Kayla: The 1937 edition of the Songbook is a 54 page monument to glassy eyed corporate inhumanity, with every page overflowing with trite praise to the company with capitals, and it's men with capitals. The booklet. The booklet reads like a terrible parody of a hymnal, one that praises not the traditional christian trinity, but the new corporate triumvirate of IBM, the father, Thomas J. Watson, the Son, and american entrepreneurship as the Holy Spirit. Chris. Kayla, have you ever been in a cult?
Chris: Probably.
Kayla: I mean, actually, wait, I should frame.
Chris: This question based on what we've talked about on this show.
Kayla: Yes. I should frame this question in a better way. Have you ever worked for a cult?
Chris: I almost joined Cutco. I worked at Disney very briefly. I worked at. I mean, yes. Have I worked then? Yes. Companies are cults.
Kayla: Oh, is that. You're claiming that right now?
Chris: That's my final answer. I haven't worked for a tea company, if that's what you're asking.
Kayla: No, you haven't worked for a tea company. We have talked on the show before about how there are some aspects of corporate culture and even capitalism itself that really lends themselves to being candidates on this show. But a recent article in the Economist took this idea a step further.
Chris: An article in the Economist, you say?
Kayla: But before we get to that, I'm Kayla. I am a television writer.
Chris: I'm Chris. I'm a data scientist and game designer.
Kayla: And this is the podcast cult or just weird?
Chris: Welcome to the show.
Kayla: That's it. I don't have any other rent or business, actually.
Chris: Sorry. We do have quick one. Quick business is that there are two more patrons that have joined us.
Kayla: Oh, yay.
Chris: In the past two weeks. And of course, as part of the benefit for signing up for our Patreon, you get a shout out on the.
Kayla: Show or a sing out.
Chris: Apparently it's a sing out. And also, we put you on our show notes.
Kayla: Beautiful.
Chris: Thank you. That's my budding musical career as of right now.
Kayla: Who are our new patrons?
Chris: They are Athena of cavesystem, sort of a longtime friend of the show. At least we've corresponded before. I believe Athena is a tulpa, and they have a system. I forget how many. But anyway, they are now supporting us on Patreon as well, and we are very appreciative. And we also have recently been supported by one Amy Sarah Marshall. Thank you so much to Athena Cavesystem and Amy Sarah Marshall for your support. We really appreciate it.
Kayla: Welcome to the patreon.
Chris: Welcome to our cult. Oh, we're so clever.
Kayla: Get out of here.
Chris: You know, remember how we cleverly named our Patreon levels after, like, there's, like, initiate and cultist and.
Kayla: Yeah, yeah, we thought about changing those.
Chris: So lame.
Kayla: I don't know.
Chris: I know.
Kayla: I I'm uncomfortable now.
Chris: I know I argued against it.
Kayla: We both, our own naming system.
Chris: I liked the lameness.
Kayla: Yeah, it's not that it's lame. I just worry that it's trivializing. But what are you gonna do?
Chris: We're gonna keep doing it.
Kayla: We're gonna keep doing it, and we're gonna keep doing the show. I want to get back to what were talking about before we introduced ourselves. The economists.
Chris: Yeah. You were promising to read me an article directly from the Economist that is.
Kayla: Basically, this episode is a deep dive into one article today from the Economist. I'm basically just gonna read it verbatim. I am not exactly an avid reader of the Economist. Like, I generally have a view of it. It's an overall decent news source in terms of, like, truth telling. Yddeme the facts are probably right.
Chris: I believe they still do journalism.
Kayla: They still do journalism. It also has a noted dedication to a radical, centrist political viewpoint. So it's not really a bias that I jive with, but overall, it's generally considered to have good, rigorous fact checking, which is good, but it's got a high price point, which makes it really only accessible to the wealthy. So that's not good.
Chris: As subscriptions go, it's pretty expensive.
Kayla: How much is it?
Chris: I don't know. It's like, isn't it like $100 something a year?
Kayla: Ew.
Chris: Hang on. Let me check. Oh, actually, sorry. I just looked it up. I was wrong. It's $200 a year digitally.
Kayla: Holy shit.
Chris: It's even more than that if you do digital plus print.
Kayla: Okay, well, that's only accessible to a small portion of the population, so, you know, maybe that's not so good. But clearly they are using some of that wealth that they have acquired to get some pretty decent ad algorithms because I happened to be scrolling our Instagram account one day, and I was met with this. Do you work for a cult company? Take this test to find out.
Chris: There's a test? Was it our criteria? Did they steal it? Because if they did and they charge $200 a year, that means we have, like, a big fat lump of money that we can sue from them.
Kayla: There is criteria.
Chris: There's criteria. It's art. Oh, I'm suing.
Kayla: We'll get.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: This copy was paired with an image of a red background and a businessman figure in the foreground sitting in cross legged or lotus position, wearing business casual dress. He was seemingly levitating above the ground, and his head is stylized as, like, the all seeing eye. So that quintessential illuminati symbol. You think of the top of the pyramid in the american dollar bill, the.
Chris: W in our logo.
Kayla: It's used to quickly connote cultishness, which is why we used it.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: I don't click ads. I clicked this one so fast, my fingers got whiplashed. This was made for us.
Chris: Finally, the algorithm finally got Kayla.
Kayla: I was hoping it would be, like, a Buzzfeed style quiz, like, you know, ten signs you're in a. Your company is a cult, and it would just have, like, gifs from Parks and Rec. It wasn't that. It was. It was a little bit better, I guess. Instead, this is an entire article dedicated to pinpointing the telltale signs of a workplace that has slid into cult behavior, focusing largely on a set of criteria. Criteria. Hey, the article is written.
Chris: Wait, could we seriously sue them? Probably not, man, because that's, like. That's how we monetize this podcast, finally.
Kayla: No, I don't think we will be able to sue, because, in general, I don't think. I don't think you can sue over lists.
Chris: But how else are we gonna monetize the podcast, Kayla?
Kayla: Don't know.
Chris: That is the best monetization strategy. In fact, I've ever. All this, like, oh, advertisers. Fuck that. Sue the Economist.
Kayla: Sue the Economist. The article is written for the Bartleby column, which journalists write for anonymously. I even reached out to the Economist several times to try and track down, like, the actual author of the article, but they did not respond. Like, I think that's a. I think they don't respond to me because who the fuck am I? B. I think it's part of, like.
Chris: Cult or just weird. The people that are gonna sue you.
Kayla: I think that's, like, the purpose of the Bartleby column is that, like, journalists can do their jobs better by being anonymous.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: I think. Actually, I don't. I think that might be, like, an economist principle. I don't know. Whatever. The article is titled, company or cult, the dividing line between firm and sect is often thin. How to tell them apart.
Chris: Yeah, it's tough to tell apart all the different sects.
Kayla: It really is in this day and age. So, for this episode, I wanted to dive into the content of this article as we go along. I'm sure our own experiences are going to come up, and maybe we'll recognize some of what we've gone through in our careers as we dive into the article. Before we jump in, I do want to clarify that we're not talking about clearly identifiable cult companies like MLMs or celestial seasonings and other cult founded endeavors like that would be way too easy. Today we are talking about regular old corporate life in today's economic system.
Chris: Cult or just weird?
