Pylimitics

My most recent employer recently decided the jobs I and many of my colleagues were doing no longer needed to be done. We had, of course, been doing exactly the work that same employer specified. We were doing it pretty well, too, judging by the performance reviews, bonus payments, and acclaim we were receiving.

But things change, decisions are unmade, and corporations exist in large part so that responsibility can be avoided, so there is no blame here. Certainly not from me; the possibility of being dismissed for no reason and with no warning was always part of the bargain. I’m not unhappy with this latest turn of the organizational mill wheel. 

I’ve decided that I will not be re-entering the corporate world. I have several reasons for this. In recent years I’ve become disillusioned about the technology industry and the actions of its leaders and organizations. It used to be an optimistic endeavor. A computer from Apple or a mobile phone from Nokia could be an aspirational, hopeful object for many people. That was a motivational thought for those of use working to make those things as useful and beneficial as we could. There were very few roles in the world where you got to help design, say, a mobile web browser that might be used by millions of people, and I and my team felt proud that we had those roles. 

I haven’t felt that kind of pride in my efforts in quite a while. In recent years I was assured that I was helping my employer prosper — and to be sure, that’s what I was doing in the first example too. But when I set out in the industry, our users were what we considered first, before the profits, the invisible shareholders, or the bottom line. My recent employer tries to communicate numerous messages about benefitting users and to trying to, in some way, be a force for good in the world. But it’s become more transparently lip service. Maybe it always was. When I say I’ve become “disillusioned,’ I’m leaving open the possibility that it always was just an illusion. 

I’ve also discovered that I’ve had quite enough of the warping of behavior called for and tacitly enforced in corporations, at least the ones selling electronic technology. The jargon. The overcomplication in almost every area. The detailed procedures for operations that did not need to be overspecified, beside the lack of detail for other operations that really should have been proceduralized. And most of all, the social pressure around the ways you were to comport yourself and communicate. 

That social pressure did not affect me as much as it did anyone who aspired to “climb the corporate ladder.” There is a formula to it: talk faster, learn the jargon currently favored by the executive class, and declare, at every opportunity, that you are excited about this or to announce that. You lean in to the performative aspects that became more and more important as you rise in the hierarchy. It is evident, at least to me, that the real job of most of an executive team is essentially acting. Performing. 

Some of the social pressure is purely the product of the hierarchical nature of most current commercial organizations. Before I began my working career I studied organizations and organizing. One of the things I learned was that the relentless hierarchy is far from necessary. And yet the tacit social pressure within those structures makes it very difficult to remember that, and even harder to change it. Margaret Thatcher once said “there is no alternative.” What she meant was she couldn’t conceive of any alternative (to the current form of capitalistic organization). That’s the mental state of, I think, most people enmeshed in these organizations, particularly at the upper tiers of the unneeded hierarchy. Upton Sinclair was right on the money in 1934 when he said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

I’ve watched several people work hard comply with the social pressure, and more. Learn the jargon. Feign excitement. Exude enthusiasm. Agree “one thousand percent” with whatever messages came down from a higher tier. Some of them succeeded, and good for them. It’s what they must have wanted, because it’s not easy to do all that. While I was watching, it seemed like they were changing, maybe into someone different than the person I thought I knew. But I don’t really think so. I think they were just learning and playing a role, exactly like an actor does. There can be great rewards for succeeding at that. Hopefully those people understood and accepted the costs incurred as well. 

But as I mentioned, I have had more than enough of all of it. I still need to earn some income, although my needs are less than they once were. But there are more local, less abstract, and less corporate ways to earn money. A few of them I even know how to do already. And I’m sure there are others I haven’t yet discovered. I can guarantee, though, that I’ve been laid off for the last time. I’m declaring that part of the bargain null and void.