🚙 Nomading across North America

Good Morning,

I went to an awesome co-working event on Friday in LA. It was hosted by The Next Fun Thing, a local organization, which — among other things — recently started hosting co-working meetups at bars that would otherwise be empty during the day.

I’d heard of similar concepts before, but it was so cool to see it executed live, flawlessly. (Felt similar to some of the events by Work From Denver.)

Worth noting that I wasn’t in town for the co-working event itself; I found out about it via @CamberApp right before the trip, and luckily was staying in the same neighborhood.

Truly great event. Kudos to the hosts, and I hope to see more of these pop up around the country.

For those of you who live in LA or visit occasionally, here’s a one-click subscribe option for Camber’s newsletter 👇

Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

Agilent Technologies: 30 remote jobs
Singularity 6: 11 remote jobs
Stryker: 29 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

🏦 Fed says remote work doesn’t impact productivity
This is great to hear because it proves there’s limited economic downside to remote work. The Federal Reserve Bank of SF conducted comprehensive analysis across 43 industries, and concluded there isn’t a positive or negative correlation between remote work and productivity. It makes sense, given that all the CEOs who call for a return to office don’t ever have data to substantiate their office productivity claims.

This is simply proof that while remote work hasn’t drastically altered work, it has drastically improved the way people live outside of work.

And that’s what this is all about 💪

So, leaders, take note: productivity won’t go down the shitter if you let your employees work from home. You might as well let them live better lives. Your employee satisfaction and retention rate will benefit handsomely. (Bloomberg)

🔄 Workforce analytics company Hubstaff says remote teams are more productive
Admittedly, Hubstaff’s productivity criteria are very different than the Federal Reserve’s macroeconomic definition of productivity. But given that Hubstaff tracks minute-by-minute productivity professionally, they’re worth listening to for these metrics.

Their major finding was that remote teams devote, on average, more time than their in-office peers to “focus time” - about 59% of their workday, compared to 49% for those in-office.

While this is a great study, and will likely help shape remote and hybrid policies, I strongly believe that measuring employee productivity by the minute isn’t smart for management to do. Company leadership is far more impactful when developing strategy, managing partnerships, and influencing culture — not when micromanaging individuals’ activities.

Plus, as many employees have proven in recent years, the ultimate measure of employee value should be their outputs, not how many minutes they’re sitting in an office or typing on a keyboard. (Hubstaff)

🚐 What worked and didn’t for a US digital nomad
An engineer at Kapwing, Alex Osman, has been traveling around the US as a digital nomad since 2020, and has lots of advice based on his trial and error.

He tried three “styles” of living over the years:

• Airbnb

  • 1-month stays at each location

  • Airbnb hosts are helpful with recommendations

  • Easiest way to begin a nomadic lifestyle

• Vanlife

  • A car suitable to sleep in

  • Membership(s) to gyms (for showers/bathrooms) and coworking spaces

  • Couldn’t be outside of cities for too long

• Full-time wandering

  • Car + trailer, with bathroom, shower, and office space

  • Can go to remote locations for longer periods of time

  • Supplemental internet service, like Starlink

  • Trailer serves as a “home base” for smaller trips in the car

As for desk setups that didn’t work:

• Using his car as an office

• Building a “floating office” (see picture below)

He plans to continue the full-time wandering style of living indefinitely. If you’re considering even just 1-2 months of traveling and working around the US, save this article for later. (Kapwing)

🧴 L’Oreal CEO bashes remote work
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, CEO Nicolas Hieronimus said the following: “I know so many employees of so many companies other than L’Oréal that have been working from home for months, that have absolutely no attachment, passion or creativity.”

Would love to hear how he knows all these detached remote workers (he doesn’t) and how exactly he’s measuring their levels of creativity (he’s not). Another boneheaded statement that’s earned a seat at the Clown Show. (Fortune)

👍 Most executives are satisfied with existing remote work arrangements
A Conference Board survey revealed only 6 out of 158 US CEOs is going to push for fully in-person work in 2024. Further, a majority of CFOs expect hybrid work to be in place at their organizations this year.

One former Slack executive shared that while many media headlines have highlighted CEOs who were forcing employees back into the office, those were just the “loudest” voices; most CEOs have accepted that the trend is here to stay, and they expect to enable remote work at various levels long-term. (Axios)

🧑‍⚖️ Legal considerations for remote employers
A team of legal experts at Reuters put together an article advising companies what to look out for when employing remote workers.

• Employers should take extra caution when employing workers in states where they haven’t had employees before. Each state has unique rules to comply with.

• Hour and wage law varies considerably by state, in far more detail than minimum wage thresholds. For example, California and Colorado use different criteria to calculate overtime pay.

• State and local protections can vary widely as well. Inquiring about previous arrest history, inquiring about credit scores, or not publishing expected salaries are all against the law in a substantial number of states or smaller jurisdictions.

• An obvious and still complex item is taxes. Most states have income tax, but some states will require income tax to be paid by nonresidents or temporary residents depending on the amount of time spent in those states. This one in particular is especially important for employees to understand, as well at their employers.

The bigger companies likely have their bases covered, but for smaller and midsize companies that have just begun hiring across the country, or across the world, these are important to stay on top of. (Reuters)

Stuff We Like

👉 Big Desk Energy:
Tyler Denk, Co-Founder and CEO of beehiiv (the email platform I use to send this to you lovely readers) wrote an incredibly eloquent piece, “the inevitability of remote work” about why he and the Beehiiv team are 100% remote, and the advantages it brings them.

A favorite excerpt that mirrors my thoughts:

If you’re interested in startups, newsletters, or entertaining insights from a Series A cofounder, his newsletter is a great follow:

👉 A great startup idea to support remote workers
Are any companies currently doing this? And if not… who wants to join forces to make it happen?

👉 Cancel your meetings (or at least some of them)
Zapier is a remote OG, having been remote for many years prior to the pandemic. Befitting of their reputation, they’ve always paid close attention to how employees work best. One week in 2022, they canceled all meetings for a week, calling it a “Getting Stuff Done” or “GSD” week, and it worked out well for them.

So if you work remotely, and especially if you manage remote teams, think about whether some of your meetings could turn into asynchronous conversations, saving everyone some time and helping more people finish their individual tasks.

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