The boss of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, has railed against Gen Z employees who work from home and “bulls**t” bureaucracy at the investment bank in a leaked recording. The Telegraph has the story.
In a rant to the Wall Street giant’s staff, Jamie Dimon complained of slow decision-making, phone calls going unanswered and younger recruits who were being “left behind” because of the shift to remote working.
He criticised “zoomers” – a term for people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s – for spending all their time on the video app Zoom instead of physical offices.
Mr Dimon said: “Don’t give me this s— that work-from-home Friday works.
“I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.
“I’ve had it with this kind of stuff.”
The expletive-laden outburst, revealed in an audio recording obtained by Barron’s, followed grumbling by JP Morgan employees about an order to return to the office five days a week.
It underlines tensions between executives and their underlings at major companies as bosses take a tougher approach to remote working arrangements that were originally introduced during the Covid pandemic.
Mr Dimon told JP Morgan staff that he had concerns about the “damage” working from home was doing to young recruits who needed training up, and on company culture.
But he also accused managers of failing to keep the practice under control and of abusing the privilege to slack off.
He said: “There is no chance that I will leave it up to managers. Zero chance. The abuse that took place is extraordinary.
“A lot of you were on the f—— Zoom… and you were doing the following: looking at your mail, sending texts to each other about what an a—— the other person is, not paying attention, not reading your stuff. And if you don’t think that slows down efficiency, creativity, creates rudeness – it does.
“When I found out that people were doing that – you don’t do that in my goddamn meetings.
“If you’re going to meet with me, you’ve got my attention, you’ve got my focus. I don’t bring my goddamn phone, I’m not sending texts to people. It simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for creativity. It slows down decision-making.”
Mr Dimon added that employees who did not want to come to the office should quit.
He said: “I will not be responsible for a company like that, okay?
“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. But this company is going to set our own standards and do it our own way.
“I’ve had it with this kind of stuff. I’ve been working seven days a goddamn week since Covid, and I come in, and where is everybody else?
“They’re here, they’re there, the Zooms, and the zoomers don’t show up… That’s not how you run a great company.”
He dismissed a staff petition objecting to the new requirement for office attendance, arguing that the bank had always been clear they would return eventually and that it was tough luck for people who had moved home to live further away.
Mr Dimon said: “I don’t care how many people sign that f—— petition.”
Worth reading in full.
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Could we find someone like this to run our Civil Service?
Everybody employed in public service needs to hear this sort of language. All DEI staff should be sacked, every single one by way of putting down a marker. This Third World Shithole needs putting into reverse.
MEGA.
I’m presuming Dimon is directing his ire at managers and rightly so these people are incredibly well paid. Low income staff WFH may be a different case in point. Transport costs and time travelling take up so much time and money many argue that they are only marginally better off than those on welfare.
Make JP Morgan Great Again. Come to work in person.
Totally agree with Dimon. WFH is being abused and from my own experience results in a lot less work being done. One of the ‘symptoms’ from the Rona plandemic fascism. I can’t imagine how inefficient the unlimited # of gov’t-civil service gnomes are with WFH.
In the UK one of the great challenges is the sheer cost of transportation. To get into our Canary Wharf office, 3-4 x a week, costs about £3500 a year or more for me. Most large firms do give a car allowance which can be used for this, so I am fine, but many firms do not pay any travel costs. It is a challenge for a lot of people who can’t afford to live near their work.
TBH even living several thousand pounds a year away from central London, the prices of houses are still very high for young people starting out.
For me it wasn’t the money cost of the commute, it’s the time. 3 hours a day. I am a lot less tired now.
I do think it must be a bit weird for young people to be at home, doesn’t seem healthy to me. I am an old git and don’t want to listen to my normie colleagues talking crap.
Many did that before you and earned much less in real terms.
When I worked at Victoria and the City my employers allowed you to pay for your season ticket monthly as opposed to having to find the whole amount at once. I used to read or sleep on the train.
I think Dimon is right, even though I work from home most days of the week.
I do CAD work and I don’t need to be in the office for that.
I commuted for 15 years – two hours on the road every day and that’s was two hours when the traffic wasn’t bad.
But he is right; a lot of people will take the mickey.
Consider the fact that people are not paying attention because you are boring and there are too many unnecessary meetings.
Consider the fact that people don’t want to come in to the office because it is an unattractive unhealthy and inefficient working environment
Consider the fact that inadequate leadership is not inspiring subordinates or supervising their WFH to ensure that standards are maintained.
Consider the fact that any daily commute also significantly detracts from performance and job satisfaction.
Youngsters keen to get on will generally attend the office as required. If senior staff are not voluntarily attending to offer leadership, mentoring, then you have appointed the wrong senior staff.
Ranting kind of gives the game away; unattractive at best, at worst indicative of a bullying management style.
This gentleman should take a serious look in the mirror.
Dimon has been a successful leader of a dynamic company for many years, probably decades
You might be the sort of person he has in mind when he says “You don’t have to work for J P Morgan”…..
If you’re in the boat, row, otherwise get out and swim home
Glassdoor:
Cons
‘Fraser told managers Citi’s flexible working was giving the bank a competitive advantage in attracting talented staff’
You make some good points
I do worry about some people who become quite isolated through WFH but they are adults and have the right to make choices
They need to be Informed Choices.
