The screen stared back, an unforgiving white expanse, daring me to find the ‘next’ button hidden somewhere in the digital abyss. Day three. Still no access to the main production environment. My calendar, a digital wasteland, populated by ghost meetings I couldn’t join. A 204-page PDF, helpfully titled “Your Journey Begins,” lay open but unread on a second monitor, its dense text a physical barrier between me and any useful action. My fingers twitched, a restless energy born of inaction, reminiscent of checking the fridge for new food, even though I knew nothing new would appear. The silence of my home office, usually a comfort, felt like a judgment. How many more hours until I gave up trying to find the right portal, the right contact, the right anything?
This wasn’t just a bad onboarding experience; it was an act of ritual hazing. And I’m starting to believe it wasn’t an accident. We talk about “sink or swim” cultures, but we rarely acknowledge the deliberate construction of the deep end. It’s a social sorting mechanism, designed not just to test your technical skills, but your resourcefulness, your ability to navigate ambiguity, and crucially, your willingness to ask for help-thereby forcing you to build social capital from scratch. You’re pushed to approach stranger after stranger, to confess your ignorance, to become vulnerable. It’s effective, in a brutal, Darwinian kind of way, for integrating you into the tribe, but at












