I've been a high school teacher in the UK for 25 years and I wonder if this piece might be the straw that broke the camels back, and give me the push to jack it all in and do something else, something with my hands. The section on college / education neatly encapsulates the insidious bullshit I'm expected to mouth, of which there is more and more each day. The relentless tide of new approaches and educational nirvanas we are 'trained' in is weirdly deflating and numbing. We now provide 'exciting and authentic learning opportunities'. If a student misbehaves, it is probably because our lessons weren't entertaining enough. We push and squeeze students to jump through specific hoops that the examining authorities impose. Education is not the aim, credentials are the only currency understood.
I forgot to mention the mandatory training we had recently on 'Misogony and Toxic Masculinity' during which the 'Misogony Continuum' was shown; where 'low-level misogony' like dirty jokes or telling someone to 'man-up' supports a culture where rape and murder of women are more likely: Don't tell a bawdy joke as your effectivley condoning sexual assualt.......
An observation from the university: many of my students simply want to “hack the class.” They walk in and think, “What can I do to get the best possible grade without doing any actual work.” ChatGPT figures prominently in their “education.” It is disheartening, but only if one thinks that what the university has to teach them is of some inherent value, which may not always be the case. There may be an element of cynical wisdom among some students who recognize that all they’re required to do is get a piece of paper that will let them get a job that itself can be done by sentence-generating machines. Machines talking to machines. Maybe the ChatGPT students I see are just early adapters to a world in which they are irrelevant. It will be interesting to see what redundancies emerge in the workplace as large language model machines play a more prominent role there. No one has to pay ChatGPT or offer it a benefits package, and it can work weekends and holidays! What are we going to do with all these “well-educated” white collar people?
Have you come across the term 'moral injury'? I think it chimes with a lot of what you write here.
The concept was developed in studies of the military, and it's application was relevant to the work I used to do, as a middle-ranking member of a big news organisation who frequently found himself on the front lines of (battlefield) conflict, not just HR tussles - though the whole corporation was shot through with the disorder in more mundane matters, too.
The rough definition is the effect on your mind of being expected to do things that go against your strongly-held values, or to do them for someone or some organisation that you come to believe does not share those values, and perhaps never did in the first place. For example: 'Go and get another interview with the refugee for prime time, preferably in English, and make sure she cries for the camera this time.' And so forth.
Back in the newsroom, it might be repeatedly hearing from above that yet another show with new deadlines that you didn't sign up to serve is 'an exciting opportunity to do more with less and deliver value across platforms...' - the mental consequences accrue in both cases. (A genuinely exciting opportunity would have been one to have a day off, or sleep in, or say 'fuck it' to a nasty programme editor.)
What was particularly tough about the 'exciting opportunities' spiel was that it was delivered to journalists of all people - highly-trained, professional sceptics - who were expected to swallow it whole, and then regurgitate it to lower-ranking cadres without smirking and enforce it ruthlessly.
The winners were the upper echelons who could point to a chart in meetings I never visited and 'prove' that they had 'leveraged excellence', or something like that.
Thanks for that glimpse into a large news operation. The like your invocation of “moral injury” in that setting. I learned the term when I read about drone operators who carry out assassinations. If I remember the article (it was some kind of sociological study), it drew attention to the entirely different setting in which these drone operators kill people, compared to, say, a fighter pilot. Sitting in a trailer in Colorado or wherever, they have no skin in the game whatsoever. They are existentially absented from the scene; from their own actions. But this blows back into their psyches as some kind of deep moral alienation from themselves. I suppose that’s a more extreme example of the effects of suppressing individual responsibility in many other jobs.
I’m trying to fold your insights into a new slide on the strategy deck I’m supposed to present. It needs to be on my boss’s desk by start of business on Monday so I’m working through the holiday weekend. I have three pillars supporting our main objective of “building innovation into our business.”
So far my three pillars are: 1. Lean into learned helplessness, 2. Live between our culture and reality, 3. Embrace team dynamics that bring us to our knees.
Pillar three is where you come in. How can I demonstrate increased efficiency across horizontals? Im thinking I use “some teams standing on their feet while others are kneeling” as the benchmark and the show how a north star of 100% kneeling could increase alignment by having all teams operating at the same level.
I’m hoping to set expectations at 60% kneeling by end of Q1 with 75% over H1. We’ll never achieve this without senior leadership buy in, but I’ll switch teams and hand the project off to a new associate after launch. If it takes off, I’ll swoop back in to take credit. If it fails, I’ll recommend termination of the associate to increase efficiency.
In 2019 I worked at a large foundation in NY that funds science and mathematics. I am a first-generation college student and I was utterly unprepared for the culture. I sat at tables with colleagues who said, quite confidently, that if you do not travel you cannot really be said to be an interesting person (this sounded wrong to me, given that the most interesting people I know have not traveled, but I kept my own counsel and said nothing). They had free lunch, free yearly vacations for the staff, and paid all our premiums. I had vacation time, unlimited sick time, and a pretty little cubicle.
