David – the gorilla metaphor took a while to grow on me, but I like it now too. Maybe I should have watched the movie Gorillas in the Mist first.

csbmonkey – I don’t think you need to be all fake to support your manager. I think it’s important to look for the positive in even the darkest of situations. What’s the lesson, what can we learn, and how can we not make this mistake again?

If the overall environment is bad, I definitely appreciate the honest “things suck dude, and we need to fix them” to the false sunshine, or worse, the passive aggressive who says yes to your face, and then runs in the other direction when it comes time to do the work.

Thanks for sharing all! Let’s hear some more!

I like the Ghandi quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” I think I am already on my way for that for something. I try to be genuinely who I am. I don’t dress it up in smiles and happy, shiny language that doesn’t get to the point, which is what I want from everyone else. That often isn’t pretty, but it’s better than the disingenuous false “Isn’t everything great!” behavior from so many managers. I support one of those in my current job, and I know it annoys her that I won’t buy into her false happy enthusiasm, but I just don’t think that’s better than honest, even if honest sometimes seems cynical. When an environment is bad and a culture is bad, you might do well to pay attention to the people that seems cynical since they might very well be the only ones accurately telling you what’s going on.