Agreed. But since so many middle managers are twits isn't it incumbent on the employee to learn a set of skills to deal with Johns?
Managing people is hard. Being a good manager is really hard, which is why there are so few of them.
Rather than rail against how terrible Person X is as a manager I feel like it's more productive to say, "Unless I start my own company there's always going to be some clueless middle manager above me. How do I deal with him/her effectively?"
It's much easier to simply find a better job without a John, or where you're shielded from John.
(My name breaks this analogy a bit.)
a) It's hard to identify a good manager ahead of time.
b) People change; circumstances change.
c) Your team and manager will change sooner than you expect, especially if they are a good team or manager.
Who stays anywhere more than 2-3 years now anyway?
My current manager where I work is pretty cool. We get along pretty well, and I don't mind working for them. However, I think my manager's manager is...umm, well, let's just say "not very good at their job", fairly close to the "John" in this story.
If my current manager quit or was fired or died, and I had to work for their manager, I probably would quit before I learned to effectively work with "John"; the job market is pretty good for engineers right now, why the hell not?
Now more and more are moving towards a heavier backloaded vesting schedule. Schedules that are 10/20/30/40 or 15/25/25/35 are more and more common at big tech co.
It can make sense as well, if it takes you a certain period of time to ramp up, once you've ramped up you contribute more value and they want to retain you more there. Yes it is a mechanism to lock you in, but it's not wrong to see why the employer would want to do it. Though yes, you can also get stuck in crap work because they know they can get away with it. Then it's up to you how much you want to deal with that.
Flat vesting sort of implies that four 1-year tenures are just as desirable as one 4-year tenure. And if people can get a better cash-compensation raise by switching jobs, then staying 4 years is probably less profitable than staying 2-3. (Of course, companies could also cure that by making internal raises competitive with job-transfer raises...)
Although I do find .../30/40 a bit stranger. If somebody leaves at 3 years, you save 15% of their stock compared to flat vesting. But if the extra stock gets them to stick around, they're obviously going to leave after 4 when their effective compensation plummets. It's not obvious to me that pushing employees with no long-term intent to stick around and claim more stock is a winning move.
I'm reminded of this quote:
"I divide officers into four classes -- the clever, the lazy, the stupid and the industrious. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the high staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy is fit for the very highest commands. He has the temperament and the requisite nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be removed immediately." - General Baron Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
He'll eventually be fired -- with a golden parachute, no doubt -- after reports of sexual harassing women emerge in the media. He'll go under the radar for a few months until the media storm and Twitter mob find something else. He'll reemerge in a new startup, promising to have changed after "much praying, reconciliation, and meditation," and move on. Rinse and repeat.
The real problem we have is that there are many highly competent sexual harassers in workplaces and these issues get swept under the rug specifically because they’re good workers.
Because in this hypothetical situation, John was known to use his position of power to harass women.
This isn't a reason to always participate, but it is one of the many reasons that lots of people do.
Also a 10/20/30/40 vesting schedule immediately stands out as a red flag for me. 25%/year vested quarterly (with a 1 year cliff) has been standard in the industry for a very long time. I would't trust a company to have my best interests at heart when it is massively beneficial for them if employees quit after 1-2 years (which is already about the average tenure at most companies of that size).