Remote working, back in the day
Ever since the COVID19 pandemic took hold in early 2020, many people have been re-thinking the classic office work model. Here are two recent examples of announcements from major information technology firms regarding new norms for their employees’ work environment:
2/9/21: Brent Hyder, president and chief people officer at Salesforce, in a blog post announcing the company's long-term embrace of flexible and remote work. "An immersive workspace is no longer limited to a desk in our Towers; the 9-to-5 workday is dead; and the employee experience is about more than ping-pong tables and snacks."
2/12/21: Spotify joins Salesforce in adopting a “WFA” (work from anywhere) policy. “Spotify has joined a growing list of workplaces to announce that things won’t be going back to the way they used to be. The more than 6,500 people who work for the streaming music company across 73 countries will not have to return to an office five days per week once the pandemic has passed. Instead, Spotify will introduce what it calls a WFA (work from anywhere) policy, replacing the pandemic’s forced WFH (work from home) conditions.”
Social media has been lit up with discussions of the implications of these changes, and predictions as to whether this is the beginning of a broader “new normal”, or a modification that will only affect certain industry segments. Some have questioned whether it is “fair” that employees who choose to work from a new home in Arkansas should continue to be paid at the same rate as when they were based in San Francisco. Others have pointed to the potential life-changing opportunities that would now be available to people with the right skill sets and sufficient connectivity living in relatively poorly developed parts of the world. But a year into the pandemic, as discussed in this article from Forbes, the general consensus seems to be that remote work is here to stay. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alineholzwarth/2021/02/16/remote-work-is-mostly-here-to-stay/?sh=34ab7fc4b5c5
Having chosen to live and work remotely more than 20 years ago, I have a bit of experience with what many are now considering, and some perhaps unique (and hopefully interesting) perspectives to share. As described below, in spite of some hardships, I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to spend more than a decade working from a remote location in the eastern Caribbean. What’s more, I’m certain the shareholders for whom I’ve worked have been satisfied with the outcome.
One of my most productive spots, since 2000
In April 2000, a few months after closing on the sale of Genetic MicroSystems to Affymetrix, my wife and I made a spontaneous decision to move to St. John in the US Virgin Islands (not to be confused with St. Johns in Antigua) while on vacation there. Most people who heard about this thought that I was retiring at age 44 and planning to spend the rest of my days working on my tan, snorkeling, sailing, or just “limin” (google it in a Caribbean dictionary). In point of fact, I was just going with the flow. It’s true that I had just come off an intense period of work leading up to the merger, and a break would be nice. It was also the case that we had spent months house-hunting in the Bay area in the midst of a real estate market boom that made prices feel simply absurd – unless you were willing to commute for a few hours each way, which I was not. More on all this in a later story.
I really wasn’t ready to retire, so I needed to figure out how I could be productively engaged in biotech businesses back in the real world, at a time when tremendous advances were being made in genome analysis and applications thereof, while renovating an old stone sugar mill style home, sailing, exploring, and just living my life in my adopted home where everyone has a story to tell. I sought to develop a way of working that would allow me to experience just the right balance between pursuing my passion for biotech ventures, and my love for everything St. John had to offer. The warm sun, fine sand, clear turquoise waters, bright colors, stunning vistas, comfortable temperature, and nearly constant light tradewinds most of the year. The smells of Jasmine and Frangipani in the air. The sounds of tree frogs and crickets chirping at night, complementing the Quelbe, Reggae, Soca and various Latin styles that could be heard loud in town or faintly in the distance from home. The slow pace of life, and an eclectic population of friendly tolerant people who were welcoming to newcomers, very independent by nature, yet always ready to help their neighbors. And my wife had made up her mind she wasn’t coming back north, so that was that.
Some call St. John Love City, and it shows. An old St. Johnian (that’s pronounced Saint Joe-nian) saying is that nobody cares what you do on St. John, but they all want to know about it. And word spreads fast! They call it the coconut telegraph. If something happens to you and anybody sees it, or if you tell one person a story, it’s amazing how fast you’re asked about it by someone else. And this was before the internet was widely accessible!
