There's More Work and No Perks, But at Least the Vibes Are Bad --- Workers say cost cuts and AI are stripping the joy out of office life; 'feels like a funeral'

“For employees at a Dell Technologies office, mornings used to start with a tiny dose of joy. The office coffee machines doled out free daily espresso shots, a small perk that workers relished.

 

Then came the buzz kill: Last year the company started charging staffers a fee every time they used the machine.

 

The cost, while small, felt like what one worker described as the "cherry on top" of a demoralizing work culture beset by layoffs and overwhelming workloads.

 

"Honestly, it feels like a funeral in the office right now," said the employee, who pointed out the coffee was just OK.

 

Dell said it is committed to supporting the well-being of its workforce.

 

The coffee squeeze is emblematic of a broader malaise sweeping office life at American companies, which appear to be in a race to find inefficiencies and cut costs. The curtailing of perks, from offsites to travel, is happening against the backdrop of an artificial intelligence push that employees say seems aimed at squeezing more work out of fewer people.

 

The upshot, many employees say, is that work has been stripped of fun.

 

"There's almost nobody who is feeling positive vibes about their job right now," said Rocco Seyboth, a longtime software marketer outside Seattle. "We're in the AI dread era."

 

Seyboth, 45, said when he started his career, the technology industry still offered plenty to excite him. Companies were growing and bosses were lavishing ever-higher pay and perks. As his career took him from startups to larger companies like Amazon, Seyboth had a realization: Work was rather miserable.

 

"Everyone I talked to is consumed by AI -- either how to use it, how to pretend to use it, how much they hate using it, how it's going to eliminate their position or their company's product," he said.

 

Middle managers say they're on the front lines of the war on fun.

 

Once used to overseeing a handful of people, they now have far bigger teams. The average manager had roughly 12 direct reports last year, according to Gallup, a nearly 50% jump from when the firm first measured the figure in 2013. AI has changed expectations about productivity, too.

 

Once-reliable career paths -- from business school to consulting, for instance -- now look shakier.

 

"All the conveyor belts are broken," said Suzy Welch, a management professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, at a recent symposium on purpose and flourishing.

 

Companies are tightening scrutiny of employee expenses, meaning certain niceties are also disappearing.

 

At banking software company Q2 Holdings in Austin, finance chief Jonathan Price told employees the company was taking aim at nonessential expenses that were too often wasteful, part of a larger effort to control costs. The company placed a $100 cap on a single wine-bottle purchase when entertaining clients, in part because employees were spending far more.

 

Nonessential expenses fell by over 25% in February compared with a year earlier, he said.

 

Chief financial officers at large U.S. companies mentioned "efficiency" at least once on 307 conference calls in the latest quarter as of March 26, up from 219 a year earlier and the highest level since at least 2020, according to AlphaSense.

 

Executives say it's a delicate balance in gauging what perks, if any, to eliminate. Trimming the wine budget is one thing; touching the office snacks, like bananas or Kind bars, can be a no-go.

 

"You can cut too far or make people feel less valued in the workplace and they'll just go work for the competition," said Ken Bowles, CFO of packaging giant Smurfit Westrock.

 

Smurfit Westrock has been scrutinizing certain expenses following a 2024 merger, and said it surpassed its goal of $400 million in cost savings in its first full year after the deal.

 

The company said it asks employees to be sensible. "If someone is entertaining a customer and orders a nicer bottle of wine, that's probably OK" in the context of the relationship, Bowles said. "But if he's taking out the GM of a plant or controller and they've gone off and ordered Champagne for everybody, then you go, oh look, that's a conversation."

 

Bowles said in offices where the company struggled to retain workers postmerger, it added perks like refreshment fridges, with soft drinks, sparkling water and healthy snacks like fruit and cheese. "People do use them," Bowles said.

 

Some companies stepped up perks, like better coffee and food, to encourage people to return to the office following the pandemic. But they've since swung back, said Bruce Daisley, a former executive at Twitter and YouTube who advises corporate leaders on culture.

 

"Culture always outperforms every other variable in terms of what we want from the job," Daisley said. "We typically join the job for pay, and we leave because the culture's bad."

 

Seyboth, the technology employee, left his job at the software company Tango last year, and now regularly hears from former colleagues at a range of companies who are miserable. He now says he is retired from corporate life, freeing him to pursue new interests, like building a pool.” [1]

 

1. There's More Work and No Perks, But at Least the Vibes Are Bad --- Workers say cost cuts and AI are stripping the joy out of office life; 'feels like a funeral'. Maurer, Mark; Cutter, Chip.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 31 Mar 2026: A1.