Feb 28, 2021 · 38m · another-podcast
Who's in the office? Notes on a year of remote work.
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Marking the one-year milestone of pandemic-induced remote work, hosts Toni Cowan-Brown and Benedict Evans explore the operational, economic, and cultural transformations reshaping hybrid office models, digital communication tools, and the future of business travel.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.8 Guest teaching 0.1 Guest disagreement 0.1 The hosts pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 9:50 Unmuting etiquette clash
Toni notes that unmuting while someone else is speaking feels rude and prompts her to shut up, whereas Benedict views it purely as polite visual hand-raising.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 10:07 Reframing the unmute gestureBenedict pushes back against Toni's interpretation of unmuting as rude, insisting it functions benignly as a signaling mechanism for wanting to speak next.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 30:27 Remote processes require 5x more rigorToni educates the discussion by quoting Andreas Klinger on remote teams requiring five times more explicit process than in-person teams.
The host holds their own ▶ 27:30 Historical analysis of Chiat/Day hot-deskingBenedict demonstrates deep domain recall by walking through the exact operational failures of Chiat/Day's 1990s hot-desking rollout.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reflecting on a Year of Remote Work and Upcoming Conferences | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict opens with his decision on attending an upcoming conference in Switzerland and reflects on the broader structural questions around in-person vs remote events. Toni joins collaboratively, discussing the challenges of hybrid events. | |
| The Loss of Peripheral Vision and Limits of Current Collaboration Tools | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict analyzes the loss of peripheral vision and serendipity in video calls compared to office architecture like Pixar's. Toni brings in concepts from collaborative reading, and Benedict compares Zoom's single-utility model against Microsoft Teams. | |
| The Hybrid Schedule Puzzle and Ripple Effects on Real Estate | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Benedict details survey numbers on return-to-office days and questions commercial real estate repercussions. Toni and Benedict share a mild, friendly disagreement over Zoom unmuting etiquette. | |
| Clubhouse, Audio Spaces, and the Unbundling of Conferences | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict compares Clubhouse to early Twitter and frames it as unbundling the conference panel. Toni shares her experience navigating Clubhouse rooms and digital hallways. | |
| Deconstructing Business Travel and the Multi-Tier Value of In-Person Events | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict cites data from Expedia on executive travel patterns and outlines the primary, secondary, and tertiary perks of conference attendance. Toni agrees that business dealmaking has permanently adapted to remote channels. | |
| Asynchronous Collaboration, Time Zone Realities, and Always-On Culture | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict and Toni discuss the friction of cross-time-zone collaboration and asynchronous communication habits. They examine the persistent 'always-on' work culture where home and office blur. | |
| Lessons from Hot-Desking History and Prioritizing Audio Hardware | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict shares a detailed historical case study of Chiat/Day's failed mid-90s hot-desking experiment from Wired magazine. Both hosts strongly advocate for prioritizing microphone quality over expensive camera rigs. | |
| The Cultural Shift to Hybrid Work and the 'Who's in the Office?' Era | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Benedict draws historical art analogies (the Royal Academy portrait) and tech history references (Bill Gates projected over WWDC). They synthesize that 2021's defining catchphrase will be 'Who's in the office?'. |
Statements from this episode (11)
Evans: By 2022 COVID fears will fade, but 2019 normalcy won't return
“This time next year, it now feels pretty likely, like unless there's another, like, asteroid hits the Earth, that we'll be sorted back. We won't be worrying about getting COVID, put it like that. We will not be back to normal in the sense that we will, you kno…”
Cowan-Brown: Hybrid conference models generally never work
“Because the hybrid model generally never works because it's just a weird experience for people of there's someone on stage, now there's someone on screen, and it has to be done extremely well.”
Evans: Video calls eliminate peripheral vision and serendipitous workplace interactions
“The problem with a video call is there's no peripheral vision. So you can't kind of see what else is going on. You can't see what other people are looking at or thinking about. You're sitting in an office, you can't hear what other people are doing. You can't …”
Evans: Microsoft Teams provides a collaboration substrate lacking in Zoom
“What Microsoft is doing in Teams is kind of interesting, because it's trying to not just be the video call, it's trying to be like a whole substrate for collaboration. Whereas Zoom made it really easy to get into a call, but everything else around the Zoom app…”
Evans: Hybrid office footprint only shrinks if attendance is evenly spread
“You need less office space if that's evenly spread across the week. But if you're a whole, if everybody is home at Thursday and Friday, then you need exactly as much office space as you had in If everybody's got to be in the office on Mondays, then, like, you'…”
Evans: The tech industry compulsively shouts buzzwords like Tourette's syndrome
“I sometimes say that the tech industry has Tourette's and instead of people chatting swear words, they shout like bots or voice or
Autonomous cars.
Yes.
Clubhouse.
Clubhouse.
Clubhouse.
and certainly that's the word of the moment.”
Evans: Clubhouse functions as a Napster for conference panels
“But it's clearly, amongst other things, like a Napster for conferences, for conference panels. Something I've said several times before was conferences are like a bundle of, there's presentations, there's panels, there's talking in the hallways, there's the si…”
Cowan-Brown: In-person dealmaking at conferences will decline drastically due to Zoom
“That idea of this is the moment where we can all be in a room and finalize that deal or get that deal done. I think that's going to shift pretty drastically because I think people have realized that they can actually conduct their business as usual on Zoom cal…”
Cowan-Brown: Remote teams require five times more process than in-person teams
“And I think it was Andreas Klinger who said that as a remote team, you've got roughly Five times more process that you're going to need than any other mechanism of working. So the moment you go remote, there's five times more process that's going to be needed.”
Evans: Microphones matter far more than cameras for remote work
“There's actually much more important, I think, is the microphone, because that's what you can actually hear, and the challenge is you can't hear that you sound terrible. You can see all your own image on the screen, so you can see you look like crap. You can't…”