consensus reality aligned declaration
February 26, 2026
aka, a "truth".
At work, the definition of "truth" isn't always as straightforward.
Most of the time it is. If you ask someone "Hey, what range of voltages are acceptable on this pin?", or "What's the upper bound on the cycle count for SMLALB?", or "Is swift a well designed language?", you'll usually get the right answer. Here the right answer is trivially defined as the one that aligns with the documentation, or maybe more philosophically, how most people interpret the documentation (or how the author intended its interpretation?). In these scenarios, if someone gives the wrong answer, a trip through the documentation is all it takes to resolve. There are other things that can't rely directly on documentation. These are resolved with a number of techniques: empirically, through pure reasoning, etc. And of course, there are some things that are unknowable, or unknowable with a high degree of confidence. But again, there are an array of techniques to attempt to resolve the truth, or at least progress in the absence of certainty.
Other times, the definition of "truth" depends solely on who is speaking. It may be related to the speaker's company-related attributes: job title, project role, tenure. Sometimes, personal attributes: age, gender, physical characteristics. It could be due to the amount of political capital the speaker has with the audience. It might even depend on the reason the speaker is speaking, for example, if they are at fault for something, or, are exposing someone else's fault for something.
why?
I won't pretend to know all the reasons why someone might make a false declaration. And in any particular instance, I can't know the precise reason why. But here are some that I have speculated about in the past:
- honest mistake
- misinformed
- appearing knowledgeable
- shifting blame
- flexing/dominating
- seeking to evade work
- seeking to take work
- accomplishing an unrelated end
- propagating party line/narrative
reacting
These scenarios are always difficult to respond to.
To be clear - the scenarios I mean are the ones where a false declaration is made, but it is accepted as true, because of the speaker. If it's challenged, it does not fall into this category. If a random person uttered the same words, and it wouldn't be accepted as true, it doesn't count. If there's room for reasonable disagreement, it doesn't count either.
Sometimes I've thought: should I make a contrary claim right now, just to set the record straight for everyone? Is that going to make the speaker mad? Would that make my management mad? Maybe I could tell them after this group discussion ends, and either they or I can propagate the resolution to the rest of the participants.
I've also tried perverting my own internal logic, or similarly, giving extreme leeway in interpretation of the declaration, in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. This is the reaction that is most easily witnessed in others, when they are bothered by the statement but don't want to directly object - they will sometimes interrupt the speaker to subtly rephrase the claim in a way they are more comfortable with (I am guilty of this).
No matter what, I end up feeling bad in these scenarios. When nobody else raises an objection, I start to have some doubts: Am I bad at interpreting the declaration? Is my logic failing? Is there some social or company cultural perspective that everyone but me has bought in to?
Of course, there are varying degrees of heinousness to the non-true claims, and so it's not always a large cognitive dissonance to overcome. But there have been times where the same person yesterday said the sky is blue, and today said it's orange, and there's an immense pressure to just nod along and smile.
conforming
I don't exactly know where the pressure is coming from, but I can definitely feel it. It might be related to the earlier mention of wanting to save face on the speaker's behalf, or to avoid making yourself an enemy.
Prioritizing veracity is what makes conforming hard. If you're ok living in a dissonant headspace, or you can find harmony by integrating lies or perverse logic into your view, then it's probably just fine. Similarly, one might prioritize making money or being promoted over veracity. I don't think these apply to the vast majority of people though.
I think most people (including myself) conform out of fear. It's being afraid of a potential offense, commiting a career limiting move, exposing your lack of comprehension of the topic, and many other things. But it's obvious that conforming is the correct move as far as the company, project, and your career is considered - hence why noone raises a challenge. The expectation is that you receive the false declaration and keep moving. Essentially, lying to yourself a litle bit is the cultural norm.
It's a strange experience to have to frequently tell yourself lies, for an extended period of time. For me it made me question whether I was taking the right approach to work. Maybe I should just not care what the truth was, as I'm not being paid to unearth the truth. Maybe by trying to unearth the truth, I am distracting the rest of my coworkers from the big picture. Maybe everyone else adopts a psychoprotective strategy that allows them to function easily in this environment, and I should do that too.
future
You can guess by now that none of this sat well with me. In my opinion, this is one of the most disturbing parts of corporate culture, and one I actively sought to avoid. I plan to continue avoidance in the future as well. I'm not sure exactly what aspects of the company might help in this - it might be the size of the company, company goals, organizational structure, business model, or a million other things. Talking to friends that have worked for the same and other employers, this is not a unique experience. It seems to be an emergent behavior that's intrinsic to large organizations.
In any case, part of what I'm going to consider is how to suss this out in a future interview. Asking the interviewer when they and others had to bite their tongues, and the effect it had on the team, project, company, etc. Or maybe some more subtle questions too :)
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