🏭 Remote Work Redefines Productivity

In 2021, there were 106 work days where I suffered a setback that would have prevented me from doing a standard, in-office, 9 to 5 shift. That's 40% of business days. Covid restrictions, covid itself, other viruses, and strikes were the main culprit. I made a Tiktok about it!

My employer gave me the flexibility to work whenever I could, mainly evenings. Despite the turmoil, 2021 was the year I was able to have the biggest impact on my organization.

I learned to juggle work and craziness. Collaboration apps and mobile were a blessing. Whenever I had 5 minutes, I would peek through Slack, set reminders, give status updates. The best messages were the ones that I could reply from my phone with one or two words. It's easy to crunch 5-6 emails while brushing your teeth that way. Turns out that when you work "off" hours you also learn to optimize meetings.

This brings me to this week's spotlight story: BBC published a long-form article about the "non linear workday". Researchers from the London School of Economics found out that workers who integrate their schedule into their "natural working rhythm" are generally more productive than those who grind through a straight 8-hour day. Single parents were the most favoured by non-linear work, and Vox adds that minorities as well tremendously benefit from flexibility. BBC also cites health benefits: many workers allowed themselves long "two-hour breaks" to work out.

These stories matter in the wake of many companies' desire to force back employees to the offices (sometimes while senior management stays remote). Many knowledge workers dread returning to the arbitrary work model of yore.

I can't believe we still have to write this in 2022. Most knowledge work requires problem-solving, creative thinking, and debating. Yes, you do need precious talks with close collaborators or customers, nobody disputes that fact. But breakthroughs cannot be measured and predicted. Most of the solutions I find to complex problems come to me while I make coffee or walk my dog.

That idea smells funny, PP

Many organizations seemingly lack trust. I couldn't find data on the subject, but my belief is there must be a high correlation between the engagement required to complete the task vs the necessity to bring back employees to "watch them" in the office. My advice would be to instead automate the boring tasks to allow employees to focus on relationship-driven tasks, which a machine can never do. The rest? Trust your employees!

I write this as someone who, starting this summer when covid restrictions were lifted, has been attending office 4+ days a week, by the way! Why? Because I love face-to-face interactions with my colleagues! I enjoy coffee machine gossip and my dad jokes land much better in person.

Okay, I lied. They never land, remote or not.

Most employees' issues do not lie with in-office work itself, it's the return to the ridiculous model of thinking that sitting a knowledge worker 8 hours on a chair with an overwatching middle manager will give a steady, predictable, and measurable output, which has always been a misconception of how the human mind works.

I'm glad we have a little bit more evidence to back this up!

🥊 Quick Hits

• 🛰Starlink no go in China. Sattelite-powered internet Starlink has been instrumental in fighting oppression in the Ukraine war and as part of the Iranian protests. It is therefore no surprise that China asked Elon Musk not to sell the technology. Trying to contain an internet that is in the air is like trying to contain the wind. If one country can do it, it'll be China.
• 🤡 China's Virtual Influencers. Chinese government censors human influencers. The solution? Generate them with AI! Cannot send a virtual person to prison.
• 🕺 Tiktok is moving into music streaming. Spotify ought to watch closely. While Spotify offers far superior recommendation algorithms, Tiktok can provide a social dimension that Spotify could not match. Tiktok is also an inherently "silly" app. I think Spotify's endgame is to double down on podcasting and allow users to discover more niche content, while Tiktok becomes the musical "fast food".
• 💸 Apple is bound to become a bank. The Apple card will offer a savings account. I am more intrigued by Amazon's bet on healthcare.

🥑Google Facing Huge Privacy Lawsuit Over Chrome's Not-So Incognito Mode

A major civil lawsuit is taking place in Oakland. Plaintiffs argue that Google mislead Chrome users over incognito mode's privacy features. Google purposefully fiddled with incognito mode's statements and branding, the suit argues, to make users believe their sessions to be confidential, whereas Google kept harvesting "conversion data" from their ads viewing habit.

The news comes one week after Google's efforts to disable adblockers in Chrome were made public.

I will leave it to the Court to decide whether Google is liable or not. However, whatever the judiciary process yields, Google's brand is taking a massive hit. When you have an e-mail from Google's Chief Marketing to the CEO saying: "We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging."... You have lost on ethics. Firefox, Brave and Opera are your alternatives.

As private as Chrome's incognito mode

🗣️UK Coroner Links Social Media to Teenage Girl Suicide

It has been over a year since Frances Haugen leaked the "Facebook Papers". Its most shocking revelation remains Meta's failure to act on Instagram's harmful effects on teenage girls while being fully aware of them.

Another sad story shows social media's dangerous effects on teenage girls. 14-year-old Molly Russel took her own life five years ago. The coroner's inquest into the death concluded that her research of self-harm, suicide and depression on Instagram and Pinterest were a factor in her death.

The coroner recommends stricter laws around social media use for minors, especially in relation to algorithms and advertising. The report pressures companies to "self-regulate" while politicians figure laws out.

In this case, everybody agrees on the problem, but solutions are worlds apart. Tech companies like to display a paragraph in their Terms and Conditions to warn parents that their websites are not intended for children under 13. Because everybody reads those carefully of course.

I smell sarcasm.

On the other end, one could imagine a "big brother" solution, wherein websites would "digitally card" people to tailor their websites based on their age. This solution would require significant infrastructure on a global scale, and cause unpredictable downstream effects. Plus, whatever control adopts Big Tech, you can rest assured teenagers will circumvent them to join "clandestine" networks.

As a parent, I feel most social media websites lack a "children" or "teen" experience (because of the aforementioned bullshit restriction in their T&Cs). Like TV was forced to create more "moral" cartoons that did not feature ads, social media are bound to create such "bubbles" for teens. Easier said than done.

⛓️Crypto Creeping Into the Banking System

The FTX cryptocurrency exchange announced a partnership with Visa to distribute crypto debit cards. Meanwhile, Google announced a partnership with Coinbase to allow customers to pay for its cloud services using crypto.

Both of these events are essential if cryptocurrencies are to remain a part of our economy. Banks and credit card companies built massive real-world infrastructure to easily purchase, credit and debit off their accounts with smart cards and mobile devices.

People have been trained to pay with plastic rectangles. They will not download a complex keychain. Managing your BitCoin with the same card and online services as your Visa? People can do that!

Using crypto for everyday transactions could lead to more convenient travel and more stability in countries with broken financial systems. Earning crypto can also be easier with online digital goods and services. A card to facilitate transactions for "real world" goods would make crypto participation more desirable (and therefore value the currency higher).

Purists will frown over a decentralized currency dabbing with "Big Finance". Let them bicker. Web3 must focus on making the technology useful for people's everyday problems. Buying pizza with your credit card in Ethereum is the convenient endgame!

🎧 Quote of the Week

You work a decade to build an audience, and you go viral with this: