Why office is young professional’s finest classroom

There is no better finishing school for the ambitious young than the office. Not because of the work—though that, too, has its merits—but because it is a place where you observe human behavior in action. Remote work may spare you the commute, but it denies you the accidental lessons that shape careers and sharpen instincts.

Walk into any office and you will see hierarchies play out in quiet ways. The overqualified editor, lavished with performative praise (“You are the real boss here”), is a gesture of kindness, true, but also a tell: even the well-credentialed worry about irrelevance. The mid-level manager who schedules in-person meetings for no reason other than to remind everyone how much he really knows (but cannot tell the difference between it is and its) is not leading. He is broadcasting insecurity. And the quietest person in the room is often the one plotting their exit while coworkers debate whether 5:00 pm is “too early” for a cold beer.

The office teaches what university never could: that competence is not always rewarded, that confidence frequently masks mediocrity, and that the most socially adept among us were sometimes the ones bullied into vigilance. Observe long enough and you will learn that the fastest way to provoke a superior is not to question their ideas: it is to remind them of their bad hires. Nothing stings like a mistake that cannot be undone.

For the young, particularly those from less privileged backgrounds, the office performs a sacred service: it demystifies success. The myth of the infallible professional—the fund manager who always beats the market, the banker who never flails, the smooth-talking salesman who charms clients into signing anything—crumbles fast when you see them in the wild. The reality is that most people are figuring it out as they go. The bar is lower than you think. This revelation is not discouraging. It is liberating. If they can do it, so can you.

Zoom calls do not make the cracks visible. They do not let you witness the way a colleague’s voice tightens under pressure or how the office alpha defers, inexplicably, to the quiet analyst in the corner or that “glamorous” office queen bee whose allure evaporates the moment substance is needed. Those are the informal side of learning, the things you absorb just by being around.

Offices run on unspoken rules more complex than corporate-policy manuals. There is the meeting “expert” who dominates every discussion while saying nothing of substance; the way people jockey for credit; the art of the passive-aggressive Teams Message; the department cheerleader whose enthusiasm is matched only by their lack of productivity; the office gossip who somehow knows about promotions before HR does. I once watched a VP spend 45 minutes urging the team to “think outside the box,” only to shoot down every suggestion that was not his own. It turns out, corporate jargon translates to “agree with me.”

Even dress codes are a silent curriculum, where forgetting your tie can be treated like a big offense, depending on the company. “Are we farmers now?” But dress too sharply and you will discover another truth: nothing threatens mediocre management like a subordinate who knows how to dress for success. The trick is to look sharp enough to be taken seriously, but not so sharp that the easily threatened think you are after their job.

Dating teaches you about people, but in narrow, transactional ways. Friendships and family are too forgiving to be instructive. The office, by contrast, is a relentless feedback loop. It rewards emotional intelligence, punishes tone-deafness (like asking “Who the hell still uses Excel?” in a room full of accountants) and shows the messy truth behind every polished LinkedIn profile.

For a generation raised in digital cocoons, this education is more important than ever. The office is where you learn to read a room, to navigate invisible rivalries, to recognise when ambition is masking fear. These are skills no webinar can teach. The workplace may not always be pleasant. But it is always educational