I recently had 13 glorious days away from the office where I didn’t hear a single corporate buzzword and my levels of “Bitch, please” when it comes to corporate nonsense are still delightfully high.

I need you executive teams to stop thinking that whatever it is you make or sell is “important” and demanding that your employees be “passionate about your mission” – it’s a bit ridiculous anymore.

Now, just because what you make or sell isn’t important, it can still be useful, and that can be enough! Case in point – my own employer – we make financial software. VERY useful, but not important in the grand scheme of things.

• We don’t save lives
• We don’t grow food
• We don’t make that food into other foods.
• We don’t house people
• We don’t make sure little kids eat
• We don’t make art
• We don’t protect or preserve natural resources

We just make financial software. And let me tell you – no one is passionate about financial software.

Your developers enjoy coding, your QC people like trying to break things, your salespeople – freaky extroverts that they are – love to talk to people. But the chances of any of them being actually passionate about what you make and sell are extremely low.

AND THAT IS OK.

Stop pretending what you do is important and demanding “passion” from your employees when we know that six days a week and twice on Sunday, you’re trying to figure out how to replace us all with the cheapest, least regulated, and most compliant labor force you can find.

Just be happy you have a workforce that shows up and has the self respect to do their job and do it well, even if they don’t care about the actual end product. All despite the fact that you aren’t paying enough, claim “the budget” is the reason none of us are keeping ahead of inflation, demand loyalty when you’d have people out the door on 5 minutes notice, and generally gaslight everyone.

Just get over it.

PS: We hate the damn AI tools. We have better things to do than chase around the digital equivalent of Chad the drunken intern who thinks he’s god’s gift to the universe. Chad sucks.