The article revealed that — assume we believe him, and this wasn’t merely a thinly-veiled advert for Microsoft’s AI tech — Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well at work. (View Highlight)
The article revealed that — assume we believe him, and this wasn’t merely a thinly-veiled advert for Microsoft’s AI tech — Copilot consumes Nadella’s life outside the office as well at work. (View Highlight)
He likes podcasts, but instead of listening to them, he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond. At the office, he relies on Copilot to deliver summaries of messages he receives in Outlook and Teams and toggles among at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio. He views them as his AI chiefs of staff, delegating meeting prep, research and other tasks to the bots. “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job, noting that Copilot is thankfully very good at triaging his messages. (View Highlight)
He likes podcasts, but instead of listening to them, he loads transcripts into the Copilot app on his iPhone so he can chat with the voice assistant about the content of an episode in the car on his commute to Redmond. At the office, he relies on Copilot to deliver summaries of messages he receives in Outlook and Teams and toggles among at least 10 custom agents from Copilot Studio. He views them as his AI chiefs of staff, delegating meeting prep, research and other tasks to the bots. “I’m an email typist,” Nadella jokes of his job, noting that Copilot is thankfully very good at triaging his messages. (View Highlight)
None of these tasks are things that require you to use AI. You can read your messages on Outlook and Teams without having them summarized — and I’d argue that a well-written email is one that doesn’t require a summary. Podcasts are not there “to be chatted about” with an AI. Preparing for meetings isn’t something that requires AI, nor is research, unless, of course, you don’t really give a shit about the actual content of what you’re reading or the message of what you’re saying, just that you are “saying the right thing.” (View Highlight)
None of these tasks are things that require you to use AI. You can read your messages on Outlook and Teams without having them summarized — and I’d argue that a well-written email is one that doesn’t require a summary. Podcasts are not there “to be chatted about” with an AI. Preparing for meetings isn’t something that requires AI, nor is research, unless, of course, you don’t really give a shit about the actual content of what you’re reading or the message of what you’re saying, just that you are “saying the right thing.” (View Highlight)
To be clear, I am deeply unconvinced that Nadella actually runs his life in this way, but if he does, Microsoft’s board should fire him immediately. (View Highlight)
To be clear, I am deeply unconvinced that Nadella actually runs his life in this way, but if he does, Microsoft’s board should fire him immediately. (View Highlight)
The incentives behind effectively everything we do have been broken by decades of neoliberal thinking, where the idea of a company — an entity created to do a thing in exchange for money —has been drained of all meaning beyond the continued domination and extraction of everything around it, focusing heavily on short-term gains and growth at all costs. In doing so, the definition of a “good business” has changed from one that makes good products at a fair price to a sustainable and loyal market, to one that can display the most stock price growth from quarter to quarter. (View Highlight)
The incentives behind effectively everything we do have been broken by decades of neoliberal thinking, where the idea of a company — an entity created to do a thing in exchange for money —has been drained of all meaning beyond the continued domination and extraction of everything around it, focusing heavily on short-term gains and growth at all costs. In doing so, the definition of a “good business” has changed from one that makes good products at a fair price to a sustainable and loyal market, to one that can display the most stock price growth from quarter to quarter. (View Highlight)
This is the Rot Economy, which is a useful description for how tech companies have voluntarily degraded their core products in order to placate shareholders, transforming useful — and sometimes beloved — services into a hollow shell of their former selves as a means of expressing growth. But it’s worth noting that this transformation isn’t constrained to the tech industry, nor was it a phenomena that occurred when the tech industry entered its current VC-fuelled, publicly-traded incarnation. (View Highlight)
This is the Rot Economy, which is a useful description for how tech companies have voluntarily degraded their core products in order to placate shareholders, transforming useful — and sometimes beloved — services into a hollow shell of their former selves as a means of expressing growth. But it’s worth noting that this transformation isn’t constrained to the tech industry, nor was it a phenomena that occurred when the tech industry entered its current VC-fuelled, publicly-traded incarnation. (View Highlight)
Famed Chicago School economist (and dweller of Hell) Milton Friedman once argued in his 1970 doctrine that those who didn’t focus on shareholder value were “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades,” and that any social responsibility — say, treating workers well, doing anything other than focus on shareholder value — is tantamount to an executive taxing his shareholders by “spending their money” on their own personal beliefs. (View Highlight)
