‘I’ve had it’: JP Morgan boss rails against Gen Z in expletive-laden outburst
Leaked recording of Jamie Dimon rant highlights growing frustrations over home working
The boss of JP Morgan has railed against Gen Z employees who work from home and “bull—-” bureaucracy at the investment bank in a leaked recording.
In an 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, OK?
“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.”
JP Morgan had previously allowed most employees to work from home for two days a week, while requiring full-time attendance from its managing directors.
However, a memo sent to staff last month said it would overhaul its hybrid working policy previously adopted in response to Covid.
It said: “The benefits of working together in person are substantial and irreplaceable, and as we spend more time together, the more advantages we gain.”
In the staff meeting, Mr Dimon was also highly critical of bureaucracy that he said had slowly taken root at the bank.
He cited a complaint that some decisions had to be signed off by 14 committees and that straightforward performance reports were being filled with useless information.
He said: “I’ve asked every department to cut it by 10pc: reports, meetings, documents, training sessions, because life will be OK.
“I get performance reviews for my operating committee and, you know, they got longer and longer and longer, and maybe six pages long.
“And because of legal and risk, and legal had to look at it, and risk had to look at it, and it’s an official document, the regulators might see it, there might be litigation around it, and so we got to be careful.
“I get the thing and I throw it in the goddamn garbage can. It is 100pc pablum and bull—-. I literally can’t stand it.
“People are taking hours to write, you know, ‘revenues are up 12pc this year, and we met the target here’ – I already knew all that. I just wanted an honest assessment.
“And the notion … ‘I need more people, I can’t get it done.’ No, because … you’re filling out requests that don’t need to be done …
“Someone told me that to approve something in wealth management, they had to go to 14 committees. I am dying to get the name of the 14 committees, and I feel like firing 14 chairmen of committees.
“I want it out of the company … And I know it’s my fault, I’m the boss.”
His outburst comes as Donald Trump wages war on corporate DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) policies, as well as “woke” workplace practices in general.
Businesses from Disney to Deloitte are scrambling to change their policies as a result.
A spokesman for JP Morgan declined to comment on Friday.
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Reporting by Isla Binnie, additional reporting by Tatiana Bautzer and Nupur Anand in New York, editing by Lananh Nguyen, Megan Davies, Gerry Doyle and Chris Reese
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Isla Binnie reports on how company directors and executives manage stakeholder and shareholder interests, with a focus on compensation, corporate crises, dealmaking and succession. She also covers how politics, regulation, environmental issues and the broader economy affect boardroom discussions. Isla previously covered business, politics and general news in Spain and Italy. She trained with Reuters in London and covered emerging markets debt for the International Financing Review (IFR).
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