The term Expectation Debt fits a lot of what I was talking about earlier this year. This is a paragraph about Amazon, but you could write the same thing about Microsoft, Google, Zoom, and many other tech companies.
Expectations were so high in 2021 that investors and employees had to achieve extraordinary things just to break even. When results were merely good, they felt terrible.
Check out the episode. There’s some interesting discussion. Sadly, even when asked for something positive to end on, the guest had nothing. That’s kind of what working in tech feels like, doesn’t it?
But in other areas of life, that’s not at all how the game works. War, business, education, etc. are not finite games. It’s not clear who all of the competitors are, the rules change and there’s no one “score” that everyone has agreed upon. Maybe most importantly, it doesn’t end at the allocated time, it goes on and on with some of the competitors giving up over time and dropping out of the game.
The problem Simon identifies is that when the game is infinite, but you play it as if it were finite, you end up in a quagmire.
This is the power that more and more employees realize they have. To hire you as an employer and to fire you when you no longer fit their needs. If that bothers you, if that offends your sense of loyalty to the workplace, do me a favor. Go to Google News and search for “layoff”. Do a little light browsing and tell me what loyalty has to do with anything.
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