Humane Guild

Difficult experiences can be compounded by our tendency to keep them private. It’s no surprise that we do keep uncomfortable experiences private. There is a lot at stake: hanging on to a paycheck, protecting our reputation, preserving future opportunities.

Are we protecting ourselves by keeping quiet? Or are we protecting the people and systems that create the problems in the first place?

I read a LinkedIn post last week by Bonnie Dantonio (McGuire), an email marketing manager who recently left a position at Spotify. She writes about being put on a performance plan without prior negative feedback. She says HR agreed the surprise was a “red flag” for the manager but pushed her to “learn to communicate with (her) boss better.” She ended up quitting and leaving without a goodbye from the manager or the manager’s boss.

It’d be easy to walk away from a situation like this and pack it away. I’d be likely to blame myself. That self-doubt would keep me from sharing the story outside of my closest contacts for fear that people would think less of me.

One of the post’s comments gave voice to this pressure:

I come from a different generation, but still, this kind of thing happened all the time when I was climbing the career ladder, and I would never, ever lay out all the details for public scrutiny as you did, and I would never dis a whole company because of a bad boss. I might write a letter to HR stating the facts, so that a future employer might have access to all the straight data, but never burn a bridge. Never.

"…never burn a bridge. Never." Does this advice hold when there’s something personally destructive on the other side of that bridge?

There are also plenty of comments highlighting Bonnie’s bravery in sharing this story. I think there’s deep value in sharing stories of self-protection. It is a lifeline to people in similar situations who might otherwise end up blaming themselves in dysfunctional environments.

Whatever your perception of Bonnie’s story there is a power differential at play. Dropping someone on a performance plan without early feedback or achievable guidance is toxic management behavior. Pushing someone out of a job instead of first helping them succeed is incredibly harmful. Keeping quiet about that keeps every other person in a similar situation suffering alone.

If we find the courage to talk openly about uncomfortable experiences at work we will empower people to challenge the practices creating harm. We can connect and share techniques for coping with broken systems. Instead of worrying about the bridges we burn we can build a more resilient network on the other side.

Links

The reality of Big Tech’s ‘fake work’ problem

Tech companies hire a bunch of people without serious plans for them. Weak leadership holds on to people “like Pokémon cards” to build power. They get shuffled around in reorgs and eventually, get laid off.

Many of the individuals quoted in the story are anonymous. After all, it’s hard to talk openly about a resume entry where you’ve done very little, even if you wanted to do more.

The workers at the frontlines of the AI revolution

Global outsourced workers are the first to feel the impacts of generative AI, both in feeding the models and in adapting to it. Many are folks already displaced from a prior field into outsourced work. The article includes visual examples of one-for-one AI vs human generated work.

Curiousity vs Defensiveness 2 minutes

This one is a very quick personal awareness tool. There’s a line. On one side we’re open to learning and listening. On the other, we’re shutting things out. Use this simple model to build awareness of which side you’re on throughout the day.

Thinking Time Slack app

Chat apps like Slack are essential to remote work but they tend to favor the quickest responders leaving some people on the outside of conversations. The Thinking Time Slack app gives people time to think about a prompt. It gathers responses from everyone and shares them all giving everyone a chance to influence the conversation.