Citadel CEO Ken Griffin: Remote work makes it easier to fire people
fortune.com
fortune.com
People are assholes online. Sometimes even trolls. But in real life, they're often just respectful normal people.
Heck, you wouldn't say that Ken Griffin is full of shit to his face if you met him but you said it on an online forum.
Edit: I think I should be clear that the face-to-face element of it does make it that much harder. I remember having to fire someone face-to-face multiple times. Each time, it made me very nervous because I don't know how this person would physically react upon receiving the news. I also built real human connections with them so it's extra difficult. I believe that remote work makes this process far easier on both the manager and the company. In fact, I believe that managers would subconsciously choose to fire the remote worker over the in-person worker if all things are equal.
For those who didn't read the article, the main point is in this quote:
>If your boss doesn’t know you personally, they won’t stick their neck out to save your job.
I'll take the perks of remote work every time, even if it means me being humiliated in my firing.
Also, remote work doesn’t mean you don’t have relationships with people. You can build amazing relationships with remote situations (sometimes much stronger than office relationships) if you… I don’t know… manage your company well?
Here's the main point:
>If your boss doesn’t know you personally, they won’t stick their neck out to save your job.
They might say it in in-person conversations with their colleagues.
Yes there's a level of detachment that comes from being online, but the bigger distinction is more 'who' you are talking to.
I really don’t think this is the case and it really doesn’t match my personal experience. Especially under their true name, people behave as they would talking face to face.
You see, it's more damaging for you to be an a-hole in person in the (open) office because then everyone can see and hear you and know who you really are as a person, but in chats you can be as dickish and as dismissive as you like and nobody else, especially your boss will be the wiser thinking still that you're a great guy.
This behavior is more difficult to pull off in the office where everyone can see what you're up to and your boss can come up to you saying "hey Anton, can you please stop playing World of Tanks and help Joe solve that issue?" versus WFH where Anton can paly world of tanks undisturbed while complaining he can't help anyone right now because he's super busy.
It's not universal behavior of course, and I'm not advocating for RTO or workplace surveillance, but exclusively 'on-line' presence does tend to bring out the worse in some people, especially out of those who are not contempt with their job they chose and will do anything, other than quit, to not do their duties and hold others back.
And not surprisingly, was based entirely off comments on Twitter.
Bit of a tangent, but it's like the reddit crowd that's convinced of how the world works without much experience (think the /r/antiwork or /r/fuckcars. It's just easy to be cynical. I heard the argument recently that you should be weary of cynical people, because if they think everyone is shitty they're more likely to accept it and be shitty themselves. If you think the person driving a large car is just an asshole (as opposed to someone with a big family), you're more likely to be an asshole and let the air out of his tires
There is so much discourse on HN (and elsewhere) that everyone agrees with and you just read and you're like they clearly have no idea what it is to actually be in the situation they're talking about.
But how does that connect to remote work? Remote or not, your manager knows you personally.
You severely underestimate people if you don't think some people would curse him out to his face. I worked for him as an employee of a subcontractor. They wanted NDAs not only from the place I worked, but wanted to bind me personally to their NDA. I told someone who directly reports to him something much stronger than they're full of shit.
Dude is a toolbag, no matter how much money he has.
Honestly I feel all these RTO rants are so unnecessary since if you get a remote job just keep it if you like. Or change a job if you don’t feel like to RTO, that’s the only ACTUAL action you can make impact. Instead of “telling” employees RTO is bad for them.
So I’m willing to take the worse for the better. I don’t give a shit if your 6’3 and give a firm handshake, there’s too much bloat in the workforce and I don’t think personal relationships are all that important here.
If a manager never sees you, and you produce a difficult to sell output, then he's not gonna suffer reputational damage for your sake defending you and your reasons for being X or Y on the output. If you produce an obvious advantage, then yes, but it's not everyone, and not every year: you will need, at some point, for someone else to do something for you.
If not, no big deal anyway: you can just be fired and move on. But it's never gonna be about firm handshakes, it's about trust even in temporary failure.
Some may want to ignore this, but like you said at some point it becomes quite expensive to ignore, so you’d rather have something quite valuable to sell to compensate for it.
I find it's not just technical people but everyone, everywhere seems to have irrational understandings of the nature of business and of the employer-employee relationship.
I think there is merit to everything you say, if you’re flying blind and wondering why anything happens to you
but if you objectively don’t care and work with integrity towards company output, none of the reindeer games matter
yes, in a tighter job market where you have no savings all those things in your current job and those prior relationships matter
if you want to reject that at the risk of being poorer, people are saying that’s fine too. if thats the reason you’re not financially stable: understandable, good for you for keeping a work life balance or prioritizing your mental health
people aren't trying to say you’re inaccurate, only wrong in the sense that it’s not a necessary way to live and they aren’t going to pretend that it is anymore
That said, you just need a single yearly offsite to turn strangers into friends and improve cohesion, without sacrificing flexibility, productivity and life quality by forcing everyone to a dull office in a polluted city.
> A disconnected—some might say unfeeling—workplace will be a “wild card” as industry leaders try to guess the unemployment rate going forward, Griffin went on.
yes, it is in fact the same ken griffin.