When I first set up shop in St. John in May 2000, power outages were just a regular fact of life. The local power grid was antiquated even then, never having properly recovered from Hurricanes Hugo in 1989 and Marilyn in 1995, and the Water and Power Authority (WAPA) had no money. We acquired our own generator early on, but that really was intended for emergencies. We had heard horror stories of life in the aftermath of Hurricane Marilyn, and wanted to be sure we had enough water and power to last for a month with no aid. So I had 41Kw generator installed with a 500 gallon diesel fuel tank. We had 70,000 gallons of cistern capacity to collect water under the house, a dual filter and UV irradiation water purification system, and 2 freezers filled with pasta, rice and other essentials. I don’t recall worrying about toilet paper…
Command center, circa 2004
My only internet access was initially through a 56k dial up connection, and you couldn’t count on phone service being available on a regular basis. I recall having a cell phone pretty early on, and fortunately I had a good line of sight from my front veranda to the one tower on island. Service was only available through AT&T, and to get a connection you often had to stand in just the right spot, or go for a drive. If you were out in the National Park on the north shore you might get connected through a cell tower in Tortola (British Virgin Islands), and the rates per minute would be outrageous. This was before they gave you any kind of automated warnings on your phone, so you’d just get enormous bills showing up. Surprise! Welcome to paradise. If you were on the other side of St John out in Coral Bay then you were literally off the grid.
Receiving or sending physical documents or other materials was an adventure. Fedex did not deliver to St. John or pick up from there. You had to either go to the airport on St Thomas, or make special arrangements with a local taxi service to get the package to the ferry, and then be there to pick it up on arrival. The only courier service that came to St John was DHL, and there was no home delivery or pickup. They delivered once a day (on a good day) to an “office” in a small weather beaten shack located down an unmarked overgrown path in the woods. It was just up the hill from the basketball court, in a section of Cruz Bay called Enighed that wasn’t popular with tourists. No rental villas here. Many corrugated shacks, some dumpsters, debris left from past hurricanes. Shipping containers converted into offices or living quarters. An auto parts store. A mom and pop market. Pimpy’s water delivery service. I never found out how Pimpy got his nickname, but he was good soul once you got to know him, and a lifeline for many who had small or no cistern capacity – especially in the early summer months when water ran low. Assuming you found the DHL office, you had to hope someone was around, or find some way to pass the time waiting til they came back. Some days you’d stop over by DHL to check in, find it empty, and head on into Cruz Bay to grab a drink or chat with friends by the dock before returning an hour or three later.
For access to high speed internet, I leased a closet sized office with a table, an ethernet port, and a landline phone
Computers and network support was another issue. Prior to 2003 or 2004 there was nothing beyond telephone dial up, and certainly no support. I don’t recall the exact date, but it was a big event when we heard that a T1 line had been put in place from St Thomas, with connections available in the few office suites at Mongoose Junction, a shopping and restaurant plaza in town. I rented an “office” there that was a room the size of a closet, with a simple wooden chair and table, an old rotary telephone, and an ethernet jack in the wall. I’d go down there for a few hours a day before or after stopping in at Sun Dog Café or the Gecko Gazebo for lunch.
There were no IT support services on St John back then, and no place to even buy a computer or supplies. There was a PC store on St. Thomas over by the cruise ship docks at Havensight, but you could never get them to pick up the phone, and it was a half day trip best case to just go over there. Inventory was always limited. Things improved a bit when Office Depot opened – but not much.
Knowing I’d have little support, one of my most important initial business decisions was what PC to buy. I was already bi-lingual, equally comfortable working with PCs or Apple products, and had an early Mac at home. But Apple just did not have a global presence yet, so that out of the question. Back then IBM was still a big player in the PC business, and were making the first X series Thinkpads (launched Sep 2000). I bought an X20, convinced that Big Blue would be my best bet for reliability and access to global support. I loved that unit! Compared to anything prior, it was an outstanding product, packed with features and power, and light as a feather compared to the 8 pound bricks we used to carry around (https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1559.wss).
