The pixelated face of a Director of People Operations is currently frozen mid-sentence on my monitor, her mouth a jagged, silent ‘O’ as the corporate Wi-Fi struggles under the weight of 24 simultaneous video feeds. We are 94 minutes into a presentation on ‘Core Values,’ and I have spent at least 34 of those minutes contemplating the dust motes dancing in a sliver of sunlight hitting my keyboard. There is a specific kind of existential dread that sets in when you realize your entire first week of employment has been curated by a legal department terrified of a lawsuit, rather than a manager interested in your success.

I just removed a splinter from my thumb with a pair of sterilized tweezers-a clean, sharp pull that left a tiny red dot of relief. It is the only thing I have successfully accomplished since signing my offer letter 4 days ago.

The Great Disconnect: Components vs. Starter

I’m sitting here, supposedly being ‘onboarded,’ but the process feels less like an integration and more like a slow-motion industrial accident. My manager, a man I’ve spoken to for a grand total of 4 minutes since my initial interview, sent a brief email on Monday: ‘Hey! Glad you’re here. HR will handle the first 4 days. Let’s sync next Friday at 4:44 PM.’ Next Friday? By then, I will have forgotten why I even wanted this job. I will have absorbed 124 pages of a digital handbook that explains, in grueling detail, the company’s policy on personal use of office stationary, yet I still don’t have the login credentials for the CRM I’m supposed to manage.

This is the Great Disconnect. We treat the entry of a human being into a complex social and technical ecosystem as an administrative checkbox. We throw them into a Zoom-shaped void and expect them to emerge 54 hours later as fully functioning components of a high-performance machine. But people aren’t components. They are more like sourdough starter. If you don’t feed them correctly at the start, the whole batch goes sour.

The Baker’s Ritual

Corporate onboarding is currently a bowl of cold water, and I am the yeast, floating on the surface, waiting for a warmth that isn’t coming.

I once spent 14 days at a previous firm learning an entire project management suite, only to find out on my 15th day that the department had actually migrated to a different platform 4 months prior. No one had updated the ‘New Hire Checklist.’ I had become an expert in a ghost system. I felt like a cartographer mapping a continent that had already sunk into the sea. I should have asked more questions, I suppose. I tend to assume the people in charge have a map, but the older I get, the more I realize everyone is just holding a bunch of loose papers and hoping the wind doesn’t pick up.

The Silence of Organization

The radiator just hissed in the corner of my room, a long, mournful sound that reminds me I haven’t left this chair since 8:44 AM. I should probably stand up. I should probably tell the frozen Director of People Operations that her screen is stuck. But there is a strange, perverse comfort in the silence of a broken Zoom call. It mirrors the silence of the organization. If I don’t speak, do I even exist in their payroll system yet?

We focus so much on the ‘what’ of a new job-the dental plan, the 401k vesting schedule, the 14 different Slack channels we need to join-that we completely ignore the ‘how.’ How do we actually do the work? […] These are the structural elements of a career. Without them, you are just a name on an org chart, floating in space.

I’m a bit of a hypocrite, though. I criticize the process, yet I find myself reading every single word of the benefits guide. I know exactly how much the company will contribute to my vision insurance if I decide to get new frames in 2024. I am participating in the very bureaucracy I claim to despise. Perhaps it’s because the bureaucracy is the only thing that feels real right now. I can hold a PDF. I can’t hold a ‘vibe.’