Certain staff members are culpable of coffee badging, or even jiggling their mouses to appear engaged while telecommuting. However, even when they're performing efficiently in their roles, some duties might be viewed as “fake” labor—at least based on the perspective of Slack co-founder and past chief executive Stewart Butterfield.
TL;DR
- Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield theorizes about "hyper-realistic work-like activities."
- These are superficially identical to work but are actually "fake" tasks.
- This occurs as companies grow and easy, obvious tasks are completed.
- Senior leadership must ensure clarity on recognized valuable work for all employees.
“Here’s my grand theory: hyper-realistic work-like activities goes along with this other concept called known valuable work to do,” Butterfield recently said on Lenny’s Podcast. “Hyper-realistic work-like activity is superficially identical to work…But this is actually a fake bit of work, and it’s so subtle.”
Butterfield developed these two ideas after observing the effort required to grow fledgling companies into major enterprises; the repeat founder was a co-creator of the image-sharing service Flickr in 2002, acting as its chief executive for a number of years, prior to his subsequent endeavor founding and directing the $26.5 billion powerhouse Slack in 2009. Butterfield has remained out of the public eye since his departure from the organization in January 2023.
Drawing on his extensive career in commerce, he's categorized employee output into two distinct groups: highly practical, task-oriented endeavors, which he labels “fake” tasks, and recognized beneficial efforts that foster creativity and enhance achievements.
How 'bogus' operations seem when startups grow into major corporations
Having founded two companies, Butterfield observed that issues with “fake” operations frequently originate in a business's initial stages. In the beginning, personnel are focused on launching the venture: establishing a bank account, setting up a user database, hashing passwords, and performing all the fundamental tasks that are “absolutely” essential for the company's establishment. These initial activities generate “almost infinite generative value,”, according to Butterfield, as they are indispensable for launching a business. However, as an organization expands, the nature of value generation shifts.
“The problem with almost every organization [is] at the very beginning, you have an enormous amount of work that you know what to do, and you know that it’s going to be valuable,” Butterfield explained.“Everyone’s going to work in the morning like, ‘I have 10 things to do and every single one of them is like something I know how to do, and it’s definitely going to be valuable.’”
“Time goes on and the relationship between the supply of work to do and the demand for doing work just starts to change.”
The former Slack CEO explained that over time, more and more people get hired. Eventually, those employees want more junior-level talent to help support their teams, and suddenly, businesses have many staffers ready to work, with all “easy, obvious stuff” having been done already.
However, if a company employs numerous individuals lacking distinct, significant job objectives, personnel might dedicate their hours to those highly realistic work-life pursuits. Butterfield explained this isn't due to employees being “stupid” or “evil,”, but rather their desire for acknowledgment of their contributions. Furthermore, if supervisors fail to be open about recognized valuable tasks, employees will endeavor to excel within their teams' existing frameworks.
Employees and top executives are unaware they're performing 'bogus' tasks
Hyper-realistic work-life activities aren’t always blatantly unproductive. In fact, Butterfield said that “fake” work often comes across as typical job tasks.
“People are calling meetings with their colleagues to preview the deck that they’re going to show in the big meeting, to get feedback on whether they should improve some of the slides,” Butterfield explained. “We are sitting in a conference room, and there’s something being projected up there, and we’re all talking about it, and that’s exactly what work is.”
The cofounder of Slack pointed out that this kind of “fake” effort is quite difficult to detect—and even the most experienced executives will succumb to the practice.
“I’ll do it, our board members will do it, every exec will do it,” Butterfield admitted. “The further you are from having all of the contacts, and all the information, and the decision-making authority, the easier it is to get trapped in that stuff and people will just perform enormous amounts of hyper-realistic work-like activities, and have no idea that that’s what they’re doing.”
According to Butterfield, the responsibility for confirming that all employees are engaged in recognized, beneficial tasks—spanning from entry-level positions to top executives—rests with senior leadership. Chief Executive Officers, managers, directors, and other executives must be open about their objectives and how to effectively advance the company's progress. Butterfield suggested that these individuals should establish clear guidelines regarding recognized valuable work, ensuring that every team member comprehends their intended contributions.
“It’s actually your responsibility to make sure that there’s sufficient clarity around what the priorities are, and explicitly saying ‘no’ to things upfront, rather than words like ‘Hey you guys are a bunch of idiots wasting your time on this thing that doesn’t matter,’” Butterfield said.