Tweet of the Day (Taylor Kay Phillips, on the Phrase ‘Just So I Understand…’)

“Literally no one understands something more completely than a woman in a meeting who starts a question with ‘Just so I understand…’”— Emmy-Award winning writer and comedian Taylor Kay Phillips, tweet of May 15, 2023

Quote of the Day (Sam Altman, on AI and the Future of Jobs)

“A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good; it's only going to be a supplement; no one is ever going to be replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop."— OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quoted by Ross Andersen, “Inside the Revolution at OpenAI,” The Atlantic, September 2023

Will someone please tell me what’s going on here?

I’m not talking about AI as such—most of the people I know are at least cautiously concerned about its implications, even its advocates—like Sam Altman, who, in his interview with Ross Andersen, didn’t know exactly where it would lead to except “a new kind of society.”

No, I’m talking about what is going on with Altman himself and the company he turned into a Wall Street darling.

This past Friday, its board of directors explained on a blog post that he had not been “consistently candid in his communications.” It seems that, while fully expecting that other people would be losing their jobs because of the technology he pioneered, he’d be out of his own much sooner.

In the current climate of corporate upheaval, more than a few people reading the board’s cryptic but dangerous-sounding mistake might be forgiven for speculating that Altman had inflated current financial results or projections, or, like so many testosterone-turbocharged executives in recent years, had started a personal relationship with an employee and thus violated norms evolved in the wake of the #MeToo movement. 

Evidently this wasn’t the case—the company’s chief operating officer sent a note to staff on Saturday that no “malfeasance” was involved.

But if those scenarios didn’t lead to Altman’s ouster, what did?

Oh, yes—and about that ouster? That expectation, it turns out, may be slightly premature. 

According to a report airing less than 48 hours later from The New York Times, Altman is talking about staying on as CEO, even if it means a restructuring of the group that forced him out and disrupted a tech industry that can’t stop talking about how it’s going to disrupt everything.

I tell you, I haven’t done such a double-take over news since George Steinbrenner got rid of Billy Martin (the first of five times The Boss canned him or forced him to quit!) as manager of the New York Yankees, only to have him introduced four days later at Old Timers’ Day as the team’s rehired skipper for the 1980 season. (You can read all the details of those doings from The Bronx Zoo in my blog post from a decade ago.)

Altman has vowed, MacArthur-like, to return. But to reconquer what he lost, he’ll have to execute something faster than the general’s island-hopping strategy. Maybe AI has a ready-made plan for him?

(The image accompanying this post, showing Sam Altman during TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019 at Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, was taken on Oct. 3, 2019 by TechCrunch.)

Quote of the Day (Johnny C. Taylor Jr., on the Work Ethic of Older Employees)

“With the economy slowing down, companies need fewer people and need the people who are there to be OK with working hard. Instead of trying to convince younger generations to be something different, some companies are saying, ‘Why don’t we just go hire people who are naturally predisposed to work harder?'”— Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management, quoted by Callum Borchers, “Older Workers Are in Demand When Bosses Want Work Ethic,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 6, 2023

I am glad to see that a number of employers are coming around to seeing the value of over-50 workers. It did not seem that way for much of the past two decades, and especially in the recession following the pandemic. One can only hope this trend continues.

(The image accompanying this post shows Anne Hathaway and Robert DeNiro in the 2015 film The Intern.)

Quote of the Day (Paul Simms, Imagining a Corporate Upper-Management Move)

“Alex Kerner (C.E.O., C.O.O., chairman, and president of Alex Kerner's Personal Life, Inc.) announced today a wide-ranging restructuring of his imaginary company's upper management….

“In a reshuffling move unrelated to the current streamlining, former Best Platonic Female Friend Lisa Mayberry has been summarily terminated from the organization for malfeasance involving telling Kerner's ex-girlfriend details about Kerner's current girlfriend.”— Paul Simms, “Shouts and Murmurs: For Immediate Release,” The New Yorker, Aug. 31, 2009

Quote of the Day (Edward Niedermeyer, on the ‘Negligent and Sometimes Cruel Workplace’ of Elon Musk)

“For those of us who have followed Mr. Musk’s antics for some time, the latest twist in his bid for the social media platform [i.e., reevaluating his acquisition Twitter] is entirely in character. The way that he has managed and marketed his businesses from Tesla’s early days reveals a dysfunction behind the automaker’s veneer of technofuturism and past stock market successes. Often announcing new features without consultation with his team, he forces his employees to bridge the enormous gap between technological reality and his dreams. This disconnect fosters a negligent and sometimes cruel workplace, to disastrous effect.”— American automotive analyst and critic Edward Niedermeyer, “Elon Musk Masks Dysfunction With Hype,” The New York Times, June 5, 2022

Since Niedermeyer’s article was posted on the Web site of the Times four days ago, the owner of Tesla and Space X has engaged in additional “antics,” including:

*announcing that he plans to launch “thousands” of 394-ft.-tall rockets to Mars;

*demanding that Tesla employees currently working remotely should prepare to spend a minimum of 40hours a week back at the office, or resign;

*engaging in a bit of economic soothsaying by letting it out that he has a “super bad feeling” about the economy;

*informing employees that Tesla planned to lay off 10% of its workforce, then partially walking the statement back by saying that this only applied to “salaried employees,” and that the automaker is still hiring hourly workers.

These recent developments point to something that Niedermeyer only hints about when he explains that managers have taken to “deciding whether or not to take issues to Mr. Musk based on the shade of blond of his wife’s hair that day (with platinum shades being correlated with better moods).”

