In a further example of unions are obsolete, merely 100 years after the 40-hour work week was established, software behemoth Microsoft once again exemplifies that corporations can suffer from the “smartest person in the room” syndrome, as the electronic organism has unveiled policy that grants employees unlimited time off.
The shocking directive, which inspires veteran coders to spend a three-week bender in Cabo San Lucas with a coed secured or coerced in Reno through a tenuous business arrangement, will inevitably alter the course of modern office dynamics and deter work ethic, if that latter is still possible. As Covid has morphed the framework of corporate culture, employees in many corporations are encouraged to work from home, a gravitation from tradition that is playing right into the hands of societal engineers averse to the interstate system, commuting, and gas-powered vehicles in general. Creating the lucrative cottage industry of tech villages is just another channel of cash for those exploiting the emotionally dominated and fact less infrastructure of the Green New Movement. The axis between walkability and sustainability is no laughing matter.
Through a company memo drafted by Microsoft Chief People Officer Kathleen Hogan, not to be confused with a compartment of the Chinese government, techies were notified of the “Discretionary Time Off” (DTO) program, which is highlighted by stipulations that eliminate the requirement to accrue paid vacation time. Ironically launched on Martin Luther King Day, hourly employees, which consist primarily of lower-level support staff, will not be eligible of the unprecedented benefits. Microsoft international employees who or are subject to government-specific labor laws will obviously be left out of the day drinking house party that has become protocol in the modern nightmare office culture of the information age. While the corporation’s decision to liberate the inner animal of its workforce, DTO is at best a temporary horrendous experiment, and at worst gives the software giant a viable template for mass layoffs in the near future. The follows the storyline that as the programmer skill set becomes less and less of a necessity with technology to reaching strange and spooky destinations as Moore’s Law is achieved.
As Microsoft is certainly not the first or the last publicly traded private entity to delve into human resources based on idealistic sentiment and what seemed like a good idea at the time, the model of expanding control outside sheen of iridescent glass corporate campus buildings remains a priority for those at the summit of the digital hierarchy. The unrelentingly and expanding imprint of indirect, but effective branding resulting in spheres of influence spreading across population centers exists as a stifling haze of darkness. Within this abyss productivity is convoluted. Accountability is only practiced through an employee pre-recording ten minutes of a Zoom meeting headshot and playing the video back in a continuous loop to give the powers that be the illusion that the individual is actually in remote attendance.
The “at least they tried” participation trophy awarding behavior is at the forefront of the onset of an era where the unknown can be quantified, analyzed, and electronically rendered, but not understood. And one of the prizes of this disturbing new world is facilitating unsustainable policy which destroys any resistance within its nonsensical pathway of indoctrination.
