When location no longer matters
June 27th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The other day I got an email from someone at Wieden+Kennedy trying to lure me to Portland. It’s not the first time someone has tried to proactively recruit me or tried to lure me away with some vague promise of something. This was a little different though:
Have you ever wanted to have a radio in your office, dedicated to entertaining you? Nap rooms when you’re too tired to think or had Spike Lee show up to an agency meeting?
W+K is one of the agencies that understands the Internet. They also have a two letter domain name. I don’t think that’s coincidence. As awesome as it would be to work for W+K, I was forced to respectfully decline. After a quick back and forth, I asked if it might be possible to work at their New York office, but this was the response I got:
What can I do to entice you to consider us in PDX?
How do I answer that? How about this:
What do I have to do to convince you that I can do my job just as well, if not better, without moving to Portland?
Really, why should I have to move to Portland? Why is it still normal for people to relocate for work? For certain professions I understand it—you need to be in the office every day. That’s how work “gets done.” But that doesn’t apply to me. And I’m not just saying that because I believe that I deserve to be an exception. There are, undoubtably, thousands of others just like me—there is nothing I do “at work” that I can’t do from anywhere with an electric socket and a decent Internet connection.
Why isn’t telecommuting the norm? Why do we still coordinate everything over those shitty Polycom conference phones? Why isn’t video conferencing the norm? Why don’t more companies use IRC or something like Campfire? Let’s ditch the conference call and use Mumble instead. Let’s axe the white board and use Draft.
It’s 2010. Relocate for work? What are we doing?
