Work

Where does "fun" come from at work? This article discusses values, permission to dissent, agency, and nerdy passion, relating these to the literature on psychological safety. It argues that you can't really engineer trust, culture, or happiness directly in the workplace, or perhaps in life in general.

This article explores the alignment gap between employees and equity owners through dot-com era anecdotes. True ownership demands financial or personal sacrifice—shares gifted for free lack real stakes. Intangible goodwill and networked effects constitute significant long-term value often invisible to non-shareholders. While many workers prefer paycheck safety over ownership risks, bridging this divide remains a fundamental workplace challenge.

Pay is another aspect of the Alignment Gap between employees and owners. This article discusses the employer mindset in compensation, the role of intangibles, the problem with remote work, and the value of the unselfish edge in improving your take-home value. Ultimately, the text encourages a holistic view of employment where shared success is prioritised over rigid extraction.

While truth is a fundamental tool for personal growth and organizational trust, sharing too much information can cause unnecessary stress or panic. Leaders must often withhold details to maintain confidentiality or stability. This is the transparency paradox.

The Alignment Gap between employees and owners causes friction. Workers frequently perceive leadership decisions as hostile or opaque because of an asymmetry of risk, where owners carry the burden of survival and financial liability, and workers carry the burden of execution. To overcome this disconnect, you can adopt an owner mindset, assuming responsibility for problems that have no home, finding greater personal purpose and influence within your career.

AI lacks subjective taste, relying on data patterns rather than human intuition or emotion. While AI enhances productivity, true creativity requires an author’s unique vibe and lived experience. Humans provide the authenticity and spirit that machines cannot replicate.

Human taste serves as a vital differentiator in commercial processes as AI automates output. Productivity belongs to robots, leaving humans to focus on the "wasteful" play and experimentation arising from our curiosity. Ultimately, humans will use AI as an amplifier, encoding their "golden intent" more and more to project themselves further into the world.

This farewell reflection chronicles my departure from a twenty-eight-year career. The article highlights the importance of curiosity and genuine human connections over the pursuit of status or financial gain. It discusses the psychological challenges of entering retirement, advocating for a life lived at a slower, more deliberate pace to resist the pressures of modern society. Finally, the article touches on imposter syndrome and the unique value found in long-term professional trust. Ultimately, the narrative serves as an encouragement to embrace vulnerability and prioritise personal values when making major life transitions.

In-person work has a profound impact on personal development, which has been eroded in the wake of widespread Post-Covid remote work adoption. The spontaneous interaction and relationship-building that physical presence at the office once fostered are now largely gone, removing an important source of self-awareness, personal development, and our sense of belonging. While productivity can be achieved remotely, the deeper human aspects of work — trust, purpose, and self-discovery — are best cultivated through in-person engagement.