Kayla: Let's go. The article starts here are some common characteristics of cults. They have hierarchical structures. They prize charismatic leaders and expect loyalty. They see the world as a hostile place. They have their own jargon, rituals, and beliefs. They have a sense of mission. They are stuffed with weirdos. If this sounds a bit familiar, that is because companies share so many of these traits. End quote.
Chris: Somebody's listened to our podcast.
Kayla: I'm sorry. The writer posits that some cult companies are super easy to identify and, like, literally, basically go like, cough, anything run by Elon Musk. Cough, cough.
Chris: Internet weirdos.
Kayla: Yeah. But as we know with cults, the easy to identify ones are sometimes the least insidious in some ways. Like, okay, at least less insidious. Like, still insidious, but insidious the way that, like, Pennywise the clown is insidious. Were like, yeah, it's scary, but you can see it come from a mile away. I was like, that's bad. But some real danger also lies with the companies that use cult like tactics and continue to fly under the radar. I don't know, like a, like, bozo. They're more like, who's probably, I bet you bozo the clown is the source of more people's fear of clowns than Pennywise.
Chris: Just because more people have more access to Bozo and.
Kayla: Yeah, that's what I. And he doesn't. Look, he's not supposed to be scary, so he's being brought into your life as, like, this isn't a scary thing. This isn't a cult.
Chris: So just so I'm clear here, the metaphor here is Pennywise the clown from. And that's for those of you who aren't Stephen King fans. That's the scary clown from it.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: He's gonna stab you or something, right? Stabs kids.
Kayla: Stab you.
Chris: Stabs kids. I don't know. Whatever. I've actually never seen it.
Kayla: Oh, man.
Chris: But seen it. Capital it. I've never seen it. That's where Pennywise the clown is from. He's a scary clown. Bozo the clown is from.
Kayla: Kids show Bozo the clown.
Chris: Bozo the clown. And you're saying that Pennywise is, like, the amway of clowns?
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: And Bozo is like, no, no.
Kayla: I'm saying, like, Pennywise is like.
Chris: Like, yeah, you can see it coming a mile away.
Kayla: Yeah. Okay.
Chris: Yeah, it's super nuts.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: And then Bozo is, what? Like, the.
Kayla: He's friendly, like the Google of clown.
Chris: The Google of clowns, where it's like, come sit in our nap pods and eat dinner on campus and never leave campus, because you can do your laundry here and you can live here.
Kayla: Thank you for clarifying that analogy. You actually.
Chris: All the money that we're gonna sue away from the economist. Google's gonna come sue from us.
Kayla: So the economist has put together a list of traits or criteria to help you identify if you work for a cult company. And we're going to go through these number one workforce nicknames. I feel like this is something we're seeing more and more of, especially in the tech world. I also feel like it's something that. That's not one of our specific criteria, obviously. But, like, workforce nicknames definitely falls under categories that we have. Criteria that we have.
Chris: Like, is this where you get a nickname at work?
Kayla: No, no. I mean. Okay, so this specifically is calling out things like calling people that work at Google. Googlers.
Chris: Oh, I hate that.
Kayla: Microsofties or pinployees. Bainies. Like, I've also heard that folks who worked at Yahoo were called Yahoos. Amazon.
Chris: Okay, that one makes sense.
Kayla: Called Amazonians.
Chris: Amazon. Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: Facebook employees used to be called facebookers, but when the company changed its name to Meta, it also ruled out a new worker bean nickname.
Chris: Please don't. I don't want to know.
Kayla: Metamates. Metamates.
Chris: I refuse. I refuse to use that word.
Kayla: By rolled out, I mean, it was a big thing. Like, I found a New York Times article written by.
Chris: Wait, it's not just like, casual, like colloquial, no. Groundswell type thing?
Kayla: No, they, like, had a whole big thing about it.
Chris: I hate this.
Kayla: I found a New York Times.
Chris: I did not know I was gonna hate this much.
Kayla: I'm sorry. No, it's really.
Chris: I'm sorry. I really hate this much.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: I hate it so much I wanna barf.
Kayla: And I think that these things. I wanna say that this would fall under our ritual. This would be ritual for us.
Chris: Oh. Oh, yeah.
Kayla: Yeah. Okay, so this New York Times article, it's written by journalists named Mike Isaac and Shira Frankel. And they described a company meeting in February of 2022 in which Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name for his employees. And this new name paired with new corporate values, shifting from things like be bold to now live in the future. Build awesome things. And my favorite metamates, me.
Chris: Is that from Silicon Valley, the tv show? It's like, again, beyond parody. You cannot parody this.
Kayla: Also, it's just like, you're not saying anything with any of that. Be bold. Fuck off. Build awesome things. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that there's no company out there that doesn't have build awesome things is, like, one of their core values.
Chris: Build shitty things, actually, is what you want to do. Yeah. Oh, my God. What happened to movefast and break things? What happened to that?
Kayla: That's old, baby.
Chris: That's old.
Kayla: That's web 2.0. We're on 3.0. We're in the metaverse.
Chris: Oh, shit. I'm way behind.
Kayla: The Economist article also points out these nicknames can get even more and more specific, particularly when it comes to job titles and functions within tech companies in particular.
Chris: Okay, so I can feel me hating what you're about to say. I know I'm gonna hate it.
Kayla: Oh, there's a tongue in. You are gonna relate to this so hard. There is a tongue in cheek call out of the fact that, quote, if you work in the finance team and are known as one of the apostles of the thrice tab spreadsheet, you have already lost your grip on reality. Tell me you have not worked at a company where, like, you could have heard that be thrown around.
Chris: Oh, definitely can think of specific cases, actually.
Kayla: I just remember the word evangelist being used. I feel like we talked about tech companies now where you're like, that's a way of describing a job function.
Chris: Oh, yeah. I mean, that was actually, like, part of my job function was like, we talked about that being like, oh, you were the apostle.
Kayla: Thrice tab.
Chris: Data. No. Data evangelist.
Kayla: Data evangelist.
Chris: Data evangelist.
Kayla: I remember that word being thrown around.
Chris: And, yeah, I kind of want to barf now. But, you know, like, back when you asked me the question at the beginning of this episode of, like, did you ever work for a cult? Like, part of the answer to that question is, like, we've all done some stuff in our past where we all killed a man.
Kayla: We've used to watch him die.
Chris: Yeah, no, I've done much worse things, like work in data science.
Kayla: Like, use the phrase data evangelist.
Chris: Yeah. And, like, I don't, it's not the worst thing ever, but it's just kind of cringe, and I don't know, we're always evolving as people. That's really what I'm trying to say here.
Kayla: And when you're in it's different than when you're looking. You can be on my judgy high horse out here.
Chris: I know. I think I saw friends from the business intelligence team at Blizzard where I worked, listening to this podcast. So I just want to say I don't think any of the stuff we did was lame, but I think maybe if I ever called myself data evangelists that I owe you a beer or you should backhand me or something. I don't know. Not that data is great. Just the title is just. Is kind of stupid. It's kind of cringe.
Kayla: I do wonder if these kinds of nicknames and this focusing on pithy corporate values and whatnot are specific to what I, and I'm sure others perceive to be a rise of jargon. Like a rise in jargon. When it comes to corporate culture, there's always been jargon, obviously, but it seems to be at least getting called out more, which makes it seem like there's more. I mean, we've all heard don't be evil.