Famed Chicago School economist (and dweller of Hell) Milton Friedman once argued in his 1970 doctrine that those who didn’t focus on shareholder value were “unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades,” and that any social responsibility — say, treating workers well, doing anything other than focus on shareholder value — is tantamount to an executive taxing his shareholders by “spending their money” on their own personal beliefs. (View Highlight)
Friedman was a fundamentalist when it came to unrestricted, unfettered capitalism, and this zealotry surpassed any sense of basic human morality — if he had any — at times. For example, in his book, Capitalism and Friedman, he argued that companies should be allowed to discriminate on racial grounds because the owner might suffer should they be required to hire an equally or better-qualified Black person. (View Highlight)
Friedman was a fundamentalist when it came to unrestricted, unfettered capitalism, and this zealotry surpassed any sense of basic human morality — if he had any — at times. For example, in his book, Capitalism and Friedman, he argued that companies should be allowed to discriminate on racial grounds because the owner might suffer should they be required to hire an equally or better-qualified Black person. (View Highlight)
Friedman himself makes the facile argument that economic freedom — which, he says, is synonymous with unfettered capitalism — is a necessary condition of unfettered political freedom. Obviously, that’s bollocks, although it’s an argument that’s proven persuasive with a certain class of people that are either intellectually or morally hollow (or both). (View Highlight)
Friedman himself makes the facile argument that economic freedom — which, he says, is synonymous with unfettered capitalism — is a necessary condition of unfettered political freedom. Obviously, that’s bollocks, although it’s an argument that’s proven persuasive with a certain class of people that are either intellectually or morally hollow (or both). (View Highlight)
Neoliberalism also represents a kind of modern-day feudalism, dividing society based on whether someone is a shareholder or not, with the former taking precedence and the latter seen as irrelevant at best, or disposable at worst. It’s curious that Friedman saw economic freedom — a state that is non-interventionist in economic matters — as essential for political freedom, while also failing to see equality as the same. (View Highlight)
Neoliberalism also represents a kind of modern-day feudalism, dividing society based on whether someone is a shareholder or not, with the former taking precedence and the latter seen as irrelevant at best, or disposable at worst. It’s curious that Friedman saw economic freedom — a state that is non-interventionist in economic matters — as essential for political freedom, while also failing to see equality as the same. (View Highlight)
I realize this is all very big and clunky, but I want you to understand how these incentives have fundamentally changed everything, and why they are responsible for the rot we see in our society and our workplaces. When your only incentive is shareholder value, and you raise shareholder value as a platonic ideal, everything else is secondary, including the customer you are selling something to. Friedman himself makes a moral case for discrimination, because shareholder value — in his example, the store owner — matters more than racial equality at its most basic level. (View Highlight)
I realize this is all very big and clunky, but I want you to understand how these incentives have fundamentally changed everything, and why they are responsible for the rot we see in our society and our workplaces. When your only incentive is shareholder value, and you raise shareholder value as a platonic ideal, everything else is secondary, including the customer you are selling something to. Friedman himself makes a moral case for discrimination, because shareholder value — in his example, the store owner — matters more than racial equality at its most basic level. (View Highlight)
When you care only about shareholder value, the only job you have is to promote further exploitation and dominance — not to have happy customers, not to make your company “a good place to work,” not to make a good product, not to make a difference or contribute to anything other than further growth. (View Highlight)
When you care only about shareholder value, the only job you have is to promote further exploitation and dominance — not to have happy customers, not to make your company “a good place to work,” not to make a good product, not to make a difference or contribute to anything other than further growth. (View Highlight)
While this is, to anyone with a vapor of an intellectual or moral dimension, absolutely fucking stupid, it’s an idea that’s proven depressingly endemic among the managerial elite, in part because it has entered the culture, and because it is hammered across in MBA classes and corporate training seminars. (View Highlight)
While this is, to anyone with a vapor of an intellectual or moral dimension, absolutely fucking stupid, it’s an idea that’s proven depressingly endemic among the managerial elite, in part because it has entered the culture, and because it is hammered across in MBA classes and corporate training seminars. (View Highlight)
In simpler terms, modern business theory trains executives not to be good at something, or to make a company based on their particular skills, but to “find a market opportunity” and exploit it. The Chief Executive — who makes over 300 times more than their average worker — is no longer a leadership position, but a kind of figurehead measured on their ability to continually grow the market capitalization of their company. It is a position inherently defined by its lack of labor, the amorphousness of its purpose and its lack of any clear responsibility. (View Highlight)
