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I think the economic explanation is at the root of this. As they mentioned, long term employment is essentially gone. In addition, things like pensions are no

I think the economic explanation is at the root of this. As they mentioned, long term employment is essentially gone. In addition, things like pensions are no longer common except in the public sector. Add to that, the rise in cost of living relative to salaries and you end up with a situation where the work place is a very competitive environment. We are competing with our coworkers for raises and advancement opportunities. Often this competition has an ugly under-belly, as it invariably involves criticism of coworkers' performance and self-promotion of one's own work.

mistermann 11y ago
I agree. It depends a lot on the industry and size of the company I think, but in some places it is brutally political. I personally don't even mind a critical and self-promotional environment, it's the quiet, behind the scenes long game politics that bother me. I think it's especially depressing because if everyone stopped undermining each other and worked collaboratively, the shared fruits of your labor would probably make most everyone better off. Except then likely 30% of the staff would be cut because high productivity leads to redundancy.