All of these multiple head-snapping mood swings beg the question of whether Musk is either a charismatic business and technological visionary or a megalomaniac. You can bet that not just his closest advisers, but also the shareholders in his ventures and even all of West Street, are sweating out the answer.

(The image accompanying this post, showing Elon Musk at the 2015 Tesla Motors Annual Meeting, was taken June 9, 2015 by Steve Jurvetson.)

Quote of the Day (Tony Schwartz, on E-Mail as ‘Cocaine for Compulsive Achievers’)

“E-mail’s intoxicating qualities are now well known: It’s convenient, efficient, simple, and informal, a way to stay connected to more people, a democratizing force in the workplace and less intrusive than the telephone. But as e-mail proliferates, its more pernicious effects are increasingly evident. Much as it facilitates the conduct of business, e-mail is threatening to overrun people’s lives. It’s no longer uncommon for executives – even those at middle levels – to receive 100 to 150 e-mails a day – a veritable torrent that floods ‘24-7,’ to use the macho shorthand of e-business. At a subtler level, e-mail celebrates transaction more than engagement, bite-size information rather than considered reflection, connection without commitment. In the name of better and speedier communication, e-mail can be rude, clipped, superficial, and depressingly desiccated. A boon when it comes to making lunch dates and answering yes-or-no questions, it is also an insistent source of distraction from more demanding work. E-mail has proved fiercely addictive—cocaine for compulsive achievers."— Tony Schwartz, “Going Postal,” New York Magazine, July 19, 1999

In recent years, it has fascinated me to come across articles on a trend in its childhood or even infancy. So it was again when I discovered this article by Tony Schwartz. 

I can still remember when someone first demonstrated it to me in the fall of 1993, and only a couple of years later my former company was using it. By the end of the decade, the changes in organizational behavior noted by Schwartz had become commonplace, including lack of separation between work and office and the slavery that even corporate executives feel to their e-mail in-box.

These days, the influence e-mail wields, the threat it posed, and the constantly improvised measures to safeguard us from have all taken on greater dimensions, with no end in sight—especially with the changes brought about by COVID-19.

Quote of the Day (Hannah Kuchler, on ‘Internal Propaganda’ Among Tech Companies)

“Internal propaganda is one way to create true believers out of workers. Missions are repeated like chants, offices wallpapered in slogans, and branded T-shirts bring corporate identity to the bar. Programmes that make praising peers almost obligatory complete the circle. Employees see their CEO not as the person who pays their wages but as the living embodiment of their values. Now, these leaders have a challenge that can't be solved by high fives and zings: how to live up to employees' expectations in darker times.”— Hannah Kuchler, “Virtual High-Fives,” Financial Times, May 20-21, 2017

Quote of the Day (Robert Townsend, on Sex-Crazy Execs)

“It’s interesting that otherwise competent businessmen, capable of budgeting a complex operation, can't figure out that the cost of maintaining two women is twice the cost of one plus certain fringes. An early symptom of the mistress is a sudden surge of creativity in an executive's expense account. I once had a personnel vice-president who had taken up with one of our executive secretaries. If it had been outside the company I wouldn’t have minded unless it interfered with his work. But a personnel man with his arm around an employee is like a treasurer with his hand in the till.”—Robert Townsend, Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation From Stifling People and Strangling Profits (1970)

A while back, I was lamenting to someone experienced in outplacement about how certain corporate executives paint overly rosy scenarios about their financially strapped firms that they peddle not only to outsiders but even to their employees. “These guys are in the moment, so they can convince even themselves about what they’re saying,” he explained.

That’s the best explanation I know for Robert Townsend’s continually relevant, pungent assessment of executives’ turbo-charged testosterone levels. Townsend was talking specifically about corporate mistresses—the type of situation masterfully satirized in Billy Wilder’s 1960 Oscar-winning film The Apartment.

But, as I read the part in the above quote about a “sudden surge of creativity in an executive’s expense account,” its obvious application to the sexual harassment claim that brought down Hewlett-Packard’s Mark Hurd was all too apropos. Against all odds, Hurd (in the image accompanying this post) had to believe that his (mis)behavior would either never be noticed or simply excused. He was “in the moment.”

Sexual harassment, of course, was not a recognized realm of corporate law during Townsend’s days as CEO of Avis five decades ago. Nor were reality shows and soft-core straight-to-video/DVD flicks—the two movie genres in which Hurd’s accuser, Jodie Fisher, specialized before she crossed paths with the H-P head honcho—a recognized part of the entertainment landscape of his time.

But Townsend pinpointed a certain fatal instinct common to leaders of men, a tendency to self-destruct in ways one would not normally expect. Even if we take at face value the insistence by Hurd and contracto-consultan-whatever Fisher that nothing physical happened between them, then Hurd didn’t get much for those lavish dinners he inaccurately expensed.

(I suppose there is one sense in which Hurd’s conduct constituted a departure from the usual alpha-male behavior in these situations. Over the years, a number of female colleagues have pointed to executives from other companies they’ve known over the years. These men not only don’t want anything to do with women over 30, but even with those older than 25. Hurd is unique in that he seems to have been attracted to a woman who, at 50 years old, was close to his age.)

Oh, by the way: Did you notice that H-P’s board of directors dispatched Hurd with a $28-million severance package? Paying someone for their sins—not to mention embarrassing the company and sending its stock value plunging overnight—was not something Townsend anticipated. However, in this case, he was prescient about the role of board of directors: “Directors and the like spend very little time studying and worrying about your company. Result: they know far less than you give them credit for.”