We are not the same

The COVID pandemic saved me. If it were not for that, I would be homeless or in a mental institution now. Let me explain. In 2008, I suggested that my team work one or two days a week from home as we had the technology and no requirement whatsoever to commute large distances to the office. The office was a tremendous distraction, there was no ability to focus, people simply walking around chatting and interrupting. Remote work was not allowed. In 2012, I I started to work some weekends and agreed to do it only if I could do those days from home to avoid driving to an empty office to do everything I could do from home. This was granted and, in 2012, finally, remote work became a small part of my life. 

In 2013, I moved to Madrid and led the team responsible for delivery and support of laptops and iPhones… I became very popular. It was impossible to focus on anything. As a result, I started to work one day a week from home, with an agreement that I would walk to the office immediately if the CEO needed me. Yes, I learned from the past and ensured that, when I moved, I was within walking distance of the office. I enjoyed the hybrid setup that I had because we had a great social environment and I enjoyed interacting in the office… but I needed solitude to recharge and manage my health and work. From 2014, every Wednesday, I worked from home. 

In 2016, I moved to the USA and each morning I awoke at 6am, caught a bus at 7am, arrived at the office at 07:30am and went into a private office. I sat in there all day every day doing my work. Yes, it was good to have a coffee with colleagues or to meet random people at the cafeteria… I even fell in love on the bus with a scientist from a neighbouring company and had a wonderful relationship for a while with her. Nevertheless, it was exhausting following this routine five days a week when it was totally unnecessary. Even during blizzards and severe snowstorms, it was frowned upon if we were not in the office. 

Then came 2020… we went into lockdown. Some people still wanted us in the office. I flew to Miami for work during this time (so desperate were some people to have me in the office that they asked me to fly there from Boston to spend some time in the office). I was shocked to arrive in Miami and discover that no one cared about COVID. They were being told it was a hoax (fyi, for perspective, it’s now 6.5 years later and to suit an agenda, Dr. Fauci is in court and people in Miami think it is very serious). Not only did all sports and concerts and parties and fun stop but my office also closed. I became a 100% remote employee. Work from anywhere in the United States. Yet, instead of encouraging my happiness, my leader at the time was worried I was having too much fun and wanted to get me back to an office asap. I made the decision to move to Dallas because I was spending a lot of money simply to be sitting at home in Boston, I wanted a new experience, and I was becoming a little bit isolated. Nevertheless, I will never fully forgot or forgave this moment. 

Today we exist mostly in a hybrid world, and it has literally saved my life… and, I am sure, so many others. However, the need to control is rising again amongst those who are living in the past and clinging to a youth now lost. Change to them is as alien as switching off the right-wing news channel and trying to accept that some people choose to live differently to them. My only hope is that the end of Baby Boomers and late Gen-Xers will help to alleviate some of the ridiculous resistance to change and progress that we see today. 

                  We are not all the same, but some people can’t see it.  


My home office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2021.

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