In simpler terms, modern business theory trains executives not to be good at something, or to make a company based on their particular skills, but to “find a market opportunity” and exploit it. The Chief Executive — who makes over 300 times more than their average worker — is no longer a leadership position, but a kind of figurehead measured on their ability to continually grow the market capitalization of their company. It is a position inherently defined by its lack of labor, the amorphousness of its purpose and its lack of any clear responsibility. (View Highlight)
While CEOs do get fired when things go badly, it’s often after a prolonged period of decline and stagnancy, and almost always comes with some sort of payoff — and when I say “badly,” I mean that growth has slowed to the point that even firing masses of people doesn’t make things better. (View Highlight)
While CEOs do get fired when things go badly, it’s often after a prolonged period of decline and stagnancy, and almost always comes with some sort of payoff — and when I say “badly,” I mean that growth has slowed to the point that even firing masses of people doesn’t make things better. (View Highlight)
We have, as a society, reframed all business leadership — which is increasingly broad, consisting of all management from the C-suite down — to be the equivalent of a mall cop, a person that exists to make sure people are working without having any real accountability for the work themselves, or to even understand the work itself. (View Highlight)
We have, as a society, reframed all business leadership — which is increasingly broad, consisting of all management from the C-suite down — to be the equivalent of a mall cop, a person that exists to make sure people are working without having any real accountability for the work themselves, or to even understand the work itself. (View Highlight)
Decades of direct erosion of the very concept of leadership means that the people running companies have been selected not based on their actual efficacy — especially as the position became defined by its lack of actual production — but on whether they resemble what a manager or executive is meant to look like based on the work that somebody else did. (View Highlight)
Decades of direct erosion of the very concept of leadership means that the people running companies have been selected not based on their actual efficacy — especially as the position became defined by its lack of actual production — but on whether they resemble what a manager or executive is meant to look like based on the work that somebody else did. (View Highlight)
I’d also argue that this kind of dumb management thinking also infected the highest echelons of politics across the world, and especially in the UK, my country of birth and where I lived until 2011, delivering the same kind of disastrous effects but at a macro level, as they impacted not a single corporate entity but the very institutions of the state. I’m not naive. I don’t think that the average politician is a salt-of-the-earth type, someone who did a normal job and then decided to enter politics. Especially not in the UK, where the trappings of class permeate everything, and we’re yet to shake off the noxious influence of the aristocracy and constitutionally-mandated hereditary privilege. Our political elite often comes from one of two universities (Oxford and Cambridge, the alma mater of 20% of current UK Members of Parliament) and a handful of fee-paying schools (like Eton, which is a hellmouth for the worst people to ever exist, and educated 20 of the UK’s 55 prime ministers). (View Highlight)
I’d also argue that this kind of dumb management thinking also infected the highest echelons of politics across the world, and especially in the UK, my country of birth and where I lived until 2011, delivering the same kind of disastrous effects but at a macro level, as they impacted not a single corporate entity but the very institutions of the state. I’m not naive. I don’t think that the average politician is a salt-of-the-earth type, someone who did a normal job and then decided to enter politics. Especially not in the UK, where the trappings of class permeate everything, and we’re yet to shake off the noxious influence of the aristocracy and constitutionally-mandated hereditary privilege. Our political elite often comes from one of two universities (Oxford and Cambridge, the alma mater of 20% of current UK Members of Parliament) and a handful of fee-paying schools (like Eton, which is a hellmouth for the worst people to ever exist, and educated 20 of the UK’s 55 prime ministers). (View Highlight)
While some of you might automatically think I’m talking about Graeber’s concept of Bullshit Jobs, this is far, far bigger. The system as it stands selects people at all levels of management specifically because they resemble the kind of specious, work-averse dullard that runs seemingly every company — a person built to go from meeting to meeting with the vague consternation that suggests they’re “busy.” (View Highlight)
While some of you might automatically think I’m talking about Graeber’s concept of Bullshit Jobs, this is far, far bigger. The system as it stands selects people at all levels of management specifically because they resemble the kind of specious, work-averse dullard that runs seemingly every company — a person built to go from meeting to meeting with the vague consternation that suggests they’re “busy.” (View Highlight)
