Enjoyed this humorous-but-not-really Economist article. From your experience, how accurate is it? Any stories?
TL; DR.
The article says every workplace has some of these six things. But more things equals more cult-like. A summarized version follows.
Workforce nicknames. Googlers and Microsofties to Pinployees and Bainies, meant to create a sense of shared identity.
Corporate symbols. Uniforms are defensible in some circumstances: firefighters, referees, the Pope. Warning signs include pulling on a company-branded hoodie at the weekend or wearing an amulet, hat or lapel pin that proclaims your allegiance to a firm.
Surveillance. It is reasonable for executives to want to know what their workers are up to. But it is not reasonable to track their every move. Monitoring software that takes screenshots of employees’ computer screens are tools of mind control, not management.
Rituals. Plenty of companies hand out badges to favoured employees. ibm used to have its own songbook (“Our reputation sparkles like a gem” was one of the rhymes.”). If you are regularly chanting, banging a gong or working with wicker, it becomes sinister.
Doctrines. More and more firms espouse a higher purpose, and many write down their guiding principles. If values are treated like scripture, you are in cult territory.
Family. Some companies entreat employees to think of their organisation as a family. At worst, it is a red flag. Research found that loyalty to an organisation was associated with people failing to report unethical behaviour.
I couldn’t help reading the above in the voice of Jeff Foxworthy. “If the break room is stocked with 37 varieties of Flavor Aid…”
You need to watch the show Severance that is on Apple TV.
I’m digging that show. Mostly because as someone who has never worked in a corporate office, I have always kind of suspected that office work is actually a lot like that in real life.
I worked a short contract with a company (Palm Harbor Homes) that made mobile and modular homes, and they were the weirdest place to work. Every morning, the entire department (in my case, IT) would get together in the breakroom, and we had to recite the company values, mission statement and motto, and someone had to get up and talk about one of these values and what it meant to them.
VERY cultish. Even though at the time I was looking for a full-time position, I’m not sure I’d have taken one with them had they offered. I’m too cynical for all that rah-rah company BS.
I’ve worked at a bunch of corporations, from small ones (less than 100 employees) to huge (more than 40,000 employees), and none of them felt cult-like. I don’t think it’s that common. I do believe that it does happen, though.
I can’t enjoy something that’s paywalled. 
I’m not getting the “cult” thing to be honest. I’m thinking more like a “totalitarian state”.
Those aren’t mutually exclusive. Think of North Korea.
That list describes every university.
The article is light weight, made up stuff.
In the 1980s National Semiconductor was a cult built around Charlie Spork. We earned the title of Animals of Silicon Valley.
Sorry. Did try to summarize in the second post, which removed some of the humour and nuance.
The line between company and cult seems to be most blurred with tech startups. Theranos, WeWork, even established companies like Apple have somewhat of a cult like edge.
One thing that they have in common is a charismatic leader. Employees tend to trust the leader implicitly, and disregard any outside information that does not jibe with what the leader says.
It’s all good, I got the gist of it. 
Back in the 50s to about the late 70s many large companies had musical plays and entertainment made for them and preformed just for their employees. The Industrial Musical.
Like employee number on their car license plate
Years ago, I worked for a tech consulting firm startup where they handed all new joiners a copy of Jim Collin’s book Built to Last. Maybe it was Good to Great. I can’t remember. The point is, there is a full chapter specifically dedicated to “Building Cult-like Companies”.
So in other words, many companies (tech companies in particular) incorporate elements of forming cults.
This particular company, a couple things stuck out:
- For our morning “stand up”, the last person who showed up after the start time had to spend the meeting wearing a big clock Flavor Flav style. I found this out the first week of work and was like “fuck you, I’m not wearing that thing”. It literally almost started a civil war within the project team as apparently other people hated it but never had the courage to say anything. Obviously it didn’t make me popular with management.
- Constant glamorization of people who work long hours or put work ahead of family and personal life.
- Near hero worship of the duel CEOs (who were later convicted of securities fraud as I recall).
- The insular nature of the company. In addition to work, constant happy hours, events, meals in the office, just hanging out after hours playing videogames in the office. Really just everything possible to make the company your world. People dating (such that they dated at all) either other employees or wait staff who worked in the restaurant in the building lobby (where we ate 90% of our meals).
- Just the constant parroting of the “Core Values” and messaging about how great we were and how all the old-economy style companies were idiots.
This is a really interesting thread. I’m recently retired, worked at 23 different companies in 7 different states and 3 countries (incl. US) – and I’ve never seen any of the cult like behavior listed by @Dr_Paprika. McJobs, Trucking, Construction, Pipelines, Oil patch, and Software, and no serious levels of this were evident.
I’ve worked in two specialized groups regarded by regulars as “cult-ish” (Phantom Works and Skunk Works) but that was mainly due to bypassing a lot of management and process stuff. It was mainline supervision who viewed them that way, not the other workers.
I wonder what makes a company that way.
If you have ever had to climb a water tower to defend your sister’s honour…
“Nah man…I believe you’d get your ass kicked.”