Why I signed the Work Remotely Forever pledge
Employees deserve the chance to focus on work-life harmony, not struggle with work-life balance.
Sree’s newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). Finding the balance between life and work is tough for everyone. But finding it means visiting Arches National Park on a beautiful Friday afternoon, as Zach and his family did last week (photo is Zach’s daughter Mady catching a break below the Broken Arch, taken by Zach’s son Luke).
Scroll down for Read Something; Watch Something; and a weekly tech tip from Robert S. Anthony (@newyorkbob).
🗞 TUNE IN: Our #NYTReadalong this week was w/ NYT Book Review Deputy Editor Tina Jordan. Recent episodes: distinguished journalist Terence Smith; Broadway stalwarts Nancy Ringham Smith and Chris Smith; Jarrett Adams, a lawyer who was falsely convicted at 17 and exonerated a decade later. The NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
My Digimentors team is working with companies and nonprofits around the world to create virtual and hybrid events. We’ve worked on events for 50 people and 100,000. See our updated brochure. Please talk to us if you need events help or social media consulting: sree@sree.net
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[UPDATE: I wrote a follow-up column on this topic, with responses]
I was excited to find my friends at Muck Rack have launched a movement of companies pledging never to force employees into an office. So many terrific companies, big and small, have signed the Work Remotely Forever pledge, including Automattic (run by Matt Mullenweg @photomatt, who I had heard describe his all-remote company back in 2017 at Anand Sanwal @asanwal’s CB Insights conference). Skift (run by Rafat Ali, @rafat), Expensify, Zapier and more. I immediately signed the pledge on behalf of Digimentors, my social & digital consultancy and virtual-events production company.
From the site: "A year of remote work has shown that people don’t have to be onsite to be productive. Businesses that have signed the Work Remotely Forever Pledge agree never to force their employees to report into an office. Instead, they’ll enable their teams to thrive from anywhere by investing the time, money and attention needed."
I know there's a huge push to go back into the office and it's causing friction in unusual ways (Apple is Exhibit A). I also know that people of good faith can disagree on which way is better, and there isn't one way that's right for all companies. I am a big believer in in-person meetings and those "in-office collisions" that spark ideas and more. Holding occasionally IRL meetings, retreats, and more structured and planned virtual gatherings can make those ideas happen, too.
For my team and others like it, working remotely gives them a chance to avoid long commutes, make time for their families and to TRY to achieve what leadership guru Jill Geisler calls "work-life harmony," not “work-life balance.”
Here’s how she explains it:
Balance measures time. Harmony is grounded in happiness.
Leadership is key to creating and sustaining cultures that value work-life harmony. The best leaders make it a priority.
They emphasize planning, so staff aren’t whipsawed by scheduling gaps or ambiguity around vacation availability.
They don’t expect people to quietly work “off the clock” as a demonstration of commitment or “paying their dues.”
They make it clear to employees that they aren’t taking career risks by using all of their vacation or leave time — and they don’t celebrate or favor those who take less.
They take the time to know their team members as people, not just producers, and demonstrate genuine care about their lives outside of work.
Asked how the Work Remotely Forever pledge has been going since it launched in June 2021, Greg Galant (@gregory), Muck Rack CEO & co-founder wrote:
The Work Remotely Forever Pledge has been going great, with dozens of companies representing many thousands of jobs taking the pledge. Our own company, Muck Rack, has seen its growth accelerate since pledging not to force employees back into an office. Rather than view remote work as a temporary thing to be endured, we invest time and money into making remote work great. Top talent that wants to have this flexibility for years to come have been flocking to companies like ours.
And asked if there's any circumstance under which he can envision going back to a full-time office, Galant wrote:
Only if the internet was permanently shut down.
My colleague Zach Peterson (you can follow his family’s travels @fourinthewest on IG) has mastered this harmony better than almost anyone I know. I asked him for some thoughts:
I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered it — I’ve just become ok with the tradeoff. It boils down being alright with leaving sometimes significant amounts of money on the table solely to be able to go for a hike with my kids on a Wednesday afternoon. I just hit a point of burnout about four years ago, and the only real way to combat it was to simply do less work and then internalize what that meant for our lifestyle.
In my case, it meant I had more time to chase trout in beautiful places, usually with my family in tow. The value I put on fishing and finding mushrooms with my kids in and around some backcountry stream in the middle of nowhere simply cannot be measured in dollars. I can live that (or, we have lived like that…so far).
I encourage CEOs to sign the pledge if it makes sense for them and their teams.
Congrats to @Gregory, @Semel, @Schneider_Says and everyone at Muck Rack on launching WRF!