As a result, the higher you get up in an organization, the further you get from the customer, the problem you’ve solving, and any of the actual work, and the higher up you get*, the more power you have to change the conditions of the business.* On some level, modern corporate power structures are a giant game of telephone where vibes beget further vibes, where managers only kind-of-sort-of understand what’s going on, and the more vague one’s understanding is, the more likely you are to lean toward what’s good, or easy, or makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. (View Highlight)
As a result, the higher you get up in an organization, the further you get from the customer, the problem you’ve solving, and any of the actual work, and the higher up you get*, the more power you have to change the conditions of the business.* On some level, modern corporate power structures are a giant game of telephone where vibes beget further vibes, where managers only kind-of-sort-of understand what’s going on, and the more vague one’s understanding is, the more likely you are to lean toward what’s good, or easy, or makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside. (View Highlight)
The system selects for people comfortable in these roles, creating org charts full of people that become harder and harder to justify other than “they’ve been here a while.” They do not do “work” on the “product,” and their answer as to why would be “what, am I meant to go down on the line and use a machine?” or “am I meant to call a customer and make a sale?” and the answer is yes, you lazy fucking piece of shit, you should do that once in a while, or at the very least go and watch or listen to somebody else do so, and do so regularly. (View Highlight)
The system selects for people comfortable in these roles, creating org charts full of people that become harder and harder to justify other than “they’ve been here a while.” They do not do “work” on the “product,” and their answer as to why would be “what, am I meant to go down on the line and use a machine?” or “am I meant to call a customer and make a sale?” and the answer is yes, you lazy fucking piece of shit, you should do that once in a while, or at the very least go and watch or listen to somebody else do so, and do so regularly. (View Highlight)
But that’s not what a manager does, right? Management isn’t work, it’s about thinking really hard and telling people what to do. It’s about making the calls. It’s about “managing people,” and that can mean just about anything, but often means “who do I take credit from or pass blame to,” because modern management has been stripped of all meaning other than continually reinforcing power structures for the next manager up. (View Highlight)
But that’s not what a manager does, right? Management isn’t work, it’s about thinking really hard and telling people what to do. It’s about making the calls. It’s about “managing people,” and that can mean just about anything, but often means “who do I take credit from or pass blame to,” because modern management has been stripped of all meaning other than continually reinforcing power structures for the next manager up. (View Highlight)
This system creates products for these people, because these people are more often than not the ones in power — they are your boss, your boss’ boss, and their boss too. Big companies build products sold by specious executives or managers to other specious executives, and thus the products themselves stop resembling things that solve problems so much as they resemble a solution. After all, the person buying it — at least at the scale of a public company — isn’t necessarily the recipient of the final product, so they too are trained (and selected) to make calls based on vibes. (View Highlight)
People — be they the ones you’re paying or paying you — become numbers. We have created and elevated an entirely new class of person, the nebulous “manager,” and told decades-worth of children that’s what they should aspire to, that the next step from doing a job is for us to tell other people to do a job, until we’re able to one day tell those people how to do their job, with each rung on the corporate ladder further distancing ourselves from anything that interacts with reality. (View Highlight)
People — be they the ones you’re paying or paying you — become numbers. We have created and elevated an entirely new class of person, the nebulous “manager,” and told decades-worth of children that’s what they should aspire to, that the next step from doing a job is for us to tell other people to do a job, until we’re able to one day tell those people how to do their job, with each rung on the corporate ladder further distancing ourselves from anything that interacts with reality. (View Highlight)
The real breaking point is fairly simple: the higher up you go at a company, the further you are from problems or purpose. Everything is abstract — the people that work for you, the people you work for, and even the tasks you do. (View Highlight)
The real breaking point is fairly simple: the higher up you go at a company, the further you are from problems or purpose. Everything is abstract — the people that work for you, the people you work for, and even the tasks you do. (View Highlight)
We train people — from a young age! — to generalize and distance oneself from actual tasks, to aspire to doing managerial work, because managers are well-paid and “know what’s going on,” even if they haven’t actually known what was going on for years, if they ever did so. This phenomenon has led to the stigmatization of blue-collar work (and the subsequent evisceration of practical trade and technical education across most of the developed world) in favor of universities. Society respects an MBA more than a plumber, even though the latter benefits society more — though I concede that both roles involve, on some level, shit, with the plumber unblocking it and the MBA spewing it. (View Highlight)
