When someone cannot offer competence, they will often use shallow virtuosity to influence you. I've seen that happen in religious cults, now I've seen it used to build a company.
You feel like drowning in honey. It will feel weirdly sticky. But who does not like to feel important and considered. But once I joined it did not take long to see through the facade.
The "People" leaders did a number on us too. Talking about how they've figured out that 4-day work weeks have made the teams more productive. How the company is run profitably and sustainably to ensure there are no layoffs. All lies. There was never a single measurement of productivity ever. Just a lazy tactic to attract gullible job applicants and media. Oh, and we are taking millions in debt and burning investor money. Virtue signaling for the win, who cares about truth.
It was interesting to see a train of "leaders" being paraded through a revolving door – they were the "best thing since sliced bread" as they came in and "badly cultured terrible people" as they went out. We lost some really good leaders on the GTM teams who were delivering results but started challenging the incompetence – somehow the "people" team decided to tell us that they were really bad for the company.
Product team is just used to taking orders from sales. Push features to satisfy the sales gods, no real customer awareness here. Let's just be code and pixel monkeys.
Well, the investors seem to have finally caught up. They have brought some accountability to this gravy train with a shakeup. Maybe too little too late, They've brought in a CEO who is an operations guy. He is hollowing out the company with layoffs in the hope of salvaging whatever is possible for the investors.
While a bunch of simple people watch this soap opera, we realize that it is not just time, but our careers that is being wasted.