Why Gen X corporate peacocks hate WFH
For once, it is my own generation that has sinned against the young people
This [WFH] trend, significant in itself, also marks a change in power relations between managers and workers. Behind all the talk about “water cooler conversations” and “synergies,” the real reason for demanding the physical presence of workers is that it makes it easier for managers to exercise authority. The failure of “back to the office” prefigures a major realignment of power relationships at work.
John Quiggin's Blogstack, 25/2/24
I've long found it interesting that those who are so passionate about everybody returning to the office full-time tend to almost exclusively be in well-paid, upper-management/ownership positions, have a short commute to their workplace (a real issue in cities such as Sydney), most likely have an office (with a door they are free to shut), are very likely to be treated with respect and deference while in the office – rather than, say, be reprimanded or belittled in front of their peers by an ambitious middle-management type – and either don't have young children or are in a financial position for one parent to take an extended period of time off work to raise those children. Just sayin'.
Me on LinkedIn, about a week ago
I’ve somehow become the kind of person who leaves comments under LinkedIn posts. Not only LinkedIn posts I have some conceivable connection to, such as ones authored by friends or colleagues. Recently, I’ve been spiralling downwards and commenting on LinkedIn posts randomly.
Such as one relating to this WFH article in Mi3. If you’ve got time, the article is well worth a read, but you’ve probably read countless other articles just like it. As expected, those near the top of the org chart insist everyone get back to the workplace ASAP. Even though the evidence would now seem conclusive that people can work just as effectively from their living room as they can from a soul-crushingly bleak cubicle poorly illuminated by a malfunctioning fluorescent tube.
(I’ve always found the WFH debate a little disingenuous given nobody knows better than business owners and senior managers that you can work from anywhere. Howard Hughes was able to run his vast business empire from a series of hotel rooms for much of his life. And that was half a century ago, well before laptops or the ‘laptop class’ were invented.)
The introduction to the Mi3 piece, written by Nadia Cameron, sums things up:
Some bosses think the work-home-flexibility balance is “out of whack”, crunching productivity and profitability and allowing people to ‘take the piss’ – especially at agencies. Others insist those who put in the office hours and face time will get promoted faster and get paid more – particularly younger staff because “human economics” always prevail. Yet for every frustrated CEO, there’s a story of success and an advocate for a two-way model between employer and employee. So how far should agencies and corporates return to an old Gen X way of working – often brutal hours and fostering presenteeism – versus building a new future of work?
WFH reporting now has a numbing predictability. The bosses point out it’s in white-collar workers’ interests to return to the office. White-collar workers reply, “Fuck that for a game of soldiers! If it was OK for me to work remotely back when it suited my employer, why should I now be expected to waste hours commuting to do tasks I can complete from my living room?”
Speaking of which, while my unasked-for LinkedIn comments tend to be rightly ignored, my most recent one, reproduced in full above, went viral. Well, as viral as you can expect a LinkedIn comment to go.
Several people liked my comment. One well-mannered gentleman was even moved to offer some (all too rare) positive feedback, writing: “Absolutely accurate take Nigel Bowen. ‘Natural laws’ as witnessed solely by those who want to witness them.” (One of the higher-ups interviewed for the article had commented, “This isn't about discriminating against people, for example, or those who want more flexibility than not. It's natural rules playing out you can't avoid.”)
In the current political and geopolitical environment, the employer threat that’s proved so devastatingly effective for the past three decades – ‘Do what we say or we’ll ship your job overseas’ – has lost some of its force. Nonetheless, few employers can resist the temptation to gesture threateningly at offshoring when being interviewed about WFH issues. But standard operating procedure now appears to be pointing out, more in sorrow than in anger, that recalcitrant staff will miss out on opportunities for continued employment, mentoring, promotions and pay rises.
Not, you understand, because any C-suiter would be petty enough to sabotage the career of an impudent minion who had the unmitigated gall to defy their wishes. But rather because that is simply the natural order of things. (I sometimes wonder how so many fully remote companies continue to exist despite violating all the known laws of the business universe.)
Which side is seeing reality more clearly?
Consider the following curious fact.
The officers are, by and large, determined to get their armies back on the battlefield full-time, or as full-time as they can manage. (Only the most optimistic reactionaries still hold out hope for five days in the office.) The enlisted men and women, by and large, remain determined to confine themselves to their barracks.
There’s no shortage of C-suiters insisting their AWOL direct reports are only harming themselves. However, you’ll struggle to find any of those direct reports being quoted saying, “Yeah, I gave the WFH thing a go but soon realised all the supposed upsides were illusory. I’ve now come to understand I should hightail back it to the office so all those higher-ups so eager to lead Thursday night ayahuasca ceremonies can start working their corporate-culture-building magic.”
This is surely the one thing everybody can agree on with the WFH debate. Those who give orders yearn to spend the maximum possible time in the office. Those who take orders seek to avoid the office altogether, or at least spend the bare minimum of time there.
Just when I think I’m in, they pull me back out!
Nobody cares about Gen X, and many young people aren’t even aware it exists, so I’ll try to keep this brief.
