Is it right to have work from home when not everyone can? How do we resolve moral questions about fairness in a post-COVID world?
This week we explore post-COVID work, thinking about how local governments, small businesses, and larger businesses, including tech companies, can navigate questions of costs, morals and what values are worth paying for.
I've never had office friends. I've had to develop the skills to make friendships happen despite not having a common connection. That's a skill most people never need to build.
Kids who grew up on the internet have a completely different social norm around trust and presence. When they join the workforce, their expectations will reshape what work looks like.
Hi, I'm Kahran. Hi, I'm Defeu. Welcome to the 24th episode of Thinking on Thinking. This week, we talked about the aftermath of COVID-19. We were talking about distributed workplaces
and whether they're here to stay. We talked about the ethics of distributed work and what kinds of work are well-suited to being distributed and whether it's right to allow everyone to be distributed when some types of work require to come from the office.
And we talked about our own experience. How does it feel like to move to working from home and how did we adjust as it became clear work from home was here to stay? We hope you enjoy this conversation.
We had a lovely time recording it. Okay, so like we started working together during the pandemic and we have generally worked across time zones. Not that like it's been too challenging, but how do you feel about that?
Like what do you think would be different if we were in the same space versus, you know, right now when we are at like approximately what, 10-hour time difference? Yeah, it's interesting
because I had other colleagues in the past who I kind of shared a very different working style with, right? So, you know, you prefer to do your kind of like deeper work later in the day and I'm someone who prefers to do it much earlier in the day,
right? Like it's 9am when I'm recording this and I think it's like 5pm or 6pm for you right now, right? And I think we're both very happy with kind of doing this type of work at this time of day for us. So, I had a colleague, I think his name was Jotun
who was very similar and unfortunately for him he would still come to work by like 10, right? Because it was kind of its expectation that you would be in work but he would always be at work to like 7 or 8 or later because he would prefer to do his work
in those hours after 4pm. So, I think there are a lot of people who didn't fit into the kind of standard like you like to work from 9 to 5 buckets who just kind of suffered in the past when there wasn't this kind of flexibility
and it meant that the ability to kind of work with those people was not as efficient as it was if you were more able to like kind of fit into the pre-pre-decided hours of, you know, when is a good working time and when is not
that we've culturally kind of agreed on. So, to answer your question directly, I found it really great because I think this actually with this time zone and this difference gives us more or overlapping working hours than we would have
productively even if we were co-located. Because I have broadly worked from home over the last 11 years. Like that has been my preferred mode of working. I've really enjoyed it.
I've also worked across time zones. But do you feel like there are like certain productivity gains that you only get when you are in person? Yes. I've always found that explanation a little bit sus.
But so like I would want you to maybe say more words about it because I always almost feel like, oh, it's a lie that middle management tells to everybody so that they can be present. No, it's like the small things, right?
Like I could give you a couple of examples that immediately come to mind. When I was doing some consulting work for my sister's company, the clothing rental company back in, I don't know, maybe 2019.
I remember because I just happened to be sitting on the desk next to like they were in like four big tables and the table I was sitting on was across from the table that did customer support. And just because I could hear the things
that they would have to ask each other about, it was becoming apparent to me that we had a problem where people would like, people just wanted to see the clothes and they were signing up with fake information in order to be able to get access to seeing the closet.
And then there wasn't a way for them to change the information. Like, because we contextualized on the email address or something like that, like we used it as a unique identifier. Right? And that's the kind of thing where it's like, you know, it's a product problem that you would understand.
It would get filtered to you in a certain way by the time it got to you. But, or you could just solve the problem to begin with, you know? And so I think that kind of awareness, especially if you are a product person
or someone who likes to kind of like understand full context, it's so much easier to get full context when you can kind of see the way people are behaving and see the way people are interacting with each other versus just being told.
Almost like how when you are doing user interviews and you just see somebody use your product versus when you do an interview and you are talking about them, oh, how do you use our product? And there's like a night and day difference between those two things.
