Being new to San Francisco (I moved from New York last year), I felt it was important to go full native. I acquired AirPods, downloaded the Mr. Chilly weather app for the city’s “microclimates” and briefly embraced scooters. I have not yet bought a vest from the vending machine at San Francisco International Airport, but given the aforementioned microclimates, I see their appeal.
The scooter services rode a wave of hype, and I suspect the severity of the backlash to scooter debris — and the vandalism — was greater than the companies and their investors expected. Between injuries, regulatory scrutiny, higher-than-anticipated replacement costs, potential tariffs and the wearing off of the initial novelty, the companies seem to be experiencing a trough of disillusionment just in time for spring.
I stopped riding the scooters because I was spending every scooting second thinking about how this would be an especially embarrassing way for a tech reporter to die. Even imagining myself explaining to strangers that, heavy sigh, yes, these crutches are from a scooter accident was enough to convert me back to a boring old analog bike.
You’ve written about hustle culture and toil glamour. Is the idea of work-life balance dead?
Unfortunately, a lot of the companies that outwardly promote the concept of work-life balance are the ones with the worst cultures of overwork. Over time, I imagine, hypocrisy will turn people off working at those places. Until then, it’s up to the workers to draw their own boundaries.
One way to do that is to understand the difference between taking pride in their work and defining their self-worth by their jobs. And maybe lowering sky-high expectations about their company’s do-gooder missions, and being realistic about how fulfilling their jobs will actually be.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/technology/personaltech/start-ups-tools.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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