What Does Workplace TikTok Look Like During Layoffs? It Gets Weird.

Tech and finance workers posted countless videos about the luxuries of their jobs — until the mood shifted.

The offices, accordingly, convey expense and ease. The textures are smooth, the food is abundant. Tasks exist in negative space, and amenities fill the rest. These videos play the same role as the films and shows that once provided aspirational images of different industries: the romantic comedies about magazine editors, the TV dramas about glamorous lawyers, the stories of young tech workers in offices strewn with foosball tables — none of which belabored the parts where the characters answered emails. Young people have long turned to media to form ideas, including off-base ones, about work. On TikTok, they get those ideas not from Hollywood producers but from workers themselves. Indeed, the people making workday TikToks often claim, in voice-overs and interviews, that they are trying to increase access to exclusive work spaces and educate young workers, especially those from groups historically denied access to elite jobs.

Much of what these creators flaunt, and what seems to attract the ire of critics, is that work does not appear to dominate their lives. Instead of being embarrassed by their hypercorporate jobs, they revel in how peaceful and lucrative a 9-to-5 (or a 10-to-whenever) can be. Some seem to take a mercenary approach to these jobs and the cushy lifestyles they afford, treating employment less like a vocation and more like a hack. One Facebook employee begins working in the office at 10:30, spends a few hours “analyzing metrics and identifying root causes,” goes to lunch, and is out the door, heading to Trader Joe’s, by 5:45. A user comments: “my sign to move to tech, thanks bestieeee.” The poster responds “This is why I’m here.”

Category: Technology

Source: NYTimes Technology