When did you first start working from home? Because I don't think it would have been during COVID, right? Like you would have had experience of it before. Yeah, even when I last worked in New York and with Shwethaan Sahil,
I was, we probably worked from office twice a week. And like once or twice a week, we would go to like a client site once a week. Maybe we were in pitch and at least once or twice a week, we would work from home.
And even before that, like in 2012, one of my clients was in London. So there wasn't that much of a point for me to go to the Bellevue office. So I would like maybe go to office once every two weeks or three weeks, but I'd basically go to our client's office in London
or work from home in Seattle. And I would do like three weeks in London one week off. So honestly, like when COVID happened and everybody was like finding struggles with, okay, this is how most of it happened.
My friends are like, oh my God, it's going to be work from home. I'm going to be working from the couch. I'm going to be working from the bed. And I was like, guys, you need a table. If you want to do it in any sort of sustainable way,
you'll need a table, you'll need a chair, you need a proper setup. And within the first six months, everybody was buying a new table, a new chair, bigger table so that you can put all of your stuff on it. And it was just like very interesting that I realized
a lot of these learnings that I've had over years of just working by myself, I didn't need to relearn them during COVID time. Honestly, 2020 and 2021 were so productive for me and my siblings because we were just used to working from home.
So while everybody else was having to slow down and readjust, we were just, it's not even hit the ground running. We were already running. Right? And so like why I asked you that is like,
what were some of the early challenges that you faced? Because even if you say, you know, you used to go to office once a week or twice a week, that's still more often than once in six months or not even that.
Yeah. Right? And also I would imagine that like that structurally changes how you interact with your work and with your colleagues. Like I'm seeing you every week is very different from,
oh, I have to see you once every six months. So maybe I will not tell you any of my personal life and any of my personal stories because you don't need to know any of that. Right?
I don't know. Yeah. I would have to think about that from a couple of different perspectives. I guess to answer from my own perspective, which was kind of how you asked.
I think there was a shift where in maybe my parents' generation, there was this idea that like when you had enough money, you would build yourself a cool home office. But you know, when I was growing up, that wasn't really a thing. Like offices and libraries were like kind of an outdated notion.
So I think that there was a shift once the pandemic started where it was like, oh, a work from home moment is not going to be a temporary moment. And I can't just like, you know, if I use an external monitor at work, I'm going to need to have an external monitor at home
because I'm not going to be able to do whatever kind of work I like to do on the external monitor for months. So I think that was kind of a big shift at first where people, you know, I particularly also recalibrated like, oh, I'm not going to go to a co-working space when I want to like do meetings
or I'm not going to like have access to kind of these, you know, bigger like devices or screens. So whatever I want to have, my best working environment needs to be in my home. And that I think is kind of a big shift because then you start to think about how you use your space
and how you divide your time and like, you know, physical distinctions start to blur a little bit and all of those kind of aspects. I think, you know, we've all heard a lot about, right? Like babies running on Zoom calls and like, you know, finding a balance between work and personal time
in a way that was more strictly demarcated and separated. When I think about some of my friends' experiences, especially people who started working in the pandemic or people who have taken new jobs in the pandemic, it definitely seems like you're saying it's true, right?
Like those moments where you would like be like, oh, hey, it looks like you had a hard day. Do you want to like grab a drink after work or go for a coffee or just chat? Right? Like you never have those moments. And I think those are the moments that do build lasting relationships.
Because I think even in the era in my life where I worked from home a lot, which was that 2012, 2013 era when I was working in London, I didn't make that many lasting relationships. I would say I was closest to my clients and that's probably because I spent so much time with my clients
and I did kind of take them for a glass of wine when they had a bad day or, you know, we chatted over lunch and whatnot. There was all these kind of quiet moments that you kind of build relationships. Oh, so that like made me think about this very interesting thing. So when I was like around 28 years old-ish, right?
A lot of my friends were so it had been five years since I had graduated from college and a lot of my college friends were like, oh man, it's so hard to make new friends once you're out of college. Like when you're working, you have some friends and I was just like, no, you just go and you meet people and you hang out with them.
Like, but how do you meet these people? And it's over time that I've realized, oh, because I don't have office friends that I have had to develop this and I've never had office friends. I've had to develop the skills that would be required to make friendships happen, despite not having a quote-unquote common connection.
