OMG....our suspicion is always true..

The reality of Big Tech's 'fake work' problem​

Inside the perverse system of 'lazy management' that's wrecking the tech industry

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When Graham was hired by Amazon, it sounded like his dream job. He was brought on as a research scientist to help develop features for Alexa, the company's ubiquitous voice assistant. Graham, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, assumed he would soon be using his expertise in machine learning to work on cool, new features that would make Alexa more personal to every user.

But within four months of his start at the company, it became clear that Amazon had no idea what to do with him.
He spent the next two years bouncing around — switching teams, watching project leaders get promoted despite, he said, producing nothing of substance, and generally spinning his wheels.

Graham was paid more than $300,000 a year but had little work to show for it. Feeling adrift with nothing to do, he gradually disengaged from his job and was eventually put on Amazon's formal performance-management plan.
 
As tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of employees this year, venture capitalists and executives have leaned on the term "fake work" to describe the output of employees like Graham.

The layoffs are necessary and even prudent, the argument goes, because thousands of workers at Big Tech firms such as Google and Meta are sitting around trying to look busy while doing very little productive work.

"There's nothing for these people to do — it's all fake work," Keith Rabois, a famous tech investor, opined at a March event hosted by the investment bank Evercore. "Now that's being exposed, what do these people actually do? They go to meetings."
 

The reality of Big Tech's 'fake work' problem​

Inside the perverse system of 'lazy management' that's wrecking the tech industry

HOMEPAGE

Subscribe

When Graham was hired by Amazon, it sounded like his dream job. He was brought on as a research scientist to help develop features for Alexa, the company's ubiquitous voice assistant. Graham, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, assumed he would soon be using his expertise in machine learning to work on cool, new features that would make Alexa more personal to every user.

But within four months of his start at the company, it became clear that Amazon had no idea what to do with him.
He spent the next two years bouncing around — switching teams, watching project leaders get promoted despite, he said, producing nothing of substance, and generally spinning his wheels.

Graham was paid more than $300,000 a year but had little work to show for it. Feeling adrift with nothing to do, he gradually disengaged from his job and was eventually put on Amazon's formal performance-management plan.
The whole point of frenzy hiring is to give investors a false sense of growth and make them pump more money into the company.
 
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