>On why he thinks “work-life balance” is a “debilitating phrase”
>“This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off. And the reality is, if I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.
A lot of folks seem to read this (I think Bezos said something similar last year and there were dismissive reactions to that) and take it cynically, especially given Amazon's workplace culture reputation. But I think there's a lot of truth to this -- that if you are rejuvenated by your job, then that fulfillment spills over to your personal life, and vice versa. But it's an idealized situation that simply isn't really available to everyone, and to insinuate that one _must_ strive for such a harmonious situation is dangerous, because those high standards can in turn be toxic.
On the other hand, I think that the work-life balance strict tradeoff camp shouldn't be dismissed either, because to do so would imply that, if one does not love their job and feel rejuvinated by it, something is wrong with them. But frankly there seems to be a generally inverse relationship between the inherent enjoyability of a job and its material rewards, and so it's an entirely reasonable arrangement to have a "okay, thoroughly neutral job" and a great personal like that is enabled by your 9-5.
The key is that one be happy and satisfied with the arrangement, and that it be the right mix for each person.
>“It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance. And I think that is worth everybody paying attention to it. You never want to be that guy — and we all have a coworker who’s that person — who as soon as they come into a meeting they drain all the energy out of the room. You can just feel the energy go whoosh! You don’t want to be that guy. You want to come into the office and give everyone a kick in their step.”
This, I think is unilaterally true but actually independent from his first point.
Jeff Bezos doesn't need to work a single day for the rest of his life. So people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it.
Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise. Even if I am miserable because I have to spend my 8 hours of sunlight making CEO Von Richenstein wealthier, I can't just walk away and take the risk that my next job will be different. It's just stressful.
So work-life balance means... valuing your time as your own. It's pretty rich for someone who only works because they want to to suggest that the rest of us should do the same without any of the same security.
Q - given the need to take a boring, possibly bad/negative/stressful job that is needed to pay the bills and support the family, is it within one's power to choose between feeling that this is (1) a resentful, negative, bad situation, or (2) a nonideal, but necessary siutation, and to take satisfaction and pride in the fact that you're supporting your family? IDK.
(2) happens by leaving your work at work and doing what you enjoy at home. "Work-life balance", etc.
I don't need Jeff fucking Besos to tell me that there is something wrong with me if I cannot be happy making other people richer at the expense of my own time.
> Jeff Bezos doesn't need to work a single day for the rest of his life.
That's an interesting way to suggest that I should take what Bezos says even more seriously. He's worth $131 billion on paper and yet he's still working so hard and pushing to accomplish so much more.
> So people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it. Some of us have bills to pay and families to raise.
So you mean just like Bezos in the past - the first 40 years of his life - before Amazon survived several near death experiences, narrowly avoided going bankrupt, somehow survived Walmart's extreme dominance of retail (sales 2004: Walmart $285b, Amazon $7b; 40x), and after a decade plus finally brought his paper wealth to a sustainable level such that it wasn't susceptible to disappearing in a fiery heap and being obliterated by competitors that were all massively larger than Amazon. Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him.
Wouldn't luck work that specific outcome? One lottery ticket holder manages to do what others in the same situation didn't.
Of course he is talented, but I don't believe him to be somehow absolutely unique, rather just some suitable combination of talented, connected, and lucky.
That's moving the goalposts from "lucky", to "talented, connected, and lucky", which is a huge move.
Building a massive business is not something that anyone has the same "lottery ticket" chance to do successfully, even if given the same connections and support Bezos had.
Why is Jeff refusing the concept of "work-life balance" and then talking about something independent? "work-life harmony" is great, and a great think to have with your "work-life balance". If you never get to go home and unplug from work, (because at Amazon as an engineer you get to stay up all night handling pages or monitoring a launch, and as a warehouse worker you have to stand in line before and after your paid shift for a laborious security check) then you won't have that "harmony" he speaks of. So why is he so opposed to balance?
His rejection-without-justification of the original question speaks volumes.
I agree but I think it’s easier to make sense of if you’re actually doing you own thing or have some equity in something rather than strictly a fix salary.
