Why Tech Employers Should Stop Buying Toilet Paper
2020 was a watershed year for knowledge workers worldwide. Driven by survival and necessity, tech that was with us for decades like videoconferencing suddenly mainstreamed to the point that even the Late Majority started using it properly by staring at the front camera.
And even as many are still getting used to catching up with last decade's tech, much like the beloved Selfie took decades to perfect…
The following scene has just about disappeared. With good riddance!
So who do we thank here and what's really the point? 1. Marissa Mayer of course — after all she formalized forcing employees to come to campus an atrocity, arguably costing her job and the success of her company, and was proven wrong about her insane decree when Corona finally put the nail in that coffin (even as many of us knew this long before). 2. Corona. Let's be honest. Most knowledge workers belonging to the Laggard camp notwithstanding — when an exogenous act of god forces all of us, catch up we will. And look at the stock market: An explosion of productivity happening throughout tech, because we're finally living to 2015 tech in 2021!
So what about employee toilet paper? A 6 minute glance at my announcement video and you'll notice that a. I've got my eyes set on the future of work today, even as b. I’m wholeheartedly anti-hype and go the other direction where there is one (sorry crypto kids). Specifically, reimagining the future of SaaS altogether. And while I encounter naysayers daily that don't believe the future of work is immersive, or think VR is crap (you've heard it before: 'humans are meaning making machines'. It's especially bewildering to hear it from those that haven't tried the latest in team collaboration platforms, like Villa)
I’m old enough to appreciate that most things new are bedeviled by anyone to the right of the Chasm, which is the vast majority of the market. But I’m also c. A fan of macroeconomics and the concept of free markets. And just this very second, there are thousands of CFOs high fiving their CEOs for saving $30B per day (US only) in CapEx for… well, toilet paper! Some of these companies are the kind that lavishly spoiled their workforces pre-Corona (Amazon — not you! LOL) with muffin parlors, ice-cream shops, woodworking class, 5 star restaurants, private shuttling, and multi ply toilet paper! Have discovered that VR is eclipsing even their wildest expectations to the tune of (finally!) offering their employees reimbursement for their Quest 2 purchases. Frankly, although I'm thrilled for Facebook employees that their leadership chose to replace their pre-Corona $75/day/employee food budget (back of napkin assumption) — not with a daily voucher for Uber Eats, but with Quests — I hope that leadership will do what's right next, and cover all employees' needs to run proper enterprise software that enables team collaboration with superpowers, company-wide. Not just as a nice-to-have $299 voucher for the device. But as de-facto software to do their best work out of. And I hope that many other amazing companies will follow in their footsteps.
See here's the reality we've discovered: For dispersed teams, which are all knowledge working teams worldwide essentially — physics are a handicap. You can actually achieve a lot more in virtual reality than you could IRL. It used to be that clients thought they'd get a larger whiteboard than possible over Zoom. But now that whiteboards are 3D and the height of Burj Khalifa and you can fly around and do things that defy physics altogether as a team — IRL is nothing but a handicap.
So you've made it to end of this toilet paper fairytale. Here are the key takeaways: 1. Don't miss out, bring your workforce to Villa or similar immersive team collaboration tech and blaze through to 2030 already in 2021. It's accessible. It'll pay you back dividends with a creative and happy workforce, and it'll save you a lot of money even as your teams produce more. 2. Cherish your family and loved ones: Don't bring your baby to work like Marissa. Instead — save your life from commuting unnecessarily, leaving you hours every day to be a happy human surrounded by the people you love — if you have kids, they will grow to be better adults for spending their childhood surrounded by available parenting and located in places that bring you peace and satisfaction. 3. You don't need to socialize in your physical body for work purposes. You can do it with your virtual self and it's *way* more fun, social, and productive. 4. You are an amazing human being with a physical facade — spend it with the people that matter to you in your personal life, which you now have a lot more of. 5. Pamper yourself. Meditate. Eat healthy. Go for a jog. Travel. Take work with you to wherever your can connect to a wifi that makes you a thrilled, productive, and happy employee, whether that's in a coffee shop, beach, mountain chalet. And be proud. We're never ever going back to 2019. 6. Leapfrog and skirt public toilets altogether and save your employees from having to use them unnecessarily saving our planet and humanity from this.
