I've read the author's articles before and they really are quite cynical. It reminds me of all those 90s shows and movies where all the white-collar work was considered soul sucking and the people who did it were corporate stooges. As if a person should feel shame for working a job and paying bills.

As much as a person may choose to belittle the bureaucracy at companies, it exists for a reason, and often that reason is fairly sensible. It is also simple to avoid bureaucracy if you dislike bureaucracy: just go work at companies where it hasn't had a chance to build up or the company has intentionally kept its bureaucracy in check.

Regarding promotions in bureaucratic companies:

> "You ought to know that crushing JIRA tickets is rarely a path to promotion (at least above mid-level), that glue work can be a trap, that you will be judged on the results of your projects, and therefore getting good at shipping projects is the path to career success"

Whats interesting is that all sorts of companies evaluate performance differently. The better companies will tell you how they are evaluating you - so if you want to get promoted, do the things they say you should do to get promoted. Glue work, crushing jira tickets, making the world a better place... are actually things that a company might positively evaluate you on... or maybe all they care about is shipping and you should just do that. The path to promotion is doing the things that a company is willing to promote you for ("If you want to be loved, be lovable").

For what its worth at Wells Fargo during the account scams your path to promotion was doing illegal stuff. So you know, maybe don't do that stuff and avoid promotion even if you can't leave your job right now.