Well unless there has been systematic lying, my default assumption is that choices made by adults are informed, and if they are not, then that adult has chosen to not inform themselves – a choice it is their right to make. I believe people should be allowed to go to hell their own way, provided they are not directly harming others.
And not being paid on the way
Or alternatively get rid of the clearly lazy slackers you employ.
He’s the CEO, he can sack who he wants!
Just like Trump.
Like him or not (Dimon not much) he’s the boss.
Staff can vote with their feet!
WFH was just starting to come in when I dropped through the corporate trap door some years ago.
Not for me. Work is work, home is home, and ne’er the twain shall meet, although I do like to think I had the occasional corporate good idea while cutting the grass.
As for WFH with young children around, doesn’t bear thinking about. Recipe for domestic strife and home workplace disaster.
I always needed to be in the zone – and the zone for the Gruffalo and Tumbling Towers ain’t the zone for lab work, the corporate database or preparing those powerpoint decks for serial filchers higher up the corporate food chain. That’s all there was to it.
My lot generally manage even with young kids. Shed at the bottom of the garden or a room with the door closed. Some go to the office to get away from their families. Do your work diligently, earn the freedom to choose.
It was like that in the late 50s and the 60s, when our front room was the office.
Good, its about time, service is terrible in this country, employees have no care for their work, its just something they do between hair appointments, childcare, coffee and whatever they want to do during the day, but they still expect full pay.
However; I would say excluding those paid by JP Morgan and similar who will be high earners, there is little incentive to work hard when the Government takes so much in tax, then N.I. When employers no longer offer cars, privatehealth, relocations because the Government has poked their greedy fingers in once again, when a bonus means the Government steals it once again. The result these kids cannot afford a home, cannot afford to have a parent stay at home and look after a child.
The Government needs to but out of private enterprise it needs to get its greedy fingers off people’s wages, it needs to allow private enterprise to offer incentives for the best employees.
The problems of society are caused by Government, by their overreach on Lockdown, by money printing, by terrifying and taxing. Its time they got out of the way and let people like Mr Dimon get on with making a successful business.
Hear, hear 👏
Off topic, terribly sad news from Germany. A woman and her 2yr old daughter have died as a result of the jihadist attack in Munich, enabled by the disgusting traitors in government;
https://news.sky.com/story/mother-and-two-year-old-daughter-die-after-car-ramming-attack-in-germany-13310195
14yr old boy killed by a Syrian in Austria today. He looks full of remorse🤬
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1890843189608636539
It happens everywhere the liberals are in Authority:
https://x.com/RadioEuropes/status/1890418853961740675
The work from home madness has it’s roots pre Wuhan Flu Lockdowns. I recall the BBC giving airtime to an environmental activist at least a year before house arrest and this individual was demanding we all work from home to stop commuting and thereby ‘save the planet’. What is often over looked is that working from how has been a thing in IT for at least 2 decades. I have been working from home on an irregular basis since the early 2,000s. The big difference is that it suddenly became mandated along with companies suddenly being concerned about our mental well-being.
Norfolk County Council did a work from home trial in the summer before lockdown and covid. I’ve always believed lockdown was a way to get cars off the road and the Net Zero agenda underway and nothing will convince me otherwise
In my experience it happened from the late 1990s where the bosses disappeared on Fridays and expected the underlings to cover for them.
We had a death on a building site on a Friday, no CEO contactable and a major investigation.
Years later I pick up a call for a serious incident and the boss is on answer phone. Needless to say he picked up when he heard me spell out the details.
So I do not blame the underlings leaving the bosses in the shit where they are paid to belong
‘Expletive-laden outburst’?
My CEO of a few years back could have taught him a thing or three. Swore like a trooper. Very well liked though.
My staff have to come to our place of business, so WFH never raises its head. I have only taken part in two ‘Zoom’ meetings, but I noticed how similar they were to real meetings, i.e. 8 people on-line, one doing the talking, essentially telling us what had already been decided. A memo, also requesting comments would have been far more productive. I suspect that there are lots of people invited to video meetings because its easy to get them online, rather than their essential contributions to the event.
‘Expletive-laden’? Clearly the writer never worked on a Scottish building site. When I worked on a hydro-power scheme near Loch Ness the language was much more imaginative and colourful than that used by Mr Dimon
Well Microsoft had to get its Teams software pushed somehow and Bill Gates appeared to push lockdown for the plandemic. Follow the money.
Aren’t JP Morgan part of The Cabal that started all this sh*t in the first place?
I’m surprised it took Dimon so long to figure this out.
Shame no one says that here and acts, bet 3/4 s of “uncivil” servants would be gone, its just pure idleness, and those muttering about the commute and cost, get a job nearer to home, using house prices as an excuse is crap, there are other places than Londinistan!
Good for him! Fantastic stuff!
Gee, Jamie is such a brave guy. Let’s see,he carried out all the covid mandates quite happily for four yrs ago, and now he demands his employees come back to the office…..only when Oresident Trump had the courage to call for common sense. Oh well, Jamie, at least you woke up, finally. Just wondering what is the real reason.
When one gets a woke request or observation from an employee it’s always worth asking them if they’ve considered if they are working for the right company.
Why is anybody surprised by human nature? One of the weakest traits is self-discipline. One of the most powerful traits is group think that can justify just about anything. People just are not growing up today.