What I Miss About Working at Stripe

The carefully engineered systems of factories were replaced with the “personal productivity” of offices, in which individuals deploy their own ad hoc and often ill-defined collection of tools and hacks to make sense of their jobs, with no one really knowing how anyone else is managing their work.

trying to make money off a creative pursuit they truly love.

And often doing those alone. (Or in a glass cage at a “coworking space”.) The traditional idea of a “9-5 office” is declining … along with a built-in structure to meet new friends with similar interests, face- to-face.

And along with guaranteed socializing every day.

More than a few knowledge workers, thrust suddenly into remote work, their kids screaming in the next room as they suffered through yet another Zoom meeting, began to wonder, “What are we really doing here?”

Today’s work promises the experience of togetherness, of being part of a collective, but typically delivers something much more competitive and individualistic.