your friendships are not a corporate asset.
This newsletter is brought to you by the feeling of relief you get by uninstalling Instagram, even if you’re just uninstalling it temporarily. Uninstalling: because we don’t have to live in an endorphin-fueled hellscape forever if we don’t want to.
Keep your employees from quitting with this one weird trick
Axios’ business articles tend to discuss how trends affect companies instead of workers. This article, discussing the ongoing high quit rates, is a good example of that. The “Why it matters” bullet point toward the top of the article makes this point of view explicit:
Why it matters: Companies should brace for a lasting culture of quitting.
So what, you might be wondering, does the article recommend companies do to offset this disturbing trend? There is ample evidence that hopping jobs is a much faster way to get pay raises than loyalty to a company, and the idea that people quit jobs because of terrible managers is a truism. Does the article suggest paying workers more, or holding bad managers accountable? Of course not (lol).
The article specifically says that weaker work friendships are a reason that people are more likely to quit jobs while working from home and proposes that companies try to build friendships to offset that. From the article:
Corporate retreats are now a must to build those work friendships that make people think twice about quitting.
This sentence leaves me feeling sick in my stomach. I am tired of companies using human connection to extract more money out of people—and that’s what this article is advocating for. I have a better idea: quit your job and keep the friendships.
A good chunk of the people reading this newsletter worked with me at one company or another. Some of you write back to me after these newsletters go out, which gives me a great amount of joy. I consider you my friends. The fact that we don’t work together doesn’t change that.
I lost my tech job in December, but I went to the company Christmas party before my two weeks were up. My friend Stacie Taylor, after a long hug, told me she was sad I was leaving. I told her that absolutely nothing about our relationship will change because of my employment status. And you know what? Nothing has.
One of the nice things about remote work is that I can hang out in whatever break room I want. That could be the company Slack, sure, or it could be another chat room I set up with friends from various past jobs, or a Discord with my local friends. I can work with friends downtown on any afternoon, if I want, and transition to a happy hour after.
There is no reason whatsoever for the company I work with to be my social hub. Companies want you to blur friendship and company loyalty because it benefits them—the Axios article makes this explicit. But I’m done with that. I can quit a job and keep the relationships.
Friends deserve your loyalty. Companies do not.
Stuff I wrote
- Apple Mail blocks email tracking. Marketers aren’t thrilled.. WIRED “Nothing makes you more paranoid about privacy than working in a marketing department. Trust me on this.”
- The best speech-to-text apps and tools for every kind of user. PC Mag. Sometimes you want to type by talking.
Stuff I did
- I watched Severance, on Apple TV, and it hit way too close to home (especially with the themes I discuss above). Highly recommended if you’d like to process your workplace trauma via a horror-infused science fiction TV show.
- Currently on tap in my garage: a homemade cola, a raspberry seltzer, and our chocolate raspberry stout.
- I went snowshoeing on Mount Hood with friends.
- It was a very good weekend. I’m excited about the next one.
Friendships don’t have to be forever to be real
I read a quote the other day: “The friendship that can cease has never been real.” St. Jerome supposedly said this, which I am not going to fact check. I am going to say that I fundamentally disagree with the idea.
I’ve had friendships fade away many times in my life. I’ve lived in two Canadian provinces and three U.S. states, which makes some level of moving on from people I care about inevitable. I don’t think for a moment that takes away what those friendships meant to me at the time, or what they still mean to me now.
This idea—that a relationship is either forever or not worthwhile—makes life so much worse. If you spend all of your time focusing on past friendships, you’re going to be less present for the people in your life now, which is no way to live. I’d be lying if I told you that I’m not sad about people I was once close to pushing me out of their life, or slowly losing touch with friends after moving away. Even so, I’m still glad I was friends with those people. I’m a different person because of those connections—a better person. They were real friendships, even if they weren’t forever.
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