Stupidity and sadness

Stories about office and culture

American Idiot

I was going to write about something other than news this week but there’s been a couple of stories I just can’t avoid.

The first is Amazon’s announcement that all employees will have to return to the office. The bad news is it’s going to be 5 days a week. But the good news is that it’s not until next January, so people have time to adapt.

Well, they’ll be adapting hard right now. Mostly adapting their CVs.

I probably don’t need to point out what a monumentally stupid move this is by Amazon but I will, as briefly as possible.

The data on previous RTO mandates shows that 30% of their people will leave. A large proportion of this exodus will consist of their best people.

Some have tried to put some ‘4-D chess’ framing on this, saying that Amazon want to reduce their workforce and this way they do it without paying anyone to go. However, this is not the ninja move they are making it out to be.

This is the dumbest way to reduce your headcount because you have no control over who leaves and who stays. Amazon have said that they want to reduce the number of managers but it’s entirely possible that it’s the specialists and the doers who will go because they have the highly transferable skills. Managers tend to cling on for dear life because, hey, anyone can manage, right?

Besides, managers have been indoctrinated in the Amazon’s somewhat unique approach and are going to find it harder to adapt to another organisation. They’ve been drinking the cool aid for a bit too long.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says in his email to staff that this is being done because

“we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant. I’ve previously explained these benefits, but in summary, we’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more seamless; and, teams tend to be better connected to one another. If anything, the last 15 months we’ve been back in the office at least three days a week has strengthened our conviction about the benefits.”

He concludes with the assertion that

“I’m optimistic that these changes will better help us accomplish these goals while strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams.”

Now look, Amazon prides itself on it’s analytical approach and use of data. So they’ll have data that supports these assertions of the benefits of being in the office, right?

No? What’s that, Andy? They’re ‘observations’ are they?

Funny how your observations are contrary to all the evidence that’s been gathered on hybrid and office working. (See this post from Remote Work expert Professor Nick Bloom for the low-down and links on this.)

You ‘believe’ there are significant advantages?

You ‘believe’ that it will strengthen the culture (we’ll come to that later) and the effectiveness of teams do you?

That’s not exactly scientific is it? Probably because the science says the opposite.

The best spin I can put on this is that Jassy has succumbed to magical thinking. But I don’t think he has.

And this is the most annoying thing about this whole ‘debate’. There’s a word for this (no, not that one!) - it is cant. Complete and utter cant.*

Jassy doesn’t believe a word of it. This is just about power and control.

Get back into the office, serfs! Know your place!! Do as you are commanded!!!

There is no ‘debate’ about RTO vs Hybrid. The evidence is in, the latter is clearly better.

Besides, it’s hard to call it a debate when one side is lying through their teeth, isn’t it?

*(Def: Cant : statements that are not sincerely believed by the person making them)

Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now

Although Jassy may be right about it strengthening their culture, which is one of oppression and exploitation.

I was told by someone who’d worked for them that they deliberately selected people who had low self-esteem because they could be driven hard and wouldn’t push back. They managed these people by increasing their workload and focusing on their shortcomings whilst praising them only sparingly. That kept their self-esteem low and kept them compliant.

I don’t know if this is true but you can look at what ex-employees say about their experience and draw your own conclusions. It’s remarkable how many people leave Amazon due to burnout.

Or just look at what current employees are saying about this RTO mandate. One said it was being done to ensure everyone returned to ‘the long march’. Doesn’t sound too cuddly, does it?

I was taken to task by Purple Library Guy over last week’s missive because he said I didn’t point out that underlying forces that drive the issues I wrote about - Class and Power. (You can read his comment here).

He’s right, the elite class in charge of companies want to maintain their position of superiority, their status and power. That’s what happening here.

It’s got nothing to do with the any of reasons given by Jassy (well, maybe apart from the culture one!). It’s all to do with restoring the pre-pandemic power differential.

That’s what drives all the RTO policies. And if they are telling you something different, then, remember, it’s pure cant.

Save A Prayer

The other story that grabbed my attention this week is truly shocking. It’s also deeply sad.

Denise Prudhomme, a Wells Fargo employee, was found dead in her cubicle four days after coming into the office.

This tragic story touches upon a few topics.

It obviously gives lie to the whole ‘we need people in the office to build culture, team spirit and collaboration’. Connectedness doesn’t lie in a building, it is created between human beings through habits, rituals and a sense of belonging and common interest.

Wells Fargo’s ‘culture’ clearly failed this poor woman, who had so little connectedness that no-one realised she was dead for four days. Apparently some employees noticed a foul smell but put it down to dodgy plumbing. This suggests a lack of humanity and a basic failure of care on the part of the company.

This is an extreme case of workplace isolation, which is a growing problem in organisations. Why did no-one have cause to want to speak to her for four days? Why didn’t she have anyone who would look out for her and notice she wasn’t around? Why didn’t anyone drop by her desk to check she was OK?

This can only happen, and workplace isolation more generally, because the way work is organised has removed all need for human contact. It is because of the pressure that people are put under to stay at their desks, heads down, working. It’s because managers are overloaded and don’t have time to check in with their employees. It’s because the simple human act of wishing someone ‘Good Morning’ to and passing the time of day for a few moments is seen as ‘unproductive’ and ‘time wasting’.

It also speaks to a wider societal problems of loneliness, that this woman wasn’t missed by anyone out of work either.

I know lots of people in the progressive work space who frame their work with some variation on ‘bring humanity back to work’. It’s almost over-used, to the point of seeming a bit glib. I’m a bit ashamed to admit it has sometime prompted an eye-roll and the thought “Oh blimey, not another one ‘putting the human at the centre of work”. I mean, it’s so obvious, it’s hardly original, is it?

Well, it may not be original. But it’s needed now more than ever, isn’t it?

Talk Talk

Last week I put a post on LinkedIN that listed all the things that I tried to in order reinvent myself after I left corporate . They all failed, not because they were bad ideas but because of the damage that my corporate experience had done to me. That included suffering from Workplace PTSD, which is a variant of Complex-PTSD. (You can read the post and the comments here).

I talk about this not because I want sympathy, or to flog my coaching (as one person accused me of earlier this year) but because I want to highlight the impact of suffering multiple traumas over a sustained period of time. These could be such as you are subjected to in a toxic workplace, or more particularly if you have a boss who bullies and mistreats you. We tend to try and brush the individual events off because they are minor, in and of themselves, but the cumulative impact can be serious impairment of your mental health.

I don’t think people realise what is being done to them in the everyday hurly-burly of corporate life, and the degree to which they are being harmed. I certainly didn’t, which caused me to prolong the problem and make my situation worse.

I also don’t think a proper account is being taken of the damage done collectively by the way modern organisations treat people. Just look at how ‘Burnout’ has been identified as clinical condition caused by the workplace but then simply accommodated without any root-and-branch analysis of what must be done to stop it. It’s just been accepted as a ‘cost’, something you’ll probably experience in your career, joining redundancy as an everyday brutality of corporate life.

I’m going to talk more about this is the coming months but if you’ve been affected by these issues, I’d like to hear from you. I want to hear your story so that I understand the scope of the problem and the various ways that people are affected. That will help me work out what stuff I can produce to help people through these experiences and what should go into the ‘Corporate Survival Guide’ that I’m working on.

All conversations will be in strictest confidence. To get in touch, see my details below.