Over the last few years I have watched myself in the mirror and I can clearly see my radicalization.
I am becoming a remote-work extremist.
I am becoming a remote-work extremist.
I always liked taking an extremist point of view in a discussion because it helped me better define/understand the full space of options, arguments. It helped my better understand the middle ground.
But this is/was something different. After being part of a company that played a meaningful role in the enablement of remote work I also became increasingly confident on the inability of non-remote work to peacefully co-exist with remote work. It was as if what was good for one was bad for the other. So I find myself practically getting thrown out of rooms, conversations because of me slowly turning into a militant :
What is the diff between an xxx-ist and a militant xxxist : the xxxist beleives in xxx. The militant xxxist believes that anyone believing the opposite is an idiot or enemy or a bad person etc...
You can guess how quickly being a remote-work militant can make the friendliest meeting, social gathering turn ugly.
Let me explain what I mean. I believe the world will be a better place if all companies become all-remote. When all work is all-remote. That is a significant step forward from where I was 5-10-15-20 years ago when I was dreaming of remote work and getting inspired from my cofounders "work is no longer a place" slogan. I have realized that this will never happen when companies become remote friendly or remote first or remote happy. It can only happen when and if companies stop allowing any form of non-remote work.
Why I believe that?
After 40+ yrs of remote asynchronous working groups in academia, open source, 10-20 yrs of companies like odesk, mysql, automatic and 5-10 yrs of a few dozen true all-remote companies with $0 in office rent in their G&A budget - the world has still not seen companies successfully grow, IPO, employee thousands of people AND managed to stay all-remote. And that has to do because as remote companies grow they are still doing the mistake of allowing non-remote groups to exist,, some time as a department, some times as an acquisition, some times as an team of co-founding co-habiting friends - that grows into an co-habiting executive team that grows into an HQ. These little compromises act like a cancer growing within the organization increasingly reducing the inherent advantages of an all-remote company to a point that the company eventually becomes remote-friendly as in "friendly to people with some form of disability"... the inability to come to an office and work like normal people, locally. And yes, being a militant means that I throw "remote-friently" companies to the enemy camp too :-)
Mostly joking :-)
Mostly.
So what does it mean that a company should "not allow non-remote" work or "disallow local" work?
Thats a very long answer that would take many posts to cover... but I want to give some hints:
- It means that the company cannot take on a lease and pay for offices. If people want to get paid for their working environment - you should make sure that your staff is well paid so as they can afford a good working environment.
- it means that the company cannot build a "local" IT infrastructure, buy computers, printers, servers, backup drives and take ownership of the hardware computing environment for some people. It should pay enough people so as they can afford good equipment. The company should not become an expert in furniture picking, printer cabling, reliable wifi maintaining or secure paper shredding (unless if thats what their product is :-) )
- it means that the company should not hire people that don't have a powerful enought laptop, or they are unable to manage it by themselves, or unable to find reliable high speed broadband internet or spend a good part of their day wearing headset with mic (or alternatively working from a sound insulated environment).
- it means that the company cannot be directly or indirectly financing happy hours, meal programs. It should be paying its staff enough for them to be able to live a healthy life. When the company chooses to finance socializing/travel activities it should done in a way that is global and it should be accounted as part of the cost of the corresponding teams
- it means that its noty the company's responsibility to finance or enable the immigration of people from country to country no matter how (I will get fire for this :-|.)
- it means that the company cannot be differentiating its benefits based on whether someone is a employee (as defined by the country's labor laws) or not. Salary/Overtime/PTO all these practices have to be applied across staff independently of whether the staff is a local in-state/citizen vs a remote out-of-state/non-citizen. When that is practically impossible (eg how can I pay for the health insurance of someone that lives in a country where everyone gets it for free) you have to treat the benefit as part of the cost - and use the loaded cost of the staff member including all paid benefits
Most of the above positions are counter intuitive - many sound wrong or unfair. I have come to the conclusion that they are necessary sacrifices - that if a company doesn't make it ends up losing the massive advantages of an all-remote company.
So, join me and become an all-remote work extremist :-)
What is the diff between an xxx-ist and a militant xxxist : the xxxist beleives in xxx. The militant xxxist believes that anyone believing the opposite is an idiot or enemy or a bad person etc...
You can guess how quickly being a remote-work militant can make the friendliest meeting, social gathering turn ugly.
Let me explain what I mean. I believe the world will be a better place if all companies become all-remote. When all work is all-remote. That is a significant step forward from where I was 5-10-15-20 years ago when I was dreaming of remote work and getting inspired from my cofounders "work is no longer a place" slogan. I have realized that this will never happen when companies become remote friendly or remote first or remote happy. It can only happen when and if companies stop allowing any form of non-remote work.
Why I believe that?
After 40+ yrs of remote asynchronous working groups in academia, open source, 10-20 yrs of companies like odesk, mysql, automatic and 5-10 yrs of a few dozen true all-remote companies with $0 in office rent in their G&A budget - the world has still not seen companies successfully grow, IPO, employee thousands of people AND managed to stay all-remote. And that has to do because as remote companies grow they are still doing the mistake of allowing non-remote groups to exist,, some time as a department, some times as an acquisition, some times as an team of co-founding co-habiting friends - that grows into an co-habiting executive team that grows into an HQ. These little compromises act like a cancer growing within the organization increasingly reducing the inherent advantages of an all-remote company to a point that the company eventually becomes remote-friendly as in "friendly to people with some form of disability"... the inability to come to an office and work like normal people, locally. And yes, being a militant means that I throw "remote-friently" companies to the enemy camp too :-)
Mostly joking :-)
Mostly.
So what does it mean that a company should "not allow non-remote" work or "disallow local" work?
Thats a very long answer that would take many posts to cover... but I want to give some hints:
- It means that the company cannot take on a lease and pay for offices. If people want to get paid for their working environment - you should make sure that your staff is well paid so as they can afford a good working environment.
- it means that the company cannot build a "local" IT infrastructure, buy computers, printers, servers, backup drives and take ownership of the hardware computing environment for some people. It should pay enough people so as they can afford good equipment. The company should not become an expert in furniture picking, printer cabling, reliable wifi maintaining or secure paper shredding (unless if thats what their product is :-) )
- it means that the company should not hire people that don't have a powerful enought laptop, or they are unable to manage it by themselves, or unable to find reliable high speed broadband internet or spend a good part of their day wearing headset with mic (or alternatively working from a sound insulated environment).
- it means that the company cannot be directly or indirectly financing happy hours, meal programs. It should be paying its staff enough for them to be able to live a healthy life. When the company chooses to finance socializing/travel activities it should done in a way that is global and it should be accounted as part of the cost of the corresponding teams
- it means that its noty the company's responsibility to finance or enable the immigration of people from country to country no matter how (I will get fire for this :-|.)
- it means that the company cannot be differentiating its benefits based on whether someone is a employee (as defined by the country's labor laws) or not. Salary/Overtime/PTO all these practices have to be applied across staff independently of whether the staff is a local in-state/citizen vs a remote out-of-state/non-citizen. When that is practically impossible (eg how can I pay for the health insurance of someone that lives in a country where everyone gets it for free) you have to treat the benefit as part of the cost - and use the loaded cost of the staff member including all paid benefits
Most of the above positions are counter intuitive - many sound wrong or unfair. I have come to the conclusion that they are necessary sacrifices - that if a company doesn't make it ends up losing the massive advantages of an all-remote company.
So, join me and become an all-remote work extremist :-)
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