Completely agree, and it's really complicated to do right. I've been blessed to work for some great bosses and great organizations in my life. I've worked at one or two lousy ones along the way, too, but one thing I've noticed is that problems like this become disasters when people aren't comfortable talking to leadership.

At the "Great Organizations" -- both had founders and CEOs who's "Open Door Policy" wasn't just paper. Both had more complications than a typical company of being able to actually execute on an "Open Door Policy" -- one being fully remote with global (evenly distributed) staff, the other is in-office/global. They both took the time to make employees comfortable enough to be willing to speak up -- to them, if necessary -- in the face of difficulty/evil.

The place I'm at, now, it is a core principal of how the company functions. I don't recall the founders actually saying this was a core principal and I don't think it's written on any walls in the office. However, on day #1, I was set up with a laptop, all of the appropriate credentials and a meeting on my calendar with one of the founders scheduled about two weeks from now.

By Noon on day 1, I had casually talked to both founders four times. If there were a few people in the kitchen, one of them would introduce me to them[1]. By the next day, the founder who I ultimately had the 1:1 with was asking about my kids, by name. By the time the two weeks had passed, it almost seemed silly to have a 1:1 and I've never had another scheduled -- if the founders were in the office, I often talked to them multiple times a day[2]. I would have expected this at a single-office, 5-developer shop kind-of-place but not at a 150+ shop with offices on both coasts and Europe.

Leadership at some companies try to "gimmick" the whole "Open Door Policy" by doing things like "The CEO sits with all of the rest of us"[3]. Our founders have amazing glass-all-around (with window-shades) offices with a really nice lobby area. Our desks were/are pretty basic. I've never thought of it and never heard anyone comment on it in relation to its affects on open communication. 99.999% of the time both glass doors are open, the shades are up and I have walked in there without prompting on multiple occasions. I have been asked questions like "What could we fix with this/that" expecting answers that one would expect "they might not want to hear". I'm a more extroverted individual, so I was comfortable pretty quickly, but I've seen the most introverted members of staff talk like they're "old friends" with the two founders. The only thing I can attribute it to is that they are relentless about having a real open door policy.

Many take discomfort talking openly to people with authority over them, however, if there were ever a "general vaccination" against Blizzard Culture, I'd imagine "a company where every member of staff feels comfortable telling the founders exactly what is wrong, when it is wrong, without fear of being fired" is a principle that goes a long way toward solving that sort of problem. It solves a million others and allow for things like really flat reporting structures. There was one situation a couple of years ago involving a very complex project and even more complex customer that I know I would have quit were it not for the knowledge that I could talk about my concerns, be trusted, and have them addressed -- most of the time I can handle things on my own and just the knowledge of that is enough. Outside of that, I don't think this company could exist without an open communications policy -- our product is "creations/inventions[4]".

[0] And well at that -- not your typical, "here's the new guy" but "this is Matt, we hired him because he really loves Baz-lang -- you should talk to him about that issue on the Foo project"

[1] As "culture comes from the top", if I misjudged a company and discovered during a 1:1 that the CEO/etc was a horrible human being, I'd like to know that as soon as possible so that I can start finding alternative employment. And any CEO (assuming 500 or fewer employees) who wouldn't have time to carve out a single 30 minute meeting after hiring a senior member of technical staff raises a few red flags on its own.

[2] This was partly helped by the fact that my desk was between the kitchen and their offices.

[3] I even had a buddy in a senior role at a software company, locally, where the CEO participated in a roll call every morning. He sat in a standard cubicle away from windows.

[4] I'm not entirely sure what I'm not supposed to share, but we've created a few IoT products; I did the Alexa/Gooble implementation for a device that's sold at Walmart/Target/the likes from a company that's a household name in a lot of the world for their category. We do a lot of different categories, though, including designing the customer experience of a retail store for a massive technology brand. I think the two old-school table-top Microsoft Surface PCs in the lobby won me over, though.