alt Hacker NewsBruh, with some very rare exceptions like valve, every company is run as a dictatorship or oligarchy. That goes beyond tech, hell big tech at least gives some agency to their engineers.
The only way you don’t need to be versed in compliance or group think at a US firm as an employee is to either be
1) independently wealthy, so your job is a hobby you can walk away from
2) have some leverage on a currently in demand skill, but the second that leverage evaporates they will demand the compliance
Also I realized I undersold it, they aren’t just run as dictatorships/oligarchies, they are usually run as command economies as well.
The whole capitalist competition style behavior only happens with inter firm interactions, not internal ones
Find a small company with a founder who loves their team and wants them to be happy. They exist, I assure you. They're not even rare.
I spent most of my career working in companies with <50 employees, and only hit a couple of unpleasant founders. The few large companies that I worked in were always bureaucratic nightmares by comparison.
Small companies won't pay FAANG salaries, but they also won't make you feel like a meaningless cog in a vast unsympathetic, unproductive, machine.