{"id":26087,"date":"2026-03-01T16:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T16:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=26087"},"modified":"2026-03-01T16:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T16:17:13","slug":"slack-cofounder-says-workers-can-get-stuck-doing-fake-work-like-pre-meetings-and-slide-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=26087","title":{"rendered":"Slack cofounder says workers can get stuck doing ‘fake’ work like pre-meetings and slide shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Some employees are guilty of coffee badging or jiggling their mouses to look active while working remotely. But even when staffers are being productive on the job, there are a few tasks that could be considered \u201cfake\u201d work\u2014at least according to Slack cofounder and former CEO Stewart Butterfield.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cHere\u2019s my grand theory: Hyper-realistic worklike activities goes along with this other concept called known valuable work to do,\u201d Butterfield said on Lenny\u2019s Podcast<\/em> last year. \u201cHyper-realistic worklike activity is superficially identical to work\u2026But this is actually a fake bit of work, and it\u2019s so subtle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Butterfield coined these two concepts after having seen the type of work that goes into scaling startups into big businesses. The serial entrepreneur cofounded photo-sharing platform Flickr in 2002, serving as its CEO for several years, before his next venture establishing and leading $26.5 billion giant Slack back in 2009. Butterfield has been keeping a low profile since he stepped down from the company in January 2023.<\/p>\n

From his decades of experience in the business world, he\u2019s separated workforce productivity into two separate camps: hyper-realistic worklike activities, which he deems as \u201cfake\u201d work, and known valuable work, which promotes innovation and strengthens success.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How \u201cfake\u201d work appears as startups scale into big businesses<\/h2>\n

As a two-time startup founder, Butterfield witnessed the problem with \u201cfake\u201d work often stems from the early years of business. At the start, employees are just trying to get the company off the ground: opening a bank account, creating a users table, salting passwords\u2014all the nuts-and-bolts type of work that is \u201cabsolutely\u201d necessary to a brand\u2019s foundation. Those early tasks create \u201calmost infinite generative value,\u201d according to Butterfield, since they\u2019re required to get a business up and running. But once a company grows, that value creation changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem with almost every organization [is] at the very beginning, you have an enormous amount of work that you know what to do, and you know that it\u2019s going to be valuable,\u201d Butterfield explained. <\/em>\u201cEveryone\u2019s going to work in the morning like, \u2018I have 10 things to do and every single one of them is like something I know how to do, and it\u2019s definitely going to be valuable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTime goes on, and the relationship between the supply of work to do and the demand for doing work just starts to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former Slack CEO explained that over time, more and more people get hired. Eventually, those employees want more junior-level talent to help support their teams, and suddenly, businesses have many staffers ready to work, with all \u201ceasy, obvious stuff\u201d already done.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But if an employer has many workers who do not have enough clear, high-value job expectations, then staffers may spend their time doing those hyper-realistic worklike activities. Butterfield clarified that it\u2019s not because employees are \u201cstupid\u201d or \u201cevil,\u201d but only because they want to be recognized for the duties they perform. And if bosses aren\u2019t being transparent about known valuable work to do, then staffers will try to excel within the status quo of their teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Workers and CEOs don\u2019t even know they\u2019re doing \u201cfake\u201d work<\/h2>\n

Hyper-realistic worklike activities aren\u2019t always blatantly unproductive. In fact, Butterfield said that \u201cfake\u201d work often comes across as normal job tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are calling meetings with their colleagues to preview the deck that they\u2019re going to show in the big meeting, to get feedback on whether they should improve some of the slides,\u201d Butterfield explained. \u201cWe are sitting in a conference room, and there\u2019s something being projected up there, and we\u2019re all talking about it, and that\u2019s exactly what work is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Slack cofounder noted that this type of \u201cfake\u201d work is very subtle to pick up on\u2014and even the most senior leadership will fall victim to the habit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll do it, our board members will do it, every exec will do it,\u201d Butterfield admitted. \u201cThe further you are from having all of the contacts, and all the information, and the decision-making authority, the easier it is to get trapped in that stuff, and people will just perform enormous amounts of hyper-realistic worklike activities, and have no idea that that\u2019s what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the onus for ensuring that all workers are doing known valuable work\u2014from the entry-level, all the way up to senior executives\u2014falls on top bosses, according to Butterfield. CEOs, managers, directors, and executives need to be transparent about their expectations and how to meaningfully drive the business forward. Butterfield advised that these leaders create clarity around known valuable work, so everyone understands that\u2019s what they\u2019re supposed to be doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually your responsibility to make sure that there\u2019s sufficient clarity around what the priorities are, and explicitly saying \u2018no\u2019 to things upfront, rather than words like, \u2018Hey you guys are a bunch of idiots wasting your time on this thing that doesn\u2019t matter,\u2019\u201d Butterfield said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A version of this story was published on Fortune.com on November 25, 2025.<\/em><\/p>\n

More on the workplace:<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

#Slack #cofounder #workers #stuck #fake #work #premeetings #slide #shows<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some employees are guilty of c… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[938,266,542,624,669,4580,625,1083,2547,666,1055,14805,1980,936,2297,1710,212,4603,14803,4085,14804,1606,7281,342,1561,8157],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}