As someone recently laid off, I strongly ressonate with points #1 and #5 and the amount of platitudes and empty words (but to be honest, some people were truly earnest/helpful on helping me get through this) involved in this makes the whole experience almost feel like being gaslighted by (almost) everyone. I was already quite aware on how unaunthentic and fake things are in the corporate world but this layoff (and several others in the industry right now) was really something else.
And then companies wonder why employees are more and more "mercenary"...
"If you want them to MAYBE change, talk to them directly. If you want them to get stabbed by management, put it in their performance review."
I'm pretty sure that happened to me in the past (and unwillingly done that to others). Having that said I really agree with the modus operandi that's necessary for the clown shows that "performance reviews" are, which are mostly an after the fact plausible justification in order to occlude a very simple thing: on whether a manager likes you or not and if you scratched his back properly.
I'm so glad I've found this comment. It's REALLY strange to me that this is the first time I've read someone talking about this phenomena and on how exploitative it actually is and, like other comment noted, this is a very convenient co-opting of the Peter principle in order to get more senior people for cheap in the guise of "trials" and similar.
When exactly did this extortionary tactic started? There are so many things that go unquestioned...
I also happened to time track my time this year, although in a more automatic (and less detailed) way. For that I used ActivityWatch on my personal laptop (which I use for all non-work related matters) in order to have an automatic way to track my time and, at least for me, figure out how much time I'm wasting on time wasters like social media, Youtube, Hacker News and so on. It was interesting to see the difference between the time I think I'm spending and the time I'm actually spending.
This is a topic that I've been thinking about strongly this year and I strongly relate to what you're feeling as well. As for books on this, apart from the more mainstream ones, an example would be "Business without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know", which has some interesting ideas.
But the general gist of all this is essentially to "fight fire with fire", as awful it may sound. But do note that there are some cultural aspects to this as well, companies with a strongly American culture are way more subject to that "dishonest harmony" phenomena compared to companies with a German or Dutch culture for example (other countries with a more honest and direct culture apply as well).
No doubt about this, when I reached that part of the article I was startled with that relatively low amount of savings and the courage on starting a venture like that... It can not be understated on how having enough money saved up really helps not only enduring periods with no money but also a much lower anxiety associated with that (you need to be in a good mental shape in order to do things after all).
For me, my motivations and reasons for working in tech ebbs and flows throughout the years (which I suspect is the same to majority of the people).
At first, I decided to have a degree in a STEM field in order to have in the future a dayjob that would finance my artistic/philosophical aspirations, then I started to be really interested in some specific fields and was studying/working out of mostly intelectual curiosity and now (especially due to this COVID situation) I'm again seeing it as a way to survive in this rotten late-stage capitalism era but now without almost any kind of artistic aspirations (that's the way the passage of time destroys things).
Maybe I should take up one of the examples in the TFA and just dedicate myself to run a brewery.