The Work Revolution: Freedom and Excellence for All

What Is Our Reality?

In order to rewrite the rules, it is important to get crystal clear on our current reality. I like to think of this as a math equation. We start by listing out the known variables and the constants—the things that we know to be true and that will not change. Once we’ve got those, we can solve the equation to figure out the new rules that will suit us much better (pun intended).

So, what are the facts? What do we know to be true?

Fact 1: Work Never Stops

Companies are global, and our collective workdays are 24 hours long. Increasingly, we find ourselves working in companies or with clients that are literally spread across the globe. Consistent with this, technology has evolved to cope:

• Communication is cheap: Calling someone domestically is dirt-cheap, mostly free. Calling internationally is easy, and mostly cheap, too; furthermore, video chats and instant messaging make this almost free, save the equipment charges.
• Travel is easy: I can travel to the opposite side of the world in less than a day. Furthermore, I could be working from the other side of the world and my colleagues wouldn’t know the difference between that and my “working from home” on any given day.

At Google, I worked closely with teammates in Mountain View, California (my location), Seattle, Washington (same time zone), New York City (plus 3 hours), Zurich, Switzerland (plus 8 hours), Bangalore, India (plus 11.5 hours—a very confusing 30-minute difference), and Sydney, Australia (plus 19 hours). ...