🏡 Zillow gets 4X remote job applicants

Good Morning,

Hope you had a fantastic Labor Day weekend.

While Labor Day was created to celebrate labor organizations, and continues to celebrate the progress that’s been made over the years, you might be able to guess I think the US workforce still has some room for improvement.

Business owners and their employees have always had different viewpoints when it comes to employee policies and output, simply because their incentives are different.

But in the modern employment era, despite a strong recent remote work surge, we still see very different opinions on whether employees who have the ability to work from outside an office should actually be given permission to do so — and that’s baffling to me.

It seems as though incentives are clearly aligned when it comes to remote work. While plenty of surveys and studies back this up, here’s a study of the S&P 500 showing that return-to-office mandates do not improve company performance and reduce employee satisfaction.

Plus, huge companies like Nvidia, Atlassian, Zillow, Airbnb, and others have been outspoken about their remote-first policies and how well they’ve worked for them. I have yet to see a company with knowledge workers prove that remote work hurt their company performance in any material way.

But managers just don’t want remote work — defined as either fully remote work or hybrid work days — as much as their employees do.

What’s influencing these managers? Well, there are a slew of reasons I’ve railed on in the past, mostly having to do with their tendencies to micromanage, fear of appearing as though their roles aren’t needed, or resistance to any change they aren’t comfortable with.

And then of course there are the real estate executives who only argue against remote work because their personal wealth is tied to office buildings. And the banking executives whose bonuses rely on real estate loans not defaulting all at once.

So, similar to labor policy movements in the past, employees seem to be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to remote work. But in this case, it’s for something that actually seems likely to improve the financial position of most organizations that don’t currently have remote-friendly policies in place — benefitting their leaders, too!

It may not be a frequent occurrence for labor organizations to demand remote work today, and most employees may not be able to legally demand it on an individual basis, at least anytime soon…

But I’m holding out optimism that in the not-so-distant future, American companies, employees, and legislators will be in greater agreement that remote work truly benefits all parties involved — contributing to, of course, a more perfect Union.

Remote Source Job Board

Featured companies:

Cyberhaven: 20 remote jobs
Relativity: 79 remote jobs
Achieve: 20 remote jobs

🤝 Find Remote Jobs Here

Need to Know

🥂 Remote work forces “hotelification” of offices
At companies with hybrid office attendance policies in place, most of their employees don’t want to be in the office as often as employers want them present (according to WFH Research).

And it’s likely that isn’t going to change any time soon. In fact, virtually all data points to higher levels of remote work in the future. With this in mind, leaders who want in-person work need to drastically improve their offices if they want to attract and retain star talent.

Enter “hotelification” of the workplace. According to industry professionals, that means adding amenities typically seen at hospitality venues but not typically at offices. State-of-the-art gyms, coffee shops, saunas, bars, restaurants, and other amenities are contributing to an elevated experience that will be necessary to convince employees that commuting to an office will be worthwhile. (New York Times)

🇪🇸 Spain joins the pay-to-move trend
Extremadura, a region on the western border of Spain, is now offering up to $16,800 to 200 digital nomads to move there. The amount paid is dependent on a few factors: age, gender, size of the city the nomad chooses to live in, and whether they stay after two years.

There are picturesque mountains, Roman ruins, and more that would entice lots of visitors, but the primary downside — found in many regions or countries that offer these programs in the first place — is that the economy isn’t very strong. (Thrillist)

🏡 Applicants quadrupled at Zillow
We’ve praised Zillow before for their popular remote-friendly position, and it sounds like the job market is rewarding them. They’re apparently getting four times as many job applicants as they did before they went remote-first.

Zillow’s CEO is based in Seattle but almost always works from home, only meeting live with colleagues during retreats, meetings, or events that are specifically designed to be in-person.

They currently have employees in all 50 states! And here’s a direct link to their jobs page: Zillow Job Openings. They currently have 82 openings, and apparently many, many applicants for those roles. (Fortune)

🙅🏻‍♀️ Employees continue to leave due to RTO
Business Insider interviewed four people who recently made career changes because employers required time in-office that the employees weren’t willing to accept.

The diverse range of interviewees in software engineering, HR, and legal positions found the office requirements to be unreasonable, and then found employment elsewhere. As long as mandates like these continue, these anecdotes will as well, and the most in-demand talent will go where it’s given the flexibility it wants. (Business Insider)

💸 Payday challenges for digital nomads
The number of independent workers continues to grow each year, and given remote work trends, is likely to continue. One of the most appealing options for younger nomads without major obligations is living abroad while working as a freelancer, consultant, or other type of digital nomad.

But international transaction fees, cash-centric economies, and more can present issues for these independent workers, and are especially important to research prior to making any big decisions. This article shares the top concerns to look out for. (Fast Company)

Stuff We Like

📝 Resume tips to stand out
A career expert shares important trends to review as you’re editing your resume. Topics include keywords, competencies, action verbs, results, and more. (Forbes)

🤝 Remote work boosts culture
Workforce expert Tobias Günther shared a brief essay about his experience with remote work and advice for building culture.

He says “I know, without a doubt: if we hadn’t switched to a fully remote setup in 2015, our culture — along with our communication, relationships, and structures — would never have reached the extraordinary quality they have. For me (and for many other teams I know) remote work has been the catalyst for building an exceptional team with an exceptional culture.” (Tobias.co)

👀 How to spot AI
Found this interesting from Lifehacker: “how to tell if what you’re reading was written by AI.” There are some pretty interesting clues, including that ChatGPT has a tendency to use “delve” way more often than an average human writer would.

Fun fact: I’ve never used AI to write any of this newsletter, and I don’t expect to change that! Don’t get me wrong — AI is great. But as long as this newsletter is being sent to people on the subject of how we work, I think it’s better that you hear directly from a human. (Lifehacker)