Despite the tragedies that Covid brought upon us, we have heard friends and colleagues reminisce the lockdown period, when it came to enjoying their work. Working from home and avoiding the arduous commute aside, there was something else that seems to have struck upon people, especially the corporate types in that period. Alex Mccann aptly captures that in this blog which could well become prescient about the future of corporate life or likely as the title goes, the death of it.
“Last week, I had coffee with someone who works at a big consulting firm. She spent twenty minutes explaining her role to me. Not because it was complex, but because she was trying to convince herself it existed. “I facilitate stakeholder alignment across cross-functional workstreams,” she said. Then laughed. “I genuinely don’t know what that means anymore.”
She’s not alone. I keep meeting people who describe their jobs using words they’d never use in normal conversation. They attend meetings about meetings. They create PowerPoints that no one reads, which get shared in emails no one opens, which generate tasks that don’t need doing.
But what I find weird, is that everyone knows it. When you get people alone, after work, maybe after they’ve had time to decompress, they’ll admit it. Their job is basically elaborate performance art. They’re human middleware between systems that could probably talk directly to each other.
…The pandemic pulled back the curtain for a moment. When everyone worked from home, it became obvious who was actually doing things and who was just… there. Some people’s entire roles evaporated when they couldn’t physically attend meetings. Others discovered they could do their “full-time” job in about three hours a day.
Now we’re back in offices, and everyone’s pretending again. But something’s shifted. The pretence feels different. More conscious. More exhausting.”
While many still agonise about it, some especially the GenZ are taking action. They make peace with their corporate life as a means to fund their real interests through gigs on the side till they can chart their own course:
“The corporate role isn’t dying in some dramatic collapse. It’s dying like religion died for many people, slowly, through diminishing belief rather than disappearing churches.
The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it’s building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes, that faith is evaporating.
What replaces it isn’t clear yet. Maybe it’s this parallel economy of people using corporate jobs as platforms. Maybe it’s something we haven’t seen yet. But the transition period, where we all pretend to believe in something we know is hollow, is unsustainable.
The most honest person I’ve met recently was a VP at a tech company who told me: “I manage a team of twelve people who create documents for other teams who create documents for senior leadership who don’t read documents. I make £150k a year. It’s completely absurd, and I’m riding it as long as I can while building something real on the side.””
Whilst using your employer’s time and infrastructure for your personal gains isn’t particularly ethical, the development points to the shortcomings of the status quo and what is likely to emerge from it.
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Note: The above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. The information provided is intended for educational purposes only. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is also an FME (Non-Retail) with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Additionally, Marcellus is also registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission (“US SEC”) as an Investment Advisor.
