A Dark Turn On Office Introductions

Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX
Published in
5 min readNov 3, 2022

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Introducing yourself to the team, in the Age of Teams.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

A Remembrance of Things Past

Remember those forboding offices all crowded with future co-workers, their endless lines of desks, heads all reluctantly turning toward you as some nondescript line-manager performs their only scheduled and vaguely useful function of a standing working day.

Their hands remain aloft as a magician casting a demanding spell, seemingly commanding absolute power over their domain yet, alas, they’re but a conductor of an already automated orchestra that requires no such organisation, a relic of the past, a long obsolete anachronism.

Performing the same monotonous narrative they make out they know what’s happening in an office they rarely frequent on foot, labouring on about how well you’ll fit in and be a great asset to the team (when they simultaneously have to be reminded of your first name by a trailing HR droid complete with clipboard and electronic door pass) but don’t even know why you’re actually even there.

Happy times, kind of.

Here’s To Future Days

Unfortunately these kind of office introductions, instead of fading into proper obscurity have only gotten worse with the wellbeing-washing of modern work life and the…

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Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX

Worries about the future. Way too involved with software. Likes coffee, maths, and . Would prefer to be in academia. SpaceX, X, and Overwatch fan.