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>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 exec

>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.

ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago
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.
- spiralx 8y ago
  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.
Retra 8y ago
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.
- FooHentai 8y ago
  >people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it Yup. Regardless of the way it may be intended, it's almost impossible to ignore the optics of this as similar to the boomer 'bootstraps' cliché.
- adventured 8y ago
  > 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.
  - angersock 8y ago
    > Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him. Counterargument: he was in the right place, at the right time, and happened to be working in a sector that made it easy to pivot into online retail. Not to say that his skill/leadership wasn't involved in going from say 2bn to 100bn, but he lucked out in timing.
deleted 8y ago
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gowld 8y ago
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.
thisisit 8y ago
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": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw0xln927lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw0xln927lc
- spiralx 8y ago
  > 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.
- sschueller 8y ago
  I'm sure he has said that many times but in reference to order fulfillment...

ajeet_dhaliwal 8y ago

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.

spiralx 8y ago
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.

Retra 8y ago

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.

FooHentai 8y ago
>people "take it cynically", because it is very easy to give advice from a position where you don't have to take it Yup. Regardless of the way it may be intended, it's almost impossible to ignore the optics of this as similar to the boomer 'bootstraps' cliché.
adventured 8y ago
> 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.
- angersock 8y ago
  > Whew, Bezos practically had billionaire status handed to him. Counterargument: he was in the right place, at the right time, and happened to be working in a sector that made it easy to pivot into online retail. Not to say that his skill/leadership wasn't involved in going from say 2bn to 100bn, but he lucked out in timing.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gowld 8y ago

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.

thisisit 8y ago

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": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw0xln927lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw0xln927lc

spiralx 8y ago
> 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.
sschueller 8y ago
I'm sure he has said that many times but in reference to order fulfillment...