Chris: Yeah, that was Google's slogan early on, and then they couldn't handle it, and they stopped. They're like, don't be evil. I guess we have to be evil. I don't know.
Kayla: Be super evil. Move fast, and break things. Like, those are the slogans, and you're hearing jargon like, let me download this, which I hate.
Chris: Let me circle back.
Kayla: Let's circle back. Let's sync up whatever. People make fun of it all the time. I don't need to get into it. But what I heard recently on TikTok was, let's double click into this.
Chris: Ew.
Kayla: Can you think of anything worse than that?
Chris: But I also totally get it.
Kayla: I get it.
Chris: Totally get it.
Kayla: I actually. I should try and find this TikTok that I was watching because it was talking about how corporate, this, like, rising corporate jargon has actually, like, sapped our words of all meaning. When we just. When everything is replaced with jargon, it's actually becoming more and more difficult to communicate with each other. And I kind of can see that. I kind of can see that. Yeah.
Chris: Let's circle back on the deliverables after we.
Kayla: Oh, God.
Chris: Explore some of the synergies here. Now, are you. Are you responsible, or are you accountable for this project? Do you know what a racy matrix is, Kayla?
Kayla: I feel like two weeks ago, I was yelling at you about how much I hate the term deliverables.
Chris: Yeah, I actually don't hate deliverables. That's, like, one of the ones I don't hate, because it's like, that's a word that cuts through some of the bullshit to say, like, okay, what am I actually doing here?
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Here's a big email thread. A bunch of people are sort of, like, expressing some vague desires into the ethereum. What is the deliverable? What is the piece of paper I'm putting on your fucking desk?
Kayla: Deliverables is good. I just have seen it abused so badly.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Have you heard of Rac matrix?
Kayla: No.
Chris: Raci.
Kayla: No.
Chris: Responsible. Accountable. Consulted. Consulted. What's the I? I forget what the I is ignored. Oh, informed. Yeah, actually, yes. So if you're responsible, it means you're actually responsible for. That's like, you're doing the labor. Accountable means you're, like, the project sponsor. So, like, if it goes wrong, you're the person that you yell at. Yeah.
Kayla: The person's the boss.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Person's the peon, sort of.
Chris: And then c is consulted. And that means, like, hey, I need some help on how to do this code. Can you tell me how to do it? And then informed is like, hey, Steve, we're doing this thing. Just so you're aware, that's, like, a whole thing. Racy matrix. It's to, like, help figure out, like, who the stakeholders in a project are.
Kayla: I hope it's helpful.
Chris: Does that even relate back to the show?
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Oh, because you were talking about jargon.
Kayla: Yes.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Kayla: Yes. No, you were talking about jargon. And for the jargon, like, you're trying to facilitate communication. Right. And for the nicknames, you're trying to facilitate, like, a shared identity. Right, right. It sounds nice. You want to have a shared identity. It also sounds culty.
Chris: What would we call ourselves? Culters? Weirders.
Kayla: I don't think we should call ourselves anything.
Chris: Cudgel woo words.
Kayla: I don't think that we should. Not. To me, it's culty to say, you're a googler. You're not a googler. You're an employee. You're a person with an identity outside of your job.
Chris: Kayla, we're a family.
Kayla: No. Hold that thought. Trying to conflate your employees whole identity with their job function feels kind of weird and messed up when you think about it.
Chris: Yeah, I don't even have to think about it very hard. That feels very messed up.
Kayla: As the economist article points out, it could be a red flag that you are working at a cult company to double click into the issue of nicknames, similar trope stripping workers of their identities. The New York Times reported that some Facebook employees reacted to the new metamates name and coinciding corporate value slogans as having, quote unquote, military inspiration or making workers feel like, quote, a cog in the machine. So.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. You know what's funny? Like, we're talking about all the companies we're mentioning here are like tech companies.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: They're like all Silicon Valley companies.
Kayla: Yeah.
Chris: We've talked about doing just like a whole episode on Silicon Valley specific. I guess this is sort of like heavily Venn diagrams into that, though.
Kayla: Yeah, this is that episode.
Chris: Yeah. Cause it has so much influence on the rest of corporate culture.
Kayla: This is that episode. We'll talk about it a little bit. Like, why that is. But yeah, this is. I don't, I hate to conflate, like, all of jobs are tech. Cause they're. Cause they're not. But that's kind of where we're at. The next criteria in the Economist article was corporate symbols.
Chris: Actually, you know what that makes me reminds me of is our, was our third episode on the Irvine company.
Kayla: The Irvine company. Oh, don't worry.
Chris: Cause that was like, the question I think that our music producer asked me was like, what made you think Irvine? I'm like, honestly, it was the logo.
Kayla: Yeah, I had a little bit of a tougher time with this one in my head. I was like, what are they talking about? And then I was like, oh, like logos. Because, yeah, we have talked about logos as symbols and as parts of ritual in past episodes. Like when we talked about the Irvine company. And this article states that, of course, things like uniforms are symbols for certain jobs, but, like, make sense for some jobs and don't necessarily carry an air of cultiness. Like, of course a firefighter is going to dress like a firefighter. You need to dress like that for the safety. Of course a referee is going to dress like a referee. Like, they need the visibility.
Chris: But does the firefighter really have to have the exposed midriff with the six pack?
Kayla: What's the point of being a firefighter if not that?
Chris: I guess you're right.
Kayla: The article also makes a good point that many companies, especially, again, modern tech or finance companies go overboard with this. So, like, think about things like corporate merchandise that are intended for employee consumption. So mugs, hoodies, t shirts, totes. Hats, pins. Like, how many corporate hoodies do you own?
Chris: Lizard swag. I have so much Amazon swag.
Kayla: Corporate swoody is what I said.
Chris: Sorry, it's a sweaty.
Kayla: You own swag hoodie. Corporate swag hoodies. Like you. I know from like places you haven't even worked actually.
Chris: I have a Facebook hoodie just from like.
Kayla: Yeah, you have a Facebook hoodie. You have an Amazon going and touring.
Chris: Facebook with some friends.
Kayla: You have an Amazon one that I stole a bunch of sort of work with.
Chris: We worked. We partnered with Amazon.
Kayla: I'm just saying you have a lot of corporate swag hoodies. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: And I think from Blizzard I have what, like five or six at least. There's like a couple from the dev teams. There's like one that's business intelligence specifically. Then there's like a blizzard one.
Kayla: Did you ever wear them to work?
Chris: Yes.
Kayla: Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I feel like it gets culty. Like, if you're working at Google and like a bunch of people around you, a bunch of googlers around you are wearing Google branded merch. Like, that's kind of weird. I don't think it's kind of weird.
Chris: It is weird, Caleb.
Kayla: It's really weird.
Chris: What are you gonna do? You're gonna go search up on bing, find some new.
Kayla: Find a bing branded hoodie? Yeah, you should wear a bing branded hoodie to your job at Google.
Chris: That'd be baller as fuck.
Kayla: Anyway, it goes back to the quote, like, your job. This is me quoting myself. This is me.
Chris: This is not even great, Caitlyn.
Kayla: I don't mean me quoting myself. I mean, like I was about to say quote, but this is just air quotes. You know, your job is the defining thing about your identity.
Chris: Right. Right.
