Fair point. I'm someone who's been lucky to work in high-trust low-ego teams at quite a formative stage in my career - and for this reason I try and work for co

Fair point. I'm someone who's been lucky to work in high-trust low-ego teams at quite a formative stage in my career - and for this reason I try and work for companies that have values oriented around this. My current gig adheres strongly to an "idea meritocracy", and so far I have observed this to hold true. You can tell the founder his ideas suck and that's fine (if you do so in good faith). Perhaps I'm naive and my eyes will be opened to the politics later on, but I don't think so. A lot of my colleagues in other industries often complain about the political nature of their work, and the impossibility of giving feedback to certain people in certain positions. I always assumed this was a tech/non-tech divide - or a small/large company divide. I still think those are good heuristics to be honest, but you're right about the "bad actor" dimension. I think that's why it's so important to have a well-embedded company culture, it functions as an immune system against bad actors and trust/feedback are huge parts of that immune system.