Like when you were just talking about this, that reminded me of that, that, huh, like the social aspect of what a workplace gives you is, I mean, for a lot of people, they hate their office people, but you do have one or two people that you like and you don't get access to those people either. Like you, that's one or two lesser people in your life who you like
and who you can share an aspect of your life with. Yeah, I think that's really true. Hmm. Did you feel like the people that you were living with, you ended up sharing like more of your work life with them
or they ended up sharing more of their work life with you because you were living together? I would say that's very true. That's funny. It was, that was the period that I lived with my friend Phil and like we became very good friends from that period. Also, because I would get home from these crazy, you know,
two week really intense trips in London and then like basically lie on the couch and like kind of work for two days and get back to my regular like rhythm because it was just quite exhausting also. So, yeah, we would hang out and chat and you know, make coffee and whatnot. Yeah, because I would imagine that like that mental energy has to go somewhere
and if you're just going to bond with people who are close to you, you will bond with people who are close to you over all different domains. I think you would also get your employees to start to put some of their energy into the other problems that plague you. You know, like when people are running into each other,
kind of like what I was saying a few minutes ago and they hear about like whether it's a customer service complaint or like this, you know, this frustrating processes. Like, yeah, you might casually chat about it like drinking water or coffee or something, but then because people hear that then they're going to actually be more likely to act on it or maybe be able to solve the problem.
But I think that there's that aspect of like improving work, I guess, or improving the environment that doesn't necessarily happen when you're not having those kind of non-focused or non-intent based conversations. I really don't like how these days our podcast episodes take us in directions that I'm like, oh, but I did not want to arrive at that conclusion.
Why are we moving in that conclusion direction? Well, I think if you're arriving there, then it comes back to also the question I was going to wondering about, which is like, what is ethical then? Because there is something to be argued like my friend who works at the mayor's office was saying, you know, because of where the mayor's office is in New York City,
there's only certain people who can live a certain commuting radius from it, but if you can make those jobs available, then you could be living, you know, deep in Queens or like out on Long Island and you'd be able to do those jobs. I have a separate thought here. Beyond the ethical, like, should work be fulfilling those needs?
Like, this is slightly going to sound, you know, anti-capitalist, but like, should your office job also take up your social energy? So very early on when we were thinking about joyous, you introduced me to the concept of a third space. And I've been like recently reading or hearing about it in podcasts and books and all that,
like third spaces are vanishing as people's workers become intense, as we become more and more like perpetually online and post-pandemic. Like, it's even worse. Like, just the concept of third space is like evaporating. And I wonder if rather than work becoming that place,
the third space needs to be the place where you feel like the sense of belonging, where you feel like the sense of connection, you can go there. You know that you are around like-minded people. You can socialize. I don't know. You know, like, generally work is the second space, right?
So then the third space is a, yeah. I know. Yeah. Right. So like, that's what I'm saying.
Let's say that the first space is your home, which gives you a sense of belonging, right? And like, your work can be a place that gives you some amount of sense of meaning or value. Or fulfillment. And some amount of sense of belonging. But does it have to be the, like, you know, only driver apart from your home that gives you a sense of belonging?
Or could we cultivate, like, you know, more of these third spaces? The part that I think I'm struggling with is, and I'm not sure if I agree with your contention that a third space is a place for belonging. Because if you think about the third space, like historically bowling alleys in America were considered a third space. Then obviously more recently, like coffee shops, you know, there was a time libraries.
And I would say that those are gathering places of people, but oftentimes you might meet people who are maybe not in your immediate circles or even your circle circles. So I think maybe a characteristic of third spaces is that they're a place that different kinds of people gather. And so you are able to kind of expand your purview. So I don't know. I also maybe disagree with the notion that they're vanishing.
I think that they're just changing and they will always be changing. Right. And maybe if we're like, I think we're actually leaving a time where like alcohol and like bars were really much like a third space. And now we're starting to see a time where like alcohol is becoming less of a social necessity. And you're starting to see a rise again of activities that are not as alcohol dependent. But I would still say those activities are third space is to me kind of.
