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- Don’t see eye-to-eye with your CEO? That’s fine, you can go.
- Leaders in recent months have taken a hard-line stance on AI, remote work, and so-called “woke-ism.”
- They have more power to demand what they want right now — but the pendulum is always swinging.
Bend the knee, or go work somewhere else.
That’s the message a growing number of company leaders are preaching, now that a leaner workforce is in and DEI is out.
Palantir is “the first company to be completely anti-woke,” chief executive Alex Karp said on an earnings call this week. AT&T’s John Stankey warned employees this summer that an “’employment deal’ rooted in loyalty” is dead. Also this summer from GitHub’s Thomas Dohmke: “Either you have to embrace the Al, or you get out of your career.”
The rhetoric represents a stark shift in tone from a few years ago, when CEOs such as Jamie Dimon and David Solomon voiced support for diversity in the wake of the #MeToo movement and George Floyd’s death. At the time, employees could job-hop like jackrabbits, and bosses had to play nice.
Now, white-collar layoffs are on the rise, workers are job-hugging, and CEOs are investing in AI tools to automate work.
“It’s all about control,” said Jeff LeBlanc, a management lecturer at Bentley University. “People in leadership positions are feeling like they finally have the upper hand again.”
There’s strength in numbers. As CEOs see their peers let it rip, seemingly without consequences, they’re emboldened to do the same, said Peter Cappelli, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
“Follow-the-leader happens in part because people who have been holding back from saying what they want feel more empowered once they are not the first to say it,” he said. “Expect more get-tough talk in the next few weeks.”
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Get on board or quit
Leaders are generally free to mold their workforces however they believe is best for their companies, and their employees can either play ball or move on, said Jennifer Deal, a senior research scientist at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
“Most organizations are not democracies,” she said, adding, “If you don’t like it, you need to go somewhere else.”
This isn’t just Big Tech going hardcore, pushing workers to do more with less, even if that means longer hours and fewer perks. Leaders are also demanding that employees align with their views on matters such as remote work, AI usage, and even politics.
President Donald Trump led the way by cancelling DEI initiatives at federal agencies shortly after taking office in January and lambasting “woke-ism.” In the months since, the same blunt language has been appearing in bosses’ rhetoric.
On the earnings call, Karp noted that Palantir’s software powers ICE and boasted that the company supports the Trump administration’s stance on Israel. Palantir is “fighting for the right side of what should work in this country — meritocracy, lethal technology,” Karp said. “I don’t know why this is all controversial, but many people find that controversial.”
In his letter to shareholders published the same day, Karp penned a screed against multiculturalism, calling for a “rejection of a vacant and neutered and hollow pluralism.”
AT&T’s Stankey didn’t touch on politics, but in a recent memo to more than 100,000 employees, he made clear he would no longer tolerate remote work or prioritize tenure as a reason for advancement.
“We have consciously shifted away from some of these elements and towards a more market-based culture,” he wrote.
Some CEOs are also drawing a hard line on AI policies. In an employee memo last spring, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said AI usage is now “a baseline expectation” for all employees of the e-commerce company. “Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI,” Lütke wrote.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong went even further. In August, he mandated AI onboarding for engineers at the cryptocurrency exchange and fired some who didn’t comply.
Not everyone is feeling empowered. Some CEOs are staying tight-lipped because their values don’t align with those of the Trump administration — or because they’re afraid of drawing critical attention.
“They’re afraid of getting flagged or on a list that would imply they shouldn’t be engaged by the government,” Marin Richardson, CEO of Disrupt PR, previously told Business Insider. “It’s just such a polarizing climate.”
Times have changed
Some of the CEOs now openly embracing Trumpian views once struck a different tone, presenting themselves as politically neutral or even progressive.
Palantir’s Karp, for instance, backed former Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign last year. Still, he describes himself as “left of center,” as he said in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who has championed liberal causes in Silicon Valley such as public education, recently called on Trump to deploy the National Guard to San Francisco to address crime in the city.
And just days before Trump started his second White House term in January, Mark Zuckerberg changed Meta’s content-moderation policies to more closely reflect the priorities of the incoming administration. Four years earlier, at the end of Trump’s first term, Zuckerberg blocked Trump from Facebook indefinitely, stating in a post on the social media site that “Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden.”
Even Jensen Huang, who in over 30 years of running Nvidia has remained largely apolitical and didn’t endorse a candidate during the 2024 election, thanked the audience at a company conference on Monday for “making America great again.”
A few years from now, CEOs championing their hardline values may face backlash, said Wayne Cascio, a management professor at the University of Colorado Denver Business School.
“Right now, they’re in a good position because lots of companies are laying off workers,” he said. But the job market is bound to heat up again someday.
“The pendulum will swing back as it always does,” said Cascio, adding that many workers whose values don’t align with what leaders are trumpeting today will be looking for the exits when they can tomorrow.
At that point, some of those leaders may suddenly sound more accommodating once again, but it’ll be hard to turn back the clock.
“These words will be available for people to see in the future,” Cascio said. “There is no eraser with the internet.”
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