I keep meeting people who describe their jobs using words they'd never use in normal conversation. They attend meetings about meetings. They create PowerPoints that no one reads, which get shared in emails no one opens, which generate tasks that don't need doing.

The structures remain. The offices still gleam. The meetings still happen. The emails still flow. But the faith that this activity means something, that it's building towards something worthwhile, that it justifies the life hours it consumes, that faith is evaporating.