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Harvard Business Review was valuable in the early stages of the pandemic — now two years ago, ROFL — when people had to make certain decisions they had never made before, and a leading business journalism voice needed to step up. In the last few months, they’ve become essentially insufferable, with articles like “how managers can increase flexibility without reducing productivity.” These types of articles are literally almost the entire problem with modern work.
See, it is true that a lot of managers think in this way: that “productivity” and “flexibility” are completely diametrically opposed. No. That’s not true. To have a really nuanced discussion, you need to first admit that probably 53% of the economy can’t really experience “flexibility” because they work in food or retail, and they need to physically be somewhere during a shift to produce or provide. Now you get into the other 47% and maybe half of that bucket can truly work from their fourth bedroom converted into a “study,” which is usually the high middle manager class and above. Executives barely work anyway; they show up for the big things and do the deals. They’re not on the grind 10 hours a day, although they constantly tell you they are. This is all kind of how the white-collar game is played.
