> it's like dating ... Hiding who you really are to 'pass' is a bad foundation.

you'd be surprised at the amount of people who fake themselves for the date.

It's still a bad foundation

To be fair, not all of us can be socially competent mentally healthy people who enjoy life and regularly stop to smell the flowers. Some of us just suck, some of us are miserable, so we have to put on a fake persona in order to entertain the other person enough for them to actually give us a chance. In a way, dating is all about entertaining and being entertained.

It's either that or stay lonely.

The better alternative is to work on yourself to become a better person, who is worthy of dating without deception.

You are implicitly assuming that there's some finite amount of work that could make every such person "dateable without deception". While it may or may not be true in individual case, as a general statement it sounds to me more like "well, it's _your_ fault because you didn't work on yourself enough, so you deserve to be lonely".

I think many folks are there for sex, and have no problem faking to get it.

And continuing into the resulting relationships

That is why you are not supposed to marry after first date ;)

It’s nothing like dating. Employees need a paycheck. It’s an asymmetric relationship. This becomes very apparent during economic downturns!

There’s really no use searching for the perfect job when the market is flooded with candidates and you have young children and mortgage payments due, yet you have to act like every job you’re applying to is some gift you’ve been searching for your entire life!

> Employees need a paycheck. It’s an asymmetric relationship. This becomes very apparent during economic downturns!

While this is certainly true, there still are usually enough jobs that fit the broad parameters of "pays enough to eat and take care of my rent". If you have a choice of a good boss at lower pay, or an a-hole boss at higher pay, you should take the good boss every time.

We spend 1/3, or more, of our lives at work, and life is far too short to spend any of it taking orders from an unpleasant, incompetent, or abusive a-hole. Not only will this make your time at work miserable, it will also lead to poor sleep and spending far too much of your "free time" brooding about your job. In that type of situation, you're not giving them 8 hours per day, you're giving them 24 hours per day. Eventually that's gonna take a toll on your physical and/or mental health. Don't do it.

This is also important if one wants to grow in their career. It’s hard to grow in a position that is only asked to do what they’re told. As a result, they won’t progress to a higher-level position and will lose money in the long-term. In other words, short-term thinking loses out, even economically.

Not in this job market, certainly, but that article was from 2019, where market dynamics were very different.

I've encountered this too, where I was interviewed by many of the team I would be working with, and was considered a good fit, except for by the one high-standing academic type, who didn't. In that situation, I knew I wasn't impressing that person I was just being myself. Maybe I was subconsciously testing they're openness because I remember I would use a certain word/expression and they would rephrase it and instead of mirroring their phrasing I would say it the way I thought of it. It wasn't so much about being right/wrong but maybe not rocking the boat or just 'be like them'.