> My take on work is that it's getting more exploitive, more administrative, less fun and less satisfying. Between politics and policies and management, work is asking much more, not physically but in terms of behaviors and beliefs. It's a new kind of exploitation we haven't really faced before.

Maybe I’m showing my age, but I have to disagree hard with this idea that working conditions are worse in 2021 than they were in the past.

Modern jobs are quite comfortable and flexible relative to what was expected a few decades ago. Companies today bend over backwards to retain employees. I’m not exactly old, but I’m old enough to have experienced a significant shift toward better treatment of workers.

At the upper end (e.g. us engineers earning above-average wages), the level of employee pampering we get at modern tech companies feels unreal, even outside of the stereotypical FAANG offices. The amount of flexibility, respect, and attention showered on us (meaning tech workers) now is miles ahead of working conditions decades ago.

Just ask anyone who worked through past recessions what it’s like to work in a crowded job market with far more workers than jobs and where everyone is trying to outperform each other to avoid the next round of layoffs. It’s nothing like our job market today where you can walk out of one company and into another in a matter of weeks or days.