I mean, I would also, I would also say that like for a lot of people, the third space is a digital space. Like it's a virtual space. It's not a real space. Where do I spend? Ultimately, I have 24 hours in a day. If I'm going to end up spending 12 hours of it on work, including my commute and getting ready.
How much time am I going to spend elsewhere? And I also think that like going to the first point that you made that maybe they don't have a sense of belonging is. You know how all kids who like quiet, like books, like reading, end up loving libraries. They don't have to like each other, but they can still feel like, you know, sense of belonging to the space. Like you don't have to like all of the people who come there for you to feel like you belong in the space.
You might like the thing that you do there. I'm not saying it has to bring you a sense of community, but belongingness can come from more than just community. That is an interesting notion. I've turned it over in my head a couple of times. Yeah, I think if you think historically, you're not wrong at all, right?
Because there, then there was a lot of work that was like, like very labor intensive or menial or like. Not fulfilling. And we found other ways of finding fulfillment, right? Whether it was like harvest festivals or different occasions that would kind of bring people together. Actually, I don't know if I mentioned it on the podcast, but it was really entertaining when I was in Louisiana a couple of weeks ago.
And we went, we just happened to go to this place for breakfast. And every Saturday and Sunday they had line dancing from like 8am till noon. And it was just like a thing. The whole community turned out and we happened to get there at like 1130. So we were just there for the end of the dancing at 12 o'clock everyone left.
Like it was just like a thing that right people came there and it was so full. It was maybe like 150 people were there and then 20 people were there. Soon as the dancing was over. Right. So like I think and Louisiana is still a place that is kind of more, it doesn't have as a developed economy.
A lot of it is labor based driving, whether it's tourism or fishing or whatever. So I do think that there is some truth to that notion that like people will have a need and they will find a way to fit that need or solve for that need. Even if their work is not giving them fulfillment, there will be these other things that give them fulfillment. And maybe what's possible is that we're coming out of an era where work really filled so many needs for people. It was so all encompassing and maybe work doesn't need to do that anymore.
Maybe, you know, if we, if we do have more distributed work, we will see people forming more other types of social relationships. I don't know though, because the whole online thing is kind of a troubling like new phenomena. Right. Because if you don't, if you feel that sort of like partial fulfillment and I think something we talked about really early on in the podcast was I think I was talking about how like when you like something you can have in mind. You can have engaged with someone in a shallow way, but it fills the need a little bit.
So then you don't go chasing that deeper engagement, but then long term you start to feel like suffering almost because you don't have that deeper engagement with your friends or your close loved ones. So I don't know. I don't know if that maybe you'll be able to find enough kind of sense of belonging and community online that you don't go out seeking those spaces. And, you know, I don't, I don't know though, like if that is a problem of us being millennials.
Because if you look at how like people who are younger engage with the Internet, it is completely different. Like, so for example, I think that like we would instinctively trust somebody that we have seen way more easily than someone that we have never seen regardless of how long we have known them online. And I have like, I have had friendships where like I didn't see people for six years, like six years after knowing each other was the first time that we met. And these are like long term friends, all of that and like the way we met first was online. But I know that like kids who are even younger just engage in this thing very differently.
It's almost like they have a completely different social norm around it. And like it would be interesting to see like how those people when they join workforce, what are their expectations because they are joining the workforce, right? I don't know if like, you know, we want to call them Gen Z or whatever, but like basically people who have grown up on the Internet are now joining workforce. And what does that look like? I think what you're highlighting in a kind of roundabout way is like, I think there's there's a transition problem, right?
Like there are people who have an expectation because they've worked in a certain way for a while or they grew up in a certain way. And then it's very difficult to kind of transition. So be like, oh, yeah, work was really fulfilling and you got all your friends through work and you met your partner through work and finding the right job is the most important thing for you. And then to transition from that mindset to a mindset that's like, hey, you can find your community online and your work can enable your community and enable your life. And it doesn't need to be your life.
It can be like a really difficult transition. But I think you might be right in highlighting people who are growing up with that second notion. It's not going to be as crazy to them because they're just going to look at it as saying, yeah, I already had my friends. Why would I lose my friends every time I change a job? Like how asinine.
