July 10, 1988

SOMEWHERE NEAR THE CONTINENTAL DIVIDE — As you read this, I will be tooling through the Canadian Rockies on the Big Dog, leaving the driving to them and the working to you all. I probably could have drummed up some “timeless” items, after a fashion, but there’s something else I wanted to write about, and I want to hear your reactions.

Despite the sound of many Silicon Valley executives singing “Happy Days are Here Again,” I have a sick feeling that we might be like the proverbial lapped horse — we’re so far behind we think we’re ahead.

I haven’t conducted any scientific surveys. I’m just going on what I hear from many people who work in the Valley. To use a metaphor appropriate to my present circumstances, they are not happy campers.

Remember that old cigarette ad campaign, “Smoking more and enjoying it less?” Career burnout, as far as I can tell, is reaching epidemic proportions. A very visible example is that of Joe Schoendorf, Apple Computer’s (former) VP of marketing, who just jumped ship to become a part-time consultant to Apple, a more present father, and to work in the yard of his new Palo Alto home. Understandably, he wants to not shave one day a week.

Another executive I know, an extremely capable and successful public relations person who’s landed her firm scads of good clients, has dropped to part time and is returning to school for a master’s degree so she can work with handicapped kids. She says she wants to do something that makes her want to wake up in the morning.

Neither story is unusual. Every day I hear new reports of people dropping out, quitting, or expressing intense dissatisfaction with the status quo at high-tech companies in the valley.

What is the status quo? Let’s see: Many people are being expected to work 14 to 16 hours a day with little or no extra compensation; they’re constantly threatened by mergers; and they are very unhappy with the increasing gap between worker and management wages. Those are some good places to start.

“All of us lower management peons are fearful for our jobs and our futures,” says one unsigned letter I got from a disgruntled merger victim. “I think that senior management should have a responsibility to their employees, not just cover their own butts when it’s time to sell the shop. Whatever happened to free trade?”

Indeed Sid Wilkins, a Palo Alto psychologist and outplacement counselor (that means he helps you find a job after you’ve been fired), has seen it more times than he’d like to recall. “Everyone is trying to make it on the back of somebody else,” he says. “It’s a vicious cycle. The venture capitalists are at the mercy of the money guys and everyone is driven by short-term financial gains.”

One way this manifests itself, he says, is in the workaholism that electronics companies seem to encourage under the guise of “corporate culture.” For a long time, companies have been telling employees that they can help make a difference in the world. Unfortunately, they don’t have time to watch their children grow up or get a haircut, but after all what’s more important?

Wilkins calls it “the commando mentality” — the all-for-one corporate mindset that encourages people to reject everything but their careers. “People are actually told, “I hope you don’t expect to have a life other than work,’” Wilkins says.

Then, of course, when the going gets rough, before the company gets bought or reorganizes, people get laid off, right? That’s just the way it goes. Wilkins recalls one electronics company in bad shape whose chairman made $10,000 a month and wouldn’t take a pay cut. In another company everyone was asked to take a 30 percent pay cut. When you’re making $65,000, that probably means you have to sell the second BMW. When you make $15,000, you have to decide whether to eat or pay rent.

“With people like that at the top, how can you be successful?” Wilkins asks.

Sooner or later, most people who live this way crack. Are you cracking? Write and tell me why, and what you’d like to do about it. I’ll print your answers.