MICROSOFT PRESENTS: JOB DYSTOPIA 2021
Highlights:
- techbros are doing great, everyone else hates life
- 1 in 4 think their job is asking too much of them
- time spent in Teams meetings has doubled
- People under 25 are hardest-hit
- 1 in 6 people surveyed cried with coworkers over zoom (1 in 4 healthcare workers surveyed)
- half of remote workers are planning on moving away
- and, of course, things suck more for minorities
- These interactions with coworkers may help foster a workplace where people feel more comfortable to be themselves. Compared to one year ago, 39 percent of people say they’re more likely to be their full, authentic selves at work and 31 percent are less likely to feel embarrassed or ashamed when their home life shows up at work. And people who interacted with their coworkers more closely than before not only experienced stronger work relationships, but also reported higher productivity and better overall wellbeing.
It‘s important to note, however, that Black and U.S. Latino workers in the U.S. reported bigger challenges in building relationships, feeling included, and bringing their authentic selves to work than the broader population. Leaders and teammates should be aware and ensure their workplace interactions encourage authenticity among all groups, especially in hybrid environments.
I have a no meeting day tomorrow. It's beautiful. I'm planning to luxuriate in it. I even figured out how to set the delay timer on the coffee. If I'm lucky, I'll wake to the smell of coffee brewing. Thing about a no meeting day is it can be thrown off, yes. But we already had an emergency "can you do this today" pull up on Monday, so I can't imagine my boss is going to sign the team up for another one on Wednesday. And today was a big deadline day, as was this past Friday, which means there is truly nothing that could be going on tomorrow that is going to raise my blood pressure up. I have so many plans. It will be glorious
The survey my employer did ended up at 25% considering leaving, in a non-anonymous survey. So that 40% feels very true. I expect it to rip at the end of the year, when we’ve had a few months of normal life and people realize they don’t like the old normal anymore or simply have seen greener pastures. I’ve already noticed a few coworkers intentionally moving away from the office, buying homes and creating 90+ minute commutes. Doable, but definitely not 5-day-office-doable. That third point on high productivity masking exhaustion is also something I’m seeing firsthand. What used to be 15% commute wasted time is now 15% extra projects and meetings. The people who started with us straight outta college are the most fucked, as they entered the workplace in a time where work-life boundaries were at its loosest, so they never taught themselves to let go of work in the evenings. I’m actively preventing exhaustion by setting the expectation of working a day less each week, and I know I’m not the only one because half of all 2021 team year-plans had some form “taking a step back to take care of ourselves” in it.
I've applied to three jobs in three years. Offered one but declined, not offered the second, the third stopped calling me after the first interview. When they asked about salary I didn't mince words, and I suspect I asked for something 50% higher than they can pay. Oh well. I think I made the right choice on the first one. It would have been a fine job and fine pay and under two hours to Adirondack Park, but I think it would have been mind numbingly dull. I asked about the one interesting thing happening in my line of work. "We can always contract that out." So no investment in their staff. Teams isn't the problem, it's the volume of meetings. Four one hour meetings ruin an entire day. Four one hour meetings is four hours of productivity that day. One single meeting and I get eight hours of productivity.
As a heavy Microsoft Teams user, (the only Microsoft product I actually like), and an OG tech bro, I gotta say that I am dead center inside the bell curve on every one of those metrics. Generic white american tech bro. Call me GWATBo. But man... I love how this article looks/works. It was what I was hoping online media would become back when HTML was invented. Only took 30 years...
NYTimes leaned into it heavily over the past 15 years. Frankly I think as soon as people started paying HTML5 coders rather than Flash coders the HTML5 guys started saying "you know we can make the stick figures dance with a couple extra lines" and everyone went "ZOMG WE MUST" (especially Apple - good lord, Apple, sometimes we just want to scroll) The point-of-friction that's about to piss everyone off is all the dudes who went "tra la la I'ma work from home 4EVAR" and bought a house out in the sticks, driving up prices like mad (see: the Hamptons, Sedona, Santa Cruz, Bellingham) whose supervisors are about to tell them "nah, brah, yer here 2 days a week of your choice" thereby forcing them to either stay in a goddamn hotel two nights a week or undertake a truly grueling commute. If I could short-sell all picturesque real estate an hour outside of tech and financial centers I would.But man... I love how this article looks/works. It was what I was hoping online media would become back when HTML was invented. Only took 30 years...
See also: every FAANG employee who bought a house in Tacoma over the last 13 months and are about to loooove their 90 commute each way when they have to go back to Seattle / Bellevue / Redmond.
Yeah I think it's gonna be heinous. Housing up here was going for 25% over ask just a month ago. It seems to be back down to between 0% and 10% over ask. I was watching it go for 50% over ask up in B'ham and I don't think that can continue either. Especially as something like 30% of all mortgages are in forbearance right now.