Kayla: Your job is your identity. Like, I'm sure the argument from corporate relates again to the idea of shared community or, like, feeling like you're a part of something, but it feels like the flip side of that is the flattening identity and the removal of the self in favor of the Persona of worker.
Chris: Yeah, it is a hard line toe because, like, you do want people to feel like they're deriving meaning from their work.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: But I. I don't know. I feel like Silicon Valley frequently takes advantage of that rather than fostering it.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: You know, like, in the old world, it was like, you worked for IBM for 30 years and like, your. Your identity and meaning came from the fact that you, like, worked on, like, oh, I worked on three different projects that were super important and I've been there for 30 years and now it's like, that's not gonna happen anymore. So you kind of have to, like, force it by saying, like, you're a googler, have a t shirt.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: And you're a millennial, so you want to make a difference. Let's go make a difference. That's why all these companies are like, let's make a difference.
Kayla: And also companies. I mean, I can't speak for every Silicon Valley company, but the time of the era of the pension is over.
Chris: What's a pension?
Kayla: Yeah, exactly. So, like, you can't. How do you foster loyalty from your employees when you're not going to take care of them in the long term?
Chris: Right.
Kayla: You. You give them a hoodie.
Chris: Yay.
Kayla: Hoodies make you foster a culture in which the identity is so important that it subsumes everything else. Or as the economist points out, warning signs include pulling on a company branded hoodie at the weekend.
Chris: I've done that, too.
Kayla: Oh, my God. I wear your Amazon hoodie all the time.
Chris: Are we just like, why don't you guys just go watch severance, actually.
Kayla: Oh, we will get to that, my friend.
Chris: Okay. Brought to you by Apple.
Kayla: How different is any of this from the shared community of alike clothing in high control groups like Heaven's Gate with their tracksuit and Nikes or the red robes or the Rajneeshis or the plain dress of the Amish? We can make a comparison in these groups. It's easy to argue that the similar clothing mandated by the group serves critically. We can stand here and go, that serves to strip the followers of individual identities in favor of being part of the shared identity of the community. It's a control tactic.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: Is it a control tactic, then, to hand out Amazon hats to your Amazonians?
Chris: Definitely. So, definitely.
Kayla: That's number two.
Chris: I mean, people that come on the show, I send them a gift. We give them those thermoses, those branded cult or just weird thermoses. And yes, it's a gift, but part of it's like, ooh, that's gonna make them remember us fondly, and maybe they'll drink it at work. Their place of everything's a cult.
Kayla: You can't give somebody a gift or else it's a cult.
Chris: That's not what I'm saying, kayla. What I'm saying is there is a. It's not like I'm sending them like a meat basket from Omaha steaks or something, right? Like, I'm sending them branded swag for the podcast, which there is an element of self serving there. There really is. Just to admit it.
Kayla: Here's something we don't do. This is number three on the list on the criteria. Listen, surveillance. This is something that I think has gotten worse for some jobs during the pandemic, especially office jobs that turned into work from home. Surveillance is kind of an extreme form of micromanaging. So it's keeping track of your employees every move. Some corporations use tools like mouse and keyboard trackers and alerts the boss if there hasn't been a tap on the keyboard or on the mouse for an allotted amount of time. Or there is screenshotting software that takes random shots of employees computer screens throughout the day and sends them to management.
Chris: Fuck whoever built that, literally, you're going to hell.
Kayla: Those are like hard surveillance. There's also softer surveillance of just status monitoring that comes when a company uses a system like slack. So slack has a color coded icon to kind of show if someone is.
Chris: How idle they've been.
Kayla: Yeah, if you've been idle, your circle is yellow. If you're at your computer, if you're at slack, your circle is greenhouse.
Chris: This is giving me anxiety, as you know. I'm sorry. I'm, like, freaking out here.
Kayla: Now, many office workers have talked about this, like, soft surveillance phenomenon during the work from home period of the pandemic in which managers will hound them about their status colors throughout the day, letting it like, oh, why were you yellow for an hour and a half during lunch? Your lunch is an hour. Like that kind of thing, which serves to communicate to the employee, like, you are constantly being watched. My job as a manager is simply to watch you do your job even when you are not in the office.
Chris: Can't even tell you how much I hate that. I viscerally hate that. And you know what else is fucked up? And maybe you're gonna mention something about this, but, like, we, most of us are knowledge workers. Like, we're not working in a coal mine where it's like, you mine x amount of coal per hour. Therefore, we want you down there for 7 hours. This is like knowledge work. It comes in fits and starts and, you know, there's points when you're in flow and points when you're not. And so, like, I just, I don't understand. Like, it's just such a mismatch between, like, management style, which is, like, the most positive way I can refer to that mismatch of management style when it. You know what it really should be about Kayla? Deliverables.
Kayla: Okay, I'm gonna skip right past that and say it feels like the extreme micro management of. Of non office jobs coming into the office. So it makes me think of, like, how Amazon drivers, like, are having every mile monitored and, like, cannot stop because they. To even go pee because they're, you know, the package. The amount of packages are, like, constantly logged and monitored.
Chris: Kayla, if you want to pee, you can get this Amazon swag colostomy bag. Okay.
Kayla: It's branded this Amazon water bottle that serves as a water bottle. And then your bathroom. Or again, to talk about Amazon, the warehouse floor workers are heavily monitored. Like, you cannot take bathroom breaks. You cannot do x, y, and z. I've heard the bathroom breaks thing come up a lot in talking about warehouse work or food services where managers are monitoring how long employees are going to the bathroom. And it's like that. So it's taking that extreme micromanagement and moving it into and adapting it for a work from home job, which I don't know who thinks any of these are good ideas? People are dying on Amazon warehouse floors because of these practices.
Chris: You didn't tell me I was gonna need a stress ball for this episode.
Kayla: Sorry. I did the research. It's funny that you are, like, sitting there stressed out because the next thing I say is, this level of surveillance is crazy making.
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: How can somebody feel like they are being trusted to do their job if there's somebody constantly looking over your shoulder? How can you feel safe and secure in your life if every trip to the bathroom might be met with somebody standing out there with a stopwatch being like, where are you? Either sending you a message or being like, TikTok. TikTok. This is simply a high control tactic. It's not good management. It breeds paranoia. It makes me think about the peer monitoring system that was present in things like twin flames universe, where members were encouraged to observe and snitch on other members if they were doing the wrong things.
Chris: Yeah. If you're on social media during company time, that's theft and you should report it.
Kayla: Even though time theft from employees is a way bigger problem.
Chris: Oh, yeah, way huge.
Kayla: Huge.
Chris: You know, I just. I get very, and by definitely mean.
Kayla: Not paying workers, like, overtime that they are duly owed.
Chris: Right. The thing that really grinds my. The thing that really boils my pickle about this whole thing is that I don't like who thinks the research is done. Like, yeah, there's tons of literature out there.
Kayla: Like, this is not good for anyone.
Chris: Literally, this is a known. Like, this is a studied thing. Like, we have heavily studied this because people really do give a shit about productivity. And, like, everything points to, like, people need agency and autonomy, and they need to feel invested in their. Like, all of this is, like, literally counterproductive, like, in the most literal sense of that word.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: It just. I don't. I don't get it.