- Sree
A hearty welcome to all our new subscribers. So grateful for your time and attention. We are continuing our year-long partnership with our friends at Armory Square Ventures. Managing Partner Somak Chattopadhyay (@somakc), Partner Pia Sawhney (@pia_sawhney) and their team are funding startups in places overlooked by other funders. They are a new sponsor of the newsletter and we will be bringing you their messaging each week. Read more about them below (they’re hiring!).
It's why we invest.
This week, we congratulate portfolio company BentoBox and CEO Krystle Mobayeni on joining Fiserv! We first invested when we led the company's Series A round in September 2015. At the time, the idea that restaurants needed better tech was a problem with a very large market.
Learn how ASV collaborated with BentoBox on that journey here + more about the company joining Fiserv here and here.
With gratitude & our very best,
The Armory Square Ventures team
www.armorysv.com
Read Something
I really can’t get over high-profile anti-vaxxers. Kyrie Irving is as high-profile as they get, and he is just going for it and taking the “it’s my life and I’ll do what I want” approach to the vaccine. And, he really might not play basketball this year. It’s wild.
A word from our friends at India Sweets And Spices
After debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival, Geeta Malik’s acclaimed new film INDIA SWEETS AND SPICES will release in US cinemas on November 19, 2021. This award-winning film stars Sophia Ali, Manisha Koirala, Adil Hussain, Rish Shah, Deepti Gupta, Ved Sapru, and Anita Kalathara. Check out the new trailer!
WEEKLY TECH TIP: Google’s Pixel 6 Series Shine Light on Image Fairness
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
Google’s new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro Android smartphones are no slouches when it comes to technology. The processing power and graphics capabilities of their Google Tensor multifunction chips and sophistication of their camera systems push the limits of how much computing muscle one can pack into a vest pocket.
But any technology is only as good as the people who designed it—and when people of color aren’t included in the process, that’s a problem, said Google representatives during last week’s virtual launch event for the new smartphones.
While today’s smartphone cameras have optics, sensors and imaging software that compete well with professional cameras, people of color “haven’t always been seen fairly by these tools,” said Florian Koenigsberger, head of Google’s “image equity initiative.”
He said the image databases used to calibrate digital cameras have historically not included a diverse range of people and skin tones. This shortcoming in diversity has led to cameras that generate images of white faces well, but have problems with face detection, skin tone, brightness and other image qualities with faces of color.
“They’re not being tested with diverse enough groups of people,” he noted.
By using a more diverse image database and making other adjustments, Google’s new Real Tone technology, included in the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, treats all skin hues more equitably, said Koenigsberger.
He said by reaching out to photographers and other image experts noted for their work with communities of color, Google was able to add thousands of portraits to its image database, making it 25 times more diverse. “All of that wisdom helped us make a more equitable camera,” he said.
The Pixel 6 (6.4-inch, 90Hz, 1,080-by-2,400-pixel display) has 50MP wide-angle and 12MP ultra-wide rear cameras and an 8MP front-facing camera. The Pixel 6 Pro (6.7-inch, 120Hz, 1,440-by-3,120-pixel screen) has the same rear cameras plus a 48MP telephoto camera and an 11.1MP front-facing camera. Both offer sophisticated imaging controls and editing software with Real Tone technology, which can also be used with third-party apps, according to Google.
While the new cameras’ image equity capabilities are admirable, the kudos for Google’s work here are muted by its longstanding corporate diversity problem: Its employee roster is only 4.4 per cent black and 6.4 per cent Latinx, according to Google’s 2021 Diversity Annual Report.
To repeat: Technology is only as good as the people behind it. There’s ample room for improvement here.
#WorthyThread
Threads like this are why I still spend so much time on Twitter. In all honesty, I’ve never heard of any of these hacking groups, and it’s crazy to think that one them was able to take down Ireland’s health care system.
Watch Something
Back to work-life/life-work balance…
The costs of workplace stress are all around us. It bleeds into your life — after hours calls, weekend projects, email hell, we all know what this looks like. Setting aside the personal toll of stress, businesses of all sizes need to understand that are severe consequences to the bottom line when their workers are stressed out. Great presentation here by Rob Cooke.
Odds & Ends
🗞 TUNE IN: Our #NYTReadalong this week was w/ NYT Book Review Deputy Editor Tina Jordan. Recent episodes: distinguished journalist Terence Smith; Broadway stalwarts Nancy Ringham Smith and Chris Smith; Jarrett Adams, a lawyer who was falsely convicted at 17 and exonerated a decade later. The NYTReadalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
The Readalong is followed, on most Sundays at 11 am-noon ET, by a medical show I’m co-executive producing with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, M.D. (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, M.D. (@MarinaKurian), called She’s On Call (watch live or later). Here’s the Apple Podcasts version.
After 250 episodes in 250 days, my global show has moved to a weekly cadence. The best way to know when I’m on the air and see all my archived shows is to subscribe to my YouTube channel or my Whatsapp alerts.
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