There's a problem here, a tragedy of the commons. Trust is a public good. A culture of honesty and trust is better for the experience of each individual employ

There's a problem here, a tragedy of the commons. Trust is a public good. A culture of honesty and trust is better for the experience of each individual employee, and for the company as a whole. Unfortunately, the OP is right about one thing -- one individual liar in a workplace of honest people will likely get ahead. He can lie about his place in the market, and divert more resources towards himself. He can keep the salary of others low, and take more money for himself. The problem is that if everyone started doing that, the public trust would be eroded. This thing that's critical to a company's success, not to mention the happiness of each individual employee -- trust -- starts to weaken. It might not manifest itself obviously at first -- maybe it's just people being more closed off, less open, less invested. It might mean your engineers care a bit less about doing a really good job, because they don't feel as emotionally invested in their job. It probably means the good employees leave. And it means what you're left with are unhappy, uninvested, bad engineers. In other words, it's probably a good individual strategy for maximizing short-term personal gains. But it's bad for the commons -- it's bad for your fellow employees and it's bad for your workplace. And honestly, it's probably bad for YOU; your personal inner life. Once you become okay with lying, you start to treat other people differently. It affects your entire personality. I can't imagine that OP only lies in his workplace; most likely his deceptive habits have seeped into the rest of his life too. Maybe the OP is a sociopath and doesn't feel empathy for others -- but if he's a regular person, it erodes at your soul.