Most of my personal career has been as a supervisor/manager in warehouses, which is a much more blue collar atmosphere than Severance is depicting, so the comparisons only go so far, but I had a brief (BRIEF) stint working for a chinese-owned company that had expanded into having a few locations in the states, and most of their upper management came from their facilities in China and Thailand, which were legitimately sweatshops. All things it would've been great to know going in, but they massaged that truth quite a bit going in. Their employee base was largely immigrant populations, and given that this was Arizona, well, you can do the math there. Anyway, about a month in I was already looking for a way out and had a one on one with my direct manager who "had some concerns" with the way I was handling my department, namely that I was being too nice with them (i.e. we were hitting all production goals, but I was treating them like human beings too frequently, vis-à-vis bathroom breaks when requested and so forth). We spent like half an hour going back and forth with me not understanding what he was actually trying to tell me to do because he wouldn't just come out and say it and finally he just got this insane fucking smile and said "I need you to tighten the leash." I realized that it wasn't about the numbers. I mean it was about the numbers, but it's not about the numbers TODAY. It's about sustained numbers, and their ethos was that the only way to do that was complete and utter control. Dehumanization. Management is HERE, you are THERE, and I wasn't getting with the program. I left shortly thereafter.