The Boomers have dominated Western societies for the past 50 years. With shameless self-interest, they have deployed their demographic and hence political heft to fashion a world that remains extremely Boomer-friendly. As I’ve noted on several occasions, that’s had unfortunate consequences for all subsequent generations, but Gen X has paid an especially terrible price.
For historical reasons (a birth rate-crimping economic downturn followed by a bloody global conflagration), the Boomers entered a workforce where there weren’t many people above them. As a result, many of them rocketed up the career ladder. The Boomers then spent decades jealously guarding all the good jobs they secured early on. (I wrote an article for the Fairfax papers as late as 2008 wondering if my Gen X peers would ever get a chance to shine.)
At least during the early stages of their careers, the Boomers were benefited by (a) a strong economy and (b) a vibrant union movement that ‘encouraged’ managers to treat junior staff with more consideration than would otherwise have been the case.
In contrast, Gen Xers entered the labour market after the post-war boom had petered out. Many graduated from high school or university during an economic downturn. Of course, unions have continued to exist. But a handful of exceptions aside, they were already well on their way to being neutered by the time Gen Xers started entering the workforce.
Not a few members of my generation have spent time on the dole. Unemployment, especially youth unemployment, was a serious issue in Anglosphere nations from the mid-1970s onwards. Thankfully, Australian workers have had a relatively good run since the mid-90s. But plenty of American and British Gen Xers lost their jobs and, in some cases, their homes during the GFC.
But let’s not even focus on the many Gen Xers who have struggled.
Let’s concentrate solely on the winners who have reached the top of their field. Perhaps these Gen Xers have never had any problems securing a job. Maybe they’ve never been made redundant. Possibly they’ve always earned a good income for their age and consistently felt a reassuring sense of job security. In fact, let’s just posit these fortunate Gen Xers have encountered no great hardships in either their lives or careers to date.
It nonetheless remains the case that Gen Xers were cockblocked by the Boomers for an extraordinarily long time. Typically, Gen Xers have reached the Mahogany Row Promised Land at an older age than their Boomer predecessors. Indeed, it’s only really in the last decade or so the Boomers have started drifting into retirement in workforce-reshaping numbers.
Gen X has belatedly been handed the reins of power. But – and I can’t emphasise enough how common a historical experience this has been for my benighted age cohort – now the rules have suddenly changed. Gen X heavy hitters got hardly any time to sit on their long-lusted-after Iron Thrones before all the courtiers decided they no longer wanted to schlep to the palace.
The tragedy of the Gen X corporate peacock
I was aware of the phenomenon of ‘corporate peacocking’ before I first saw the term a few days ago. The last time I weighed into the WFH debate, in mid-2022, I began my post by imagining a scenario where a Patrick Bateman type is left devastated by his inability to publicly humiliate his 21C because he’s the only one who has shown up to the office.
But my fellow Substacker, the
, aka Andy Spence, deserves all the credit for what may come to be known as ‘Corporate Peacock Theory’.Spence argues managers want to return to the office not for any of the reasons they commonly state but because they wish to engage in corporate peacocking:
Like male peacocks displaying vibrant plumage to attract mates, managers can showcase their status and contributions better when working onsite. Activities like swishing their feathers at all-hands company meetings or buying post-work drinks. By bringing workers back to the office, managers can better signal their dominance in the corporate pecking order.
Due to a perfect storm of demographic, political and technological factors, the chance for Gen Xers to shake their bossy tail feathers has been cruelly snatched away.
The leaders of 2024 can’t expect to have their ‘team members’ laughing uproariously at their jokes at Friday night drinks. They can’t look forward to Bright Young Things – the kind who wouldn’t piss on them if they were fire in any other context – hanging on their every word during watercooler chats. They can’t stride purposefully around the office while affecting a Churchillian mien, barking commands at lesser mortals.
Even if they are entirely satisfied with their pay, conditions, responsibilities and title, the Gen X senior manager is prone to believing they have been gypped. I suspect it’s this feeling of being (yet again) cheated, rather than a selfless concern for maximising productivity, that’s motivating many high-powered Gen Xers to shrilly – and often impotently – issue return to work mandates.
What is to be done?
Before the pandemic hit, the bosses had had the whip hand for as long as anyone could remember. Gen Xers got into the habit of asking “How high?” whenever anyone in a position of workplace authority told them to jump.
This is not the sort of deference those Gen Xers who’ve successfully reached the top of the greasy pole have enjoyed. Even before a bat kissed a pangolin in Wuhan.
If the business press is anything to go by, Gen X heavy hitters are desperately hoping the full employment era will end soon. And that “entitled” workers will revert to the pleasing compliance they displayed from 1980-2020.
That may happen, especially if scads of white-collar work gets automated away soon. But as I’ve pointed out once or twice in these digital pages, after four decades of Capital being overwhelmingly dominant, Labour now seems to be (a) growing scarcer and (b) growing more combative.
If neither an economic downturn nor wide-ranging technological disruption puts the Gen X managerial/ownership class back in the driver’s seat, they will eventually have to work out a WFH modus vivendi with their youthful subordinates.
I’ve run out of time and space to explore what that grand bargain might look like. But if it is to prove durable, I suspect allowance will need to be made for Gen Xers to indulge in some corporate peacocking. Perhaps of the digital variety.