The Future of Work Project Derrick Franco

Today’s guest is Darren Murph, the Head of Remote at Gitlab. Now Darren is a true pioneer in remote work who has helping shape remote teams across multiple organizations and was named an “Oracle of Remote Work” by CNBC.

Before this, Darren spent time in multiple editorial roles and while serving as a Senior Editor at Engadget, he was responsible for writing over 20,000 articles earning himself a Guinness World Record as one of the most prolific professional bloggers.

After shifting to working remotely, he traveled to all 50 states in the US and wrote his book, Living the "Remote Dream: A Guide To Seeing the World, Setting Records, and Advancing Your Career" along the way.

In 2019, Darren and Gitlab pioneered a monumental shift in remote work by creating the "Head of Remote" at Gitlab, where he has focused on defining and improving remote cultures at Gitlab and beyond.

Darren is also responsible for creating GitLab’s industry-leading guide to remote work, The Gitlab Remote Playbook, which is a public library of tactical, implementable processes necessary for distributed teams to thrive.

During our discussion, Darren and I dive into his initial steps into remote work and how Gitlab’s handbook, which is publicly available to all, is built to help teams all over the world build incredible remote teams and cultures.

We also look deeper at the Superpowers going remote unlocks, the phases of remote adaptation, and some tips and guidelines for teams that want to implement more of a hybrid model post covid.

And finally, we dive into remote work's positive effects on families, and Darren what he hopes it helps unlock in the future.

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Darren Murph

Show Notes:

The Gitlab Remote Playbook: https://about.gitlab.com/resources/ebook-remote-playbook/

Remote Dream: A Guide To Seeing the World, Setting Records, and Advancing Your Career: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Remote-Dream-Setting-Advancing/dp/1506192130

Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/darrenmurph

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenmurph

Today’s guest is Sonja Gittens Ottley, the Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Asana.

From her beginnings as an attorney at the Ministry of Legal Affairs for the Attorney-General in Trinidad & Tobago to her time at Yahoo, Facebook, and Asana, Sonja has been an advocate for building initiatives to promote privacy, free expression, and a more inclusive workforce.

While at Yahoo, Sonja helped create the companies Global Policy Counsel on Business & Human Rights, focusing on initiatives to promote privacy and free expression on the Internet. The counsel also explored the effects that the company products and tools may have on culture, human rights, activists, and more.

Recently, Sonja has been key to Asana’s efforts to incorporate diversity and inclusion into all aspects of the business by creating strategies that help build diverse and inclusive environments where every employee can thrive.

During our discussion, Sonja and I speak more about the responsibility the tech industry has to think deeper about how its products can impact society.

We also take a deep dive into the effects phycological safety has on productivity, and how Asana has worked to create frameworks to help employees succeed through a culture of open conversations and opportunities for discussion.

And finally, we take a closer look at the results of Asana’s Anatomy of Work Report, the results of a survey of over 13,000 global workers, and dive into the key findings on burnout, distributed work, tool overload, and more.

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Sonja Gittens Ottley

Show Notes:

Anatomy of Work Report: https://asana.com/resources/anatomy-of-work

Asana: https://asana.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SonjaOttley

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sonja-gittens-ottley

Today’s guest is the Co-founder and CEO of Future, serial entrepreneur, Rishi Mandal.

Now Rishi is someone who just has such an amazing background that really it reads more like a motivational article. Rishi attended Stanford for undergrad where he majored in Applied Physics and also spent time working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. After graduating, he joined Slide, a social startup founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin that was acquired by Google in 2010.

Post-acquisition he worked as a Senior Product Manager for Google before cofounding Sosh, a Human curation and machine learning platform that was backed by Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, Battery Ventures, and more.

Sosh was eventually acquired by Postmates in 2015 where Rishi went on to be the Director of Product for the growing Unicorn.

He moved back into Entrepreneurship, becoming the Entrepreneur in Residence at Khosla Ventures, before leaving to start his current company, Future.