We train people — from a young age! — to generalize and distance oneself from actual tasks, to aspire to doing managerial work, because managers are well-paid and “know what’s going on,” even if they haven’t actually known what was going on for years, if they ever did so. This phenomenon has led to the stigmatization of blue-collar work (and the subsequent evisceration of practical trade and technical education across most of the developed world) in favor of universities. Society respects an MBA more than a plumber, even though the latter benefits society more — though I concede that both roles involve, on some level, shit, with the plumber unblocking it and the MBA spewing it. (View Highlight)
I believe this process has created a symbolic society — one where people are elevated not by any actual ability to do something or knowledge they may have, but by their ability to make the right noises and look the right way to get ahead. The power structures of modern society are run by business idiots — people that have learned enough to impress the people above them, because the business idiots have had power for decades. They have bred out true meritocracy or achievement or value-creation in favor of symbolic growth and superficial intelligence, because real work is hard, and there are so many of them in power they’ve all found a way to work together. (View Highlight)
I believe this process has created a symbolic society — one where people are elevated not by any actual ability to do something or knowledge they may have, but by their ability to make the right noises and look the right way to get ahead. The power structures of modern society are run by business idiots — people that have learned enough to impress the people above them, because the business idiots have had power for decades. They have bred out true meritocracy or achievement or value-creation in favor of symbolic growth and superficial intelligence, because real work is hard, and there are so many of them in power they’ve all found a way to work together. (View Highlight)
Think of the Business Idiot as a kind of con artist, except the con has become the standard way of doing business for an alarmingly large part of society. (View Highlight)
The Business Idiot is the manager that doesn’t seem to do anything but keeps being promoted, and the chief executive officer of a public company that says boring, specious nonsense about AI. They’re the tenured professor that you wish would die, the administrator whose only job appears to be opening and closing their laptop, the consultant that can come up with a million reasons to charge you more money yet not one metric to judge their success by, the marketing executive that’s worked exactly three years at every major cloud player but does not appear to have done anything, and the investor that invests “based on founders,” but really means “guys that look at sound exactly like them.” (View Highlight)
The Business Idiot is the manager that doesn’t seem to do anything but keeps being promoted, and the chief executive officer of a public company that says boring, specious nonsense about AI. They’re the tenured professor that you wish would die, the administrator whose only job appears to be opening and closing their laptop, the consultant that can come up with a million reasons to charge you more money yet not one metric to judge their success by, the marketing executive that’s worked exactly three years at every major cloud player but does not appear to have done anything, and the investor that invests “based on founders,” but really means “guys that look at sound exactly like them.” (View Highlight)
Decades of neoliberalism has incentivized their rise, because when you incentivize society to become management — to “manage or run a company” rather than do something for a reason or purpose — you are incentivizing a kind of corporate narcissism, one that bleeds into whatever field the person goes into, be it public or private. We go to college as a means of getting a job after college using the grades we got in college, rendering many students desperate to get the best grades they can versus “learn” anything, because our economy is riddled with power structures controlled by people that don’t know stuff and find it offensive when you remind them. (View Highlight)
Decades of neoliberalism has incentivized their rise, because when you incentivize society to become management — to “manage or run a company” rather than do something for a reason or purpose — you are incentivizing a kind of corporate narcissism, one that bleeds into whatever field the person goes into, be it public or private. We go to college as a means of getting a job after college using the grades we got in college, rendering many students desperate to get the best grades they can versus “learn” anything, because our economy is riddled with power structures controlled by people that don’t know stuff and find it offensive when you remind them. (View Highlight)
Our society is in the thrall of dumb management, and functions as such. Every government, the top quarter of every org chart, features little Neros who, instead of battling the fire engulfing Rome, are sat in their palaces strumming an off-key version of “Wonderwall” on the lyre and grumbling about how the firefighters need to work harder, and maybe we could replace them with an LLM and a smart sprinkler system. (View Highlight)
Every institution keeps its core constituents and labor forces at arms-length, and effectively anything built at scale quickly becomes distanced from both the customer and laborer. This disconnection — or alienation — sits at the center of almost every problem I’ve ever talked about. Why would companies push generative AI in seemingly every part of their service, even though customers don’t like it and it doesn’t really work? (View Highlight)
