I think I know what corporations want in an employee.

A couple of years ago, I was passed up for a role as the leader of a class module I didn’t even know I was being considered for. According to a colleague, I wasn’t chosen out of the fear that I would “change the entire module” if I were put in charge.

Which is true. I absolutely would have.

I would’ve pushed for changes to make the module more student-friendly. I would’ve questioned why certain things were done the way they were. I would’ve tried to rebuild parts of it instead of maintaining what already existed.

But that’s not what management wants.

They want someone who can operate comfortably within an established framework, not someone who sees the framework as the problem. They value my hard work, logic, and ambition, but they also want loyalty, compliance, and a willingness to respect hierarchy without friction.

It’s awkward when other teachers ask why I’m not a module leader. The honest answer is that if I could sand down certain parts of my personality, I probably already would be one. I guess I’m just not module-leader material.

And honestly? I’ve learned this lesson at almost every job I’ve ever been good at.

A compliant employee is easier to work with. Many companies care more about being functional than ethical — or any other “-al” adjective we like to romanticize. That doesn’t make them villains in a cartoonish sense; it just makes them efficient.

I remember interviewing at companies that seemed more concerned with finding the “right personality” than the most capable worker. I’m sure most of us have filled out those personality questionnaires meant to determine whether we’d be a good cultural fit. Not whether we’d do good work, but whether we’d do it quietly.

That’s why my ears perked up while watching the finale of Season 2 of Fallout.

Hank McLean says that an ISTP personality is the “gold standard” for Vault-Tec employees.

For context, Vault-Tec is basically the corporation people complain about when they rant about capitalism: profit over people, function over ethics, humans treated like replaceable parts in a machine. And according to Fallout, the perfect employee, at least from management’s perspective, is an ISTP.

I had to look up what that even meant. To the best of my understanding, ISTPs are practical, logical, solutions-oriented, emotionally controlled, and independent. They’re calm under pressure. They get things done. They don’t ask too many questions.

I can absolutely see why that personality would be ideal for a massive corporation.

An ISTP can make analytical decisions without getting bogged down by emotion or moral hesitation. In an unpredictable environment like Vault-Tec’s, a person who can march forward without supervision is incredibly valuable.

But here’s where it gets unsettling.

Hank adds a wrinkle: the ideal employee shouldn’t just be productive — they should also be well-meaning, sweet, and non-threatening.

That’s the formula.

You take intrinsic productivity and pair it with passivity and a desire to be helpful. Scale that across a population, and you don’t just get obedient workers. You get a society that’s easier to control. A society that doesn’t meaningfully resist power, even when that power is clearly exploitative.

Vault-Tec’s solution is literal mind control, but the metaphor isn’t subtle. They target people who are exhausted, struggling, and desperate for stability, people willing to trade parts of themselves for comfort and certainty.

And God help me, I couldn’t stop seeing the parallels to corporate life.

How many of us would glide through our careers if we could just be more obedient? If we could stop questioning systems, stop caring about ethics, stop wanting things to be better instead of merely functional?

Control works best when people are pacified. Reduce friction. Reduce dissent. Reduce discomfort. Give people enough security to survive, but not enough agency to challenge anything.

That’s why it’s so tragic when Episode 7 reveals that the brain of Congresswoman Diane Welch, a principled, anti-corporate politician, is literally used as the power source for Vault-Tec’s mind-control devices. Her goodness, her idealism, becomes fuel for the very system she opposed.

It’s a cruel message: idealism doesn’t win in this world. At best, it gets exploited.

The longer I sit with Fallout, the more it feels like a story about an endless war between idealism and greed. Idealistic communities keep forming, and corporations keep stepping on them in the name of order, efficiency, and control.