Corporate indoctrination

Here’s an easy one: why would a company pay $6 million to get 3000+ people in a single location for a week? They call it company culture. I call it indoctrination.

For the keen observers, I have not shared my real identity on Medium. The main reason I have not done so is so that I could write about my observations of my employer without direct repercussion or indirect consequences on my next employment.

This week, I am attending a corporate event in Las Vegas. We have 3000 people from across the world gathered for the week. After 2.5 days of sessions, I have massive alarm bells ringing in my head telling me: “GET OUT”. You see, the event does not have significant issues on the surface. It’s a gathering of the senior most people across all the business units. Obviously, they go down a few levels since I am here and so are 3000 people. That is still only about 0.5% of the company.

But then there are all of the little red flags. The agenda is planned out to the last 30 minute slot through 3.5 days. We have not been explicitly told to check-in at each session, but there is an app with that functionality and a clear statement that we are to attend all sessions on our personal schedule. The dress code is expanded on in detail. We cannot expense anything outside the prepared sessions and snacks/meals around it.