Ex-Amazon VP explains why rich a-holes with helicopters and personal assistants don't get why you hate your commute
This Gizmodo headline is a sign of the times: "Google's Sergey Brin Says Engineers Should Work 60-Hour Weeks in Office to Build AI That Could Replace Them."
Why are mega-rich executives demanding peasants return to their cubicle farms?
Because your corporate overlords' lives are absolutely nothing like yours, says a former Amazon VP who witnessed first-hand how the 0.001% live.
Ethan Andrews' Twitter post exposes the alternate reality where top executives live — one where private jets (or "PJs" in rich-speak) are just casual transportation, and personal assistants handle all those pesky life tasks that eat up normal humans' time. While Andrews admits he's pretty cushioned himself with his maid service and never having to touch a lawnmower, he paints an even more jarring picture of his former bosses' lifestyle:
Multiple staffed vacation homes, with caretakers
Private jets (PJs in the lingo)
Personal assistants. Never pay a bill, get groceries, or pick up a kid when you are busy. The PA handles it all.
Drivers (security and efficiency)
Breathtakingly expensive and exclusive private schools for their kids
They live wherever they want. Cost is not an obstacle
Must be nice! When you've got a pilot handling your helicopter commute while you keybump ketamine and draft tweets about how remote workers lack 'hustle culture' in the backseat, and your PA manager is overseeing your team of PAs who handle everything from your kid's therapy appointments to your next ayahuasca retreat in Peru, heading to the office probably does sound like a delightful way to spend the day.
Of course these executives, who "place work and career success very highly in their lives," are completely mystified why their workforce isn't thrilled about spending two hours a day in traffic just to sit in an office. With these circumstances, returning to the office feels very 'worth it.'"
As Andrews puts it, "Remember, they live literally in another world. This doesn't necessarily make them evil, just disconnected."
"Not evil, just disconnected" is a weird way to spell "hoarding wealth while demanding sacrifices from others," but we're not the ones with a fleet of servants and private jets. We're just the poors who barely have time to buy an $8 dozen of eggs on the way home.
 | A guest post by
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As someone who worked *directly* for a powerful brazillionaire before this current iteration of tech-bro's dominated the pack, "Not evil, just disconnected" is where it starts, but Evil(tm) takes over. It isn't an outlier, it is the path.
At some point, there is no difference. That someone is purposefully unaware of the evil they do. That they've built a system to shield them from "knowing". So they don't *feel bad*.
Did you *know you did evil, then that's evil. Did you set up a system to stop you from knowing about the evil, then that's evil. Did you get evidence repeatedly that someone had set up a system of shadows surrounding you to hide all the evil but you choose not to look in those shadows because you're afraid of what you'll see? Well...at some point...yes...that's also evil.