Yeah. Oh my God. That would be asinine. We do it all the time. We have rich generations.
Oh my God. I've only had to do that once and it felt so stupid and it felt like a waste of a year of my social energy because I made connections with some people and like those connections went away. Yeah. Because I did a job. And then I was no longer in that job.
I thought it was interesting. Almost none of my former colleagues were at my wedding. Right. Very, very few. It's not that they weren't invited.
A lot of them were invited from like, you know, 2012 to 2018 years. There was a six, seven years that I was working, but none of them came. And just because once you lose that, especially in the culture that we have working culture, you don't really stay in touch. I think there was a working culture that brought you together and you engaged on that sides of your personalities. And then, I think we actually talked about it in a much earlier episode, one of our first few episodes, that there's almost this expectation of your vendors and your colleagues today that they'll be your kind of people in a multifaceted way.
I think part of that expectation also manifests in this. It's like, if I know you're my person in a multifaceted way, obviously I don't want you to leave from my life just because I've changed jobs. Whereas if I only look at you in a one faceted way, it's not as big of a deal when I change jobs. I even think it might answer my ethics question too, which is like, maybe that's also a question of right now. It seems like an ethical choice because of my own growing up and my expectations of work and my expectations of what work should be and is.
But for people who grew up with distributed work, it's like, yeah, if you're taking a job that requires you to be in the building, you know you're taking a job that requires you to be in the building. But if you're taking a job that doesn't require you to be in the building, why should you be in the building? Yeah. Coming back to the question that you were saying about your friend who's working in a bureaucratic job, I would imagine that like a lot of these jobs would be, they don't require you to be in person. They really are literally paper pushing jobs. You go, you take information from one place and you transfer it sorted in another place and you really don't need to be there in person. Yeah, like one of her big, like the big parts of her role she was explaining to me is helping all of the other agencies at part of the New York local government to be cognizant of that there's female genital mutilation that happens in New York and there is different
communities that kind of practice us in different ways. And these are ways that you can engage with those communities or engage with people to help educate them about the practice and why, you know, what it does and all of this, right? You should. Yes. So but like her job basically is like following up to see like, you know, do they have appropriate processes in place for reporting these things for tracking these things and then doing kind of like interventions and trainings. You have to be where those people are, right? Whether it's virtually or like in person, but you don't necessarily need to be in an office. That's not where those people are when that's not part of your job. But a lot of work is that way. Another thing that like that just reminded me of is so one of my friends, he works in climate change and he and like his he and other person are doing this like new think tank organization NGO like I'm unsure what exactly they're calling themselves right now. But like their premise is that oftentimes in case of something like, you know, any problem that the nonprofit sector is trying to solve different agencies across the world are trying to solve those problems. But because they are in such problem
ridden areas, they often don't have that and they're so resource start, they often don't have the time to do research on who else has solved this thing. So like somebody who's working in Peru on like, let's say some like, you know, problem might have solved a part of the same problem that somebody in Nigeria is trying to do or somebody in Myanmar is trying to do, right? Or there is like replicability of solutions as I like, oh, I have done this thing or I have solved part A and can you solve part B. And what they are trying to do is like, connect those organizations, especially because climate change is not the kind of problem that an individual organization can solve. Like, quite literally the entire world has to come together for it to be solved. And what they are trying to do is like just facilitate that. And when we were discussing about distributed work, it just made me think about that. So when we think about distributed work, we think there is an organization. And then there are like workers all around the world or like all around the country, or in the same time zone, whatever, like those are how that's how people are doing things. But distribution can also look like a you find the best talent wherever the talent is, if your work doesn't require you to be in person, or B, you find the solutions wherever the solutions are, as long as it's not geographically locked in terms of it being a solution, you can just use it.
