Walmart exec: 'I've never believed in the term work-life balance' | Hacker News Reader

Walmart exec: 'I've never believed in the term work-life balance'

cnbc.com

39 pointsmooreds22 comments

I’ve worked in an org where our CEO had the same sentiment. He preferred the term “work life satisfaction” . Worst thing was, if you really prodded him on it it became clear the definition was basically the same. He just didn’t like the negativity some people had when talking about work life balance.

We all had to quietly nod in agreement in those meetings and then literally everyone else openly talked about work life balance regularly. Being on the hiring team in that company quite, quite often the phrase comes up in interviews. Even our head of HR, thankfully, wouldn’t regurgitate the weird language around that to potential hires asking about work life balance.

Ultimately, executives are just humans. Humans have flaws and sometimes those flaws materialize in pedantic phraseology. People hope their execs are these perfect all-knowing individuals and that’s just never the case. It’s a combination of _some_ amount of competency and a whole lot of luck that put them there in all cases.

No. Execs are not "just humans." They are enormously privileged, often not due to skill but due to proximity / birth, and there is no excuse for this kind of behavior.

You want to make buckets loads of money and tell other people what to do? Then you need some empathy for workers who aren't stakeholders making peanuts compared to you. That is the most basic of basic requirement to be in such a position of privilege.

It isn't "just human" to be a slave driver. It is criminally inhumane. I can only hope these people will face some kind of karmic justice for their gross inhumane negligence.

Based

Same at Amazon. Bezos often talked about "work life harmony" which he liked to say instead of "balance." His reasoning was that balance implies a zero-sum tradeoff in which more dedication to one takes away from the other (a characterization he didn't like).

But simply calling it "harmony" doesn't magically make those tradeoffs go away.

Cool, cut his comp by 100x and ask him again the same question.

Her. Donna Morris is executive vice president and chief people officer at Walmart.

And it's base of $250k salary plus all the bonuses, often blowing out to over $1M a year. I'd guess she's in the $5M+ range, a year.

Awesome, then a 99% reduction would bring her comp close to the median US income (and higher than a Walmart associate who has to live on food stamps).

Much better position to make an informed comment about work life balance.

I'm fascinated by people like this. Why would you give up the ability to have uninterrupted interactions with family and friends in exchange for running Walmart? I know the answer is money but I would assume that, at a certain point, you have more than enough money to do literally anything you want in the little bit of time you leave yourself to not be working.

I would understand if she was running a huge charity; she would feel that interrupting family time is a sacrifice she makes to improve the world. But, Walmart is just a mechanism to extract value from customers.

> I know the answer is money but I would assume that, at a certain point, you have more than enough money to do literally anything you want in the little bit of time you leave yourself to not be working.

Technically, you're correct. But I believe that a different phenomenon is at play here. That is psychologically, the more money you have, the less likely you're to be satisfied with what you already have, regardless of what use you have for it. (Meaning, the richer you are, the greedier you become.)

This may be not be entirely correct at the lower end - there may be an inflection point below which you're too poor to be satisfied with what you have. But the craving is almost always increasing at large wealth levels.

Addiction to the job. Look up workaholism.

I imagine it’s common amongst high achiever, type A personalities that may end up in executive roles.

“I’ve never believed in the term work-life balance,” says Morris, who oversees the experience of over 2.1 million employees. “I call it work-life integration. There are times that your life requires a lot more, and there are times that your work requires a lot more. … I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

My interpretation: The "Chief People Officer" at Walmart doesn't want to be responsible for making sure that the people who work at Walmart have a good work life balance.

Does anyone know if Walmart pays more than its competitors?

it’s a very reasonable take: you can’t simply balance work and life at a particular ratio. You must adjust to the demands at the time. Otherwise both work and life will eventually need more than you initially allocated them.

Whether “work life balance” ever meant “fixed work life balance”? For some I imagine. Integration makes it clearer that it’s specifically not that.