No more than a month after receiving my X20 I was working in the Great Room, a big open aired room with vistas looking out over Great Cruz Bay to the west towards St. Thomas, and the south shore out to Ram Head looking east. Sitting at a coffee table, lap top open, cold beverage close at hand, I heard the distinctive sound of a friend’s truck drive up the hill towards the house so got up to greet him. Two of our dogs started barking, one black lab mix and the other a coconut retriever (an island mutt that appeared to be part Rhodesian Ridgeback, Boxer, and Pitbull). The dogs got into a bit of a wrestling match, rolled over, banged into the coffee table, and sent the X20 crashing to the floor where it hit the Saltillo tile and the screen went black. I was no longer a happy camper.
Scene of the crime: destruction of the X20
I immediately called IBM customer service, and spent the next hour being transferred from one group to another (you all know the drill), waiting forever on hold, and failing to find anyone who could help me. The first problem they claimed to have was that nobody knew who was responsible for supporting customers in the US Virgin Islands. In spite of being a US territory, “VI” or “USVI” was not an option in anyone’s drop-down menu. It wasn’t listed along with the other states in the US, and several support reps insisted that the VI was “foreign” and I had to speak to someone in “international support”. Of course the international folks didn’t have a listing for a US territory in their menu either. What’s more, the international support team insisted they had to check with the Legal department because it was against the law to send software or hardware outside of the US without proper licenses. At this point I’m getting pretty upset with the combined lack of understanding of US territories, combined with the inability of a customer support team at a major US company to figure out how to simply help a customer! Arggggh!! Time for a rum drink.
I tried calling back several more times over the ensuing two days, spending hours on the phone trying to convince IBM that the US Virgin Islands was not a foreign country, and that it was perfectly legal for them to ship replacement software or hardware to me (at that point it was unclear which I needed). Bear in mind, I’m now on day 3 of having no computer, who knows what emails were waiting, and I had project deadlines approaching for clients. So I bit the bullet, made the trek over to St. Thomas, and bought a cheap functional Compaq laptop. By that evening I was set up and back online – but the story doesn’t end there.
A month or so later I woke up in the middle of the night, fuming that I had placed my faith in IBM, not to mention spent a considerable sum on a state-of-the-art laptop, and gotten no help whatsoever from the company when I ran into trouble. I fired up my Compaq, got online, and started searching for the email addresses for all of the senior VPs involved in global PC sales and support. I sent the same scathing letter to each of them, explaining what had happened, and why they should be embarrassed about their company’s response. Around 8am I found the email address of Lou Gerstner, then CEO of IBM, and sent the same nastygram off to him. About an hour later my phone rang. Lo and behold, it was Lou Gerstner’s executive assistant. She was very pleasant, extremely apologetic, and promised me that a brand new X20 would be in my hands in 24 hours, no more questions asked. The next morning I went down to the DHL shack at 10am, and true to her word, my brand new replacement X20 was there. I’ve been a loyal fan of Lenovo computers ever since, reinforcing a lesson I had learned much earlier in my career at Perkin-Elmer-Cetus: poor customer service can kill a business, but great customer service can be a major competitive differentiator and create a loyal base of happy customers.
The good news is that now I’m back online, but the bad news is that there is no wifi yet, no broadband even, and so videoconferencing from St John was inconceivable. That meant you had to be willing to travel frequently for face to face meetings including internal planning sessions or project reviews, financing, partnering, conferences, or whatever. I became very very familiar with all air routes from St Thomas to the mainland, in particular American’s non-stops to New York, Boston and Miami. I’ll leave the whole story of long-distance commuting for another chapter, but comfort with frequent travel simply came with the territory if you really wanted to play a credible role in an emerging biotech business and still live in the Virgin Islands. Also bear in mind that this kind of travel could actually be fun in those days – but that all changed forever on September 11, 2001 (also a subject worthy of a later chapter).
Over a 15 year period living full or part-time in St John, and in spite of the travel distance from all east coast hubs being much shorter than a Boston to SFO flight, I only recall three times when people flew to the VI for a meeting: one in conjunction with an Affymetrix national sales meeting where their top performing sales executives were all rewarded with a trip to the Westin St John; the second when I was depositioned in a lawsuit between Promega and Applied Biosystems and the lawyers happily agreed to bring their entire team down to St John to depose me on a Friday morning (along with their families, who stayed through the weekend); and the third when Vlad Slepnev, then a scientist at Sention, met me at the beach at Trunk Bay and used the sand as his whiteboard to explain a new technology he had invented and pitch me on helping him develop a business plan around it.
