The further up the ladder you go the more importance is placed on numbers and metrics. Every meeting and every mandatory training is either about leadership decisions or some kind of numbers, be it profit, efficiency, budget or accidents. As a team lead you can still see the individuals you work with, but past that with 100+ people under you, even their health and safety gets reduced to numbers on a sheet.

It gets so ingrained in your brain that its nearly impossible to forget once you reach a point high enough where the shackles loosen a bit.

That doesn’t really excuse anyone from being an out of touch asshole though. You can still see people as people instead of numbers, it just takes more effort to do so.

Whether you think that the output is half as good quality or not why the fuck aren’t you JUMPING at the chance to do that.

Two reasons actually.

1. Most people want to be productive in some way. Even if you don’t like your job very much, its a much bigger mental burden to sit around and do nothing than it is to actually work.

2. You employer isn’t going to pay you the same rate for half as much work done. It is that way now cause they have no idea what the actual productivity will end up being, but once the numbers are stable they will save as much money as possible. You will either be lucky and will work just as much as before with more but worse output, or you will be fired.