A manager once said to me, “I just wanted to let you know that my best wishes are with you.Don’t worry about work and just get home to be with your family. If you need anything from us, just let me know.” That kind of leadership didn’t just retain employees—it built loyalty that no compensation package could match.
“You were quiet in the standup today. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, all good. Just… tired.”
“Cool. By the way, can we deliver that feature two days early?”
And just like that, we miss another opportunity to see the human behind the screen.
Welcome to modern work culture: where we're connected all the time, and yet, increasingly disconnected.
🪞 The Rise of Metrics, the Fall of Meaning
We’ve built dazzling dashboards to measure every heartbeat of productivity.
Velocity? Tracked.
Pull requests? Counted.
Commits? Counted.
Standups? Attended.
Emotions? …Untracked. Undiscussed. Unwelcome?
In a world obsessed with measurable outcomes, we’ve lost sight of the immeasurable ones: empathy, trust, resilience, mental health, and human connection.
💻 Remote Work: The Blessing That’s Becoming a Blindspot
Let’s be clear—remote work is amazing in so many ways. Pajama pants and productivity? Yes please. Commute-free days? Glorious. School pickups without calendar drama? Game-changer.
But here's the catch: we’ve swapped coffee machine chats for “Can everyone go on mute, please?”
We meet in 30-minute blocks, talk, close Zoom, and vanish into task silos.
We’ve stopped asking:
“How are you really doing?”
“What’s going on in your life?”
“Need a break or a venting buddy?”
And the result? We miss the signs of struggle. We miss each other.
Remote work isn't the villain—but our robotic approach to it might be.
🧾 The Gig-ification of Everything: When Humans Become Line Items
Another trend quietly reshaping workplaces: the contractor boom.
Companies are hiring contractors and freelancers at scale—less liability, more flexibility, and, let’s be honest, easier exits. Full-time roles are shrinking, and with that, so is the emotional investment from both sides.
I will be honest here. I have taken my fare share of benefits of being a contractor. But the time has changed now and the shear goal now is to get away from the liability of a full time employee and flexibility of firing at anytime without a guilt.
You can’t really do a birthday surprise for someone when you don’t even know their timezone.
But let’s call it out: this disconnection is dangerous.
When team members are treated as puzzle pieces, you can't expect them to build a masterpiece.
🧑🤝🧑 So, What Now? The Case for Human Teams (Even If the Company Doesn’t Care)
If employers are chasing profits and ignoring people, the real responsibility falls on us—on teams, individuals, peers.
Let’s not wait for the “organization” to send out a wellness survey or mandate a mental health day.
Let’s check in with each other.
Let’s say, “Hey, your voice sounded off today. Want to talk?”
Let’s remember birthdays, celebrate wins, offer help on off days, and yes—even send memes.
Because when companies start behaving like machines, it’s up to the humans to save the soul of the team.
🏢 Employers, Are You Listening? You Might Be Digging Your Own Grave
Let’s have a heart-to-heart with the leadership bench now.
Dear Employers,
We get it—margins are tight, investor calls are brutal, and competition is fierce. But this short-term thinking? It’s eating away at the very DNA of our culture.
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Burnt-out employees = low innovation
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Disconnected teams = high churn
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KPI obsession = creativity collapse
Big companies aren’t immortal. Ask Kodak. Ask Nokia. Culture collapse is real. You may not notice it immediately, but the slow bleed has already begun when no one wants to build, only ship.
Apathy doesn’t scale. Empathy does.
✅ What Can We Do?
🔧 For Employers:
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Balance the dashboard with dialogue. Ask your people how they’re doing, not just what they’re doing.
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Don’t outsource your culture. Contractors or FTEs—everyone deserves to feel seen.
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Stop ranking people like search engine results. 98% isn’t “underperforming.” It might be your most loyal, emotionally mature teammate.
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Train leaders to be more human. Coaching is good. Listening is better.
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Create rituals that connect. Virtual coffee rooms, Friday wins, or just a “no-meeting day” can go a long way.
🧘 For Employees:
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Check in on each other. Create your own culture within the team.
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Share, but don’t overshare. Be honest about life—but also respect boundaries.
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Say no when needed. Protect your health like you protect your deadlines.
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Journal your wins. Especially the invisible ones.
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Find joy in the small stuff. The emoji in a PR comment, the GIF war in Slack, the 2 AM idea that made someone’s day.
🌈 Let’s Make Work… Work Again
Work doesn’t have to be this heavy. It can be meaningful, warm, funny, frustrating, but still human.
Let’s not wait for HR to draft a new policy. Let’s start by asking one simple question today:
“How are you really doing?”
You’d be surprised how powerful that can be.
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