(None of this means you should assign “too much” time to work, nor should employers violate labor laws to require you to work without being compensated).

The problem is that most work takes more of your time when they deem it necessary, but never gives back when the pendulum swings.

In my country supermarkets are all run by literal teenagers and a few "older" floor managers who are in their 20s. Very cheap.

Some addition perspective questions I would have.

What is her compensation ratio vs the minimum paid employee?

Are exempt employees compensated (stock?) in some capacity for being available at any time?

How do you monitor that managers are being good role models and/or helping to set boundaries? Without a company plan/objective, the only people holding the company to account is the individual, and they only power they have at the end of the day is to leave.

Whatever the Chief People Officer of any company has to "say" is plain PR and as such can't be taken seriously...

That can be generalized a bit more. Whenever an executive with a designation starting with 'chief' gives some sort of advice to ordinary laborers, be very very skeptical and suspicious. There are exceptions to this rule - especially in startups, small companies and among domain specialists. But it's always a good idea to think deeply about who benefits from these advices, before accepting it.

HR people are usually the least humane people on the Org chart. They often will include the worst offenders of out-of-touch views and often privileged lives whilst championing their own self interests yet gate keeping the ability from anyone else. HR is a disease - the worst of the worst .

“Work-life integration” has superseded “work-life balance” for more than a decade now.

Neither works, hence the huge draw of working from home.

“When Morris is visiting family, for example, her main focus is on them. But if there’s something at work that needs her attention, she won’t wait until she’s back in the office to do so”

So, not really focused on family then

Puff piece

> Walmart exec: ‘I’ve never believed in the term work-life balance’—this is the mantra that made her highly successful instead

Did the mantra change again? Wasn't it called 'hustle culture' previously?

> For some, the term can mean not working nights, ... While this divide may give you a sense of happiness and fulfillment, it isn’t always realistic

Actually, it can be anything from 'mandatory' to 'completely impossible' depending upon who sets the limits.

> “I’ve never believed in the term work-life balance,” says Morris, ... “I call it work-life integration."

I admire the rich people for their ability to cook up intelligent-sounding alternative terms on a dime! However, based on the elaboration of the concept, 'work-life disintegration' sounds more appropriate.

> When Morris is visiting family, for example, her main focus is on them. But if there’s something at work that needs her attention, she won’t wait until she’s back in the office to do so.

What an inspirational example! I will remember that for the day when my compensation also justifies such dedication.

> Morris’ insight comes as young professionals are demanding more out of work, ... Along with an inadequate salary and burnout, lack of work-life balance is one of the top reasons why Gen Zers would quit a job

Hmm. Sounds more like Morris' demands vs Gen Zers insights. I mean, how can someone think about jumping back into work at midnight when they are constantly worried about paying their rents and transportation costs?

> The pursuit of work-life balance can also cause mental distress

As opposed to?

Option A: Working unpaid/unlimited extra time

Option B: Being on call 24x7

Option C: Being on text with boss during your child's football match

Option D: Any arbitrary combination of the above

> We hear these things from others, [like] trust in the process [and] balance is so important, we need more balance, it’s the ultimate goal

> It ends up being very frustrating and can lead to anxiety, because we’re constantly feeling like we’re not in balance.

So you become distressed by aspiring to be peaceful and satisfied? Is that like being sad because you want to be happy?

Forgive me for being cynical. It's completely fair for well paid (often exorbitantly) executives to have standards for their responsibilities and dedication. But when you project the same onto young employees, some thought must be given about their spare cognitive and emotional capacity after their struggles to make two ends meet. When leaders start recommending 50 year mortgages, your first priority must be to evaluate the compensation that these employees are paid, as a percentage of the value that they generate, instead of peddling idealistic, if not inhuman standards using language of subtle guilt tripping. A bit of sensitivity will take you a long way in these troubled times.

“I’ve never believed in bringing your true self to work. The motto is: fake it till you fake it again”

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