Why should an employer brand show its harsh realities?

Because honesty about the genuine difficulties of a role lets the right people self-select in and the wrong people self-select out before anyone wastes time. Naming the real challenges, whether that is the pace, the ambiguity or the on-call weekends, builds trust, sets accurate expectations and improves both quality of hire and retention, because nobody arrives disillusioned. It also makes the positives more believable, since a brand willing to admit hard truths reads as credible rather than promotional. It feels risky because of the fear of scaring people off, but scaring off the wrong people is precisely the point. The pitfall is listing only strengths, which attracts a broad, poorly matched pool and stores up costly early departures.