Fun Boy Three

Heading for the Ghost Town

Relax

Another week, another idiot CEO.

In a move he was either taught in Business School or was led to by his intuitive stupidity, Grindr Chief Executive George Arison implemented a return to work policy mandating that workers return to work in person two days a week at assigned “hub” offices or be fired, and promptly lost nearly half his employees.

As this had followed hard on the heels of a decision by staff to unionise, he’s now being taken to court by the Communications Workers of America, who claim it was an attempt to silence workers from speaking out about conditions. What a bonus!

Grindr had grown as a special place to work for those in the LBGT+ community, providing support and a safe place, and close connection with the community that the company’s dating app serves. This seems like a remarkable maladroit move by the company that threatens to damage it’s reputation and market standing.

So why is this being done?

Arison was brought in last September to take Grindr public. So is it all about the money?

Well, he told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference in San Francisco this week that more staff attrition is expected as a result of the mandate, which will be financially advantageous in the near term.

How did that work out, George? Not so good, huh?

He got rather more than he bargained for and now the stability and security of the platform is in doubt. He seems to be following Musk’s approach as he said “…you don’t need that big of a team to do the things that we need to do.”, and he’s getting much the same results.

But let’s just rewind a bit. Arison, who we should note worked for Boston Consulting Group, said that he implemented this policy to reduce headcount because he doesn’t believe they need as many people as they have. It’s not about culture or collaboration or innovation or any of the old baloney they normally come out with. It’s to create a smaller, and more compliant, workforce.

We may have suspected this was the case but they pretended it wasn’t. Now they are saying it out loud.

Chain Gang

And like London Buses, you wait for ages and then three come along at once.

(Actually, that analogy is a bit strained because there’s been a pretty regular stream of idiots, to be fair, but this week has seen a bit of a surge).

Let’s look at this astonishing clip of property developer and CEO Tim Gurner that’s been doing the rounds

"We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50 percent in my view. We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

No doubt met with a refrain from neoliberal politicians & economists and the self-style libertarian fringe of “NOOOOO, Tim. You’re not supposed to say it out loud, mate!! That’s our little secret. We only say it in the Sweat Lodge after you’ve drunk the fire water and are in the brotherhood!”

They are saying it out loud, people. Listen up.

Stowe Boyd declared this is ‘Neofeudalism’ and I agree. This is why we are seeing an uptake in unionisation. It needs to be resisted because it leads to a dark future - unless you’re Tim Gurner or some other ‘business mogul’.

“So, who he?”, I hear you ask.

Well, he has risen to prominence for his crass insensitivity before. Remember that old one about how young people could afford to buy a house if they weren’t “buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each”?

Yep, that’s one of Tim’s. He’s right out the “I worked 40 hours a day for 9 days a week living off nothing other than cornflakes and what I could find in bins and making my clothes out of discarded burger boxes when I was trying to buy my first house” school of comparative bollocks.

It would be easy to laugh this off. I mean, the guy is clearly a jerk and has as much idea about economics as the avocado toast he derides (although that’s also true of some economists I could mention) but a lot of people hold the same views as him. A LOT, people with money, power, profile and influence. They are wrong, callous and dangerous but that’s what they think. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Dear old Tim has since apologised for his comments, and says he regrets saying them. I bet he does. But he DID say them, it’s clearly what he believes needs to happen. Other people to suffer so that the economy goes back to working for him and his mates.

We have been warned.

Sultans Of Swing

And just in time for this missive, Mike Bloomberg pops up saying that employees who are working from home are playing golf instead of working.

His evidence for this? “…every golf course that I've heard about in the last three years has had record summers, okay? It is funny, but it's tragic”.

Well, it is tragic, Mike, but in not in the way that you think.

He reveals his out-dated thinking when he states that “we are paying our employees for five days a week of work”. In other words, they are valuing presenteeism over effectiveness, using in-person time as a proxy for productivity. He seems to have forgotten that almost all his employees have mobile devices and they certainly use them for work purposes outside of the ‘five days a week’. But that’s OK, because that’s a rachet that works in his favour. I said rachet, not racket, but frankly the words are interchangeable.

It’s true employees are getting out on golf courses during the week but that doesn’t mean the work isn’t being done at other times. They are switching to periods that suit their priorities and their energy cycles. If the job gets done, what’s the problem?

I’ll grant him one point that he makes. "I can't work with you if it's over Zoom," he said. "You can't do the same thing via Zoom that you can do face-to-face. Period.”

He’s right, there are some things that are best done face-to-face. But how much of your time does that take? For many people, they are spending 60-70% of their time on focused work. The stuff that is best done face to face is probably about 10% of their time. In what world does it make sense to optimise for the minority of time?

(I’d say about the 1980s, which, funnily enough, is when Bloomberg built his eponymous company).

It would be easy to dismiss this trio of idiots as just that, a trio of idiots. However, their comments betray an underlying worldview that regards people as disposable resources, to be commanded and controlled and manipulated for the benefit of shareholders. It’s not being hidden any longer, it’s upfront and centre.

This should be no surprise, it is the logical conclusion of shareholder primacy and the drive for returns above everything else. But we seem to be going into a more dangerous phase, one that can be even more damaging to employees. One that could blow this fantastic opportunity that we have to re-imagine work - and life.

And we have to fight against that.

Read All About It

This wasn’t the missive I was going to write, that one was about the flaws in surveys and business research but it started to send me to sleep, so I did this instead.

For a much better and funnier commentary on business research and why it’s so awful, I recommend this piece by Dr. Craig Knight

Bits And Pieces

The new episode of Work Punks is out, in which Paul, Ben and I talk about holidays and Ben tells of the time he got sacked by his own team. You can watch it here on YouTube, or listen to the podcast at Work Punks or via your favourite podcast platform.

I’m still developing my Corporate Survival Guide and I’d love to hear your experiences of working in a large organisation and the vagaries of being a cog in the machine. If you’re currently feeling a bit uncomfortable about corporate life and want some help on figuring out what to do, or just want to get it off your chest, I’d love talk to you. Either DM me to arrange a time or book a slot on my Calendly page.

It’s always lovely to speak to readers, so if there’s anything you’d like to talk about, questions you’d like to ask or if you just want to say hi, get in touch and let’s set up a call.