Description

General

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The present and future of work

The first cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by a novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2, were identified near Wuhan, China as early as November 2019. A few months later, in early 2020, much of the world went into lockdown.

As the COVID-19 crisis approaches its 2nd full year, it's becoming increasingly clear that the way we work has changed, if not forever than for what's likely to be the next 5 or 10 years at least. This is especially true for knowledge workers.

Technology as an enabler

• It's kind of hard to imagine what this pandemic would've been like had it happened in, say, 1989.
• Tools and services like video conferencing, workplace chat, remote event/conference platforms, cloud storage, and others enable partially or fully-distributed work.

Concerns about the role of tech

• "Zoom fatigue" and other phenomena are very real.
• Some companies are implementing systems to surveil workers.

Flexibility as a mega-trend in knowledge work

• Especially before vaccines became widely available, professionals often had to balance work, family, and personal needs all from one place: their homes. For folks with children, working adults needed to meet their professional obligations, while also serving as a teacher or supervisor of school-aged kids engaged in remote learning. These circumstances necessitated increased flexibility in work arrangements.
• With more time away from the office, more workers are coming to terms with the fact that commuting to an office and spending the majority of the day there has taken up a lot of mental bandwidth.

Reading list

• Is Going To The Office A Broken Way of Working? (Cal Newport in conversation with Chris Herd, in the New Yorker. September 2021)
• WFH Doesn’t Have to Dilute Your Corporate Culture (Pamela Hinds and Brian Elliott for the Harvard Business Review, in February 2021)
• Work can be better post-COVID-19. Here's what employers need to know (Stephen Ratcliffe and Julia Wilson for the World Economic Forum, in September 2021)
• Remote Work Persisting and Trending Permanent (Lydia Saad and Ben Wigert for Gallup)
• Remote Work Trends You Should Not Ignore in 2021 (Dmitry Chekalin publishing on Medium in April 2021)
• Remote Work Can Be Better for Innovation Than In-Person Meetings (Gleb Tsipursky for Scientific American in October 2021)

About The Co-Hosts

• Jason D. Rowley is a researcher who has previously worked with Uzabase, Golden.com, Crunchbase News and others. He volunteers with startup outreach for the open-source community and sends occasional newsletters from Rowley.Report.
• Graham C. Peck is a Venture Partner with Cultivation Capital and additionally helps companies build technology development teams in partnership with Brightgrove and other technology development organizations.