In 2021 we were WFH. I got COVID, as did my husband and my infant. I had to work through it. By which I mean joining Zoom calls and working with datasets while I ran a fever and my 6 month old ran a fever. I’d joined a vague, menacing call with the head of HR who made it quite clear that no, I was not going to take 2 weeks off of work, even though of course I could, because NY had paid leave, but no, I was not going to do that, and also he was not going to put any of this in writing, I just had to remember what he said (I was feverish and wasn’t quite sure even then WHAT he was saying). I was genuinely shocked. It had not occurred to me that all the free food and events were a form of discipline, and this was just another way the discipline was enacted.... It genuinely had not occurred to me.
My guess is that team-building works well when the members already identify as the same group in an unconscious way, Like the movie, The Dirty Dozen. They were all rule-breakers who had declared war on petit bourgeois society, and that's what the job required. They were basically all cut from the same cloth.
As Pound said, Culture is what's left over after you forgot what you tried to learn. It's like learning how to ride a bicycle or water ski. There's an innate predispostion and there's what you try to learn. The two aspects form a culture.
Pop culture in its own way articulates what Matthew said (elegantly, I might add). In music see: Dolly Parton’s “Working 9 to 5” or Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It.” Many people relate to those lyrics. Is there a way out in an economy that relies so heavily on large complex organizations? I have no idea, but reading Matthew’s piece again (I read the book) reminds me of how lucky I am to have been retired from a career in large complex organizations for a decade now. These past 10 years have been the most fulfilling of my life. I must add that much of this fulfillment has been enabled because in working in management for such entities, I achieved a level of financial independence that frees me from want.
Speaking of credential inflation, I have been told that there are certain high-end restaurants in my city of Toronto that require the wait staff to hold Master’s degrees, supposedly so they can engage intelligently with the illustrious (i.e. monied) clientele.
"If I had been serving the user of the database directly, his interest in high-quality abstracts would have aligned with my own interest in experiencing the pleasures of comprehension." But that doesn't scale. The imperative in managerial administration is to scale. Doesn't that make it fundamentally and irredeemably fraudulent as far as the user/customer is concerned? The user may have their reasons for going along, of course. But it is still fraud, or is that too strong a word?
I've been a high school teacher in the UK for 25 years and I wonder if this piece might be the straw that broke the camels back, and give me the push to jack it all in and do something else, something with my hands. The section on college / education neatly encapsulates the insidious bullshit I'm expected to mouth, of which there is more and more each day. The relentless tide of new approaches and educational nirvanas we are 'trained' in is weirdly deflating and numbing. We now provide 'exciting and authentic learning opportunities'. If a student misbehaves, it is probably because our lessons weren't entertaining enough. We push and squeeze students to jump through specific hoops that the examining authorities impose. Education is not the aim, credentials are the only currency understood.
I forgot to mention the mandatory training we had recently on 'Misogony and Toxic Masculinity' during which the 'Misogony Continuum' was shown; where 'low-level misogony' like dirty jokes or telling someone to 'man-up' supports a culture where rape and murder of women are more likely: Don't tell a bawdy joke as your effectivley condoning sexual assualt.......
An observation from the university: many of my students simply want to “hack the class.” They walk in and think, “What can I do to get the best possible grade without doing any actual work.” ChatGPT figures prominently in their “education.” It is disheartening, but only if one thinks that what the university has to teach them is of some inherent value, which may not always be the case. There may be an element of cynical wisdom among some students who recognize that all they’re required to do is get a piece of paper that will let them get a job that itself can be done by sentence-generating machines. Machines talking to machines. Maybe the ChatGPT students I see are just early adapters to a world in which they are irrelevant. It will be interesting to see what redundancies emerge in the workplace as large language model machines play a more prominent role there. No one has to pay ChatGPT or offer it a benefits package, and it can work weekends and holidays! What are we going to do with all these “well-educated” white collar people?
Have you come across the term 'moral injury'? I think it chimes with a lot of what you write here.
The concept was developed in studies of the military, and it's application was relevant to the work I used to do, as a middle-ranking member of a big news organisation who frequently found himself on the front lines of (battlefield) conflict, not just HR tussles - though the whole corporation was shot through with the disorder in more mundane matters, too.
The rough definition is the effect on your mind of being expected to do things that go against your strongly-held values, or to do them for someone or some organisation that you come to believe does not share those values, and perhaps never did in the first place. For example: 'Go and get another interview with the refugee for prime time, preferably in English, and make sure she cries for the camera this time.' And so forth.
Back in the newsroom, it might be repeatedly hearing from above that yet another show with new deadlines that you didn't sign up to serve is 'an exciting opportunity to do more with less and deliver value across platforms...' - the mental consequences accrue in both cases. (A genuinely exciting opportunity would have been one to have a day off, or sleep in, or say 'fuck it' to a nasty programme editor.)
