I woke up this morning and had a thought - what if I had nothing to write about? What if, by taking a few days off to recover and enjoy Thanksgiving, I’d find a world devoid of things to comment on. And I was wrong. Last week, the New York Times published an adapted essay
Today's post made me wonder if the Times is exploiting an unconscious bias in the sort of people who write for them. Particularly, your comment about the assumption that work is where people socialize.
For the kinds of strivers who meet the dual criteria of "millennial/gen-z" and "writes for the Times," work likely is where they socialize because work likely is their life. I used to work with a lot of people like that; hell, I used to be that person. Everyone worked together all day, then went out to happy hour together to keep talking work. We'd read work emails late into the night and work late, either at the office or at home, and then come back the next day with work on the brain. I remember wasting hours after *dinner* chatting with colleagues before returning to my desk, only to leave before I missed the last train. I burned out and changed careers.
I suspect that the writers who write the things you hate so much empathize with those who want to go back to the office because, for them, work is their social life. Remote makes us question how much of a presence work should have in our lives. That probably scares these writers on a subconscious level--the social element of work is their social life, and taking that away means taking away their social life. Change is hard, and they want things to be normal again. So they write these pieces, empathizing with the execs who bemoan the loss of "socialization" and "spontaneity" (the execs know that these young writers likely miss it too). The execs have different motives (butts in seats = work), but they know how to exploit these writers. If only the writers could see through it.
The idea that everyone was getting carefully mentored before remote work feels just laughable to me. I’ve worked in book publishing, museum communications, digital media and cannabis PR, and every single time I’ve switched fields I’ve been thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. I’ve changed careers enough that I now know the first three months of any job will demand all my time and energy to figure it out, bc it’s on me to do so. Employers expect you to show up knowing how to do the job, and if you lack any skills that’s something you need to figure out on your own time (this is what all of that “fast-paced, many hats, self-starter, juggling multiple projects & tasks at once” is code for in job listings). “Mentorship” is another canard, right up there with “culture” and “spontaneous ideation,” that the manager class has retroactively dubbed essential just so they can force everyone back into the office.
It feels like many of the anti-remote work articles compare remote working to an idealized workplace that never existed. I changed jobs during the pandemic and am working remotely full time now and it never once occurred to me that there'd be more mentorship happening if I were in person. If anything, the advent of screen sharing has allowed me to learn faster than if I were in person trying to awkwardly watch someone code over their shoulder or vice versa.
First, yes, mentorship is almost impossible to find. When I worked at Sports Illustrated, I tried so hard to find someone just to pick their brain -- forget being a mentor! Not only was it an impossible pursuit, it was also masochistic. Later, I went to Newsweek specifically because I wanted to learn from some of the editors there. And despite it all imploding because of ownership criminality, I did develop two pretty good relationships with people I count as mentors. It just took going to a place a wash in financial crimes to do it!
Second: Let's not lose sight of the fact that this book is written by two people who *checks notes* work remotely. In Montana, or wherever. When they announced that this was going to follow "Can't Even," it was pretty clear it would be a complete mess in the way that AHP's chapter on parenting in "Can't Even" was a total and utter pile of offensive trash. And this piece (per your evisceration; I didn't read it because I hated "Can't Even") seems to confirm that. I'm not sure who anointed AHP and CW the voices of their generation, but I wish culture would knock it off.
I think the lack of mentorship and training ties in really well with the incredibly tedious "goal setting" process at a lot of companies have too, I understand there is some organizational need to create an established process or criteria, but so much of these goals, really seems like it just takes responsibility off managers to guide and recognized talent or success, it boxes everything in so at some point management is able to to say stuff like "well that wasn't in YOUR goals, so we can't give you a raise, bonus, promotion etc. It directly fuels this burn out/overachieve at all costs mentality for younger workers, and allows poor managers to protect and insulate themselves for what is ultimately bad leadership. The best boss I had, made goals/reviews as collaborative and flexible as he could because he understood that recognizing good work was just as much about him as it was about his staff
100% agree. I was SO SURPRISED that Anne and Charlie chose this as their first excerpt because it reads just like all the other problematic remote work pieces that you've been skewering for months. I respect both of them a lot and hope the book itself is a lot more nuanced than this piece.
There is also the limitation you've written before about people with exclusively academic and/or writing/creative media jobs writing about a work context that is extremely niche and amenable to remote/flex work in so many ways that the value of the insights and anecdotes is limited. This stuff would probably best written about by line workers at JP Morgan or Mary Kay but they are likely too beaten down by a lack of mentorship and cancellation of the movie club that they have better things to do with their time.
Unlike remote work, a physical workspace allows you to confront people and demand things of them like their time. Whether you have the authority or conviction to do this without being immediately brushed off - or even the personality type to even try - is left unsaid.
I normally love AHP's writing - her substack is a favorite of mine. I have enjoyed her on this topic, even. Originally I was planning to buy the book but this turned me off big time and now I'm reconsidering.
Remote work *exposed* how bad companies are at things like mentorship.
I have a lot more to say about this. But a comment here doesn't seem like the right place to go into indepth detail. I'd almost rather that you wrote a piece about how companies have used being exposed to learn how to change practices. Because I've got examples. And I know other people do.
In short this year we had an "academy" for new hires - but also for existing employees - which we'd never really had before. Indepth coordinated training. Major investment in employee knowledge. NEVER HAD IT BEFORE. And it was tremendously successful. But it never would have happened in the office proper because "mentorship" was a matter of standing in line at a couple of people's desks to ask for help.
