The U.S. government once served as a counterbalance to abusive worker treatment. It now facilitates it.
I watched private equity underwriters (PEU) abuse hospice workers after our takeover by TPG and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe.
Nurses were made salaried and their work hours exploded due to purposeful understaffing, inefficient computer software and hard (unreasonable) productivity targets. Nurses donated their personal and family time to the corporation in order to complete visit and admission documentation.
The new "all organization" software (business and clinical) stole mileage reimbursement from workers. It took hours each week to investigate and correct the shortfall in miles and worked hours. I wrote the Department of Labor in San Antonio. Crickets.
TechGods took the PEU playbook and ran with it. They paint a pastoral human future under AI with new free time, everyone having a penthouse and robots doing menial tasks.
Their present is very different. Many espouse the Chinese 96 hour workweek and workers are subject to ever changing priorities and irrational management demands. A Meta worker was recently belittled for asking about the possible return of a former time off benefit called Meta Days.
There is no body of knowledge that they can't ignore or corrupt. Kalshi's CEO doesn't care about management theory or laws as his gambling site parades around as a "derivatives" play.
OpenAI's Sam Altman knows "secrets" about all human beings. All they need to do is "stay busy." This also ignores the tenants of what brings pride in work.
The model for insane management is Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who has the full throated backing of the U.S. government. The Pentagon has a $244 million line item simply stating "fund Palantir."
It is a dangerous time with so many powerful people chasing massive returns so cavalierly. The dangle of an ideal future or the need to beat China is the excuse for them to flout management practices, laws and basic human decency.
There is no group to hear opposition given politicians Red & Blue love PEU and their new TechGod brethren. Increasingly, more are one and for that, many suffer.
