Wholeness at work — big tech is not your friend

An incomplete history, both global and personal, about how to make work not suck

The Workers of the 19th and early 20th century won rights for us that neither govt. nor the bosses thought we deserved. In white collar, creative, high tech jobs; these are under attack in wholly insidious ways that Huxley warned us about — three free meals cooked onsite; free work iPhones and paying for IVF.

But what it really is — another unwillingness to embrace our full humanity, a capture of our time, attention and energy for corporate ends rather than the more truly transcendent task of being human. The bosses now expect us to be on call 24/7, reachable via Slack, via that work phone they gave us.

Seven years of hard work and deep personal risk later — I’m one of those bosses; and I respectfully dissent.

What to exult in instead

To be human is to be loved; and love in turn. To be human is to make choices (have kids, or not). To struggle in child-rearing and learning, in growing by learning new work-relevant skill or hobbyist master craft. And I will not ask anyone to do the same; just go about my own highly visible way of encouraging people to embrace their whole life at work; from talking about fasting at Ramadan to worrying about your parents in India; to taking your kids on a Zoom call, to building a porch with your dad in such a way, we lower the social barriers to making this wholeness more visible. Then there is the economic, education, structural/systemic bits to worry about to.

So what?

I also kind of refuse to toe the line that people say when they say “oh, and that’s just smart business.” I mean yes, but that’s a far, far secondary goal. The focus should be on “that’s just how to be a good, fulfilled, happy human making their way in the world.”