Future is a unique fitness company unlike any other solution on the market. Using a combination of technology, elite personal trainers, and custom content, they empower their members through a personalized training solution with trainers personally texting and talking with their clients daily to help them fit their goals into everyday life. They also use a unique technology to help trainers understand how their client's body is reacting by providing each client with an Apple Watch to monitor vitals and energy levels to help tailor the workouts and nutritional plans.

During our discussion, Rishi and I take a look at Future has focused on helping people manage their health outcomes in today's fast-paced, and uncertain society.

We also take a look at how he and his team have grown from an early-stage idea to a company that’s raised over $35 million with over 150 employees in less than 4 years.

And finally, we take a deep dive into how accountability and feedback loops are the keys to not only building amazing products, but is also to creating a healthy lifestyle, and achieving amazing results.

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Rishi Mandal

Show Notes:

Future: https://future.co

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rmandal

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rmandal/

Today’s guest is author and serial Entrepreneur, Jeff Wald. Now Jeff has a wide ranging background that includes time in Private Equity and Venture Capital, to co-founding WorkMarket, which sold to ADP in 2018.

Jeff is also the author of 2 books with his most recent publication being "The End of Jobs". The book reviews the history of work to help us understand how companies and workers reacted to the last three industrial revolutions, to help us better predict how the workforce and markets may react to the coming changes of AI and Automation.

The book was also contains insights from some of the best thought leaders from around the world on the Future of Work thanks to Jeff’s $10 million Future of Work Competition. The competition focused on bringing together a group of twenty leading global thinkers on the future of work, to use data and their insights to help predict how the workforce may look in 2040.

During our discussion, Jeff dives into predictions for the Future of Work based on 3 main bodies of evidence: History, Data, and How companies are currently engaging with their workers.

We’ll also take a look at how flexibility and the de-densification of the office will lead to huge productivity advantages for larger companies.

And finally, we touch on how the technical revolutions of AI and Automation will effect the workforce, and how retraining efforts need to be brought to the forefront of conversations.

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Jeff Wald

Show Notes:

The End of Jobs (Book): https://www.amazon.com/End-Jobs-Demand-Workers-Corporations/dp/1642934356

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffwald/

Today’s guest is the traveling Career Coach and Digital Nomad, Christa Romano (also known as ChristaBellaTravels).

Christa has been traveling the world for more than 7 years visiting over 59 countries, all while building a career as a marketer and last year, turning her side hustle into a full-time endeavor.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with the term digital nomad, essentially this is a person who is completely location independent. They 100% lean in and take advantage of the ability to work remote, traveling the globe working remotely from their Airbnb’s, coffee shops, the beach, or anywhere else with a wifi connection.

During our discussion, Christa dives into how she turned a round of burnout from her job in New York, into taking a leap and starting a lifestyle traveling and working abroad.

We also take a look at how she has successfully built her career all while getting to travel and work from some amazing locations over the last 7 years.

And finally, we’ll dive further into the logistics of her life as a digital nomad, and how she is now focused on helping others take the leap to work from their dream locations today.

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Christa Romano

Show Notes:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christabellatravels/

Digital Nomad Starter Codes Course: https://christabellatravels.mykajabi.com/nomad-starter-codes-sales-page

Website: https://www.christaromano.com/

Today's guest is the Founder and CEO of The Ready, Aaron Dignan. As an entrepreneur and investor, Aaron is an advocate for helping companies transform from slow bureaucratic organizations into fast, efficient machines allowing for further growth and potential.

Aaron is also the host of the Brave New Work Podcast, an investor in early-stage startups, and is the author of the book, A Brave New Work.

During our Discussion, Aaron dives into how most complexity in organizations is not caused by our people or leaders, but by the fundamental operating system that businesses run on.

We also take a look at how companies can reinvent their core principles and practices to help build a culture centered around autonomy, trust, and transparency.

And finally, we explore how building constant feedback loops can help remove roadblocks and barriers to allow people to start doing their best work.

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Aaron Dignan

Show Notes:

Book: https://www.bravenewwork.com/

The Ready: https://theready.com/

Brave New Work Podcast: https://www.bravenewwork.com/podcast

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondignan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondignan/