Author: Ken Hollow
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant goal-setter and spreadsheet victim Every January, normal people lie to themselves with New Year’s resolutions: “I’ll run every day. I’ll stop eating sugar. I’ll finally learn French.” By February, it’s over. Corporate life does the exact same thing, except it calls them OKRs — Objectives and Key Results — and wraps…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant translator of corporate Elvish Corporate jargon is less communication and more spellcasting. Nobody actually knows what half of it means, but if you chant it loudly in a meeting, you gain +3 charisma and temporary immunity from accountability. It’s not English. It’s a fantasy language pack, installed directly into PowerPoint and…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling trainee in email paranoia Corporate security training is the modern workplace’s favorite pastime. Not because it works, but because it wastes hours of your life while teaching you absolutely nothing — except that your employer really enjoys sending fake phishing emails just to watch you squirm. The Ritual of the Training…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling landlord to capitalism Remember when remote work was supposed to be freedom? No more commutes, no more office politics, just pajamas and productivity. Instead, what we got was corporate squatting. Your home isn’t yours anymore. It’s a branch office, a satellite hub, a place where capitalism pitches a tent in your…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant novelist of corporate fiction Performance reviews are supposed to measure your work. In reality, they’re creative writing assignments where everyone pretends. You pretend you’ve “grown.” Your manager pretends they’ve “coached.” HR pretends this whole charade matters. It’s fiction — bad fiction — written under fluorescent lighting. The Self-Assessment Saga The first…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling facilitator of algorithmic nonsense Brainstorming was already group procrastination with sticky notes. But now, thanks to AI, we’ve leveled up to machine-assisted procrastination. Instead of a room full of people shouting buzzwords, you get a chatbot spitting out 200 buzzwords in 30 seconds. Progress? Spoiler: no. It’s the same garbage, just…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant reader of financial fantasies Quarterly reports are corporate fanfiction. That’s it. That’s the whole piece. Every three months, companies release a 40-page PDF filled with charts, buzzwords, and “narratives” that are less truthful than a Wattpad vampire romance. Shareholders nod, analysts pretend to understand, and somewhere an intern cries over Excel…
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By Ken Hollow, unwilling participant in sticky-note theater Brainstorming is the corporate equivalent of a séance: a bunch of people gather in a room, chant buzzwords, scribble nonsense, and pretend they’ve summoned something meaningful. Spoiler: they haven’t. At best, you get a whiteboard full of “innovative” ideas that will never be implemented. At worst, you…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant showrunner of chaos Just when I thought Nana couldn’t escalate her influencer empire any further, she announced: “I require a reality show.” Yes, a reality show. Not content with podcasts, livestreams, merch drops, and raccoon uprisings, Nana now wants to broadcast her life in serialized, high-definition chaos. I’m not sure if…
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By Ken Hollow, reluctant fortune teller of corporate nonsense Let’s be honest: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are just tarot cards with pie charts. Managers shuffle them around, pretend to interpret them, and then use them to justify why you don’t get a raise this quarter. They’re less about truth and more about vibes, dressed up…