The future of work.
One year ago we published the first part of “No Office, No Limits”. It became quite a journey for one young man.
Meet Joseph, he had joined us in early 2015, initially writing content for social and SERPS, and then moving onto more serious authority pieces. He was, and remains, a driven, passionate, a skilled writer … and one of the new generation of true digital nomads.
When Joseph had his first interview it was over Skype, no surprises there as we are a location agnostic company and used to folks working out of cafes, bars, home, co-working spots etc. What came as a bit of a surprise was that Joseph had based himself in the city of Cusco in Peru. Quite how a young lad born in Carlisle in the North of England ends up in deepest, darkest Peru is a story he needs to tell you.
We’re used to folks working all over the world, I’ve worked in some strange, wonderful, exotic and grim locations over the last decade but to find another kindred nomad soul was refreshing. Joseph hasn’t been our most remote staffer, that award goes to Tom who, when he started working with us in 2014 was based out in Bali, Indonesia (he has since relocated to The Balearics) both were doing the full-fat nomad thing. And making a success of it.
We’d embraced location independent working since we founded in the late 1990s and even at the height of our “officeness” nearly a decade ago, we still had a third of our company working away from offices. However, prior to the availability of cloud-based applications and pervasive 3/4G, adopting a location agnostic approach was an uphill challenge, and expensive.
I’d like to say we predicted the future and moved away from dull offices and 9-5 commuting, but that would be wrong. It just suited us, and most of our folks, at the time to work this way. Roll forward to November 2015 and we’re celebrating our 3rd “No Office” birthday. After three years it seemed such an obvious way to work, and being tied to an office such a old-fashioned 19th century approach.
I’d also like to say that we’re kinda famous for the making the jump in our industry, but we are not. However, when I meet folks for the first time it is our location-independence that generates the most interest. We’ve learned a lot and definitely ploughed our own furrow in this space so we decided to share our journey, not from a corporate view, but from a staffer’s point of view.
So, Joseph was commissioned to create a mini-series of articles to explore what it’s like to be a digital nomad and work in a world without limits, and without offices. It became a bit of a marathon and took Joseph eight months to complete what ended up being a five-part series.
Since Peru, Joseph has worked in Mexico and more recently moved to Barcelona. Nothing really stands still in this space and we’ll look back in a year of two and see this as normal. In the meantime, it’s definitely worth a re-read.
Available in five parts:
- Introduction
- Part 1: Why go remote?
- Part 2: Wave goodbye to 1920s workweek.
- Part 3: A stripped back look at life.
- Part 4: Why being remotely agile is essential.
Thank-you, Joseph, for sharing what ended up being a very personal journey across continents, work boundaries and life.
