Milder Recessions, Wilder Careers
Remote work makes it easier for the economy to adjust to changes in supply and demand and allocate people to their most productive use. But a more efficient economy also means more volatile careers.
Productivity and Inequality
Yesterday, I wrote about the 50-fold increase in the productivity of manual laborers in the 20th Century. In the decades ahead, experiments with new work arrangements are expected to lead to similar increases in the productivity of knowledge workers. But there is a key difference between manual labor and knowledge
Routing Around the Office
Can you force people to work a certain way? Companies and labor markets are networks. Collaboration and innovation depend on the flow of information. Once you plug your business into the internet, it starts behaving in ways you cannot control. If you try to force your views on the network,
God Outside the Office
What do you have in common with your colleagues? Fifty years ago, it was easier to answer this question. Work was linear and relied on identical inputs that produced predictable outputs. Corporations recruited identical people to perform identical tasks, and the media and education system produced identical people to fill
Goodbye Risk, Hello Uncertainty.
Young people are opting out of guaranteed decline for a slim chance of incredible success. They did so when the economy boomed, and they have even more reason to do so now that the economy is slowing down. We owe them a third option. We tend to consider the terms
A Recession Won't Bring People Back to the Office
Some analysts assume that employees will lose their leverage and return to the office as the economy slows down. This theory is based on a mistaken assumption.
If nobody's there, is it still a company?
The office and the corporation are intertwined. A big box full of people and things is the physical embodiment of the legal entity that "owns" these people, their tools, and whatever they produce. Once people are liberated from the box, what happens to the legal entity? We focus
Who Needs Web3?
The internet is a meteor that crashed into human civilization. We absorbed the initial impact. Now, we need to figure out how to fit all the pieces back together.
