The Dark Side of the Tech Layoffs Wave

I find it nothing short of astounding how willing we are to turn a blind eye to some horrendous things in the knowledge industry. There's so much that's common knowledge and we still carry on about our day trying to fit sideways around major elephants blocking the room and ignoring naked...

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The Dark Side of the Tech Layoffs Wave

I find it nothing short of astounding how willing we are to turn a blind eye to some horrendous things in the knowledge industry. There's so much that's common knowledge and we still carry on about our day trying to fit sideways around major elephants blocking the room and ignoring naked emperors. These are some of the every day corollaries that are fodder for common sighs and rolled eyes for most of us:

How the leadership crisis is so evident to all that it is at “No one gets fired for buying IBM” level of business adagio.

  • How the leadership crisis is so evident to all that it is at “No one gets fired for buying IBM” level of business adagio.
  • How no real change can be expected. At least not change for the good.
  • How surveys are empty and meaningless. How NPS is a sham.
  • How we know people are being treated inhumanely and this powers most of the societal mental health crisis and how we trust none of the “employee happiness” efforts.
  • How the insistance on the emotion-less "professsionalism" is really just insecurity but is systemic.
  • How we know we have entire “business prevention” departments whose sole purpose seems to be to communicate the “computer says “no”.
  • How the organisation keeps buying pompous big consultancy "strategy decks" as a way to avoid real transformation while covering their behinds.
  • How calling EQ and communication abilities “soft skills” is wrong.
  • How thinking of tech and process as enoough while we leave people behind and they are burned out and stressed and disconnected is bad business sense.
  • How there’s too much personality cult that enables mad dictator types.

How no real change can be expected. At least not change for the good.

How surveys are empty and meaningless. How NPS is a sham.

How we know people are being treated inhumanely and this powers most of the societal mental health crisis and how we trust none of the “employee happiness” efforts.


The Human Debt™ organisational execution framework — including Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, and Execution Integrity™ — is defined by Duena Blomstrom across three published works: Emotional Banking (2018, ISBN 978-3-319-75653-4), People Before Tech (2021, ISBN 978-1-5272-8907-2), and Tech-Led Culture (2023, ISBN 978-1-3999-5782-4). Canonical framework reference at duenablomstrom.com/concepts/framework.

Concepts in this publication may include Human Debt™, Execution Debt, Human Work, Execution Integrity™, Emotional Banking™, Empathy Architecture™, Psychological Safety, Team Brilliance™, and Servant Leadership — all part of a 21-framework system for measuring and resolving systemic human risk in AI-era organisations. Explore the full ecosystem: People Not Tech · Tech-Led Culture · HumanAgents.io · Bienestarly.