First and foremost, I’ve worked remote much of my career, whether fully so, a loose hybrid arrangement where we came in very occasionally (typically a few days a month to a few days a year), or more slightly more structured where I might have meetings in office 1-2 days a week but be remote the rest of the time. I’ve been IT for the better part of two decades, and I liked the flexibility, as well as increased work-life balance remote options gave me. I’ve been instilled with a mantra and expectation of accountability as being the price of autonomy. For me and many of my colleagues, we thrive with this arrangement, and I went from being an individual contributor to the highest levels of leadership under this expectation.
When the pandemic forced many companies to go remote, neither I nor most of my teams suffered at all. While some had interesting new dynamics to navigate, there was a new undercurrent, where companies were seeing their productivity skyrocket as work became more focused and workers happier with newfound freedom from the stresses of commuting. News feeds began to report on this, along with HR departments speaking to the success of the “experiment” many of us in the IT world had known about for a long time, and how they would continue to offer remote options even after the pandemic had subsided. All seemed to be well, but then an interesting and rather negative bit of spin swept in to the news cycles.
It began with a few notable CEOs. Upset with empty workspaces, they began pushing return to office mandates, claiming the statistics and experts were wrong and it didn’t work for their company. Social Contagion being the factor it is, other companies copied the example, and began to make remote work vilified with no real evidence. Having been on the forefront of this type of arrangement for many years, I had read voluminously on related areas of health, productivity, and team building from the remote standpoint, so this battle over objective reality and provable metrics was disturbing. I set out to write on the subject, and released a book on the subject entitled “Rise of the Remote Worker: How a Change in Perspective Can Save American Companies” in May of 2023.
I’m using this site as an outreach tool, specifically to companies who are considering or already working on switching to remote or hybrid arrangements. For them and the startups of today and tomorrow, adopting this model will allow them to create more robust companies with less overhead, who can focus more on the people and their mission instead of physical constraints against growth.
To keep the topics fresh and relevant, this website will serve as an aggregator of reading material, links, and resources for the remote work movement. I’m passionate about remote work because of the equity and empowerment it provides to the worker, and I want everyone who can take advantage of it (and wishes to do so) to have the ability to educate themselves as well as learn how to pursue it.
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