Jamie Dimon's The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Breaking down JD's viral leaked audio of a rant about RTO

A general rule of comedy is that one punches up - jokes about marginalized or underserved groups that are more malice than funny don’t land and they’re in extremely poor taste. This newsletter follows a similar guidepost: when calling out bad behavior in the corporate world, it tends to look up at managers and not down at juniors when it comes to things like RTO. It’s not that there isn’t bad behavior among juniors when it comes to this stuff - the counterproductive trend of coffee badging comes to mind - but the lack of control juniors have makes them a soft target when it comes to these topics.

In that spirit, we return to one of our favorite people to pick on in this newsletter: Jamie “Creative Combustion” Dimon. A rant of his was leaked recently of him taking a stern tone with his staff about RTO and “fucking Zoom.” Some of his points are salient, even if they’re aimed at the wrong target, while some of them show a sincere lack of understanding of the relationship between management and labor in late-stage capitalism. Let’s call back to Sergio Leone’s pièce de résistance and break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of Dimon’s points.

The Good - Where JD Nails It

There’s a few gems in this rant that this newsletter is 100% on board with:

And the notion - these beuaracracies - ‘I need more people. I can’t get it done.’ No, because you’re filling out requests that don’t need to be done. Your people are going to meetings they don’t need to go to. Someone told me to approve something in Wealth Management they they had to go to 14 committees. I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees, and I feel like firing 14 chairs of committees. I can’t stand it anymore. Now you have a choice - you don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So the people of you who don’t want to work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not mad at you; don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country. You can walk with your feet.

TDNBW co-signs all of this. Meetings are the worst, and the approval process for even minute pieces of work has been highly over-engineered. Not sure I would fire 14 people over that though - I might go all the way up the chain to see who is running the joint and allowing such inefficiencies to run rampant on their watch.

The Bad - Fucking Zoom

Dimon’s griped about Zoom and how juniors are acting on it:

A lot of you were on the fucking Zoom and doing the following: looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an asshole the other person is. Not paying attention, not reading your stuff, you know? And if you don’t think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness - it does.

Dimon is 100% right here - there is no doubt that multi-tasking happens on Zoom calls or Teams meetings. This newsletter would argue the majority of it is due to work overload; catching up on emails, trying to get a deck done, and maintaining ever-changing calendars. We all have too much work to do, so staying off-camera and trying to catch up on work is one way many of us try to compensate.

JPM bankers texting each other during meetings. (ChatGPT4o)

And then there is the more pernicious behavior Dimon mentions - the texts, the inside jokes on DM, the rudeness. That happens, too. This newsletter wouldn’t call it a rule, but maybe this newsletter is simply left off the group chats [Ed.’s note: This is 100% the reason.] In any event, it happens.

But Dimon’s solution of forced RTO is not going to solve the problem. We’ve tackled these subjects on the newsletter before: multi-tasking and the human brain don’t mix. But this happens in the office or at home. I wouldn’t even argue RTO is a band-aid on this, as there’s no real benefit given the fact that we are all neurologically cooked thanks to our addiction to screens. Whether we let our brains simmer at home or in a bullpen won’t make much of a difference from a productivity standpoint (and science has the data to prove it.)

The Ugly - Victimhood Mindset

One of the striking things about Dimon’s diatribe was the “woe is me” threaded throughout:

And when I found out that people were doing that — you don’t do that in my goddamn meetings. You got a meeting with me, you got my attention, you got my focus. I don’t bring my goddamn phone, I’m not sending texts to people, ok?

…

And I’ve had it with this kind of stuff. And, you know, I come in - I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since Covid and I come in and - where’s everybody else? They’re here, they’re there, they’re Zooms and the Zoomers don’t show up. And people say they didn’t get stuff. So that’s not how you run a great company.

I’ve read a good amount of leadership books and have been fortunate enough to attend several leadership trainings: not one of them said a winning tactic to rally the troops was to paint yourself as a victim. Being a leader certainly means holding yourself to a higher standard, and I think this is what JD is trying to convey, but the whining about the hours he works and how he runs his meetings significantly waters that down.

There’s also the power imbalance - juniors really don’t want to hear from their highly compensated managers that they’re not working hard enough in comparison. This newsletter crunched the numbers and since Covid - when Jamie Dimon says he’s been working seven days a week - he has, on average, made over $96,000 per day. The median average salary in the United States is $65,000 - Jamie Dimon makes that in just over 16 hours. The average JPM salary for associates at the high end is $200,000 - Dimon makes that by lunch on Wednesday. I would expect someone making over $30 million a year to be working every day. (The kicker? These numbers do not include the $50 million retention bonus JD pocketed in 2021.)

Management-Labor Relationship

Finally, it feels like there is a misunderstanding of what managers are meant to do. They don’t create value - labor via the juniors does that. It’s also important to note that these juniors are so overworked creating this value at these kinds of institutions that they are literally dying from too much work.

Managers are meant to guide labor into the right places at the organization to ensure it creates the most value in the larger context of the business. Managers who think they are god’s gift to business and the only reason the labor is being done are sorely mistaken, as without said labor managers are useless. With no labor to guide into value utilization, there is no need for management.

Leaders and managers: bring value to the company by ensuring the labor is focused and driven into the right areas, but don’t denigrate the juniors actually creating the work and value that you are ensuring is employed correctly. This will simply breed resentment, leading to things like not paying attention in meetings while (literally) phoning it in.

Grab Bag Sections

WTF Red Sox: If you’re an avid reader of this newsletter, you know I am a huge Boston sports fan. You might think basketball is my favorite sport, but in reality it is baseball. Not only because I’m better at baseball than basketball, but because the Red Sox were the first team I was simply fanatic about. I went to bed every night until high school with a clock radio next to my bed listening to Joe Castiglione call the games. And if you’re familiar with the 1990s Sox, only someone who really likes the team would subject themselves to that.

Then in college they turned things around - but if we’re being honest the past few years have felt transitional. They’ve actually beaten this newsletter’s expectations (2024 did not feel like an over-500 year, and in classic fashion they were exactly .500.) But the signing of Alex Bregman gives this newsletter (and, if the blogs are meant to be believed, a good portion of Sox fans) hope for the upcoming season. Bregman was one of the hottest free agent targets this offseason and it’s nice to see the front office put the money up for him (at $40 million a year, he’ll be just out-earning Jamie Dimon.) If you end up in the metrowest area, Alex, let’s meet up - but drinks are on you.

Album of the Week: We’ve talked about pioneering concept albums before in Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds with the Beach Boys. This week’s album of the week has its roots in that - an artist creating a concept album that was a mainstay in the production room and makes generous use of unique vocal layering.

Frank Ocean’s Blonde proves the old adage that good things come to those who wait. The album - which was highly acclaimed and likely would have taken home some Grammys had he put it up for the award - began being teased in 2013 but wasn’t ultimately released until the summer of 2016 thanks to a bout of writer’s block Ocean went through.

The album is full of raw emotion - the reminiscing of an on-again/off-again relationship in “Solo,” the synth-based shifted vocals on “Self Control” (the album standout), when Ocean sings “We’ll never be those kids again” on “Ivy.” If you’re not feeling something listening to this album, call a shrink.

Other highlights include Andre 3000 on “Solo (Reprise),” the ephemeral vibes on “White Ferrari,” and “Nikes,” which is a bold start to the album. If you want an immersive musical experience, look no further than Blonde.

Quote of the Week: “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” - Aristotle