journey. Accountability is finding itself. Accountability is in a meeting and will circle back. Nobody knows where accountability is. Leadership moves with the confidence of people who have never been told no by anyone whose opinion they respected. Every initiative lands like a keynote. Every pivot is framed as vision. And somewhere in the room, every time, there are people who know exactly what's happening and have made the quiet calculation that saying so isn't worth it. The most transferable skill you'll develop here is the ability to sit across from someone confidently explaining something that isn't true and respond in a way that makes them feel smart. It takes practice. And once you have it, you'll find it useful everywhere. Compensation is "dynamic," which is an accurate word. It can change. It did change. An email arrived. New plan. Sign or resign. What's remarkable is how they made it your choice. You stayed, after all. You can't argue with the logic. It's airtight. Headcount reductions are managed cleanly. The remaining team absorbs the work, onboards the incoming class, and is recognized for their adaptability. I've learned more about how institutions actually function here than anywhere else in my career. Not the version from books. The real version. How decisions get made when the door is closed and nobody has to perform. I understand why good people leave. And I understand why some people stay for fifteen years. Either they figured out how to play the game, or something broke inside. Maybe both. Also, have you heard about the fun parties?
Cons
You don't lose your optimism all at once. Just a little every day, until one morning you reach for it and it's gone.
