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- šŖšø Madrid ranks highest for remote workers
šŖšø Madrid ranks highest for remote workers
Inside: remote city rankings, job board with "purpose," Nike CEO's dumb comment, remote husbands, Dropbox CEO's great remote stance, and more.
Good Morning,
Itās hilarious (and annoying) to me that CEOs are still trying to blame poor company performance on remote work.
Itās a played-out, unmeasurable claim that only seems to come from leaders who have to find someone or something to blame other than themselves for negative results.
Nike CEO John Donahoe joins the CEOs before him who have used this excuse, blaming remote work for his companyās lack of innovation in recent years.
And you can probably guess where this is going: heās the newest member of The Clown Show.
Fortunately, more and more people are catching on to the empty nature of this scapegoat tactic, so I donāt expect weāll continue to hear this trite excuse too much longer.

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Need to Know
š³ļø Dropbox CEO Drew Houston encourages remote work
The subtitle of this article says āLeaders canāt keep mashing the āgo back to 2019 button,āā which is an incredible opener. And the article is an abridged transcript of a full podcast episode, worth listening to if you have about an hour to listen to Houstonās takes on AI, remote work, and more.
There are at least a dozen quotes in there I could have pulled for this newsletter, given Dropboxās policies and the CEOās stance on the future of work.
We see our employees as our customers. We will support however they want to gather, but weāre finding that these retreats and off-sites and things like that are often a lot more effective than asking people to commute.
One of the interesting takes he had in this interview is that hybrid didnāt seem appealing. When they were making big policy decisions in late 2020, they opted to shift to about 90% remote, to a āVirtual Firstā environment.
We went for [remote-first work] and never looked back. I think we also got lucky. I mean, sometimes you make a big one-way door decision, and you go through the wrong way at the wrong door. But itās really worked for us. Our employee retention is way up. Engagement is way up. We donāt have any problems with people commuting. We can get great talent from anywhere, as I was saying. The flexibility is like a trump card. Our offer separates are way higher. There are a lot of other factors with the market and everything else, but it has been phenomenally successful for us.
Itās maybe one of the best case studies for remote work and its potential, especially because Dropbox had been primarily in-person before Covid. (The Verge)
šŖšø Madrid ranked #1 city for nomads
Low taxes, lots of visa options, and a robust set of cafes and coworking spaces all contribute to this ranking, which places Madrid at the top of the list of desirable digital nomad destinations. (CNBC)
š WFH = fewer burglaries
Home burglaries have declined for 12 years straight, but the remote work phenomenon appears to have further impacted the drop in burglary rates.
Criminals are now less likely to target primary residences, and are more likely to engage in cybercrime or to shift their focus to places of business instead of residences.

Clearly, more people staying home mid-day has reduced residential criminal burglary activity. And hopefully the trend continues! (Bloomberg)
š©āā¤ļøāšØ Rise of the remote husband
Itās a dynamic that wasnāt nearly as common in past years as it is today: plenty of couples consist of women who commute to an office regularly and men who work from home.
Even though itās slightly more common for men, vs. women, to be able to work from wherever they want (according to a McKinsey study), women have seen the highest labor workforce participation rates when remote work was more prevalent. If that doesnāt convince hiring managers that more remote talent is readily available, what will?
āThe geographical liberation of either partner makes it possible for the other to ascend the corporate ladder.ā (The Economist)
āļø How remote work is changing corporate travel
Corporate travel looks far different than it did in 2019. As someone whoās been with multiple companies since 2019 - in roles that often require travel to potential customers - I can absolutely vouch for this. Itās far more common for employees to travel to meet internally with colleagues today than it was before the pandemic.
And that makes sense. People want to meet in-person and thereās nothing wrong with that. Iād argue it makes the employment experience far better.
But some of the biggest questions companies face when constructing new travel policies are highlighted below. The percentages reflect the companies in a Global Business Travel Association survey that are currently tackling these questions:
Which types of meetings are allowed for travel? (40%)
How often can the employee travel to an office? (32%)
What types of transportation are reimbursable? (26%)
How much is allowed for per diems (22%) and accommodation? (20%)
Further, one policy area thatās still murky is ābleisureā travel (business + leisure). Anecdotally, I think companies have figured out how to manage this for the most part. But companies may want to be aware of a big trend: over 40% of corporate travelers said they have added personal days onto their business trips. (Guilty! šš»āāļø)
Does it matter? Hopefully not - as long as the work gets done, it shouldnāt matter if itās done from an office space, a home office, or a couch. (The Skift)

Stuff We Like
š Remote work city ranker
Use sliding scales for criteria like Quality of Life, Internet, Attractiveness, and more to determine which cities youād most prefer to work remotely from. (Remote.com)
š„ļø Ultimate home office setup
Paul Antill at Tomās Guide broke down the products that contribute to his ādreamā office setup, including his standing desk, docking station, and 49ā Samsung monitor. (Tomās Guide)
š¼ Job board with purpose
This job board is built to help people find jobs at companies that specifically align with their values. Thereās a remote filter on the job board as well, which we link to here. (Purpose.Jobs)


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