About a month before my contract ended with Audible, a work friend told me she was trying to read the book Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter but found the author’s anecdotes so reminiscent of her own experiences it was upsetting to get through. I’d use the word “triggering” here, of course, but using the word triggering is triggering.
Intrigued, I checked it out of the library, and boy do I see what she means. It’s a genuinely well-written tale of a smart woman who devotes herself to her job at Amazon HQ and then it nearly kills her. To be clear, my job didn’t nearly kill me at all. It was delightful. All the same, so many themes of her story will resonate even if you don’t have a high-pressure corporate job, like:
How your dedication and recognized excellence won’t result in a promotion or raise, or in my case, being converted to a full-time employee. Ten years into her time at Amazon, after successfully launching and running many winning initiatives, she point-blank asked her supervisor what she needed to do to move up a level. He told her to just bring “world-changing ideas.” Change the world, and then we’ll give you a promotion.
How her wine-drinking kept ticking upward, and how she was increasingly aware of it but still felt pretty powerless to stop it. Read the brilliant, witty, viral essay she wrote about this that became her first book, Nothing Good Can Come of This.
How she and her colleagues would reward themselves with expensive handbags to offset their misgivings about the BS at work. I like nice things too, and often get myself crap I don’t need. A refreshing side effect of losing my job is that it forces me to question why or if I even want a new handbag/pair of Adidas/expensive blush/perfume.
How creative people like writers and designers were categorically devalued at Amazon.
How sexism at her work was astonishingly casual and seems baked in to the system. I would love you to read Exit Interview for this reason alone. For instance: She tolerates being called stupid to her face by a supervisor named Chuck (i.e., a man), but when she raises her voice one time in a meeting, in defense of one of her staff people, she is told that her colleagues feel “emotionally unsafe” around her.
Audible is owned by Amazon, so it stands to reason that the cultures would rhyme. Luckily for me it was only in the least offensive ways, like the occasional absurdity of corporate conduct, the anxious efforts to please the CEO, or the silly gamesmanship and jargon. Oh, and the devaluation of the creative team. After four years at a billion-dollar company, however, I have to say that I think corporate America is gross.
More or less
One month after our CEO sent out a note saying how Audible just closed out its most successful month ever, there were layoffs across the company. The dissonance was chilling. Audible’s “reduction” in employees was a trend across a slew of companies making record profits. Please read this edition of Scott Galloway’s No Mercy/No Malice newsletter where he writes about this trend with more wit and intelligence than I could. Also, I’d like to point out how validating it was for me to see that Galloway used the same corporate Ozempic metaphor I used in an earlier post I’d made about AI.
At Amazon and Audible, they trot out the slogan “do more with less” to rally the troops after layoffs. On its surface, it’s a great idea, something we should all aspire to (see unnecessary handbags, above). But it hits different when they use it to mean “we laid off 75% of your team, but here we pride ourselves on our ability to do more with less so we don’t expect to hear you whining.”
You know what else I think smells bad? The heartless way people are laid off. It’s actually better when you’re a contractor. We know weeks in advance of our last day. We have time to grab screenshots of our best samples for our portfolio and mentally prepare. For some full-time employees who had worked for Audible for over a decade, they found out they’d been let go when their badge didn’t work in the lobby. Others only had a couple hours to scoop up any relevant samples of their design or writing work before they were locked out of the network.
This is accepted practice, and we’re all OK with the concept that the moment we get the pink slip, we’re a high-risk threat to the company’s safety. How have we all been brainwashed to accept that our employers are allowed to exhibit zero trust in us? I mean, sure, there are a few people who have the capability and the criminal intent to hack into the mainframe and take down an entire company, or to embezzle millions before they pack up their things and go. Most of us are not that person, though. Most of us honestly do the best we can every day.
I know I sound like King Lear screaming at the wind. I do understand that the utmost priority of these corporations are their stakeholders, not the people doing the work. This is the way it goes. This is how American business, and thus America, is so amazing. But what good are record profits if it means more layoffs?1
The dreamwork
I’ve been a freelancer for so long, I’d forgotten the simple pleasure of being a part of a team. It was so great to experience this fundamental component of work, especially because I chanced into working with some truly hilarious, smart, delightful people. I could survive cliché-laden meetings, ludicrous feedback from stakeholders, and all the other absurd vagaries thanks to my funny, snarky-yet-upbeat coworkers. (And because of Slack. I lived in a time where I had to sit beside my work friends and write notes on paper to make fun of people in meetings. Technology is amazing.) But we didn’t just snark. We loved admiring our outfits, taking snack breaks, and trading audiobook recommendations. Most of all, I loved working with them.
Everyone was so good at what they did, and collaborative. Everyone genuinely cared about making the best whatever we were making–be it one silly little banner ad promoting Britney’s new memoir, or a full branding guide for the entire company and its outside agencies. Whatever the larger company’s cynical machinations might have been, my colleagues and I just liked doing good work. We would iterate ad nauseum. My copy director would receive what I thought were my best headlines and ask for more. Then I would write better headlines. The designers synthesized the brief with such elegance it was like a magic trick. That’s a nice thing to be a part of. That I’m going to miss.
Working in an office is not on the hot list right now. After Covid, we all understandably question whether we really do need offices at all. Data shows we were more productive when we worked in our PJs at the kitchen table. Who needs the commute? The hard pants? The dog abandonment?
I’ll tell you who. We do. All of us. I made friends at work who are now a part of my life. But I also befriended people who probably won't stay in my life. I found common ground at work and developed strong working relationships with people who aren’t necessarily “my tribe.” And I worked alongside a bunch of people who quite honestly got on my nerves. I rode elevators, had meetings, chatted in hallways, and ate lunches with them. These people probably found me equally annoying. Yet we tolerated one another and it really wasn’t difficult. We used our manners, respected boundaries, avoided hot-button topics. We found the good parts in each other. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, we recognized our shared fucking humanity. It’s just hard to be a dick to someone who’s standing right in front of you.
I have no way to quantify this theory of mine, but I think one big plus of working in an office is that it helps us all remember how to get along. If social media and the digital space is one big polarizing outrage-fest, the antidote is real life. I know no one reading this newsletter has ever trolled someone online, or insisted a person wasn’t worth even knowing because of the way they voted, or categorically rejected someone based on their views about a geopolitical nightmare happening two continents away. But we all know those people exist, and none of them are helpful. Maybe the forced civility of the workplace offsets that kind of intolerance?
Then again, maybe the outraged trolls online are just letting off steam after being coldly laid off from a job they’d dutifully performed for the last 15 years. Maybe I have it backwards. Perhaps social media is a safe space as the CEOs and AI slowly render us all obsolete and unnecessary. It’s certainly been a balm to me these last few days. Between the kookslams, the videos of people organizing their crap, and the adorable dogs being adorable, I barely even notice that I don't have a job.2
I realize we are as a culture adjusting to AI and all the wonderful opportunity that will one day arise from its integration. I’m not a Luddite. I think we can say yes to new tech and also embrace considering what’s best for employees, even if that means slightly less money for the people at the top.
"What good are record profits if it means more layoffs?¹"
Agree!! Is all this good work just about making a few really rich people even richer? Infuriating!
And I'm really sorry about your job :(
Thank you for this. I feel like I'm screaming into the wind ALL THE TIME about this brave new world of we need no actual people to work in corporations. The callousness of the layoff procedure is breathtaking. I can't wrap my head around the fact that the people who are in charge feel like this is a good way to treat each other. Especially when A LOT of the people who are in charge are our age, and our neighbors. It takes a lot of effort to not get drain circle-y when I think about it.