It’s simple: they neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate. (View Highlight)
It’s simple: they neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate. (View Highlight)
An IBM study based on conversations with 2,000 global CEOs recently found that only 25% of AI initiatives have delivered their expected ROI over the last few years, and, worse still, “64% of CEOs surveyed acknowledge that the risk of falling behind drives investment in some technologies before they have a clear understanding of the value they bring to the organization.” 50% of respondents also found that “the pace of recent investments has left their organization with disconnected, piecemeal technology,” almost as if they don’t know what they’re doing and are just putting AI in stuff for no reason. (View Highlight)
An IBM study based on conversations with 2,000 global CEOs recently found that only 25% of AI initiatives have delivered their expected ROI over the last few years, and, worse still, “64% of CEOs surveyed acknowledge that the risk of falling behind drives investment in some technologies before they have a clear understanding of the value they bring to the organization.” 50% of respondents also found that “the pace of recent investments has left their organization with disconnected, piecemeal technology,” almost as if they don’t know what they’re doing and are just putting AI in stuff for no reason. (View Highlight)
Johnson & Johnson recently decided to “shift from broad generative AI experimentation to a focused approach on high-value use cases” according to the Wall Street Journal, adding that “only 10 to 15% of use cases were driving about 80% of the value.” Their last two CEOs (Alex Gorsky and Joaquin Duato) both have MBAs, with current CEO Duato’s previous ten years at Johnson & Johnson being “some sort of Chairman or Vice President,” and the previous two CEOs (Alex Gorsky and William Weldon) were both pharmaceutical sales and marketing people. (View Highlight)
Johnson & Johnson recently decided to “shift from broad generative AI experimentation to a focused approach on high-value use cases” according to the Wall Street Journal, adding that “only 10 to 15% of use cases were driving about 80% of the value.” Their last two CEOs (Alex Gorsky and Joaquin Duato) both have MBAs, with current CEO Duato’s previous ten years at Johnson & Johnson being “some sort of Chairman or Vice President,” and the previous two CEOs (Alex Gorsky and William Weldon) were both pharmaceutical sales and marketing people. (View Highlight)
The term “executive” loosely refers to a person who moves around numbers and hopes for the best. The modern executive does not “lead,” but prod, their managers hall monitors for organizations run predominantly by people that, by design, are entirely removed from the business itself even in roles like marketing and sales, where CMOs and VPs bark orders without really participating in the process. (View Highlight)
The term “executive” loosely refers to a person who moves around numbers and hopes for the best. The modern executive does not “lead,” but prod, their managers hall monitors for organizations run predominantly by people that, by design, are entirely removed from the business itself even in roles like marketing and sales, where CMOs and VPs bark orders without really participating in the process. (View Highlight)
Society berated people for “quiet quitting,” a ghastly euphemism for “doing the job as specified in your employment contract,” in 2022 because journalism is enthralled by the management class, and because the management class has so thoroughly rewritten the concept of what “labor” means that people got called lazy for literally doing their jobs. The middle manager brain doesn’t see a worker as somebody hired and paid for a job, but as an asset that must provide a return. As a result, if another asset comes along that could potentially provide a bigger return — like an offshore worker, or an AI agent — that middle manager won’t hesitate to drop them. (View Highlight)
Society berated people for “quiet quitting,” a ghastly euphemism for “doing the job as specified in your employment contract,” in 2022 because journalism is enthralled by the management class, and because the management class has so thoroughly rewritten the concept of what “labor” means that people got called lazy for literally doing their jobs. The middle manager brain doesn’t see a worker as somebody hired and paid for a job, but as an asset that must provide a return. As a result, if another asset comes along that could potentially provide a bigger return — like an offshore worker, or an AI agent — that middle manager won’t hesitate to drop them. (View Highlight)
Artificial intelligence is the ultimate panacea for the Business Idiot — a tool that gives an impression of productivity with far more production than the Business Idiot themselves. The Information reported recently that ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott — the chief executive of a company with a market capitalization of over $200 billion, despite the fact that, like SalesForce, nobody really knows what it does — chose to push AI across his whole organization (both in product and in practice) based on the mental consideration I’d usually associate with a raven finding a shiny object: (View Highlight)