This is the key point as to why this advice comes across to me as out of touch and patronising. Doing something where you have a real investment in the outcome can indeed be rewarding and even energising, and even when it isn't going well that investment helps people to keep going; but for the vast majority of people work isn't something that they have any stake in, it's just a means to support the rest of their life and hopefully allow that to have a positive impact on their well-being.
If you've no stake in your work, you're trying to balance the negative impacts of work with the positive impacts of the rest of your life, hence the phrase work-life balance. Having work-life harmony would almost certainly mean both work and everything else was equally neutral or negative.
What if Bezos said "I think fulfillment should be the priority" instead of saying work-life balance is a "debilitating phase". That would got his point in a concise and clear manner.
But unfortunately in today's world people try to re-define a known word and then go into a lengthy explanation. My first reaction to reading Bezo's explanation was to compare him to Ivanka trying to redefine the word "complicit":
> What if Bezos said "I think fulfillment should be the priority" instead of saying work-life balance is a "debilitating phase".
Because fulfilment for most people comes from balancing their positive home lives with their negative work lives. Sure there are ways to improve both, but it's a small minority of people whose work lives are a real positive beyond simply supporting their non-work existance.
For the likes of Bezos work is completely optional and for themselves, they get to choose what work they feel like doing and when. That kind of autonomy has the effect of motivating one to work hard and enjoy it. Which is why Bezos can afford to be happy at work and "come home with tremendous energy"
I think he's right, but only if you're doing a job that you enjoy like running your own company. Let's give him a mop and put him on bathroom duty in an Amazon warehouse and see how much "work-life harmony" he finds...
Work/life balance asserts a distinction between a job and unpaid time, as if labor rights didn't draw that line. It says nothing about emotional state.
There is a strict tradeoff in many cases; you're on the clock or you're not. But many companies prefer those boundaries get ignored.
"It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance."
Maybe it's a triangle or polygon.
It sounds like an oblique way of arguing that Amazon workers should work long hours and are to blame if they're not enthusiastic about this.
All these human resources taking it upon themselves to optimize for 'work/life balance' is debilitating to the business owner's extraction of labour for profit.
The irony is that it's not likely the overworked and underpaid sweatshop hourlies & temps in the warehouses demanding work-life balance but rather the highly paid "professionals" in the nice glass HQ buildings with all their nap pods, masseuses &c.
Nap pods and all that jazz don't help with work-life balance though. I'd say it's rather the opposite. I'll take strict 8-5 schedule over 8-10 with all the in-house entertainment any day. Taking a nap any time you want just means you stays in office longer and do less "life" stuff.
Not partying till 2am before a workday is pretty good if it means I'm free at 5-something every day and can enjoy a nice dinner, go for a walk/ride/run, hit the gym or whatever.
From my partying experience, no amount napping helps after a good party. The next day is lost anyway. Unless you plan to hide from your colleagues in that pod for the whole day...
Yup. Free market at work, too. Fungible labour = low wages and poor conditions because other people are available that will do the job. More specialized labour = We will acquiesce to your whims because replacing you is non-trivial and you individually have greater impact on the bottom line.
The overworked and underpaid warehouse workers are demanding it too - plenty of them are parents or students or have to manage second jobs to make ends meet, despite the instability of Amazon's penchant for unscheduled arbitrary extra time, or "involuntary VTO."
Warehouse work wouldn't be quite so difficult if it weren't designed to come as close as legally possible to breaking people. 8 hour shifts with a overtime caps beyond the 60 hour limit, actual 30 minute breaks and regular task rotation to reduce repetitive strain injury and boredom, that sort of thing.
I'm guessing the concerns of the highly paid Amazonians don't get dismissed with "because business needs," though.
Establishing Scope of Work, and sticking to it, is the fundamentals of management.
For employment, there is time and responsibilities. Responsibilities should be matched to time, and if one changes so does the other. If there is too much work, either there should be be paid overtime to make costs visible for future planning, or resources should be added.
Sticking to 40 hours per week is not only good for employees personal lives. It is a good management practice.
The mistake bezos makes is that his work is extremely rewarding, creative, fun.
