60 Years Later
Bob Dylan wrote The Times They Are A-Changin’ more than 60 years ago. It still feels like a warning—and a dare.
Dylan wasn’t just writing about culture—he was pointing at the structure beneath it. The lyrics mark that moment when trust in institutions breaks down, when younger generations stop asking for permission, and when those in charge are the last to realize their time is up. That kind of shift doesn’t just live in protest songs or politics. It shows up in offices, in boardrooms, in the quiet drift between meetings—when action stalls, questions pile up, and everyone’s waiting for someone else to go first.
From inside corporate hell, it’s tempting to believe this kind of change is happening somewhere else—outside the building, on social media, in some other industry. But you can feel it here too. You feel it in the way people hesitate before speaking, in the questions that don’t get answered, in the polite nodding after another round of “alignment” that leaves no one aligned. The storm isn’t coming. It’s already here. And some of us are still hoping it’ll wait until after the quarterly results.
The Shift
The shift isn’t in the system—it’s in our tolerance for it. Corporate hell has always sold the illusion of inclusion. What’s changed is how many people have stopped pretending to buy it. And ironically, the companies that promised to reinvent work—startups, disruptors, all that agile talk—just repackaged the same old hierarchy. Faster, shinier, more extractive. The perks got louder, but the power stayed in the same hands.
That’s what makes this moment so tricky. I work for a massive, global company. We’re not perfect, but we do more for our people than most. Long-term careers still mean something. Real benefits still exist. But you wouldn’t always know it from the inside. Some folks have never worked anywhere else. They assume this is standard. It’s not. Comfort has a way of erasing memory—and sometimes, gratitude. I’m old enough to remember when we were disposable. Some of us still are.
Meanwhile, power is shifting in ways the org chart still doesn’t capture. I see it in the women coming up now—not asking how to get to the top, but whether the top still matters. I see it in Gen Z, already here, already watching. What looks like impatience is actually pattern recognition. They don’t confuse titles with wisdom. They don’t confuse bureaucracy with credibility. And they’re not waiting for permission to move. They want clarity, purpose, and momentum. And they’re paying attention—even when we aren’t.
Dylan wasn’t being poetic. He was being precise. He couldn’t have imagined Zoom fatigue or AI-generated feedback forms, but the message still holds. The structure is buckling. The story is shifting. And if you’re still waiting for the winds to pick up, let me save you the trouble.
Bitches, they’re already blowing through the halls. Some of us are just holding the door—trying to decide whether to brace it, open it wider, or walk through it ourselves.