Artificial intelligence is the ultimate panacea for the Business Idiot — a tool that gives an impression of productivity with far more production than the Business Idiot themselves. The Information reported recently that ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott — the chief executive of a company with a market capitalization of over $200 billion, despite the fact that, like SalesForce, nobody really knows what it does — chose to push AI across his whole organization (both in product and in practice) based on the mental consideration I’d usually associate with a raven finding a shiny object: (View Highlight)
I’d wager Bill is concussion-free — and an example of a true Business Idiot — a person with incredible power and wealth that makes decisions not based on knowing stuff or caring about his customers, but on the latest shiny thing that makes him think “line go up.” No, really, that’s Bill McDermott’s thing. Back in 2022, he said to Yahoo Finance the metaverse was “real” and that ServiceNow could help someone “create an e-mall in the metaverse” and have a futuristic store of some sort. One might wonder how ServiceNow provided that, and the answer is it didn’t. I cannot find a single product that it’s offered that includes it. (View Highlight)
I’d wager Bill is concussion-free — and an example of a true Business Idiot — a person with incredible power and wealth that makes decisions not based on knowing stuff or caring about his customers, but on the latest shiny thing that makes him think “line go up.” No, really, that’s Bill McDermott’s thing. Back in 2022, he said to Yahoo Finance the metaverse was “real” and that ServiceNow could help someone “create an e-mall in the metaverse” and have a futuristic store of some sort. One might wonder how ServiceNow provided that, and the answer is it didn’t. I cannot find a single product that it’s offered that includes it. (View Highlight)
Bill, like any of these CEOs, doesn’t really know stuff, or even do stuff, he just is. The corporate equivalent of a stain on a carpet that nobody really knows how it got there, but hasn’t been removed. The modern executive is symbolic, and the media has — due to the large amount of Business Idiots running these outlets and middle managers stuffed into the editorial class — been trained to never ask difficult questions, such as “what the fuck are you talking about, Bill?” or even the humble “what does that mean?” or “how would you do that?” or saying “I’m not sure I understand, would you mind explaining?” (View Highlight)
Bill, like any of these CEOs, doesn’t really know stuff, or even do stuff, he just is. The corporate equivalent of a stain on a carpet that nobody really knows how it got there, but hasn’t been removed. The modern executive is symbolic, and the media has — due to the large amount of Business Idiots running these outlets and middle managers stuffed into the editorial class — been trained to never ask difficult questions, such as “what the fuck are you talking about, Bill?” or even the humble “what does that mean?” or “how would you do that?” or saying “I’m not sure I understand, would you mind explaining?” (View Highlight)
Remote work terrifies the Business Idiot, because it removes the performative layer that allowed them to stomp around and feel important, reducing their work to, well…work. Office culture is inherently heteronormative and white, and black women are less likely to be promoted by their managers, and continuing the existence of “The Office” is all about making sure The Business Idiot reigns supreme. Removing the ability for the managerial hall monitors to look at you and try and work out what you’re doing without ever really helping is a big part of being a manager — and if you’re a manager reading this and saying you don’t do this, I challenge you to talk to another person that doesn’t confirm your biases. (View Highlight)
Remote work terrifies the Business Idiot, because it removes the performative layer that allowed them to stomp around and feel important, reducing their work to, well…work. Office culture is inherently heteronormative and white, and black women are less likely to be promoted by their managers, and continuing the existence of “The Office” is all about making sure The Business Idiot reigns supreme. Removing the ability for the managerial hall monitors to look at you and try and work out what you’re doing without ever really helping is a big part of being a manager — and if you’re a manager reading this and saying you don’t do this, I challenge you to talk to another person that doesn’t confirm your biases. (View Highlight)
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many, many other outlets all fell for this crap because the Business Idiots have captured our media too, training even talented journalists to defer to power at every turn. When every power structure is stuffed full of do-nothing management types that have learned exactly as little as they need to as a means to get by, it’s inevitable that journalism caters to them — specious, thoughtless reproductions of the powerful’s ideas. (View Highlight)
The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and many, many other outlets all fell for this crap because the Business Idiots have captured our media too, training even talented journalists to defer to power at every turn. When every power structure is stuffed full of do-nothing management types that have learned exactly as little as they need to as a means to get by, it’s inevitable that journalism caters to them — specious, thoughtless reproductions of the powerful’s ideas. (View Highlight)
But that would get you in trouble. The editorial class is the managerial class now, and has spent decades mentoring young reporters to not ask questions, to not push back, to believe that a big, strong, powerful company CEO would never mislead them. Kara Swisher’s half-assed interviews are considered “daring” and “critical” because journalism has, at large, lost its teeth, breeding reporters rewarded for knowing a little bit about a few things and punishing those who ask too many questions or refuse to fall in line. (View Highlight)
