“It’s been assumed that the amount of time staff spent at their desk was a measure of productivity. Some 65 percent of Britons, 63 percent of Americans, and 58 percent of Australians rank productivity above having a healthy body, more money, or being happy.īut the science of productivity is inexact at best, and at worst, leads to disastrous outcomes for workers and companies. A survey of 1 million people by edtech company Headway in late 2022 found that productivity is most people’s number one priority in life. Workers have even internalized this desire to be productive. The need to further codify and measure productivity in the work-from-home era has meant that workers are now experiencing tougher, more arbitrary productivity pressures than ever before, along with a creeping paranoia that their every move is being tracked with automated time-tracking software and productivity surveillance software. Those left behind have been told to work more “productively” than ever.Īn obsession with productivity is deeply entrenched in knowledge work, even though the idea that a worker’s worth is based on their output per day, not the quality of that output, is a hangover from pre-industrial times. The wave of layoffs resulted in a 13 percent loss of the company’s workforce.
Managers were given a day to identify, on gut instinct, the staff that were performing poorly and fire them. In November last year, managers at Meta were asked to identify members of their team to “ move to exit,” as the company prepared for its first mass firing in its 21-year history.
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