Over the weekend, I listened to two episodes of Andrew Keen’s podcast which feature conversations with two people from our own domain of work and workplaces. One was Julia Hobsbawm and the other Dror Poleg. It seemed that Julia had introduced Keen to Dror so a link between the two existed. Another link formed in my mind as I listened: the unspoken role of privilege underpinning both conversations. albeit in different ways.
Now, Julia had a genuinely privileged upbringing by most standards. The daughter of a world-renowned historian, her interview begins with an anecdote about being friends with Jessica Mitford while working as Maya Angelou’s publicist in her 20s.
But I know Julia slightly, so I can say that the interview itself was largely characterised by Julia’s humility, nuanced thinking and universalism. For example, she is sceptical of the voguish idea of a four-day week for many of the same reasons I have, even though my own upbringing was very different indeed. Julia gives the impression that she understands that a four day week is an idea only applicable for a minority.
Dror’s conversation was – as it usually is – fascinating, well-informed and wide ranging. I follow his work and am always inspired, although I don’t always fully understand some subjects that fall outside of whatever expertise I may have. But he has a tendency to fall into the common trap of making grand pronouncements that can only be true of you ignore the existence of a lot of people. This is a different kind of privilege to Julia’s, but privilege it is. Judge for yourself.
We’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing over the last five years. Nearly every grand pronouncement you can find about remote work, four-day weeks or whatever relies on some form of privileged thinking.
They can’t be categorised as luxury beliefs, based on Rob Henderson’s well-known definition. Let’s call them privileged beliefs. And I think they betray two misleading ways of thinking. One is to assume that it’s OK to ignore the majority of people because they don’t matter in some way. I won’t accuse Dror of this. The other is to assume that the experiences and preferences of the person making the pronouncement apply universally, or to enough people to make the pronouncement ‘true’. This is the more common of the two fallacies.
It’s often signposted by an announcement that something is dead, or dying. Julia’s episode is indeed titled The Death of the American Way of Work. This week an article Bloomberg has declared that Loyalty is Dead based on the experiences of people at AT&T, Uber, Shopify, and Meta.
Another example of how this works and what is wrong with it is this piece by John Preece and Domino Risch titled The Desk is Dead. Now, the article itself is more thoughtful than the dumb headline, but it is still reliant on a string of privileged beliefs. Most importantly it ignores where most people in office-based jobs work; in mundane surroundings incorporating basic office furniture, grey / blue carpets and a couple of plants and pictures to cheer the place up.
The sales figures for office fit-out back this up. The majority of people working in offices haven’t begun to work in the sorts of offices being declared dead in articles like this, never mind the hotel like spaces that would render them obsolete.
Of course, it would be tiresome to caveat every opinion somebody has with an acknowledgement that it only applies to a minority of people, but if you are going to pronounce on the death of the office or the five-day week, the desk, loyalty or the way of work of the world’s largest economy, you better had.
A distorted reality
The reason this sort of stuff goes on is not solely down to solipsism or snobbery. It’s rewarded by social media, meaning of course by people. Adam Becker makes this very point in his book More Everything Forever about the distorted ways in which the tech sector and especially proponents of AI see the world and its inhabitants.
“A cruel irony of the modern world appears to be the negative correlation between many people’s interest in technology and their interest in people and how they live their lives,” he writes. “It’s equally ironic that most of the people who are in sectors where their roles depend on understanding how normal people live also tend to live some of the most abnormal lives.
“The greatest opportunities in the world today come from understanding the needs of normal people. We’ve been tricked into thinking that all technology starts as a toy for rich people before moving down, and use this to ignore the realities of billions of people’s lives. We always look at target markets in aspirational ways; we envision the lavish lives of Peloton owners, ?? the needs of affluent millennials in apartments in Shoreditch or Williamsburg, over farmers in Kenya, or middle-aged accountants in small towns.”
Freddie de Boer explores this inability of what he calls ‘AI guys’ to acknowledge the realities of what work and life means for the majority in this Substack.
“I will not relent,” he writes. “This period of AI hype is built on twin pillars, one, a broad and deep contemporary dissatisfaction with modern life, and two, the natural human tendency to assume that we live in the most important time possible because we are in it. Our ongoing inability to define communally-shared visions of lives that are ordinary but noble and valuable has left us terribly frustrated with the modern world, and our sclerotic systems convince us that gradual positive change is impossible. Hence pillar one. And the very fact that we have a consciousness system, the reality of our lives as egos, of dasein, makes it very difficult to avoid thinking that we live in a special place and special time. Hence the second pillar.”
We are all subject to the intertwined forces of bias, solipsism and ego, which Steve Stuart Williams helps us to identify in this Twitter post and this table, which adds some interesting context to many of the grand proclamations about work we see all the time.
Acknowledging that our own group is not necessarily a guide to much beyond that group, and that our own preferences and experiences are just that, will not just help us to have better conversations about work and workplaces, it will help us to understand our fellow travellers better and create better outcomes for the many.
