It’s a job. Even if you love your team, it’s a job. When it no longer serves your life, you can leave. When it’s overwhelming to you, you can take a break. If the rest of your team is overwhelmed because you took a day off or left shorthanded because someone left for a better job, that’s management’s problem. You didn’t create this “do more with less” strategy around hiring. They did.
Most managers and even former peers are under strict orders never to say anything, positive or negative, when contacted as a reference for a former coworker.
To paraphrase, HR and legal folks know that if the former employee doesn’t get that position, everything they say will be used against them in a future legal claim that they harmed the job prospects of a former employee unfairly.
So it was somewhat shocking to see the CEO of Intuit not only say this but put it in writing:
Most hiring managers have a short-term problem. They have work that needs to be done and not enough bodies to do that work. The easiest thing to do is hire another body just like the ones they have working for them. Many of them may understand the benefits of having a diverse team regarding broader life experiences with different voices and ideas, but that’s a long-term benefit. It’s not solving their short-term problem. Hiring another member of the team is a short-term solution.
Many people who make hiring and firing decisions don’t think about AI as a tool for better work-life balance or increased productivity in their workforce. They are planning on replacing their workforce. These are likely the same ones who view layoffs as a strategy to tweak stock prices and see employees as numbers on a financial statement instead of human beings. Increasingly, they are being put in charge by shareholders who see employees similarly – a bothersome cost.
We should not be surprised that younger generations want to blow it all up.
You’d better be adaptable because your job will change whether you do or not.
I find it interesting that the same people who only want to hire “the most qualified” person also want to limit themselves to hiring only people who live in the vicinity of their office and are physically able to be in the office 8-10 hours per day, five days a week. It seems that leaves out many talented people who might be better qualified. Can your company compete with just that labor pool in a global economy when others search the world for talent?
If foreign companies poach American workers to work remotely, they might know something you don’t.