Jeff Bezos on why work-life balance is ‘a debilitating phrase’
chicagotribune.com
chicagotribune.com
>“This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off. And the reality is, if I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.
A lot of folks seem to read this (I think Bezos said something similar last year and there were dismissive reactions to that) and take it cynically, especially given Amazon's workplace culture reputation. But I think there's a lot of truth to this -- that if you are rejuvenated by your job, then that fulfillment spills over to your personal life, and vice versa. But it's an idealized situation that simply isn't really available to everyone, and to insinuate that one _must_ strive for such a harmonious situation is dangerous, because those high standards can in turn be toxic.
On the other hand, I think that the work-life balance strict tradeoff camp shouldn't be dismissed either, because to do so would imply that, if one does not love their job and feel rejuvinated by it, something is wrong with them. But frankly there seems to be a generally inverse relationship between the inherent enjoyability of a job and its material rewards, and so it's an entirely reasonable arrangement to have a "okay, thoroughly neutral job" and a great personal like that is enabled by your 9-5.
The key is that one be happy and satisfied with the arrangement, and that it be the right mix for each person.
>“It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance. And I think that is worth everybody paying attention to it. You never want to be that guy — and we all have a coworker who’s that person — who as soon as they come into a meeting they drain all the energy out of the room. You can just feel the energy go whoosh! You don’t want to be that guy. You want to come into the office and give everyone a kick in their step.”
This, I think is unilaterally true but actually independent from his first point.
If you've no stake in your work, you're trying to balance the negative impacts of work with the positive impacts of the rest of your life, hence the phrase work-life balance. Having work-life harmony would almost certainly mean both work and everything else was equally neutral or negative.
Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise. Even if I am miserable because I have to spend my 8 hours of sunlight making CEO Von Richenstein wealthier, I can't just walk away and take the risk that my next job will be different. It's just stressful.
So work-life balance means... valuing your time as your own. It's pretty rich for someone who only works because they want to to suggest that the rest of us should do the same without any of the same security.
Yup. Regardless of the way it may be intended, it's almost impossible to ignore the optics of this as similar to the boomer 'bootstraps' cliché.
That's an interesting way to suggest that I should take what Bezos says even more seriously. He's worth $131 billion on paper and yet he's still working so hard and pushing to accomplish so much more.
> So people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it. Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise.
So you mean just like Bezos in the past - the first 40 years of his life - before Amazon survived several near death experiences, narrowly avoided going bankrupt, somehow survived Walmart's extreme dominance of retail (sales 2004: Walmart $285b, Amazon $7b; 40x), and after a decade plus finally brought his paper wealth to a sustainable level such that it wasn't susceptible to disappearing in a fiery heap and being obliterated by competitors that were all massively larger than Amazon. Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him.
Counterargument: he was in the right place, at the right time, and happened to be working in a sector that made it easy to pivot into online retail.
Not to say that his skill/leadership wasn't involved in going from say 2bn to 100bn, but he lucked out in timing.
Of course he is talented, but I don't believe him to be somehow absolutely unique, rather just some suitable combination of talented, connected, and lucky.
Building a massive business is not something that anyone has the same "lottery ticket" chance to do successfully, even if given the same connections and support Bezos had.
I don't need Jeff fucking Besos to tell me that there is something wrong with me if I cannot be happy making other people richer at the expense of my own time.
His rejection-without-justification of the original question speaks volumes.
But unfortunately in today's world people try to re-define a known word and then go into a lengthy explanation. My first reaction to reading Bezo's explanation was to compare him to Ivanka trying to redefine the word "complicit":
Because fulfilment for most people comes from balancing their positive home lives with their negative work lives. Sure there are ways to improve both, but it's a small minority of people whose work lives are a real positive beyond simply supporting their non-work existance.
How it is debilitating? No explanation.
Work/life balance asserts a distinction between a job and unpaid time, as if labor rights didn't draw that line. It says nothing about emotional state.
There is a strict tradeoff in many cases; you're on the clock or you're not. But many companies prefer those boundaries get ignored.
"It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance."
Maybe it's a triangle or polygon.
It sounds like an oblique way of arguing that Amazon workers should work long hours and are to blame if they're not enthusiastic about this.
All these human resources taking it upon themselves to optimize for 'work/life balance' is debilitating to the business owner's extraction of labour for profit.
From my partying experience, no amount napping helps after a good party. The next day is lost anyway. Unless you plan to hide from your colleagues in that pod for the whole day...
Warehouse work wouldn't be quite so difficult if it weren't designed to come as close as legally possible to breaking people. 8 hour shifts with a overtime caps beyond the 60 hour limit, actual 30 minute breaks and regular task rotation to reduce repetitive strain injury and boredom, that sort of thing.
I'm guessing the concerns of the highly paid Amazonians don't get dismissed with "because business needs," though.
This is maybe only the case for 0.5% of all employees in general. The other 99.5% need a good balance, because work isn't as rewarding, sometimes strenuous, boring, annoying.
Every single dollar you keep is a a dollar I don't get. Just as every single goddamn second your employees spend doing work stuff (including commuting) is a second they cannot spend with their families, pursuing hobbies, relaxing and living their lives.
It's a zero sum. Fk you very much for suggesting that spending time at work is comparable in any way to spending time with your children.
Now we're talking about zero sums, the quantity of tears shed by Amazon employees [1] is not a zero sum. You can fix that and it doesn't mean others will be crying.
The question isn't whether Bezos has talent. The question is how many people on the planet of 7 billion with his luck would have come out equivalent. Not all, no sir, not all. But when I think about him that way, he's not a philosopher he's just another arsehole who believes his bankbalance is relative measure of his worth as a human. Cross the road to avoid such people. Don't work for them.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-...
You cannot have work-life harmony without work-life balance. It feels like Bezos is just splitting hairs and twisting language around so he can seem like he has something deep and insightful to say.
You should work at the wearhouse for close to minimum wage with no party to upward mobility, and then preach about fulfillment - not the wearhouse logistics fulfillment, but career and life fulfillment