Kayla: I don't get it. But that's why. I mean, I. Here's me going out on a limb and saying, like, did not common sense. Like, the being counter to sense and common sense is kind of what makes it feel cult adjacent, because it's like, it's in that arena of, like, applied insanity. Like, you're. We say we want high productivity, and then we actively employ managers or empower managers who are encouraged to use tactics that stifle productivity, let alone the morality of it, let alone the morality of working warehouse employees to the bone and not letting servers take longer than five minutes in the bathroom or having somebody literally monitoring your slack away symbol. I don't know.
Chris: It's very puzzling.
Kayla: It's very puzzling.
Chris: But you're right. I think that part of it that also makes it feel cultier is the. Like, this isn't even good for you.
Kayla: Well, it feels like the importance is put on instilling fear in the employee. And that's what makes me think of the fear of being watched like a hawk. And every move that you make is observed and can and will be used against you. We see that in twin flames universe. We see that in Scientology and NXivm and the Amish. And that can make it difficult for people to leave cult like groups. So maybe it's that installation of fear that becomes the priority.
Chris: Yeah, right. Maybe it's less about the productivity and more about the chains, which is kind.
Kayla: Of what backfired in the pandemic, specifically with these, what you refer to as knowledge jobs or office work or white collar jobs, where people have the ability to leave those jobs. When we're talking about the more exploited labor class and we're talking about retail food service, warehouse work, a lot of those folks are not empowered to move on to other jobs, whereas you go a class up to, you know, you and I sitting in our chairs at home, we can make the choice to go, you know what? Fuck this company. I'm going to go somewhere else. Like, this kind of surveillance feels like it can quickly lead to burnout and, like, create negative feelings and resentment towards your employer. Like, it's a good way to get people to quit. And we've seen that because now we're seeing headlines about, like, the great resignation.
Kayla: And that's because people are fucking pissed off and fed up, because it's not a good way to work.
Chris: Yeah. So you just reminded me of something that a friend of ours sent us a while back. This feels like its own little maybe Patreon topic. We'll see. But above the API versus below the API.
Kayla: Ooh, interesting.
Chris: Do you remember that?
Kayla: No.
Chris: That little article lit thing. Basically the idea, it comes from the entertainment speak of above the line. Below the line where above the line are like the actors and the director, and below the line are like your more labor intensive folks, the grip and.
Kayla: The cinematographer and the electricians and the makeup and the hair.
Chris: Yeah. So API is a programming term, means application programming interface. So it's basically just a way for, like, one program to talk to each other. To talk to another one. That's not really important for this. What's important is that it's above the API means you are essentially. What it breaks down to is, are you telling the computer what to do or is the computer telling you what to do? If you're telling the computer what to do, you're above the API and you're making bank and you're a knowledge worker that can move around like you were talking about and can afford to, you know, throw your weight around. If you're below the API, you're being told what to do by computers and you are a lot less marketable.
Chris: And so there's this vast divide between, like, it basically means, like, are you coding or the coding? Or is the code telling you what to do?
Kayla: Fuck the code.
Chris: Fuck the algos.
Kayla: Okay, the next one is a good one. Rituals.
Chris: I've heard this criteria.
Kayla: Companies will often create, encourage, and perpetuate rituals as forms of team building or morale boosting. And to do something called. Or what I'm referring to is corporate culture formation. Some examples cited in the article are, like, badges and awards handed out to employees for recognition of various forms of achievement. So think of, you know, employee of the month photos or when you got your sword from working at Blizzard for five years.
Chris: I love my sword.
Kayla: Your sword is. I can literally look at it right now and I love it so much.
Chris: Literally. People, like, their career paths are altered by this fucking sword. And the shield. The shield. The ten year shield.
Kayla: Right?
Chris: Like people. Absolutely. I've heard multiple stories where people are like, well, I kind of want to look for another job, but I'm getting my sword in seven months, so I'm just gonna hang on for that.
Kayla: Sure.
Chris: And then I'm like, it's like seven months of, like, massive salary difference and change in your life's trajectory. But you're like, I want the sword.
Kayla: Right? Right.
Chris: And it's not even wrong. It's like, that's not a wrong choice, but it's really interesting.
Kayla: Walmart has a company cheer that employees are supposed to yell or chant before they start their day and even think about doing things like birthday cakes for employee birthdays or when the ladies of selling sunset ring the big office bell when they sell a house. There's also companies that do company wide retreats, like the talent agency. CAA. I think it's CAA. They might all do it. I don't know. Historically have these big company retreats where they go and do team building exercises and have lectures and bond together, or there's family picnic days.
Chris: Trust falls.
Kayla: I don't mean to say that every activity a company might put together or encourage is a ritual, but also. Yeah, I kind of do. I kind of do mean that.
Chris: The last two things you said, I kind of feel like company picnic is more or less fine, especially if it's optional.
Kayla: Fine doesn't mean it's not a ritual.
Chris: Especially if it's optional.
Kayla: Fine doesn't mean it's a ritual.
Chris: But I think. Okay, so I'd say that's. That's, like, low ritual content, whereas the. Like, these retreats, I feel like, tend to be very high ritual content because you get these, like, that's where you get the motivational speakers on the workshops and the Kohl's and the. And that's, like, literally every time you see a documentary about this bullshit, they always have this, like, wework had that.
Kayla: Beyond CM had that. And then you, like, have to stab a nail through your hand.
Chris: Right. All the mlms have that.
Kayla: You can handle it.
Chris: Yeah. Yeah.
Kayla: I mean, we know that from doing this show that rituals are everywhere. And, like, almost any activity can really tip over into that bucket, given the right context. So, I mean, I love a good weekly happy hour or bagel Friday, or, like, a company outing to the movies or axe throwing or bowling, but, like, in the right context, axe throwing.
Chris: That sounds dangerous.
Kayla: Yeah. And not axe bowling. Axe throwing and bowling.
Chris: Did we just invent a new spirit?
Kayla: Oh, my God. Were you throwing axe at the pins? I play that. Those can fall under the label of ritual, especially if their intent is to strengthen corporate culture at the sacrifice of the individual identity. I even found a research paper written by two Stanford researchers named F. Cursat Ozink and Margaret Hagen titled ritual crafting team rituals for meaningful organizational change. That claimed, quote, this research shows that organizational rituals are most desired for increasing creativity, resilience, and cohesion among team members. It also shows that a ritual design framework can allow for organic, democratic culture building.
Chris: So it's like, should we be doing a culture?
Kayla: Just weird ritual if we want to culture build democratically. Jargon, jargon. But does that make the presence of rituals at your company culty? Well, look, I mean, maybe not, but yes. If you worked at IBM in 1937, then definitely, yes.
Chris: Sorry.
Kayla: Because apparently IBM had a songbook, so.
Chris: Wait, so IBM had their doors open in 1930. What did you say?
Kayla: The company was founded in 1911.
Chris: Get out of here.
Kayla: I know.
Chris: They hadn't invented computers then.
Kayla: What, were building punch cards. And. They did a lot of punch cards and stuff like that. Punch cards.
Chris: And then they became IBM.
Kayla: Yeah. All right, so they had this songbook. It was published ten years before, so it was originally published in 1927. And I think it was around. I think it was around for a while. The copy I found online was from an updated 37 edition. And it opens with this for 37 years, which. That's not true. The gatherings and conventions of our IBM workers have expressed in happy songs the fine spirit of loyal cooperation and Good Fellowship, which has promoted the signal success of our great IBM Corporation in its truly international service for the betterment of business and benefit to mankind, an appreciation of the able and inspiring leadership of beloved President Mister Thomas J.