What was particularly tough about the 'exciting opportunities' spiel was that it was delivered to journalists of all people - highly-trained, professional sceptics - who were expected to swallow it whole, and then regurgitate it to lower-ranking cadres without smirking and enforce it ruthlessly.
The winners were the upper echelons who could point to a chart in meetings I never visited and 'prove' that they had 'leveraged excellence', or something like that.
Thanks for that glimpse into a large news operation. The like your invocation of “moral injury” in that setting. I learned the term when I read about drone operators who carry out assassinations. If I remember the article (it was some kind of sociological study), it drew attention to the entirely different setting in which these drone operators kill people, compared to, say, a fighter pilot. Sitting in a trailer in Colorado or wherever, they have no skin in the game whatsoever. They are existentially absented from the scene; from their own actions. But this blows back into their psyches as some kind of deep moral alienation from themselves. I suppose that’s a more extreme example of the effects of suppressing individual responsibility in many other jobs.
I think concepts of duty and answerability are the heart of it. For something on Moral Injury as commonly conceptualised now: https://moralinjuryproject.syr.edu/about-moral-injury/
Anthony Feinstein has written at length on the topic with respect to journalists. This is seen as the groundbreaking study - https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/emotional-toll-journalists-covering-refugee-crisis
Thanks, Christopher
I’m trying to fold your insights into a new slide on the strategy deck I’m supposed to present. It needs to be on my boss’s desk by start of business on Monday so I’m working through the holiday weekend. I have three pillars supporting our main objective of “building innovation into our business.”
So far my three pillars are: 1. Lean into learned helplessness, 2. Live between our culture and reality, 3. Embrace team dynamics that bring us to our knees.
Pillar three is where you come in. How can I demonstrate increased efficiency across horizontals? Im thinking I use “some teams standing on their feet while others are kneeling” as the benchmark and the show how a north star of 100% kneeling could increase alignment by having all teams operating at the same level.
I’m hoping to set expectations at 60% kneeling by end of Q1 with 75% over H1. We’ll never achieve this without senior leadership buy in, but I’ll switch teams and hand the project off to a new associate after launch. If it takes off, I’ll swoop back in to take credit. If it fails, I’ll recommend termination of the associate to increase efficiency.
Please advise.
Brilliant.
You just got me to pay for this newsletter!
In 2019 I worked at a large foundation in NY that funds science and mathematics. I am a first-generation college student and I was utterly unprepared for the culture. I sat at tables with colleagues who said, quite confidently, that if you do not travel you cannot really be said to be an interesting person (this sounded wrong to me, given that the most interesting people I know have not traveled, but I kept my own counsel and said nothing). They had free lunch, free yearly vacations for the staff, and paid all our premiums. I had vacation time, unlimited sick time, and a pretty little cubicle.
In 2021 we were WFH. I got COVID, as did my husband and my infant. I had to work through it. By which I mean joining Zoom calls and working with datasets while I ran a fever and my 6 month old ran a fever. I’d joined a vague, menacing call with the head of HR who made it quite clear that no, I was not going to take 2 weeks off of work, even though of course I could, because NY had paid leave, but no, I was not going to do that, and also he was not going to put any of this in writing, I just had to remember what he said (I was feverish and wasn’t quite sure even then WHAT he was saying). I was genuinely shocked. It had not occurred to me that all the free food and events were a form of discipline, and this was just another way the discipline was enacted.... It genuinely had not occurred to me.
My guess is that team-building works well when the members already identify as the same group in an unconscious way, Like the movie, The Dirty Dozen. They were all rule-breakers who had declared war on petit bourgeois society, and that's what the job required. They were basically all cut from the same cloth.
As Pound said, Culture is what's left over after you forgot what you tried to learn. It's like learning how to ride a bicycle or water ski. There's an innate predispostion and there's what you try to learn. The two aspects form a culture.
Pop culture in its own way articulates what Matthew said (elegantly, I might add). In music see: Dolly Parton’s “Working 9 to 5” or Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It.” Many people relate to those lyrics. Is there a way out in an economy that relies so heavily on large complex organizations? I have no idea, but reading Matthew’s piece again (I read the book) reminds me of how lucky I am to have been retired from a career in large complex organizations for a decade now. These past 10 years have been the most fulfilling of my life. I must add that much of this fulfillment has been enabled because in working in management for such entities, I achieved a level of financial independence that frees me from want.
Speaking of credential inflation, I have been told that there are certain high-end restaurants in my city of Toronto that require the wait staff to hold Master’s degrees, supposedly so they can engage intelligently with the illustrious (i.e. monied) clientele.
"If I had been serving the user of the database directly, his interest in high-quality abstracts would have aligned with my own interest in experiencing the pleasures of comprehension." But that doesn't scale. The imperative in managerial administration is to scale. Doesn't that make it fundamentally and irredeemably fraudulent as far as the user/customer is concerned? The user may have their reasons for going along, of course. But it is still fraud, or is that too strong a word?
The customer's and management's goals do not align, certainly. But dont' worry, the marketing department will convince the customer otherwise.