Yeah, I think that makes sense. I was thinking while you were talking about how Boeing used to get so much shit when it was launching the 787, I think it was, because it was made all over the world, different parts of it, and then they were shipped somewhere, somewhere in the US, I think, for final assembly. And people are like, you know, this kind of supply chain will break down, you can't do just in time sourcing for these kind of big complicated things. And you know, sure there was hiccups, but eventually they pulled it off and now it works. But right, like it's very distributed workforce. But what they did is they just use small vendors. It was something that once upon a time Boeing, you know, did everything themselves. And now there's, you know, 1000 different vendors who are making individual components that are then used in the plane. And now how that's how all manufacturing is done. Correct. And that's why, for example, I remember there was a whole saga when Apple was trying to move their manufacturing of their highest and Mac, I think it's like this $5,000 Mac called a Mac.
Mac Pro to Texas. And the story, I don't know how true the story is, but the story is that they ran out of a certain type of screw. And in China, where it was being made, there's 1000 factories that make that screw. So you literally just go down the street and be like, hey, we need to, you know, get a regular supply of the screw being added. But in Texas, no one makes the screw. And the amount of work to try and get the screw shipped from wherever it was, because there's no other kinds of manufacturing that are happening there. So that's kind of an interesting kind of side point where, yeah, because things have gotten distributed and like gotten locked into some of the distribution patterns, it is kind of hard to change some of that now. You can't consolidate if you want. That's also very interesting because like normally you would think about manufacturing as the last job that can be distributed. But if you look at it from that perspective, honestly, it has been one of the first ones that was distributed. Yeah. As soon as you break down the job into a standard set of processes, then you can start, you'll start to immediately start to look for optimizing those individual processes, which eventually will push you into distribution.
Because likely there's something, some advantage to doing one thing in one part of the world, whether it's historic or geographic or even like the current contextual current work culture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like going back to our previous thing about having third spaces and all of that. Last year when I was consulting with a team that was working on creating physical experiences post pandemic IRL, it was very interesting that all of their investors or potential investors were very bullish on the idea because they were like, oh, the demand for physical experiences is going to go down. And even right now as I look at how just how the Bangalore scene locally has been sort of almost blossoming. It like looks like that pre pandemic BIC used to have like, you know, one or two interesting events in a month. The rest of you like, why could attend, or I could miss these days, there's at least an event a week where I'm like, oh, I don't want to miss this thing. Why I can't go every week. I just don't have that kind of time, but I wish I could go every week. And this is just one venue that is doing things and there is appetite because every single time that I have gone there post pandemic, it's full. It's 100% capacity. Sometimes over capacity.
People are like, you know, flooding the stairs, people are flooding the lobby. It's just so it's very interesting that like people do have that desire to find belongingness connection, whatever it is, like post pandemic, it has increased. But I feel like it's also increasing in other areas rather than just people wanting like none of those people I think want to go back to work. They want to do other things. They don't want to like, you know, go back to office. That's interesting. Yeah, I was at a poetry workshop, I think last week. And one of the one of the poets I met, she was telling about how she and her husband have always lived in the same place and they maybe have spent like two weeks apart maximum. But she was taking a two year visiting professorship at Brown and Brown is maybe like a four hour flight from Colorado where they live. And it was just interesting kind of hearing how she was talking about right because this I think part of it is what you're saying right it's like everyone spent three years kind of caught up and there's this almost partially like excitement but partially almost like fear where it's like you know what
have you know that happens again we have to seize these moments and seize these opportunities. Yeah, their eyes. Yeah. Have you found something in your mind sort of changing I know you were traveling an okay amount even during pandemic, considering that like half of your life was in US and half of it was in India. But like have you felt like oh, the pandemic changed these things I want to do these things now. I think I'm personally feel like I'm less focused on the future. And I think other people may be similar. I'm not sure. But I think like there was a time where, especially before the pandemic I really kind of focused on like like saving and investing and figuring out kind of where, you know what I could do to kind of make myself well set up for for this you know, future dates. And now I kind of feel like, you know, I don't know, when I got home finally from India at the after lockdown kind of with did I like bought a Tesla because I wanted to have a car for years I never bought a car.
I really wanted to have a Tesla and I was like what am what am I waiting for right like what day is going to be the right day. And so I think some of that has changed my mindset a little bit like one of the things that I think I didn't agonize for as long as I maybe would have before was like buying plants for my apartment in New York once I got here I just kind of did one day. I feel really happy that I pulled the trigger on some of those kinds of decisions. So I think some of these like larger purchases whether it's larger monetary or larger just like mentally because I occupy space in your life like physical space or mental space have become a little bit easier or feel a little bit more like they should be done, I guess, maybe. Interesting. Like your risk taking appetite has been changed when it comes to like things that you want in your life. I think like would you have taken this poetry workshop before.