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.
Image: Toffs and Toughs, 1937 by Jimmy Sime
August 10, 2025
We need to acknowledge the role privilege plays in the ways we talk about work
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace
Now, Julia had a genuinely privileged upbringing by most standards. The daughter of a world-renowned historian, her interview begins with an anecdote about being friends with Jessica Mitford while working as Maya Angelou’s publicist in her 20s.
But I know Julia slightly, so I can say that the interview itself was largely characterised by Julia’s humility, nuanced thinking and universalism. For example, she is sceptical of the voguish idea of a four-day week for many of the same reasons I have, even though my own upbringing was very different indeed. Julia gives the impression that she understands that a four day week is an idea only applicable for a minority.
Dror’s conversation was – as it usually is – fascinating, well-informed and wide ranging. I follow his work and am always inspired, although I don’t always fully understand some subjects that fall outside of whatever expertise I may have. But he has a tendency to fall into the common trap of making grand pronouncements that can only be true of you ignore the existence of a lot of people. This is a different kind of privilege to Julia’s, but privilege it is. Judge for yourself.
We’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing over the last five years. Nearly every grand pronouncement you can find about remote work, four-day weeks or whatever relies on some form of privileged thinking.
They can’t be categorised as luxury beliefs, based on Rob Henderson’s well-known definition. Let’s call them privileged beliefs. And I think they betray two misleading ways of thinking. One is to assume that it’s OK to ignore the majority of people because they don’t matter in some way. I won’t accuse Dror of this. The other is to assume that the experiences and preferences of the person making the pronouncement apply universally, or to enough people to make the pronouncement ‘true’. This is the more common of the two fallacies.
It’s often signposted by an announcement that something is dead, or dying. Julia’s episode is indeed titled The Death of the American Way of Work. This week an article Bloomberg has declared that Loyalty is Dead based on the experiences of people at AT&T, Uber, Shopify, and Meta.
Another example of how this works and what is wrong with it is this piece by John Preece and Domino Risch titled The Desk is Dead. Now, the article itself is more thoughtful than the dumb headline, but it is still reliant on a string of privileged beliefs. Most importantly it ignores where most people in office-based jobs work; in mundane surroundings incorporating basic office furniture, grey / blue carpets and a couple of plants and pictures to cheer the place up.
The sales figures for office fit-out back this up. The majority of people working in offices haven’t begun to work in the sorts of offices being declared dead in articles like this, never mind the hotel like spaces that would render them obsolete.
Of course, it would be tiresome to caveat every opinion somebody has with an acknowledgement that it only applies to a minority of people, but if you are going to pronounce on the death of the office or the five-day week, the desk, loyalty or the way of work of the world’s largest economy, you better had.
A distorted reality
The reason this sort of stuff goes on is not solely down to solipsism or snobbery. It’s rewarded by social media, meaning of course by people. Adam Becker makes this very point in his book More Everything Forever about the distorted ways in which the tech sector and especially proponents of AI see the world and its inhabitants.
“A cruel irony of the modern world appears to be the negative correlation between many people’s interest in technology and their interest in people and how they live their lives,” he writes. “It’s equally ironic that most of the people who are in sectors where their roles depend on understanding how normal people live also tend to live some of the most abnormal lives.
“The greatest opportunities in the world today come from understanding the needs of normal people. We’ve been tricked into thinking that all technology starts as a toy for rich people before moving down, and use this to ignore the realities of billions of people’s lives. We always look at target markets in aspirational ways; we envision the lavish lives of Peloton owners, ?? the needs of affluent millennials in apartments in Shoreditch or Williamsburg, over farmers in Kenya, or middle-aged accountants in small towns.”
Freddie de Boer explores this inability of what he calls ‘AI guys’ to acknowledge the realities of what work and life means for the majority in this Substack.
“I will not relent,” he writes. “This period of AI hype is built on twin pillars, one, a broad and deep contemporary dissatisfaction with modern life, and two, the natural human tendency to assume that we live in the most important time possible because we are in it. Our ongoing inability to define communally-shared visions of lives that are ordinary but noble and valuable has left us terribly frustrated with the modern world, and our sclerotic systems convince us that gradual positive change is impossible. Hence pillar one. And the very fact that we have a consciousness system, the reality of our lives as egos, of dasein, makes it very difficult to avoid thinking that we live in a special place and special time. Hence the second pillar.”
We are all subject to the intertwined forces of bias, solipsism and ego, which Steve Stuart Williams helps us to identify in this Twitter post and this table, which adds some interesting context to many of the grand proclamations about work we see all the time.
Acknowledging that our own group is not necessarily a guide to much beyond that group, and that our own preferences and experiences are just that, will not just help us to have better conversations about work and workplaces, it will help us to understand our fellow travellers better and create better outcomes for the many.
Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.
Image: Toffs and Toughs, 1937 by Jimmy Sime