Are there parts of your whole self that are not always appropriate to bring up? I sure think so. If one team mates whole self includes their support for Israel and another whole self is their support for Palestine, maybe we can leave some of these whole selfs at home, and just talk about work, and maybe how our camping trip this weekend was. People shouldn't have to be proselytized by any other people's extreme religious or political views at work.

Very true, there is a balance to be found. The suggestion from OP to leave it all at home, to focus purely on skill and merit is too black/white.

Good ways to bring your unique perspective to a professional context: intervening to avoid making some users feel offended or excluded, before a project ships to those users.

Bad ways: just yammering about how you are poly, bi, trans, and a revolutionary anarchist while we are trying to finalize OKRs for the quarter.

>be a sterile, subservient entity for the majority of your existence

yeah, having a job sucks shit, we know

most people don't have the luxury of working a job that's worth aligning with

This isn't how people really are.

People have different presentations for different social contexts. That's typical and normal. For a working example, the social context of the marital bedroom is not the social context of the city playground where you mind your kids. Differences in clothing, actions, words.

This spans into most areas of life.

You don't have to sterilize your work life - but you do have to have _boundaries_.

But this is how people really are. Being authentic is easier for some because the corporate world more closely aligns with the dominant culture. Take the casual ignorance of an employee PC background of a sexy woman, because that's just how the boys are. Or how women are meant to breastfeed out of sight.

People do present differently in different contexts. But it is a requirement to file off all your sharp edges to participate effectively in the workplace. Intentionally limiting yourself, your output, to cater to the social conformity of others seems to be an anti-goal. But it is what we do.

Your authenticity is not everyone’s authenticity.

And the opposite is true. There's a balance. For some that authenticity really works for them at work (those with a general curiosity, an interest in how groups interact and work, who are workaholics) and it aligns. For others it does not and is unfortunate in its requirement of more energy to suppress and lack of natural culture-fit.