“Why so serious?”
The line is memorable because it cuts through pretense. The Joker was not asking for chaos. He was exposing hypocrisy. People pretending this is all very important, very controlled, very rational. When in reality, it is not.
Lately, scrolling LinkedIn feels like watching that scene on repeat.
Stories proudly shared. Lessons supposedly learned. And beneath them, a disturbing seriousness about work and people that has lost all proportion.
When professionalism turns into parody
I recently saw a post about a candidate being disqualified because he drank coffee during an interview.
The reasoning? It showed he was pampered.
Let that sink in.
Not rude. Not arrogant. Not disrespectful.
Pampered.
For drinking coffee.
Another story described a developer fired after a few weeks because she was “not the right fit.”
If you reach that conclusion after a few weeks, there is a more likely explanation. You do not know how to hire. Or how to onboard. Or how to manage. Possibly all three.
Then there are startup managers who proudly declare that they only want the top 0.0001 percent. Anyone else is disposable. Anyone who needs time, context, or support is weak.
This is not high standards.
This is insecurity disguised as excellence.
Work is a means, not the meaning
Somewhere along the way, many people forgot a basic truth.
Work is not an end.
It is a means to an end.
We work to build things. To solve problems. To support families. To grow. To contribute. To live better lives. Work matters, but it is not life itself.
When leaders forget this, people stop being people. They become “fits,” “resources,” “headcount,” or worse, risks to be eliminated quickly.
And once you see people that way, everything becomes easier to justify. Firing fast. Judging shallow signals. Rejecting nuance. Ignoring context.
The obsession with perfect fit
Another pattern I see constantly is the demand for a one hundred percent match.
Every skill. Every tool. Every behavior. Every preference.
Anything less is filtered out.
What gets missed are the people with breadth. With judgment. With scars. With adaptability. With pattern recognition earned over years in different environments.
Great teams are not built from identical Lego bricks. They are built from complementary humans.
Hiring only for perfect alignment means you are selecting for sameness, not strength. You are optimizing for comfort, not outcomes.
What goes around comes around
Here is the part many forget.
The way you treat people does not disappear into the void.
It compounds.
Industries are smaller than they seem. Reputations travel. Cultures echo. Leaders eventually become candidates themselves.
The same rigidity. The same lack of empathy. The same shallow judgments will come back. Maybe not tomorrow. But they will.
Why so serious?
So yes, why so serious?
Why pretend every interview is a moral test.
Why confuse cruelty with standards.
Why forget that behind every resume is a human being trying to do good work and live a decent life.
You can demand excellence without losing humanity.
You can move fast without being reckless.
You can build strong teams without acting like a caricature of power.
If your culture cannot survive a cup of coffee, it is not a serious culture at all.