This is maybe only the case for 0.5% of all employees in general. The other 99.5% need a good balance, because work isn't as rewarding, sometimes strenuous, boring, annoying.
I think having attitudes towards certain things (or trying to force them) is harmful. Work doesn't have to be fun, nor does it have to be boring. Work is just, work. Still, its ridiculous for Bezos to enforce that if you don't like doing monotonous work for 8 hours a day without breaks, you're a passionless energy-sucking millenial.
Is this the same Jeff Bezos that creates a disincentive for his employees to use the restroom, so they might meet their numbers in the Amazon warehouse? [1] Are they still peeing in bottles?
Jeff, this distinction between your property and mine is debilitating. As your customer when I'm happy it makes you happy and I can 100% guarantee there is nothing you can do that would make me happier than to donate your entire wealth to me thereby sharing the decisions you make exercising the power that comes with it.
Every single dollar you keep is a a dollar I don't get. Just as every single goddamn second your employees spend doing work stuff (including commuting) is a second they cannot spend with their families, pursuing hobbies, relaxing and living their lives.
It's a zero sum. Fk you very much for suggesting that spending time at work is comparable in any way to spending time with your children.
Now we're talking about zero sums, the quantity of tears shed by Amazon employees [1] is not a zero sum. You can fix that and it doesn't mean others will be crying.
The question isn't whether Bezos has talent. The question is how many people on the planet of 7 billion with his luck would have come out equivalent. Not all, no sir, not all. But when I think about him that way, he's not a philosopher he's just another arsehole who believes his bankbalance is relative measure of his worth as a human. Cross the road to avoid such people. Don't work for them.
If I'm spending nearly all my waking hours working myself to the bone, I'm not going to be happy at work, and that's going to translate to unhappiness at home. No harmony there. If I'm working so hard that I don't have time outside work for family and friends, even if the work itself makes me happy, I'm not going to be happy outside of work. No harmony there, either.
You cannot have work-life harmony without work-life balance. It feels like Bezos is just splitting hairs and twisting language around so he can seem like he has something deep and insightful to say.
Fuck off Jeff. It must be very fulfilling to be the CEO and founder of one of the world's largest companies. I'm sure anyone will be just as fulfilled as you when every second of existence can catapult your already enormous wealth and influence.
You should work at the wearhouse for close to minimum wage with no party to upward mobility, and then preach about fulfillment - not the wearhouse logistics fulfillment, but career and life fulfillment
>“This work-life harmony thing is what I try to teach young employees and actually senior executives at Amazon too. But especially the people coming in. I get asked about work-life balance all the time. And my view is, that’s a debilitating phrase because it implies there’s a strict trade-off. And the reality is, if I am happy at home, I come into the office with tremendous energy. And if I am happy at work, I come home with tremendous energy.
A lot of folks seem to read this (I think Bezos said something similar last year and there were dismissive reactions to that) and take it cynically, especially given Amazon's workplace culture reputation. But I think there's a lot of truth to this -- that if you are rejuvenated by your job, then that fulfillment spills over to your personal life, and vice versa. But it's an idealized situation that simply isn't really available to everyone, and to insinuate that one _must_ strive for such a harmonious situation is dangerous, because those high standards can in turn be toxic.
On the other hand, I think that the work-life balance strict tradeoff camp shouldn't be dismissed either, because to do so would imply that, if one does not love their job and feel rejuvinated by it, something is wrong with them. But frankly there seems to be a generally inverse relationship between the inherent enjoyability of a job and its material rewards, and so it's an entirely reasonable arrangement to have a "okay, thoroughly neutral job" and a great personal like that is enabled by your 9-5.
The key is that one be happy and satisfied with the arrangement, and that it be the right mix for each person.
>“It actually is a circle; it’s not a balance. And I think that is worth everybody paying attention to it. You never want to be that guy — and we all have a coworker who’s that person — who as soon as they come into a meeting they drain all the energy out of the room. You can just feel the energy go whoosh! You don’t want to be that guy. You want to come into the office and give everyone a kick in their step.”
This, I think is unilaterally true but actually independent from his first point.