Well, I registered before but didn't go so there's a telling data point. I think maybe I could use my example of a few episodes ago but I was telling you about how I really wanted to order a mattress and I finally got around to ordering the mattress. And I think something like that right like I would feel like am I a bad person for not you know wearing wearing down this previous mattress until it like got used up or like you know should I be changing mattresses so quickly or what not right like there's all these like questions of partially of identity and I think partially of like what will people think of me if I do something like that when those questions I think have really reduced where it's like either I don't care or I just doesn't feel like as big of a deal. That's the pandemic. You know what that made me think but like so normally people tend to have like a lot of distractions in their life and pandemic forced everybody to sort of be in touch with themselves regardless of like you know however much you might want to distract yourself and however much like you know things might be difficult.
But you're still forced to spend more time on what do I want and why do I want it and do I want it here or not. And I wonder if like something like that is true for you in this case. Okay I am slightly more sure in what I want like we are tribal creatures it would be impossible to not care about what other people think. Because of the isolation having a more individualized perspective if that makes sense. Because like so many people who were in sort of like on the fence about having kids around me had kids during the pandemic.
Yeah me too. So many people had kids it's insane. It felt like either people got married or if they weren't like immediately falling or if they were already married they had kids during the pandemic but one of those two occurred for everyone. Yeah I also know quite a few people who started their own businesses during pandemic. Yeah I don't know for me I think it comes back to this thing of it's like who cares what people are going to say or think like we might be dead anyway you know.
I think kind of going back to what you were mentioning though I think the traveling has really been an interesting thing of like changing and then kind of coming back. So I feel like like spaces and airports during the pandemic were really different right like I remember walking through Charles de Gaulle in Paris and it was the only time in my life that like it's all these super fancy stores right and they all were closed and it was just like crazy it was like very spooky. To like be walking through and seeing all these you know like shops closed they were never closed. But now it's like there's just no one wears masks right like they're a handful of people will be wearing a mask on an airplane like no one's wearing a mask inside the airport it feels like and people are just I don't know I've heard this term revenge travel right like people are trying to make up for a lost time. And I feel like a lot of that is going on just from looking at people's Instagrams like everyone went to Mexico it felt like then everyone went to Italy.
Yeah but nobody is going to revenge you walk from office. No one is dying to run back into the office. I think commutes are just such a thing it's crazy how much time people would spend commuting and we just accepted that as a given. It's ridiculous. Yeah it's actually one of the key markers of your unhappiness with your work your commute time.
It's just like very understandable if you're spending like an hour both sides that's like two hours of your 24 hour day basically you are spending 10% of your life in traffic that's not. Yeah and both my husband and my best friend are both chemists and they both spend three hours a day commuting. This is crazy. Yeah. Yeah really crazy.
Yeah I mean it would be interesting to just see where things go with how people are returning to work how things will change in longer term like not just right now because right now I'm sure office like senior management and middle management is like no we must bring people back but like. There have already been some like you know explorations into how is productivity changing with work from home are people happier what does that mean and like as more longitudinal data comes in it would be interesting to just see like. What is the like actual data saying and also what is the cultural sense of things. I think what we might see is a new kind of like era of companies to like remember how like in the 50s or maybe the 70s even right everyone was like wearing suits to work. Right and like there was this kind of expectation of work wear and like how you behave and then there kind of came a new wave of companies where people are like oh we could just wear whatever we want to work and still be able to do work and we could have flexible hours and still be able to do work.
But those suited companies still exist they just became a smaller proportion of the of the overall economy. So I wonder if now what we'll see is like companies like ours start to rise up which are distributed workforce and they will just start to occupy more of a section of the economy versus we start seeing too much of the like suited companies or you know the old style flexible workplaces converting to being a fully distributed workplace. Yeah. Yeah that makes a lot of sense. That would be interesting.
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