Ms. Rubin wrote: "I was also interested to see that the study suggested that people’s opinions of their workplaces are more determined by their immediate manager than by the overall company. It was their direct manager – not money, benefits, perks, or a charismatic leader at the top – that was the critical element for people."

This is true up to a point and that's the point at which a mediocre company turns into a miserable one. These would be organizations like my last employer before retirement, a company which used to talk nonstop about the quality of its workforce and the value of empowered individuals, which now requires that employees record the times of their bathroom breaks and routinely cuts payroll by hounding people until they quit in order to avoid lawsuits and/or severance payouts.

In an organization like this, if your immediate manager is someone you trust and respectyour manager is probably as unhappy as you are and the two of you become more like co-conspirators than team members.