Young & virtual
My path to discovering the future of work, and where I hope to take you on this journey
My journey through work-from-homesville
It's been nearly three years since that unforgettable day in March 2020 when I was first sent home from my job as a consultant, besieged to work inside because of a deadly virus outside.
For me, just like for the tens of millions of other Americans experiencing this, the change was radical. The hustle & bustle lifestyle of endless travel and a rush to always be somewhere became, literally overnight, a solitary existence beset by routine & mundanity. Of course there were perks -- less time sitting in traffic, for one (in 2019 I clocked in nearly 500 Uber rides alone), and more time to spend with family.
The world would go on to undertake a massive experiment: for those of us with the privilege of being able to work behind our laptops, does it really matter where we plop down to do it?
In exploring that question, our attention first turned to the digital titans of our era, powering our every move: Microsoft, Facebook, Zoom. They had answers we so desperately needed: yes, you can have work meetings, collaborate on projects, connect with family & friends, all from the comforts of your couch.
And so, while figuring out how to get the Wifi from cutting out every time the cat jumped on the router, we began to imagine a new future: a remote-first world, where everything we could ever need would be behind a keyboard.
We fantasized and obsessed with the 'metaverse', virtual reality, artificial intelligence and NFTs. Sinking deeper into our own imagination, some of us near forgot that the Starbucks latte sitting on our doorstep did not fall from the skies above, but was delivered by a real human being. Oblivion, you could call it. Or, I would say, the divergence of two worlds: the physical, and the virtual.
Like many young people sent home, the transition to this virtual world was painful.
It turned out, I would find, that my energy and drive to give my very best each day did not so much come from the tasks I was doing (mostly, PowerPoint and Excel). It must be about the "cause", I thought. So I quit my job, looked for something more "meaningful", and joined an early stage climate-tech startup. And here, working on a promising new product to help save us from the worst of what climate change might do to our planet, I discovered that this too was not it.
While on paper I was producing greater than any boss could have asked of me, I knew deep down that I had more to give. Even when working fewer hours, I was more fatigued. My creative enthusiasm had been drained, and I couldn't bear to sign on to another 30 minute Zoom call where I could predict the script before even hitting Join: 3-4 minutes of friendly, but not too personal "catch up" (banter on the weather, what I made for dinner last night, or, worst of all, my Zoom background), a review of the agenda (artfully crafted to somehow take exactly 30 minutes), and then 25 minutes of transactional back-and-forth on a decision that really should have been made via email to begin with.
I bought a bigger monitor and a plush chair. I tried silly putty, lollipops, slinkies and fidget-spinners -- anything to keep myself engaged. But I knew watching my team-members eyes shift rapidly between windows on their screen as I presented that it really didn't matter. We could see each-other, hear each-other, talk to each-other. And yet, we were never truly together.
So what was it that was 'missing'? Recognizing that WFH, in some capacity, was here to stay, and refraining from the death-spiral of over-intellectualizing, I couldn't help but start to ask: For the young and restless, the old and experienced, what does the future of work look like?
Arriving at Stanford to explore the future of work
I came to Stanford a year and a half into the pandemic eager to explore that question.
But upon engaging with academics, technologists, executives and venture investors, I found that, for many of them, "future of work" meant something pretty different from what I was interested in.
For them, the future of work was largely a question about what more virtual technologies could do for work: how we could communicate, collaborate and produce more and better, virtually.
What I wanted to explore was what physical experience could (and should) do for work.
That is to say, not what physical settings did for work before we began this massive experiment or how we could "bring that back" — no, I wanted to know what the physical world could do for work.
The former is a question on finding a 'new normal' - a balance between the old, the physical, and the new, the virtual.
The latter is something entirely different: a rethinking of what the physical was to begin with to craft a new vision of the future: one that is better for employees and their families, better for employers and their customers, and ultimately better for our communities and our society at large.
With the great help of my colleagues at Stanford, I sought to understand:
Clearly, where we work does matter. In nuanced and complex ways, where we work changes how we show up, which affects both what we create for our employers and how likely we are stay with them. Sometimes that's better at home on a couch, sometimes at a coffee shop filled with ambient noise, sometimes in a conference room of a luxury office building. How and when should physical space be used to enhance work?
Once we answer that, enacting change isn't so easy. Accessing physical space requires commitment and cost, usually far greater than the cost of implementing tools enabling virtual work (a tug which has left most companies with "remote by default" so far). What does the market for physical space (a.k.a., "real estate") need to provide to make this 'ideal' working norm a reality?
My teammates and I knew these questions would be difficult to answer. After all, this great experiment is still very much in the making.
But we also know that the sooner we can chip away at them, the greater the impact we will have, both on individuals seeking richer, more meaningful work lives, and on employers seeking ways to empower their workforces to be more creative, innovative and forward-thinking in what they produce.
Where I hope to take you
Over the past year, we have interviewed more than 250 professionals working in roles that might help us answer these questions. Heads of human resources and real estate at big companies, CEOs and business owners at small to midsize companies, and a multitude of commercial real estate professionals from office building owners to brokers, designers to architects to coworking operators. We've spent countless hours sourcing and compiling research from academics (including our own here at Stanford) and industry associations.
Many of the individuals we've interviewed have asked what we hoped to do with all this. To them, we said: we do not know (yet). And that is because, with the incredible richness and color we were capturing in all of this, we did not want any of it to be lost in an academic paper or journal publication.
We wanted to create something real -- something that would not just spark conversation, but give those with power a real tool to take action.
This blog won't be everything, but it will be a start.
In the coming weeks, I look forward to taking you on a journey to discover the future of work & the physical world. We'll explore some of the biggest questions plaguing decision makers, and pose new ones you may not have yet thought of, such as:
What does the office of 2030 need to look like? What gets done inside and what does not?
How will this physical space be made accessible? What must it include and for what price?
Who will make this a reality? What systems, incentives, norms need to change to enable existing market players to serve this new demand?
My hope is to convey a complete story that is accessible and enjoyable. I'll include bits of data, quotes, and anecdotes both from my research and others -- but unless it adds value, I'll avoid making this too formal.
Some parts you may relate easily, and others may provoke, and that's okay. Whatever it is you feel, I hope you will chime in -- comment directly, shoot me a note, post to Twitter (if people are still using that), I really don't care.
So, let's get this conversation started. Thank you for joining me.
Rafi