Ed Zitron
Writer and public-relations executive, chief executive of EZPR, author of the newsletter Where’s Your Ed At and host of the podcast Better Offline. Writes combatively about the business of technology, the incentives of executives, and what he calls the Rot Economy.
Ed Zitron did not write this page.
We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.
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Their wordsYou can read your messages on Outlook and Teams without having them summarized — and I’d argue that a well-written email is one that doesn’t require a summary.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 1st of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsWe live in the era of the symbolic executive, when "being good at stuff" matters far less than the appearance of doing stuff, where "what's useful" is dictated not by outputs or metrics that one can measure but rather the vibes passed between managers and executives that have worked their entire careers to escape the world of work.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 2nd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsthe definition of a “good business” has changed from one that makes good products at a fair price to a sustainable and loyal market, to one that can display the most stock price growth from quarter to quarter.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 3rd of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsWhen you care only about shareholder value, the only job you have is to promote further exploitation and dominance — not to have happy customers, not to make your company "a good place to work," not to make a good product, not to make a difference or contribute to anything other than further growth.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 4th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsThe Chief Executive — who makes over 300 times more than their average worker — is no longer a leadership position, but a kind of figurehead measured on their ability to continually grow the market capitalization of their company.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 5th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsManagement as a concept no longer means doing "work," but establishing cultures of dominance and value extraction.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 6th of 7 in this piece
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Their wordsDecades of direct erosion of the very concept of leadership means that the people running companies have been selected not based on their actual efficacy — especially as the position became defined by its lack of actual production — but on whether they resemble what a manager or executive is meant to look like based on the work that somebody else did.
↗The Era Of The Business Idiotwheresyoured.at 7th of 7 in this piece