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Work ≠ Family

One of the dumbest narratives out there.

Ted Bauer
4 min readFeb 19, 2024

You may have seen this article getting some attention recently, which is entitled “After working at Google, I’ll never let myself love another job again.” It’s easy to fit this article into the box of “impressionable young people eventually need to come to grips with the realities of existence,” and there’s even an A-HA! moment in there where she realizes that HR doesn’t truly protect employees. Here is potentially the best section:

“After I quit, I promised myself to never love a job again. Not in the way I loved Google. Not with the devotion businesses wish to inspire when they provide for employees’ most basic needs like food and health care and belonging. No publicly traded company is a family. I fell for the fantasy that it could be.

So I took a role at a firm to which I felt no emotional attachment. I like my colleagues, but I’ve never met them in person. I found my own doctor; I cook my own food. My manager is 26 — too young for me to expect any parental

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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