Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself

That is the true test. You are supposed to pretend only to buy into it but never really believe it. Understanding that things function on two levels is critical. One level is the superficial "we are a family, community, we are not evil, making the world better". But that's the trap to catch all the naive people and extract extra work hours from them (possibly at the expense of family or personal time).

There is a second level of unspoken rules - "it really is about business and internal politics". You are supposed to discover and navigate a set of unwritten rules. And these usually don't get spelled out for you, because they are kind of ugly and often diametrically opposed the official rules from the first level.

Slavoj Zizek likes to talk about this when he talks about institutional ideology and how there are rules and meta rules. The meta rules dictate how you relate to the official rules. Which ones you are supposed to break to get ahead, for instance. The other side is that you are given permission to do something but you are not really allowed to take advantage of that or you get in trouble. For example the whole "take any vacation time you want, we don't have fixed days". But you are expected to not really take more than a few or you'll be laid off eventually.

Here is an excerpt where he talk a bit about that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfO9gL28pAs (warning, he likes to use gross jokes and you might find his style unpalatable)

I too was hoping for a senior level promotion. The last project I worked on, I was the only non-senior level developer in a team of 5. I went out of my way to ensure we released a well designed, built and tested system on time. At times I felt like I was committing more to the project than any of my more senior comrades. Come release time, I even saw one of the design decisions I had insisted on save us from down-time. All of this I was sure would lead me to the desired promotion.

Come performance review time, I was rated at the top performance tier, as I had the past couple of years. Unfortunately however, I was informed not enough time had passed since my last level increase, but I was sure to get it if I kept it up for another 1-2 years.

It's hard to describe the feeling of defeat I felt at that point. I resigned and left within the next few months. What I found most off putting, was when meeting my skip-manager (your managers manager) for the first time during my exit interview, all doors for a senior level promotion were suddenly open, to incentivise me to stay. Doesn't feel great when negotiations with your employer are comparable to those had with your cable provider.