Un-actionable insights about corporate absurdity — from a modern work skeptic. Ex-accountant. Google outcast. SaaS marketer. 20-yr new media iconoclast.
Sometimes Slack. Maybe Email.
Joined May 2023
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Linkedin's new "Starting a New Position" animation is a Rube Goldberg-inspired perpetual motion machine.
Totally nails the "🐂💩 jobs" aspect of corporate work.
@LinkedInLunat1c
Is the most common use-case for AI the further Rube-Goldberg-ification of "work"?
teapaw.org/UnAIify/status/1960348…
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All the people watching: "Good job!"
(Just kidding no one cares.)
Your mom fr: "That's cute."
This quoted post is unavailable.
Levels of knowledge:
- Not using emdashes because who cares
- Not using emdashes because you don't know how/don't care and can excuse this "because AI"
- Not using emdashes even though you know how ... you just don't want your writing to come off as AI
- using emdashes anyway because screw AI
- just write
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Spend time on r/overemployed (411k members), and marvel at the sociopathy of it all.
No one there realizes they mirror the very sociopathic ethos of the companies they take advantage of.
They never consider the coworkers, managers, teammates etc. they defraud.
Something else.
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Any talk of introversion or extroversion misses the bigger point:
You need people who know how to be assertive
(Yes, and how to listen, back off.)
Assertiveness is a willingness to communicate, negotiate, and act. It's opposite is the passive wallflower.
That remote enables behaviors of timidity, consensus-seeking — and bureaucracy — what you get in time is inertia.
Nuance in all things, but the underappreciated skill today is assertiveness — that not only can you just do things, but you must just do things.
Introversion is a good excuse to turn your camera off, but that's a cop out. You need introverts who know how to be and can be assertive.
Really, assertiveness is what needs to be built into the culture. And you balance assertiveness with good faith and most respectful interpretation behaviors.
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Sums up hiring for marketing jobs in 2023–Present.
Email 1: "Thanks for applying."
Candidate: YES! This is a good sign they got my application!
Email 2: "Before we consider your application, please take this IQ test."
(Passes test)
Candidate: Great now I guess a phone screen?
Email 3: "Now complete this questionnaire."
Candidate: What? This is for a VP job, and I am jumping through a HubSpot drip campaign to ... Get a phone screen? What kind of company is this?
(Bails)
👆 True story.
Meanwhile every marketing job has candidates jump through these hoops that are spaghetti against a wall exercises.
This is a dumb way to hire.
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Need to remake Exec on the Desk but with all the knowledge workers pigs and see if it still works.
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This is a smart approach to management that focuses on what matters most.
Results Only Work Environment (ROWE):
Beginning about a decade before the pandemic, my business had been a Results Only Work Environment (ROWE). All of our team could work wherever, whenever, and however. We managed to results. While results occasionally involved hours worked or physical presence (eg fielding support requests, manning the reception desk, contributing to synchronous discussions), generally we did not care about those things at all.
Attending to results demands more of managers and leaders. It forces them to articulate a clear, reasonable, and mutually understood picture of success. It forces them to define what success looks like and how their direct reports can advance in earnings, responsibilities, and authority.
Though we did require employees to be in the office, about two thirds of the team chose to come in every day. They found they were more effective and enjoyed the work more if they were away from the distractions of their home and amidst other team members. About a third of the team (and about half of our senior leaders) worked remotely.
People would sometimes characterize this as "unlimited vacation". It was not unlimited vacation. It was "Focus on impact, progress, results, etc. Do not focus on irrelevant things."
teapaw.org/geoffreydgraham/status…
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If technology saves time, then we are living in the Stone Age.
I'm with you. I often say to my wife (as we rush from one meaningless activity to the next, all the while staring at our phones and not each other): If technology is supposed to save us time, and therefore give us more leisure hours to engage the "pursuit of happiness," then why aren't we if this is the most technologically acdvaved society the world has ever known?
Or is it just me? Don't we seem to have less time than any other period in history, in terms of sitting around the dinner table, staring at the flames in the fire place, rocking back and forth on the porch, reading aloud to our children, walking the wooded path each evening, sharing a pint in the study with a dear friend... and on and on....
In short, if technology saves time, then we are living in the Stone Age.
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