Ah, found a person of culture in my geographical proximity (relatively speaking)! Humans like you are hard to come by these days (or maybe that was universally true across the ages). Appreciate your practical recommendations. I never expected another human to ever read my experiences/rant amidst the constant barrage of bits on everyone's screens hence the delay in my reply. Let me break it down into palatable sections:

*My Lack of Nuance:*

From my previous message/rant, in an attempt to distill that wall of text into short paragraphs, I inadvertently skipped several nuanced takes - e.g., around my 'naïveté'. I feel it wasn't the 'teenage idealist' kind of naïveté where I imagined corporate life to be all roses, candy and everything dandy. My 'naïveté' was of the 'Quid Pro Quo Pragmatist' variety (somewhat still is, just dialed down and more cynical than earlier times) - you know the type - where I helps his/her peers+bosses to get end-results/succeed/move up their respective ladder and in return, some act selfishly and some others (not 'all' - that's the pragmatic part) in turn help me out in a similar fashion.

*Your recommedations:*

I've already read a couple of them at the start of my career - specifically 48 Laws of Power & Pfeffer's 'Power: Why Some People Have it' amongst other classics like 'Art of War' & 'How to Win Friends...'. Will surely look into other recommendations across your previous comments. Early on, I learnt to think critically & viewed these authors' wisdom/lessons as 'amoral blueprints' - to be wielded for selfish purposes by some psychopathic individuals but also used by compassionate people to unite & shield their 'us' folks against the 'them' group. But discussing these works with peers+bosses would almost always (with 2 notable human exceptions) yield 1 of 2 reactions:

1. Blank Stares followed by topic change - 'Robert Greene / Nietschze / _insert original, insightful poet/author here_ who ?'

2. A couple of idealists advising me against these 'evil' authors - 'Don't read them ! They're spreading everything that's wrong and evil with our human world; read positive and uplifting books only' or 'People like Greene are foolish authors serving ideas to all those psychopathic C-Suites'

The gist of all these 'realist' Machiavellian works distilled in 1 over-generalized sentence, lacking nuance, would be - Be Smart™ - which most (with few exceptions) humans conveniently boil down to - 'Be Selfish without overtly exhibiting the same'

In a separate unrelated comment, you recommended Dave Packard's speech from 1960 - the gist of that speech feels exactly what I would like to practise and subsequently preach - walking that ever-so fine line between idealism & pragmatism, short-term & long-term, details & big-picture stuff.

>E.g. Dave Packard: I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists simply to make money. While this is an important result of a company's existence, we have to go deeper and find the real reasons for our being.

Above advice and several paragraphs of that article emulate empty platitudes that most mediocre managers sing today - the underlying virtues are more-or-less non-existent in today's transactional world, or in the process of dying out across most organisations (both public & private orgs).

I would've been perfectly fine with my corporate overlords ignoring my pleas for help IF I were a mediocre performer, since I would've either reciprocally ignored or been incapable of - going above and beyond in my work commitments to them. I used to think the 'Goose that laid the Golden Eggs' was just a useful, universal story to warn children of the perils of greed. It's only after my sustained exploitation that I've realized that:

"Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see." ~Edgar Allan Poe

Feels like almost all adults (Mr Poe and few excluded) are simply grown-up children who mask their childishness & greed under the veneer of confidence & charity.

Knowing this doesn't fill me with any hope for humanity in the long-term because the biggest and most complex challenges (that don't have optimal substructures) that we face as a species cannot be solved just by applying 'The Greedy Algorithm' everywhere.

Guess the TL;DR summary of everything here for me (and any other teen/20 something who skims through this) would be just as you mentioned (in different words):

Shut up and Be Smart™

*Bonus Anecdote for posterity:*

I'm not sure if I was surrounded by luddites who simply hated reading or people who secretly read a lot but revealed little - At my firm, I had a habit of asking anybody I interacted with (if the conversation sustained beyond the usual small talk):

"What was the last non-fiction book(s) that you read and couldn't stop thinking about for the next few days?"

The most common reply outside of Harry Potter & A Song of Ice & Fire (Gosh, imagine my plight in pointing out that Harry Potter & ASOIAF is not non-fiction - with a poker face :| ) used to be one of:

1. 'I don't read much because books are a waste of my time - Twitter is where the real advice is at' (cue me indulging in an imaginary facepalm. All Twitter advice is ultimately mangled or morphed from these classics at the end of the day)

2. _Insert popular Biography_ deifying the public's current favourite human demagog- I meant- demigod.

3. Oh yeah - I started reading Sapiens/NNTaleb but found it too dense and boring so left it midway (Then why mention it if it did not compel you to think?)

4. 'Forget books, Did you check out the latest TV Series about ... That's so rad!'

On one occasion, a manager in his mid-30s beamed at me and told me - Yes I'm reading a non-fiction right now that keeps me awake at night ! My eyes glistened as I felt the tingly feeling of receiving an insightful book recommendation, until he took out and showed me a copy of 'Rich Dad Poor Dad' from his bag D: I consider myself fairly open-minded and mostly non-judgemental about people's choices, but this recommendation was akin to an 18 year old (of average intelligence) telling me that he's learning how to add, subtract, multiply and divide whole numbers.