Could you write on something like that? About how some companies have learned and pivoted and may come out of it somewhat stronger?
Today's post made me wonder if the Times is exploiting an unconscious bias in the sort of people who write for them. Particularly, your comment about the assumption that work is where people socialize.
For the kinds of strivers who meet the dual criteria of "millennial/gen-z" and "writes for the Times," work likely is where they socialize because work likely is their life. I used to work with a lot of people like that; hell, I used to be that person. Everyone worked together all day, then went out to happy hour together to keep talking work. We'd read work emails late into the night and work late, either at the office or at home, and then come back the next day with work on the brain. I remember wasting hours after *dinner* chatting with colleagues before returning to my desk, only to leave before I missed the last train. I burned out and changed careers.
I suspect that the writers who write the things you hate so much empathize with those who want to go back to the office because, for them, work is their social life. Remote makes us question how much of a presence work should have in our lives. That probably scares these writers on a subconscious level--the social element of work is their social life, and taking that away means taking away their social life. Change is hard, and they want things to be normal again. So they write these pieces, empathizing with the execs who bemoan the loss of "socialization" and "spontaneity" (the execs know that these young writers likely miss it too). The execs have different motives (butts in seats = work), but they know how to exploit these writers. If only the writers could see through it.
The idea that everyone was getting carefully mentored before remote work feels just laughable to me. I’ve worked in book publishing, museum communications, digital media and cannabis PR, and every single time I’ve switched fields I’ve been thrown in the deep end to sink or swim. I’ve changed careers enough that I now know the first three months of any job will demand all my time and energy to figure it out, bc it’s on me to do so. Employers expect you to show up knowing how to do the job, and if you lack any skills that’s something you need to figure out on your own time (this is what all of that “fast-paced, many hats, self-starter, juggling multiple projects & tasks at once” is code for in job listings). “Mentorship” is another canard, right up there with “culture” and “spontaneous ideation,” that the manager class has retroactively dubbed essential just so they can force everyone back into the office.
It feels like many of the anti-remote work articles compare remote working to an idealized workplace that never existed. I changed jobs during the pandemic and am working remotely full time now and it never once occurred to me that there'd be more mentorship happening if I were in person. If anything, the advent of screen sharing has allowed me to learn faster than if I were in person trying to awkwardly watch someone code over their shoulder or vice versa.
Came here to say two things:
First, yes, mentorship is almost impossible to find. When I worked at Sports Illustrated, I tried so hard to find someone just to pick their brain -- forget being a mentor! Not only was it an impossible pursuit, it was also masochistic. Later, I went to Newsweek specifically because I wanted to learn from some of the editors there. And despite it all imploding because of ownership criminality, I did develop two pretty good relationships with people I count as mentors. It just took going to a place a wash in financial crimes to do it!
Second: Let's not lose sight of the fact that this book is written by two people who *checks notes* work remotely. In Montana, or wherever. When they announced that this was going to follow "Can't Even," it was pretty clear it would be a complete mess in the way that AHP's chapter on parenting in "Can't Even" was a total and utter pile of offensive trash. And this piece (per your evisceration; I didn't read it because I hated "Can't Even") seems to confirm that. I'm not sure who anointed AHP and CW the voices of their generation, but I wish culture would knock it off.
I think the lack of mentorship and training ties in really well with the incredibly tedious "goal setting" process at a lot of companies have too, I understand there is some organizational need to create an established process or criteria, but so much of these goals, really seems like it just takes responsibility off managers to guide and recognized talent or success, it boxes everything in so at some point management is able to to say stuff like "well that wasn't in YOUR goals, so we can't give you a raise, bonus, promotion etc. It directly fuels this burn out/overachieve at all costs mentality for younger workers, and allows poor managers to protect and insulate themselves for what is ultimately bad leadership. The best boss I had, made goals/reviews as collaborative and flexible as he could because he understood that recognizing good work was just as much about him as it was about his staff
100% agree. I was SO SURPRISED that Anne and Charlie chose this as their first excerpt because it reads just like all the other problematic remote work pieces that you've been skewering for months. I respect both of them a lot and hope the book itself is a lot more nuanced than this piece.
There is also the limitation you've written before about people with exclusively academic and/or writing/creative media jobs writing about a work context that is extremely niche and amenable to remote/flex work in so many ways that the value of the insights and anecdotes is limited. This stuff would probably best written about by line workers at JP Morgan or Mary Kay but they are likely too beaten down by a lack of mentorship and cancellation of the movie club that they have better things to do with their time.
Unlike remote work, a physical workspace allows you to confront people and demand things of them like their time. Whether you have the authority or conviction to do this without being immediately brushed off - or even the personality type to even try - is left unsaid.
I normally love AHP's writing - her substack is a favorite of mine. I have enjoyed her on this topic, even. Originally I was planning to buy the book but this turned me off big time and now I'm reconsidering.
Remote work *exposed* how bad companies are at things like mentorship.
I have a lot more to say about this. But a comment here doesn't seem like the right place to go into indepth detail. I'd almost rather that you wrote a piece about how companies have used being exposed to learn how to change practices. Because I've got examples. And I know other people do.
In short this year we had an "academy" for new hires - but also for existing employees - which we'd never really had before. Indepth coordinated training. Major investment in employee knowledge. NEVER HAD IT BEFORE. And it was tremendously successful. But it never would have happened in the office proper because "mentorship" was a matter of standing in line at a couple of people's desks to ask for help.
Could you write on something like that? About how some companies have learned and pivoted and may come out of it somewhat stronger?
This is 🔥🔥 Ed