Some of my most productive “meetings” have been while driving cars, sailing, or sitting on a mooring
Just as with fashion, religion and politics, one size does not fit all. Working remotely is not only the wrong choice for many types of people, it’s simply impossible for many types of jobs. Fulfilling the role of CEO of an early stage company takes things to a whole other level. When I first started down this path I rationalized to myself that the CEO of a large multinational company is constantly traveling, has employees working in many sites around the world that they don’t see very frequently, and in many respects is facing the same types of challenges as I was. So if it’s routine for them, surely I can make it work. In retrospect, I don’t think I was that far off the mark – but the big company CEO has far more support, whereas the individual trying to lead a smaller group from a remote location is pretty much on their own.
From my perspective, some of the keys to success in this type of relationship are the same as those required to make any startup work: having a solid plan with clearly defined personal objectives; ability to leverage a strong network of established relationships; having a senior management team in which you have confidence, who respect your judgement, and with whom you have good, frequent communication; being comfortable handling all the logistics around your ability to maintain lines of communication; and being willing to travel as needed to make it work
I can’t honestly say I’d recommend it to all, but it worked well for me, and I know I could never go back to working full time in a traditional office environment. When I reflect on what made it work, or how I made it work, I realize that it takes a certain degree of tolerance, acceptance and support from both employer and employee. It’s great to be able to live on a Caribbean island you love while working for a company based 2200 miles away as a crow flies, but you have to be flexible, creative, driven and committed to make it work. Aside from simply accommodating time zone differences, you need to be open to adapting to other aspects of the company’s mainstream way of working. In my case, my commitment from day 1 was that I would get on a plane whenever needed, and be wherever I was needed, if a personal meeting was required.
My personal objectives, as well as the company’s annual goals, were well defined and well aligned. I had a very strong supporting cast at each operating location, with at least one leading person I could rely on who had great judgement, intimate knowledge of our operations, and didn’t need to be micromanaged. My main tasks were to refine the strategy, be a missionary for our vision, secure financing so the rest of the team could get their jobs done, provide them with high level direction and motivation, and develop partnerships where needed. With strong communication skills, this is a task list well suited to a person who is traveling frequently and sleeping wherever they want.
Some of the other features that contributed to a successful outcome: the ability to focus on the tasks at hand, self-discipline and self-motivation, ability to multi-task and mentally compartmentalize, persistence in everything, willingness to put up with minor annoyances and major aggravations, ability to stay calm under pressure, and continually finding ways to make the process enjoyable for myself and the rest of the team.
My personal experience doing things a bit differently, and learning from others who did things their way too, all contributed to a philosophy I’ve shared with all new employees regarding the work environment. As long as we all share a common vision, have respect for one another, understand our individual responsibilities, and provide the effort required as evidenced by one’s work product, I don’t care about what hours you choose to work, where you get your work done, how you choose to dress, or any other aspect of your personal life. There are always some limitations, some tasks or roles that are inherently tied to a specific location and/or hours. And there is unquestionably a benefit to finding times to interact in person both formally and informally. But I care most about one’s ability to be effective: to deliver high quality work on time and on budget; and I recognize that different people work well in different environments, or have constraints that only enable us to access their talent in a more flexible way.
Now that so many people have had the experience of being forced to work remotely, it will be interesting to see how this changes the conventional wisdom about the work environment. My expectation is that those who are in roles that can be effectively addressed remotely will insist on being able to continue to work remotely, that various new systems will emerge to support the new remote work ecosystem (e.g., Zoom, child care, etc), and businesses will realize the benefits of having more productive and motivated staff while also being able to save on the cost of office space. With the exception of jobs that require a physical presence at a specific location (e.g., restaurants, hotels, factory workers, lab technicians, etc), there is no going back.
4/21/21: see New York Times story, “Welcome to the YOLO Economy”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/21/technology/welcome-to-the-yolo-economy.html