When you first start off your career, you're bright and starry-eyed, carrying such ideals as "work hard and be rewarded," fueled by stories and mythology of working stories you've heard. The reality is that work is more like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill only to have it roll back down again—nothing gained, changed, or earned except the opportunity to complete the task again.
You probably think that as long as you put effort into something, it will eventually pay off and that honest feedback, given with honest intentions of improving the business, will be taken into account and even praised. The reality is those making the decisions will almost always feel criticized upon hearing that their subordinates don't like things the way they are—the way that they, the powers that be, made them.
Your honest feedback—nay, criticism—will be met with retribution rather than those powers recognizing that they are not infallible, something their egos could never reconcile.
Giving feedback, whether in person, in reviews, or through "anonymous" surveys, is a mistake you only make once in your career, carrying the lesson with you forever after once things go belly-up. What's worse is that even if you were promised, the survey was anonymous—even if it is actually anonymous—it's not hard to figure out and narrow down who has likely answered what. It's easy enough through simple pattern recognition to whittle down who might say what and how they might say it.
Unfortunately, this is probably what happened to this worker who shared their story with this online community.
Image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Image is for illustration only and subjects are models.
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