ACT II: THE MACHINE — How the system works (or doesn't)
Luckily, every now and then in companies, someone with a bit of decision-making power takes the time to ask this question.
The ugly part of this story is that many people, who "in private" have plenty to say, when someone comes and asks them how everything's going, seem to have all that valuable information wiped from their minds and respond: Everything's fine.
This is because people think it's better not to get themselves into trouble by sharing the difficulties they experience daily. After all, "nobody does it," so "why would I put myself in a bind?"
This topic has many angles, but I simply ask myself:
What happens in companies for people to be so afraid of saying what they experience daily?
What kind of measures do companies take that generate this behaviour?
How do workers think their difficulties can be solved if they don't communicate them to their direct supervisors?
Why can sharing reality be compared to "getting into trouble"?
Isn't the reality evident to all workers?
From my point of view, I can't conceive of any other way to modify reality than by getting into the difficult topics, discussing them. If we all keep acting passively in the face of work errors and difficulties, reality will never change.
I could cite one of those phrases about how if you always do the same thing you shouldn't expect different results, but I prefer to call this being a prick.
The Taleb Connection
This is one of the few articles in the series where Taleb's framework is slightly off-axis. He attacks at length the insulation of decision-makers from consequences. He says less about the silence of subordinates — the mirror image of that insulation.
But the two are linked. Silence is rational when the listener can't afford to act on what they hear.
"What matters isn't what a person has or doesn't have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing." — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Skin in the Game (2018), Prologue
The worker has plenty to lose by speaking — being seen as a complainer, having the conversation become an HR record, watching the messenger get shot quietly over six months. The manager has nothing to lose by not hearing, because the structure is designed so the cost of not hearing won't reach them. Asymmetric downsides. Silence is the equilibrium.
The article's closer — calling silent workers pricks — assigns moral weight to the silence anyway. Fair. The worker who watches the room burn and says "everything's fine" isn't innocent; they've made a calculation, and the calculation has consequences for everyone else. But the calculation is rational only because the structure made it rational. Fix the structure or stop being surprised by the answers.
This article was translated from the 2012 Spanish original and revised in 2026 through human-AI collaboration—clarifying transitions and adding connections to Nassim Taleb's framework.