But that would get you in trouble. The editorial class is the managerial class now, and has spent decades mentoring young reporters to not ask questions, to not push back, to believe that a big, strong, powerful company CEO would never mislead them. Kara Swisher’s half-assed interviews are considered “daring” and “critical” because journalism has, at large, lost its teeth, breeding reporters rewarded for knowing a little bit about a few things and punishing those who ask too many questions or refuse to fall in line. (View Highlight)
The reason they don’t want you to ask these questions is that the Business Idiot isn’t big on answers. Editors that tell you not to push too hard are doing so because they know the executive likely won’t have an answer. It isn’t just about the PR person that trained them, but the fact that these men more often than not have only a glancing understanding of their underlying business. (View Highlight)
The reason they don’t want you to ask these questions is that the Business Idiot isn’t big on answers. Editors that tell you not to push too hard are doing so because they know the executive likely won’t have an answer. It isn’t just about the PR person that trained them, but the fact that these men more often than not have only a glancing understanding of their underlying business. (View Highlight)
That, and mentorship is dead across effectively all parts of society, meaning that most reporters (as with many jobs) learn by watching each other, which means they all make sure to not ask the rough questions, and not push too hard against the party/market/company messaging until everybody else does it. (View Highlight)
That, and mentorship is dead across effectively all parts of society, meaning that most reporters (as with many jobs) learn by watching each other, which means they all make sure to not ask the rough questions, and not push too hard against the party/market/company messaging until everybody else does it. (View Highlight)
Investing in talent, or worker conditions, or even really work itself would require you to know what you’re talking about, or actually do work, which doesn’t make sense when you’re talking to a worker. They’re the ones who’re meant to work! You’re there to manage them! Yet they keep talking back — asking questions about the work you want them to do, asking you to step in and help on something — and all of that’s so annoying. Just know the stuff already! Get it done! I have to go to lunch and then go back out to another lunch! (View Highlight)
We live in the era of the symbolic executive, when “being good at stuff” matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where “what’s useful” is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work. (View Highlight)
Our economy is run by people that don’t participate in it and our tech companies are directed by people that don’t experience the problems they allege to solve for their customers, as the modern executive is no longer a person with demands or responsibilities beyond their allegiance to shareholder value. (View Highlight)
When the leader of a company doesn’t participate in or respect the production of the goods that enriches them, it creates a culture that enables similarly vacuous leaders on all levels. Management as a concept no longer means doing “work,” but establishing cultures of dominance and value extraction. A CEO isn’t measured on happy customers or even how good their revenue is today, but how good revenue might be tomorrow and whether those customers are paying them more. (View Highlight)
A “manager,” much like a CEO, is no longer a position with any real responsibility — they’re there to make sure you’re working, to know enough about your work that they can sort of tell you what to do, but somehow the job of “telling you what to do” doesn’t come with it any actual work, and the instructions don’t need to be useful or even meaningful. (View Highlight)
We live in a symbolic economy where we apply for jobs, writing CVs and cover letters to resemble a certain kind of hire, with our resume read by someone who doesn’t do or understand our job, but yet is responsible for determining whether we’re worthy of going to the next step of the hiring process. All this so that we might get an interview with a manager or executive who will decide whether they think we can do it. We are managed by people whose job is implicitly not to do work, but oversee it. (View Highlight)
We are, as children (and young adults), encouraged to aspire to become a manager or executive, to “own our own business,” to “have people that work for us,” and the terms of our society are, by default, that management is not a role you work at, so much as a position you hold — a figurehead that passes the buck and makes far more of them than you do. (View Highlight)
have you noticed how most of the calls for people to return to the office come not from people who actually do the jobs, but occupy managerial roles? (View Highlight)
Google demanded employees return to the office in 2021 — but let one executive work remotely from New Zealandbecause absolutely none of the decisionmaking was done with people that actually do work. While we can (well, you can, I’m not interested) debate whether exclusively working remote is as productive, the Return To Office push was almost entirely done in two ways:
Executives demanding people return to the office.
Journalists asking executives if remote work was good or not, entirely ignoring the people actually doing the work. (View Highlight)
