fred.kim: futurist + author of the upcoming book
The Hypocrisy of Meritocracy
We are in an aspirational traffic jam.
The gap between our career aspirations and our career achievements are widening.
And we are in the midst of a great reconfiguration where employee values and employer priorities are in direct conflict.
The Great Resignation of 2021 and Quiet Quitting of 2022-2023 were symptoms of a larger double macro shift happening in the workplace. Pandemic lock downs and the remote work boom of 2020 caused a societal epiphany where we realized we desired meaningful, purposeful jobs that balance work and life, health and happiness, pay and rewards.
Conversely, the pandemic caused companies to make hard and sudden shifts in priorities, focusing almost exclusively on short-term profit, growth, and efficiency as they fought for survival. In 2025, we are now feeling the byproduct of this shift through mass layoffs, industry contraction, lack of workplace mobility, and cultural toxicity.
As we patiently wait our turn to be recognized and rewarded for our hard work, we now openly question if we’ve been in the wrong line for years. Despite clear signs that companies and managers are pulling back and even closing the doors on recognizing our merit, we keep pushing with the hope that one day our turn for success will come, not realizing we’re running on an uphill treadmill.
The Hypocrisy of Meritocracy is a nonfiction narrative about the future of work. This upcoming book examines the rules and beliefs that have governed upward mobility and achievement in the workplace, why we work hard today, how that has changed in recent years, the blockers to our success, and what possibilities and alternatives exist specifically for Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z workers.
Chapter List
01. Our Belief in Meritocracy is Culturally Rooted
02. The Hypocrisy Starts in School
03. The Evolving Meaning of Why We Work Hard
04. Weaponized Performance Reviews
05. The Three Bad Managers: The Fraud, The Lazy, and The Jerk
06. Bad Manager Math
07. Hiring Manager Gatekeepers
08. The Chosen One and The Nepo Hire
09. The Miserable Metamates
10. Opportunity > Meritocracy
11. Create Your Opportunities
12. The Future of Workplace Meritocracy
COMING SOON
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About the author
Fred Kim is a business research leader by profession and part futurist, part sociologist, and part ethnographer.
He has led strategic product innovation along with foresight research, design research, UX research, and market research teams in Silicon Valley for 20 years. His expertise is uncovering the “unknown unknowns” of societal and technological shifts that shape our futures.
Over the past decade, he has studied human aspiration and the future of work indirectly as a senior people leader and directly as part of his innovation research.
Fred was the former head of business foresight research at Meta, Next Billion Users research leader at Google, the Society & Technology Research Group Manager at Mercedes-Benz R&D, head of advanced product planning at Lucid Motors, and team principal at Volkswagen Group and Samsung Design.
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