Kayla: Watson, and our unmatchable staff of IBM executives, and in recognition of the noble aims and purposes of our international service and products, this 1937 edition of IBM Songs solicits your vocal approval by hearty cooperation in our songfests at our conventions and fellowship gatherings. End quote. Okay, so cold, cold.
Chris: I can see why communism was making a lot of headway during this time.
Kayla: Well, I read from. I read this ars technica article about it by writer Hutchinson, and he explained that this fierce loyalty probably had to do with the fact that this was during the Great Depression, and people actually were maybe very grateful for these jobs and actually did feel a really intense sense of loyalty, but, yeah, also communist. But, I mean, were super anti communist at the time. This was like the first. I guess I can't say it's the first red scare, but there was a red scare happening at the time.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, but that's the thing. It's always like, there's. There's never like a. We were this, right? It's like there were people here that were kind of. There was an american communist party, and then there was like a communist scare party who was like the, you know, probably Republicans. I don't even remember. But it's always, you know, there's always multiple elements.
Kayla: So this writer, Lee Hutcheson, describes the songbook like this. The 1937 edition of the songbook is a 54 page monument to glassy eyed corporate inhumanity, with every page overflowing with trite praise to the company with capitals and its men with capitals. The booklet. The booklet reads like a terrible parody of a hymnal, one that praises not the traditional christian trinity, but the new corporate triumvirate of IBM, the father, Thomas J. Watson, the son, and american entrepreneurship as the Holy Spirit. So remember how you mentioned severance earlier? Tell me this does not feel like severance. Because if you haven't watched severance yet, go watch severance on Apple TV.
Chris: And also. Spoiler alert.
Kayla: Spoiler alert. I mean, this. I'm not going to get into too much of a spoiler, but they treat the company handbook as if it is like religious text. Yeah, religious text, gospel text. Like that is what they treat it like. And this felt very similar. Obviously, this is not the company handbook. Yeah, but it is a company songbook. And like, when you go through it's. Okay. First of all, it starts with my country. Tis of thee and the Star Spangled Banner. Because.
Chris: Yeah. Rah rah. Patriotism, naturally. Yeah.
Kayla: And then it moves on to ever onward the IBM rally song. And I'm just gonna read you all of the lyrics.
Chris: I don't think that.
Kayla: A wish I knew. I wish I knew the tune. So this is ever onward IBM rally song written especially for the international Business Machines Corporation. There's a thrill in store for all for we're about toast the corporation that we represent. We're here to cheer each pioneer and also proudly boast of that man of men, our sterling president. The name of TJ Watson means a courage none can stem. And we feel honored to be here toast the IBM in the choruses.
Kayla: Ever onward, ever onward that's the spirit that has brought us fame where big but bigger we will be we can't fail for all can see that to serve humanity has been our aim our products now are known in every zone our reputation sparkles like a gemdez we've fought our way through and new fields we're sure to conquer too for the ever onward IBM second chorus ever onward we're bound for the top to never fall right here and now we thankfully pledge sincerest loyalty to the corporation that's the best of all. To the best of all our leaders we revere. And while we're here, let's show the world just what we think of them. So let us sing men once or twice, then sing again for the ever onward.
Chris: IBM, could you do, like, a rap version of that?
Kayla: I could not.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: But somebody maybe could.
Chris: Somebody probably could, I'm sure. Yeah. And it definitely feels like it's not just the good book, it's also the reverence to the founder.
Kayla: Oh, guess what happens after that.
Chris: That is some weird ass shit, man.
Kayla: After this song, there are half a dozen songs dedicated specifically to praising Thomas J. Watson himself.
Chris: Like, that's literally what we do in church. Like, catholic church.
Kayla: It's like he's a deity. And, like, they're set to tunes like auld lang syne, like other popular tunes, and it then continues in that fashion. So there's songs then praising various high level corporate officers in the company at the time, and then there's songs specifically praising the various departments of the company. Okay, so you've got gems like, Thomas Watson is our inspiration, head and soul of our splendid IBM. We are pledged to him in every nation. Our president and most beloved man. His wisdom has guided each division in service to all humanity. We have grown and broadened with his vision. None can match him or our great company. TJ Watson, we honor you. You're so big and so square and so true. We will follow and serve with you forever. All the world we must know.
Kayla: All the world must know what IBM can do.
Chris: Again, that literally sounds like a catholic hymn of praise. Yeah, that's. Why do they have this? Why does IBM have, I don't know, a hymnal?
Kayla: It was a thing. And there's a lot of songs. I mean, it's 54 pages, and, like, I could go on and on and on again. Like, it's. It's intense.
Chris: But, like, here's the bonus content. We are gonna sing one of these songs for you guys.
Kayla: Oh, yeah. Because it tells you what tune the songs are. And I'm gonna link to the songbook and the Ars Technica article about the songbook so that you can go through and read this for yourself, because it is a lot. And this is a song. So this is for employees to get together and sing with each other at events and gatherings.
Chris: I'm sure they spontaneously want to sing praise to the company founder.
Kayla: As the economist article says, if you are regularly chanting, it becomes sinister. So, number five on the list.
Chris: Sorry, what were the first four again?
Kayla: I don't know, workforce nicknames?
Chris: So that's, like, googlers and stuff.
Kayla: Corporate symbols.
Chris: Right? Okay. Logos and that. Okay.
Kayla: Surveillance.
Chris: Right. Surveillance. Right.
Kayla: Rituals.
Chris: That's the one we just talked about.
Kayla: And now we are at doctrines, which we basically already covered when we had the discussion about workforce nicknames. Okay, so again, think about like, the updated metaverse company values, which Mark Zuckerberg called the company's cultural operating system. Like, quote, cultural operation system.
Chris: Good God.
Kayla: Cultural os.
Chris: Mark, we know that you're not a human.
Kayla: We know he's a robot lizard. Amazon has their 16 leadership principles, which include pee in bottles so you don't have to stop driving or working.
Chris: It's a good leadership principle.
Kayla: Or die on the floor. No, actually, sorry. Those are the applied company values. What they say their values are things like customer obsession or strive to be the earth's best employer.
Chris: I've heard of customer obsession for them.
Kayla: Leaders are right a lot. Like, that's one of them. It's technically, it's are right a lot because I think they realized you can't say leaders are right a lot, but it's are right a lot. And then when you read what it's about, it's like leaders are often right.
Chris: Okay.
Kayla: The Economist puts it succinctly. If values are treated like scripture, you are in cult territory.
Chris: And Blizzard had eight core values.
Kayla: I think that a lot of companies have this, and I don't think it's wrong, but I think, yeah, that one's tough. Kind of a red flag when you're Facebook and you have to roll out a whole big thing of, like, you're changing your corporate values. Like, who gives a fuck?
Chris: Yeah.
Kayla: And like, Amazon, like, what the. You're really saying that, like, you strive to be Earth's best employer when you're union busting. Like, it doesn't mean anything.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: It's cover.
Chris: Right?
