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Okay, so apparently we're still debating whether it's rude to text during a meeting. Seriously? In 2025? Give me a freakin' break.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, bless his heart, is apparently losing it over iPads and wandering eyeballs. He even told Fortune, “If you have an iPad in front of me and it looks like you’re reading your email or getting notifications, I tell you to close the damn thing. It’s disrespectful.”
I mean, on the one hand, the guy's not wrong.
The Attention Economy is a Scam
But here's the thing: Dimon's also running a company that probably relies on people being glued to their screens 24/7. It's the financial sector, after all. So, you're gonna demand their undivided attention in a meeting, then expect them to go back to obsessively refreshing Bloomberg terminals? Makes total sense.
Then you've got IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, who's taking a slightly less draconian approach. He thinks it's "weird" to tell people at a tech company not to use tech. Shocker. He distinguishes between small and large meetings, which, okay, fair enough. If I'm in a room with 200 people listening to some corporate drone drone on, I'm gonna check my fantasy football scores, offcourse.
Krishna says, “If it’s a small meeting, I would really frown upon if somebody is sitting opposite my desk and lost in their phone, I would tell them, ‘why don’t you come back when you have time?’”
Translation: "If you're wasting my time, get the hell out."
It all boils down to one thing: respect. Or, more accurately, the appearance of respect.
The Illusion of Presence
Dimon's freaking out because he wants to feel like he's the center of attention. He wants to believe that everyone in the room is hanging on his every word. Which, let's be real, they're probably not. Most meetings could be summarized in an email. And most emails could be summarized in a single, well-placed GIF.
But hey, what do I know? Maybe I'm just a grumpy old millennial yelling at clouds.
This whole thing reminds me of my last doctor's appointment. I'm sitting there, trying to explain my back pain, and the dude's just typing away on his computer, not even making eye contact. Is that respectful? No. Is it the reality of modern healthcare? Absolutely.
And that’s the problem, ain't it? We're so addicted to our devices, so terrified of missing out on something, that we can't even give someone our full attention for 15 minutes. We're all just Pavlov's dogs, salivating at the sound of a notification.
The $3 Billion Distraction
The article mentions that JPMorgan just opened a new $3 billion headquarters in Manhattan. Nineteen restaurants, a company store, and a gym. So, they're basically building a gilded cage to lure people back to the office, then complaining when they can't focus?
Maybe if meetings weren't such a soul-crushing waste of time, people wouldn't feel the need to mentally escape via their phones. Just a thought.