The Australian Financial Review, like its US counterpart the Wall Street Journal, tends to take the side of unfettered capitalism in every matter. Last week they published an opinion piece by Nick Coatsworth (“Nine’s Network Medical Expert and is completing a doctoral thesis on the first seventy days of Australia’s COVID 19 crisis response. He is the former Deputy Chief Health Office of Australia.”) titled Why WFH is likely to be bad for your health with the subhead “Instead of offering a holy grail of flexibility and work-life balance, what if WFH [work from home] might lead us to an early grave by actually increasing stress and decreasing our fitness?”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I wrote to the AFR’s editors and opinions editors, so far have not heard back from them. So I’ll use my own tiny platform here to publish my response:
The Netflix 100M party in 2017 was held regionally, with the bulk of the attendees traveling in buses from all over the Bay Area to San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium (because the majority of the employees work in Los Gatos).
Guests were encouraged to dress to reflect Netflix’s expanded worldwide market – a relatively easy assignment for Brendan and me as we are both comfortable in Indian clothing and had some formalwear from our trips to India together. Many of the Indian women wore saris, and their consorts, seeing Brendan, regretted that they had dressed in western suits instead of churidar-kurta!
Some of the most fun tech events I have attended were two epic parties thrown by Netflix for its employees, to celebrate hitting the 50 million (in 2014) and 100 million (in 2017) customers marks. Netflix now has over 200 million customers, but alas there have been no further parties Brendan reminds me that there was a 200M party, virtually, in 2021.
The 50M party involved EVERY Netflix employee (and a date) worldwide being flown to LA for an evening themed around its then-current hits (yes, House of Cards was the biggie – another thing that has changed), featuring the stars of said shows plus a bunch of other notables.
We were not hobbing and nobbing with the balcony people, but nevertheless had fun. Just having an occasion to dress up and admire others dressed up is always fun!
Once upon a time, a company that many – especially those who worked there – felt to be nice, good, and generally on the right side of tech history was acquired by a company that many – including some who worked there – felt to be evil, rapacious, soulless, and in other ways reflective of its founder.
Many stories could be told about this acquisition, but for the purposes of this piece I will focus on the schism between those who left Oracle immediately, and those who did not.
The pandemic has changed attitudes towards work in many or most parts of the world. The experts are now debating why this is but, as the battle for talent rages, more and more employers are having to reconsider the terms of their relationships with employees.
For white-collar workers, companies are coming around to the idea of working “hybrid” (part office, part remote). Some are going beyond this to become fully remote-friendly or even remote-first or remote-only. “We’re happy for you to work from anywhere” is increasingly a lure that companies can use to attract top talent.
