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Monday morning I interviewed Darren Murph, head of remote for the coder collaboration company GitLab, from my bathroom. There was a time when that would have been an odd and embarrassing thing to do, let alone write. But you already know where I’m going with this—and so did he. Some workers were in my home, and my school-aged daughter was remotely attending class in the small apartment I am using as an office. Thus my banishment to the privacy of the privy.
Murph has a simultaneously upbeat and realistic view of our work-from-home experiment. GitLab is an all-remote company, and Murph is clear-eyed about the difference between remote working as his company and others envisioned it before the pandemic and the unfortunate situation many now find themselves in. “The best part of remote is yet to come,” he says. “Right now we’re in what I call crisis-driven work-from-home.”
His point is that while there certainly are pros and cons, one shouldn’t confuse our current setup with the goal, which is a distributed setting that allows people to live where they want but with the right tools (like comfy furniture or a co-working space) and the ability to decamp to a coffee shop or whatever else floats a remote worker’s boat.
I asked Murph if GitLab used to bring its people together. The answer was something along the lines of ‘Heck, yes.’ The whole company gathers once a year, and teams meet for bonding and team-building. “In-person is vital,” he says. “We’re communal beings.” As for travel expenses: “If you unwind your offices you’ll be hard-pressed to ever spend what you would have spent on real estate by putting people up in hotels in San Francisco and New York,” he says. He lives in coastal North Carolina, near his and his wife’s extended family, and says he never could have done it without the ability to work remotely.
Murph thinks in a year’s time companies that truly and flexibly support their workers will shoot up in employee survey ratings such as Glassdoor. And reputations will plummet at companies that merely tolerate staffers who have re-architected their lives during the pandemic on the assumption they could.
Adam Lashinsky
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Google rebrands its productivity tools. Google's G Suite software, which offers tools such as Gmail, Chat, and Meet, will now be known as Google Workspace and will also incorporate additional features to aid with remote work. Coins2Day
Software executive John McAfee arrested. John McAfee, who founded a well-known antivirus software company, was arrested in Spain on U.S. Tax evasion charges. New York Times
An outage hits Slack. The Slack app was offline multiple times on Monday. “Our teams are aware and are investigating the issue,” a Slack spokesperson told The Verge. “We know how important it is for people to stay connected and we are working hard to get everyone running as normal.” The Verge
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
In professional running there are two events that matter more than all the others combined. The Olympics is the premier affair. A distant second, but still the third-largest sporting event in the world, is the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships. The Olympics take place every four years, with the World Championship alternating every other year, on the odd year, since 1991.
—Inside a secret running program at Nike and a win-at-all-costs corporate culture, Coins2Day
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Companies with happier employees outperform their peers By Lance Lambert
Here’s what Google’s new Nest Audio speakers are like By Jonathan Vanian
Alibaba’s making an opportunistic investment in Dufry By Lucinda Shen
Getting involved in diversity and inclusion is optional. That’s a problem By Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link
Tech firms in India coalesce around a common foe: Google’s ‘monopoly’ By Grady McGregor
Walmart CEO: To tackle today’s challenges, ‘listen with open ears and an open heart’ By Doug McMillon
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BEFORE YOU GO
The New York Public Library is urging people to read before they vote. To help with that task, librarians have compiled a 2020 Election Reading List, with nearly 200 nonfiction and fiction titles for adults, kids, and teens. Coins2Day
