A viral conspiracy theory on TikTok says nice people don’t get promoted. But experts disagree

Is being nice holding you back at work?

One viral TikTok has young workers up in arms about the perils of being pleasant in the workplace.

A TikToker who goes by the name Jacqueline recently posted a TikTok video where she claimed that people who are "a pleasure to work with" will "never get promoted."

The video has struck a nerve and has now racked up 8 million views and 900,000 likes.

Jacqueline says in the video that executives "will never allow an employee who is both good at doing the work and good at keeping a smile on their face while doing the work move up the ladder, because they know they can keep serving you sh-t on a platter and you'll eat it with a smile."

She added: "You will never be promoted out of a hardworking more junior position where a lot of the hard work exists ... If you are in an executive suite, you do not have to be a pleasure to work with or good at your job."

TikTok users in the comment section largely agreed with Jacqueline and put a name to her theory called "performance punishment" where good workers are assigned more tasks as a consequence of being reliable and effective.

Although the stereotype that jerks are more successful has long persisted, evidence suggests otherwise.

A 2020 study by Cameron Anderson, a professor of organizational behavior at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley, found that people with disagreeable personalities do not progress any faster in the workplace than agreeable people.

The study used results from a personality test taken by college students and graduates 14 years prior and how their careers turned out after.

It found that disagreeable people had two distinct traits that canceled out any career gains. This is that they were dominant and