I’m just ricocheting off recent experience, but I keep thinking about how screwed up the setup is for the younger crowd coming up.
People are paying thousands of dollars to go to college. For what? A degree, debt, networking events, and maybe a front-row seat to the same nonsense they’ll run into later in the corporate world?
And fraternities, in my opinion, are not always that different from corporate committees. A bunch of people packed into the same overcrowded outhouse, all acting like there’s a system, when really everybody just wants a seat and half the room doesn’t know the difference between their elbow and their ass.
Then we tell young people, “This is the path.” Pay up. Join in. Smile. Network. Learn the language. Pretend the structure makes sense.
Maybe I’m being too cynical. Maybe I’m not. But when college, fraternities, committees, corporate life, and staffing agencies popping up like weeds all start looking like the same overcrowded outhouse, I feel like I’m allowed to ask a question:
Who keeps calling these short-term band-aids “leadership development” when half the room doesn’t know the difference between their elbow and their ass — and the short-term hires are the first ones dumped when the math stops working?
