My name is Greg Goodenough, and I have a long history of being a ‘super commuter’, meaning my daily commute, 5 days a week, exceeded 1.5 hours each way. At 109 miles door to door, my 1 way commute takes 2 hours without traffic, or 3.5 on Fridays at the wrong time. For those counting, yes, this comes to 3-7 hours of commuting every day depending on traffic, 5 days a week. 50 weeks a year. My gas and toll total also comes to ~1200/mo. vs. my previous $200 while working remote. I other terms, the requirement was to give 40% more of my resources (time & income combined), for a lower salary cap due to a different location.
I have never met someone that would disagree that removing the friction between you and your productivity is a bad thing. But everyone has met a liar. The philosophy that work can only happen in the office is dated. Now if thats just who your company wants to be, fine, but lets not pretend the last 5 years didn’t see huge booms in economic success for companies that had a large stake in remote work.
As a photographer, the work is taking place everywhere. On a train, on a plane, or even in a field, on the tailgate of a pickup using your phone as a hotspot to upload images for a client. In this situation, no one would ever question that I am doing what I am supposed to to move my needle, even though I was not in the cliche coffee shop, or sitting at a desk with a rack full of hard drives, and a poster that screams starving artist.
Now transition this approach to the revolutionary move that the corporate world took in order to stay open during the previous pandemic. Work from home. Or, as a wise few took it, work from anywhere. Let’s step out of the talent pool approach for a second here, and look at the morality approach of time savings, as well as financial savings for employees of allowing associates to work from anywhere.
Amazon, the most successful business of our generation takes pride on its true asset for users, ‘time savings’. The most successful companies lean into this approach of time savings, and build systems that allow for further time savings, while cutting waste, or muda for those leadership folks that are too far removed from normal terminology. Now what if companies were to lean into the benefits for employees that save them time like working from anywhere? Was there any company that actually tried to make remote work, work for culture building? So far, ‘culture’ is the only reason to come back to the office, and I have heard that you can’t build that online. I have closer friends on Reddit than I do in the office. Look at the culture that Roaring Kitty built to unite thousands of Reddit users to overtake a massive short position on Gamestop. Look at Twitter, Instagram, youtube. Literally everywhere, and everything we interact with when we are not at work, is online, and it is remote. My best friend livs 2500 miles away in Florida, and no one is close to taking his spot. I see hime once a year, but we constructed our own culture. Companies can’t build a culture, because their values can be bought, and don’t get me started on the government funded DEI scam.
Companies not being able to ‘create a culture with remote work’, simply are set up to fail. The coming generations do not need your wifi password to turn on their productivity, and then be told to go work from home when the office lights turn off as well. We are more productive than generations before us, but our gear crank is small and we get less for it, and now, once again, being told to get back on the leash.