Kayla: Like, you're providing cover for your shitty tactics.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, Blizzard's run into some of that stuff too with, like, some of their values didn't necessarily align with what was going on. And I won't, like, go into all that now. But, you know, but then some of them were good too. Like, so I think that, you know, the one that was cited most often was the, you know, the first core value, which is gameplay first.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And that was frequently cited as sort of like a justification for, you know, what we should be working on. What's the priority? Like, why is it important if we do X or Y? And, you know, if x meant better gameplay, then we would try to do X instead of Y. Right? So I think that in terms of, like, getting people on the same page about stuff, sure, maybe some of that's okay. But I also think we probably could have gotten away with just that one core value. Right.
Kayla: So when you get to, like, eight and 16, I'm kind of like you guys. The scope is too big and not focused enough. And I don't even know what your company is anymore.
Chris: Yeah, yeah. And, like, I could probably name, like, six or seven out of the eight now still, but, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. It's hard, I think, just to kind of go back to what I was saying. If it's something that it kind of helps people align on a goal, and that's probably not a bad idea, but then once it gets out of hand, then it starts becoming red flaggy.
Kayla: I think that's the takeaway for most of these, is that when it starts to be, like. When it starts to be too much.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Not good. So last but not least on this criteria, listen, I've got everyone's favorite word when it comes to the workplace, the f word. Family.
Chris: Fuck off.
Kayla: Family. Which, yeah, fuck off. Do I even need to expand on this? If your company constantly calls itself a family, or says, we treat each other like a family, or we're one big family, just be prepared for a shit show.
Chris: Like, unless you're Dominic Toretto, then it's okay.
Kayla: That's not a job. It's them pulling a job.
Chris: Yeah, it's jobs every day.
Kayla: But it's a family doing a job, not, I'm the boss of the store and you're my family.
Chris: We're family.
Kayla: It's my opinion, and I am not alone in this, that pulling the family card in a company setting means that employees can just look forward toxicity. Like, it is a way to emotionally manipulate underground workers to dedicate more of their precious time and mind space to an organization that's, like, probably underpaying them and, like, exploiting the fruit of that manipulation. So don't use it. Don't do it. The Economist also points out that it is a manipulation tactic to engender loyalty. Research conducted in 2019 into the motivations of whistleblowers found that loyalty to an organization was associated with people failing to report unethical behavior. And the defining characteristic of families is that you never leave, end quote. So it's like, if you're more like, this is a family, you might sweep things under the rug because.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: That complicates boundaries, and you may feel unable to extricate yourself, because, like, how do you leave a family? Now, think about how many cults have also used the word family like this. The Manson family, the australian doomsday cult. The family. The family International, a christian cult originally known as the children of God. There's many others. It's. It's. It's a bad sign.
Chris: Yeah, it's not good. And, like, you know, I think even if you don't have family in your title, there's often, like, a brother and sister nomenclature within.
Kayla: You know, like weird mom and dad.
Chris: These are all my brothers. And I kind of think of the leader as sort of like our dad.
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah, that's. Now, we've probably all worked for companies at one time or another that referred to themselves as families. And we've probably all got a handful of fucked up stories from working at those companies. So if you're an employer, stop calling your workplace a family. Especially if you require your employees to do, like, two jobs for the price of one. Or you want them to, like, be on call after work hours or cover shifts themselves, or at the last minute, or participate. Or participate in exploitive workplace events like weight loss challenges or potlucks. Like, if you're using the word family to get people to be more like, pliable to doing these things, fuck you. And if you work at the place like this, I'm sorry.
Kayla: I hope you can find a new job soon where you have defined hours and can turn off your phone and hire managers who don't run things lean.
Chris: I simply would recommend not emotionally manipulating the people that work for you.
Kayla: That would be good. That would be good. The Economist article ends with a handy evaluation tool that goes like, if none of the above resonates, rest easy. You are not an occult, but you are unemployed. If you recognize your own situation and up to three items on this list, you are in an ordinary workplace. If you tick four or five boxes, you should worry, but not yet panic. You may just be working in technology or with Americans and losing your sense of self may be it for the stock options. If you recognize yourself in all six items, you need to plan an escape and then write a memoir. Now, of course, this article is somewhat tongue in cheek, but like, only somewhat. That little, like, bit at the end of like, you're just. You're. You're not.
Kayla: You're unemployed or you work in an ordinary workplace, or you're working in tech or with Americans. Like, that's. Yes, it's tongue in cheek, but also, it's not.
Chris: That's why it's that's why it's funny. It's funny because we're all like, that's me. Oh, God.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Oh, but it's. It's actually not funny, is it?
Kayla: It's funny. It's serious. As we talked about while going through this criteria, these things are all red flags that you're working for an organization employing tactics similar to high control groups. And the unfortunate reality is that companies like this are probably far more common than they're not. I'm saying probably just, like, cover my own ass. I would. Gun to my head, I would say way more companies are like this than are not.
Chris: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Kayla: It just seems to be rampant in corporate culture these days. And you and I, you kind of hit on this earlier. Like, I'm saying, this is probably thanks to the outsized influence of the tech industry on corporate culture as a whole, because, like you said, they're so influential. And tech companies seem to be very prone to cult like operations, to a recruiting, like, cult prone people, and then creating a cult like environment. Maybe it's also a natural byproduct of just, like, entrepreneurship and capitalism. Like, it makes me think about when we. We've watched those. Those documentaries, like, the WeWork documentary or the inventor about Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, or even, like, the Fyre Fest documentaries. So much of what goes on in these stories, like, it presented as big and crazy and, like, holy shit.
Kayla: Can you ever imagine, like, being asked to suck a dick to keep your job?
Chris: Like, literally what happened in the Fyre Fest doc, by the way, I don't know actual reference, but when you really.
Kayla: Drill down to what's going on, it's a charismatic leader building a dream based on promises, hoping that they can expand big enough to actually reach said dream before the paper house of promises they built under themselves collapses. That seems to be the story of so many legitimate companies or entrepreneurs that then succeed.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. That's when were watching, and this is obviously, like, nothing new. Like, this was what the documentary was trying to communicate. But when were watching both Fyre Fest and the inventor, it was very clear that, like, this isn't, like, some crazy person. This is somebody following the formula.
Kayla: Right, right.
Chris: Like, Elizabeth Holmes was not like, yeah, maybe she was, like, a little more, like, echo than the average, but not really. Like, she's really was just very much following, like, the Silicon Valley model startup, you know, move fast and break things model, you know, fake it till you make it model. And. And that's what the. You know, it's so. It's not like. Like Theranos was. Yeah. They didn't have any of the science behind it. And yeah, a lot of venture capital companies did pass up on them. But. And that's a whole other thing is like private equity. That's a problem regardless. That's not like an outlier. That is the standard.
Kayla: Right. And the. The whole thing that's presented with Theranos and Wework and all this stuff where it's like the leader is promising a bunch of crazy stuff that they don't actually have, but if they just could get. If they can get to a certain point, then they will have it and it will all be like, the story that they have told will come true. That's how Uber has the corner on the transportation market isn't because they were so good. It's because they literally did not make, quote unquote, make money. Like, they operated at a deficit. Is that what it's called?
Chris: Oh, yeah. You are not. If you're making money now, you are doing it wrong.
Kayla: Right. They just.
Chris: They, like, literally. I'm not like, exaggerating. You go to a. You know, you go to investors now, nobody's gonna invest in you if you're showing revenue.
Kayla: Right. Right.
