Would You Want Your Children to Work Here?
January 14th, 2026
During my internship, I thought I had landed the jackpot. I received my onboarding letter and couldn’t have been more excited. I was few years older than most interns. Had a little more experience, and even to this day, I’ve never seen anything like it. Everyone was welcoming. They gave me a tour, introduced me to employees, and made me feel like part of the team. For a couple of weeks, I soaked it all in, convinced I had found my place.
Little did I know I was being sold a dream.
On my first day, reality started to hit. Everything was disorganized. There was no work lined out, no shadowing plan. It was just me, stepping in to figure it out. It was like they decided to offer an internship on a whim. I shared an office with two employees who had been there for about 10 to15 years. They told me the only way anyone ever got promoted was if someone retired or died. At first, I rationalized it: maybe they were comfortable, maybe there wasn’t room to grow. But soon I realized it wasn’t about comfort, it was about management intentionally keeping people beneath them. I still don’t understand why they stayed.
A couple of weeks in, my boss assigned me a project: tackling inventory. I was told I could propose a new system. In theory, this sounded like freedom but in practice, every move had to be approved by the director. Rigid hierarchy ruled, and innovation was unwelcome.
The inventory problem seemed simple: reduce time spent receiving and retrieving materials and cutting down on wasted purchases. My boss envisioned a vending machine-style solution with QR codes for materials stationed in each hangar. Theoretically clever, but in practice, returning unneeded items was a nightmare, storage was a disaster waiting to happen, and there was still no proper tracking system on the back end.
I built a combined tracking sheet logging every material purchased, used, and needed, complete with IDs, to minimize waste. We needed to also figure out what exactly was being wasted and how, before we could work on fixing it. I worked tirelessly on spreadsheets, reports, and analysis, but realized my plan would never be implemented. My manager never intended to consider my suggestions.
While assisting another director in purchasing, I saw even more dysfunction. She asked me to run a report through SAP to pull materials for deliveries that had already arrived, then told me to call vendors for updates, most of which had already been provided. When I asked for access to vendor accounts to make this easier, she said, “figure it out.” I remember thinking: What kind of company can’t even keep track of its materials? Employees were too afraid to act without explicit approval, and management didn’t make systems accessible.
It became clear: Management actively blocked innovation and growth. Team members were set up to fail, ideas were ignored, and feedback was dismissed. Employees who learned something new often took those skills elsewhere.
As my oldest prepares for college, this experience comes to mind more than ever. It raises a question most organizations never think to ask themselves:
As a manager or employee, would you want your own children, or the next generation, to work here?
If the answer is no, what does that say about leadership, culture, and priorities?
Managers are the gatekeepers of growth, innovation, and morale. When they hoard authority or ignore feedback, the entire organization feels the ripple effects.
The stakes are real.
Revenue loss from turnover
Costly retraining of lost talent
Competitive disadvantage as skills leave for competitors
Long-term erosion of organizational reputation
Even highly capable employees eventually stop investing discretionary effort, and the culture suffers silently. Over time, these consequences compound, threatening the organization’s sustainability.
How to Fix It
Empower leadership to develop talent.
Managers should mentor employees, create opportunities, and actively support advancement. Leadership is about cultivating leaders.
Listen to feedback and act on it.
Frontline employees see problems executives often miss. Create channels for honest input and visibly respond to it. Ignoring feedback trains employees to stop caring.
Encourage innovation and knowledge-sharing.
Treat training as an investment. Celebrate ideas and improvements, even if they challenge the status quo.
Audit your culture regularly.
Ask the hard questions: If we trained the next generation of employees, would they stay? Would they thrive? If the answer is no, remove the barriers.
The ultimate question isn’t whether employees are capable, it’s whether the organization creates an environment that allows them to thrive. If we’re training the next generation only for them to disengage or leave, what does that say about our priorities? About the kind of organizations we are building?
Thinking about this is necessary. Talent, culture, and leadership are the most valuable assets a business can cultivate. Ignoring these signals isn’t just a short-term risk, it’s a long-term liability.
At the end of my internship, I was offered a full-time position. I declined, choosing not to step into a culture I had already seen would suppress innovation, block growth, and fail to value talent. Over the years, I stayed in touch with the company. My old boss was eventually let go, and the company itself went under.
When you think about whether you’d want your own children to work somewhere, most people default to “yes” if the place genuinely invests in talent and lets people prosper. But when your first instinct is no, and your mind immediately runs through a thousand compromises you tolerate just to survive, that’s not minor friction, that’s a systemic problem. That instinct is a brutally honest gauge of culture.
Additional thoughts:
Why do we tolerate toxic work cultures? I know the biggest reason for some is financial. I suppose that is partly why so many people are starting there own businesses and side hustles, but how will you keep from making the same mistakes?