The perks are great and the work is fine

Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric.

Our family did a lot of home cooking before pandemic. But over the past two years, we've done a lot more.

It's been a good excuse to learn new dishes and, in some cases, entirely new culinary traditions. But nowhere has the impact been felt more deeply than in the pantry drawer - home to an array of spices, most poorly labelled and of unknown provenance.

How badly does the recipe need paprika? And how trustworthy is this container of paprika at the bottom of the drawer? Also, does anyone remember whether this is hot or sweet paprika? Cause one of those means the kids won't eat it.

Most recently, we got to the bottom of some red chili flakes. This isn't so remarkable - they go in lots of things - but they also come in really big bags. So outside of carbon dating, it's hard to know how long this specific batch had been there.

We fished around, found a new bag, and started cooking with it. And, because we had no reason not to, we put in the same amount we were using before.

On the surface, the ingredients were identical. On our tongues, they were not. 🔥

Not all chilis pack heat

People often want to know if all orgs of a certain size or stage or phase are the same. Our nonprofit folks want to know if all nonprofits are as weird as they sometimes feel. Our startup people wonder the same but they typically cite chaos over weirdness. And our BigCo bosses want to know how their challenges line up to what we see with other orgs.

It's one of the things that's the hardest to assess from the inside. How many of the things where you shrug and say, "well, that's startup life" are actually startup life? And how many of them are actually a commentary on your specific company?

It's not predictable in the way you'd expect, even when orgs share similar markers. Be it size or stage. Investors or customers. Even whether they are remote, in-person, or hybrid doesn't have much predictive power.

As far as we know, there's no Scoville ranking for tech companies. But within moments of starting work with a new group, we can spot it.

Do they talk to each other while we're warming up? Are they goofing in the chat? Are their cameras generally on or off, and how long do they wait to answer a question? How vulnerable are people willing to go, and how quickly? We've always seen a broad spectrum of company cultures, but right now the differences are particularly stark.

Some companies have an energy that's infectious. And others show up like a group of people here to do their job in as quick, and sterile, and inoffensive a way as possible. And you can see the disengagement from space.

Everyone is really nice

People walked out of their old jobs. And when they walked into new ones, their shields were up. They were fresh out of fucks to give – and they spent their last one on fuck you, pay me. Reading chapters of Work Won't Love You Back in between orientation sessions over zoom.

They didn't come asking for meaning, or flavour, or for work to delight them. They came with boundaries and a list of expectations. And, listen: that's a good thing. It's extremely healthy for workers to want things like limits on working hours, competitive pay regardless of geography, and an ability to shut off work when they aren't at work. We should hope that those gains, as uneven as they've been, outlast any pandemic or economic cycle.

Those changes are necessary. But they aren't sufficient. Like a shopping mall food court, we're surrounded by companies shouting about what a good deal they're offering. Globally competitive salaries! 4 day work weeks in summer! Free dipping sauce! And in the midst of it, it feels like more people than ever before are finding their work really... bland. Like in the fight to compete for attention, employers have forgotten to build a culture worth fighting for.

"Everyone is really nice" is the least interesting thing you can say about an organization. It's like saying your favourite seasoning is pepper. You are fooling precisely no one.

Fixing the wrong problem

Faced with that blandness, a lot of leaders are pushing back-to-office plans. They have nostalgia for the flavour of a packed and humming office, and feel like if people would just get back in there, it would fix things. Like just being in the building together will do it. But instead what they get are objections:

Hotel desks sound good, but the booking system is crap and not all desks are the same and the good ones get sniped.

I'm in the office two days a week as required. But my days don't overlap with the people I need to work with. So I'm just in zooms from the office, with shittier coffee and less comfortable pants.

My commute is 45 minutes each way, if I catch the right train. Where I then sit being coughed on by people who refuse to mask.

And every objection is punctuated with the same implied question. And for what? You already know it but, "because the CEO said so" is not a very compelling answer.

We will travel for good food. We will walk 5 blocks and wait in the rain for good food. There is a special energy, a comfort, and a sense of community to it. But it's not the building that makes the trip worth it.

And if you’re a remote boss chuckling at the woes of the in-office bosses right now, you're not off the hook. You may not need folks to get on a train. But you’ve likely noticed more black boxes in the all hands meetings. Or fewer folks in the optional, remote culture-building activities. It’s ok, because the advice is the same, regardless of where you’re cooking.

Season your damned food

It's time to tell the story again, bosses. Get your house in order on compensation and workload and expectations, for sure. But once you've done that, it's time to remind yourself why anyone should care.

You may find this surprisingly hard at first. Why does your work matter? What impact does it have on the world around you, and why should someone who doesn't care about the details of your industry give a shit? We don't mean some sanitized corporate mission statement. We mean your own, real, authentically felt, dare-we-say-it-spicy sense of purpose.

Connect with that story. Tell that story. A modern one, with fresh spices. You want your people to feel it, to put the fire back in your organization. And you're not gonna get there with the version that's been sitting at the bottom of the drawer since 2019.

- Melissa and Johnathan