Chris: Like, that's. That is a thing of the past.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: You want to be losing money because if you're losing money, then that means that you are growing. And the model is grow, grow until you own everything. Until you are the only. Until Uber becomes the only transportation option. And then they have the monopoly. And then they charge monopoly prices and they own everything. And that's the model now.
Kayla: Right.
Chris: And it's fucking nuts because remember when.
Kayla: Uber started, it was like, wow, how can they charge these prices? How can they charge such low prices, undercutting any other taxis or other rideshare service around me? Wow. How can Uber. They couldn't afford. They could not afford those prices. And now we're paying the price for that because now they're like two or three times more expensive than the remaining taxis that exist.
Chris: Amazon lost money, famously lost money for decades.
Kayla: Right? So when we go like, wow, it's crazy that, like, Elizabeth Holmes, and I'm not defending Elizabeth Holmes at all, and she ruined lives and she took people's money and she did a lot of bad stuff.
Chris: Yeah. She was a grifter, to be sure.
Kayla: She was telling a story and hoped that she could work hard enough, get other people to work hard enough and invest enough money in her so that she could make that story a reality. And that is what Billy McFarlane was doing, and that is what Adam Newman of Wework is doing. And they all exploded. But Uber succeeded. Steve jobs succeeded.
Chris: Uber is. Jury's out a little bit.
Kayla: Oh, is it really? I mean, I guess I haven't watched the new show about Uber with Joseph Gordon Levitt, so maybe I'll do it.
Chris: I know. I know. I'm like. I don't know if I want to. I'm like, I've. Okay, that's the thing. It's like, I've seen theranos, doc. Do I want to watch the, like, theranos for cars, doc? I don't know. Like, obviously they're not theranos. Obviously, they, like, provide a real service that people have benefited from, myself included.
Kayla: But they're also technically scabs.
Chris: Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're huge.
Kayla: The reason why they operated differently from cabs at the beginning is because they didn't have to have all of the regulation. Regulations that cabs have part of. Because of, like, the fact that regulations make our car safer and make our ride share drivers safer, and they are part of a union, and Uber came in to, like, undermine the union stuff, so.
Chris: Right.
Kayla: Fuck you guys. This type of.
Chris: Fuck uber.
Kayla: Fuck uber. This type of cultiness is just. It is all around. It's all around, and it's. It's probably not going away anywhere sometime soon.
Chris: It's not going anywhere.
Kayla: We are all experiencing this all of the time. And, in fact, I wanted to hear directly from some of our listeners if they have, like, what experiences they have had, what culty behavior have they encountered from companies they worked at? And shockingly, of course, people have had shitty experiences. Let's talk about a couple of them. A listener named Sam shared this experience after being overworked and underpaid. I quit a job. And when my direct supervisor found out, he told me how disappointed he was that I was leaving because he believed I would be the one to rise up and succeed despite how poorly he thought I was doing at the job.
Kayla: This is the same guy who would simultaneously yell at me for messing stuff up and tell me I couldn't be trusted with harder stuff until I did better, when were always rushing on everything.
Chris: It's like, literal abuse tactics, basically, yeah.
Kayla: Can you think about, like, think about how fucked up it is and, like, how much of a mind warp it is to, like, yell at and berate an employee constantly while they work for you, and then, like, the second they stand up for themselves and their own life. You then pull a 180 and are like, oh, but you were the chosen one.
Chris: That's why I'm saying it literally sounds like abuse where it's like you beat the shit out of someone and then they're like, I'm gonna leave. And you're like, I love you, baby.
Kayla: Yeah. It's manipulation to the nth degree. Another listener named Britt shared this. They said, I don't know if I can explain in a tweet, but here goes the cult of western healthcare, where doctors are God, nurses are angels, and lab rats, which are texts, push buttons and get questioned, undermined by the docs and rns when our results don't make sense to them. I used God and angels as a metaphor for hierarchy, but I also had a teacher in lab school lecture us that doctors are God and they get what they want. So that felt pretty culty. So like feeling disempowered to criticize or like getting punished for criticizing higher ups, like toxic culty, referring to higher ups as literal gods culty.
Chris: Also, aren't the lab tech supposed to be presenting unbiased data and results? And you have God saying, this is wrong?
Kayla: That's pretty pathological brits experience. And it sounds like this is something that was being taught to their fellow classmates.
Chris: Not good.
Kayla: Not good. Finally, a listener named Claire shared this experience of working in academia. My first job out of college was in a research lab. It was pretty much immediately made clear to me after I started working there that members of this lab worked seven days a week. I started on a super legal. I started on a Tuesday and had worked nearly 60 hours by Sunday. I had to specifically request when we not schedule a procedure that took 8 hours and had to end at about 11:00 p.m. For incubation time reasons. On a Saturday, because I was moving apartments, I needed to have any time off at all. Another week. I came in at 10:00 p.m. On a Saturday because I had to handle some cultures but was hoping to avoid running into anyone else.
Kayla: And one of the other employees was still there looking like he wasn't heading out anytime soon. All this to say that one day my boss asked me to speak to a prospective postdoc who was looking to join the lab. And when I came back and talked to her about this person, she was sort of laughingly like, sounds like she's really interested in the idea of a work life balance. So I don't think we have quite what she's looking for here. Laughing at the idea of work life. Like laughing at the idea of work life balance, laughing at it. When the underpaid people working for you are going on day seven of seven, working a back breaking gig, laughing at the idea of work.
Chris: Yeah, man, I've been there. The video game industry is notorious for this. And I've definitely been in conversations where there was a, I won't say which companies and whatever, but there was a particular team at one company where part of the promise that they had been hired under was this work life balance. And so far that company had been, like, pretty good about providing that. But then when they were, like, partnered with another group were working with, that was more like more video game culture, let's say. Okay, like, there was like conversations, like, oh, those guys, like, man, they're so lazy. They can't keep up with the work and blah, blah. Oh, it's because they do like 40 hours weeks over there. Like, there was just like this sort of disdain amongst full gamer. Yeah. Amongst the video game folks.
Kayla: Yeah, it just, I hate to hear that story. I hate to hear all these stories. It really sucks that most of us have stories like this. Like that. Almost anyone you talk to has been employed, who has been employed can share an experience that showcases the more toxic extremes of the criteria discussed in the Economist article, which, again, is about. Is your company a cult? I'm not really sure what's to be done about it. I think that unions are probably one of our best bets at empowering workers and rooting out toxic management and bosses at the source, or at least being able to fight against them.
Chris: Starting a podcast and bitching about it, that's venting.
Kayla: But I don't know if it's gonna change anything. I still think it's the unions.
Chris: I think that, I guess they could help, too.
Kayla: It's been heartening to see labor and pro union movements springing up across the country in so many sectors and many of them in the same sectors and fields and companies we've discussed, like the Amazon unions and like Starbucks unionization. So maybe, I don't know, join a union if you can, organize your coworkers if you can, and share your stories if you can. I appreciate this article calling out the cultiness of corporate culture so starkly. I think this is one of the circumstances in which dragging the truth into the light is one of our best defenses. So if you're being mistreated at your job, if you're experiencing these red flags, and if you're safe to do so, drag your stories into the light. And if you're not sure, take this mini test in the article and brace yourself.
Chris: This is Chris, and this is Kayla. And this has been cult or just your workplace?