Part 1/4: What happened to the 9-5 Corporate Job?

Who is to blame for the death of the “safe” job?

This tweet (or a variation of it) never fails to make me laugh:

At it’s core, it’s not wrong – for many years, large corporate jobs have been the best type of job to raise a family, get steadily rich, and live a reasonably easy lifestyle when you were college-educated. These jobs are compensated well, in theory, because they are more productive and do “strategy” or whatever. But, people have other ideas on how to represent these jobs:

But, recently, there has been a shift that I see in the eyes of my colleagues in corporate / bullshit jobs – it has become more difficult than ever to have one of these jobs. And I’m not the only one who sees this trend.

I have been thinking all year about the content that Microsoft released on the “infinite workday” This chart specifically has been seared in my mind:

What’s happening? Why did corporate jobs get like this? I’ve been spending A LOT of time (outside of my work hours…lol) – thinking about why work got like this. And why it feels so much worse all the time. But it’s not just me! It’s everyone!

But the reason WHY is usually pretty mixed:

And workers are showing it by starting to check out of these jobs:

But I’m less interested in why people don’t like their work (as seen above, it could be a lot of things), but the underlying reason of what has shifted. I’ve heard three things, that I likely think, because of the data, are wrong:

1. It’s all the layoffs!

2. It’s all the Boomers / GenX people!

3. It’s all the return to work!

Myth 1: It’s the layoffs!

What I hear: Because of the rampant layoffs in white collar jobs, people are constantly walking on eggshells – that’s what makes work bad.

So, let’s make a few things clear – layoffs hurt employee morale. In fact, they hurt employee morale MUCH MORE at places where people are highly committed to their jobs. But layoffs aren’t new – in fact in business and professional services, layoffs have stayed pretty steady for almost two decades (with the exception of Dot Com Bust / The Financial Crisis / COVID):

But worker sentiment during this year fell to an all time-low – its lowest since it was started to be measured in 2016.

This likely comes from a number of factors, but most importantly, this figure CLIMBED during COVID – a time when mass layoffs were happening!

Layoffs seem worse as employees have rising anxiety about them (in fact, 1 in 3 Americans are worried about layoffs) – but likely, you have the same probability of being laid off as you did in 1997.

Myth 2: It’s the Boomers / GenX people!

What I hear: It’s the old people who have screwed up work! They demand this insane work that doesn’t match how work is done today!

(The corollary to the above is that Millenials / Gen Z / Gen Alpha all expect work to be easy to them and they have the wrong expectations when it comes to their corporate jobs.)

It seems like an easy jump for many Millennials – the idea that the group of people who broke housing markets, the environment, the social safety net would also be the ones who broke work – their samurai-like dedication to their jobs has so fundamentally changed expectations.

But Boomers aren’t the ones to blame:

Jean Twenge, author of Generations: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents – and What They Mean for the Future, found that the percentage of young people willing to work beyond their contracted hours was steadily going down until around 2009-10, when there was a significant uptick.

So, maybe it’s Gen-X! They said “Greed is Good” and they spent all their time at work (plus with added anxiety created from the financial crisis) and it is forcing Millennials and Gen-Z to work more hours than ever!

The data doesn’t pan this out, either. Those under 35 are actually working fewer hours than ever – and the number keeps falling:

My guess is some of this is attributable to secondary income, but my guess is that this chart about parenting (another sticky one I can’t get out of my head) – is probably the reason why:

So if it isn’t macro market trends and it isn’t my coworkers it must be….

Myth 3: It’s the return to work!

What I hear: Work is bad because of the commutes! Why didn’t we just stay working from home??

In 2023, Nick Bloom – an economist who leads Stanford’s research into Return to Office (RTO) / Hybrid policies claimed: “RTO is dead, hybrid won.”

More recently, worked have been straight up ignoring RTO mandates:

• “While policy requirements for office attendance have jumped 10% since early 2024, actual attendance has barely moved, increasing less than 2% during the same time period,” reports Time.

• “According to Occuspace CEO Nic Halverson, whose workplace occupancy sensor technology is deployed across Fortune 500 companies, many firms mandating five days in office see almost the same rate of utilization as those with more flexible policies.”

• “A Stanford study found that half of workers asked to go back to the office full-time reported they were simply ignoring the request.”

Listen, I want to believe that I’m working a LOT more days and the commute is a LOT worse, but actually – people like being in the office? In fact, JLL is saying Gen Z wants to be in the office more!

Younger workers (up to 24 years old) are in the office on average 3 days a week, tracking higher than all other age groups and the UK national average (2 office days a week)

We aren’t returning to office and when we are asked to – we aren’t really doing it – and perhaps, going back to the office might actually be desirable?

So is work actually bad?

For a number of reasons work feels worse, but my contention is that work doesn’t feel worse because of macroeconomic factors or generational differences or that the place of work has our biggest impact. But my guess is that work feels worse because of how we do it. Let’s go back to the Microsoft Infinite Workday.

The article reads as dire warning for workers – that “triple peak” working is coming (high productivity hours at noon, 6PM, and again at 10PM), that workers are interrupted every two minutes, and that edits in PowerPoint spike 122% in the 10 minutes preceding a meeting.

These aren’t signs of a more productive or better workforce, but ultimately a more chaotic one. The problem is (as evidenced above) – we don’t really have the taxonomy to talk about work. We just feel it in our bones. I’m going to explore these a bit in depth in my next few parts, but the way we work has been shifted by three new north stars that have ruined work:

1. Part 2: Productivity as King | We are asking more of each individual worker as a consequence of the fact that we think that downtime is the enemy of work. In fact, our major institutions (DOGE, sports, etc.) – aim to do more with less. But when we think about productivity, we think about its relationship to pay. But what if we’ve just reached the edge of human productivity?

2. Part 3: Consulting Ruined Everything | As a former consultant, we’ve changed how we think because we’ve let more consultants into the C-Suite. Consultants, primarily, who are focused on financial management and further away from true product innovation. Coupled with tax law that disincentivizes compensating “innovation time” – we’ve spent the greater part of the 2000s squeezing cost out of systems.

3. Part 4: The Rise of Risk Control | With the passing of greater risk mechanisms, governance within corporations has started to grow at an unprecedented rate. This manifests itself in ways that are obvious (growth in legal spend) and non-obvious (more people need to see every decision). This factor makes all work more painful – and more time-consuming.

You’ll see the problems that have arisen aren’t a function of the way we work, but rather what/who we work for.