Skip to main content
Paul Welty, PhD AI, WORK, AND STAYING HUMAN

· business · found · innovation · management · strategy · technology

The question over whether to allow employees to work from home has been settled. here’s the new normal.

The question over whether to allow employees to work from home has been settled. here’s the new normal.

Explore why the shift back to office work may fail as data supports remote work's benefits for productivity and employee well-being.

This article discusses the recent announcement by Mike Hopkins, the senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, regarding Amazon’s mandate for employees to work in the office rather than from home. Hopkins claimed that working in the office is better without providing any data to back up his statement, relying instead on personal belief. The article argues that this reflects a favoring of belief over data and highlights three common responses when facts contradict one’s beliefs: claiming complexity, creating alternative facts, or denying opposing facts exist. The text then presents various studies and surveys that suggest remote and hybrid work can lead to increased productivity, employee happiness, and improved physical and mental health. The article concludes by pointing out that the return to the office trend has flattened, and companies that continue to mandate office work may experience a talent transfer towards remote work-friendly companies.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3711386/why-return-to-office-mandates-fail.html

The agent-shaped org chart

Every real org has the same topology: principal, role-holder, specialists. Staff AI maps onto it, node for node, and the cost collapse shows up in the deliverables that were always just human-handoff overhead.

AI as staff, not software

Two frames for what AI is doing to work. The tool frame makes tools smarter. The staff frame makes roles unnecessary. Those aren't the same product, the same company, or the same industry.

Knowledge work was never work

Knowledge work was always coordination between humans who couldn't share state directly. The artifacts were never the work. They were the overhead — and AI just made the overhead optional.

The work of being available now

A book on AI, judgment, and staying human at work.

The practice of work in progress

Practical essays on how work actually gets done.

How do I get my dev team to adopt AI?

A stub on helping mixed-interest development teams find their own useful ways into AI.

Want to learn about agents? Talk to someone who ran an agency.

I spent 20 years running consulting engagements at Fortune 500 companies. Turns out that's the best preparation for running a fleet of AI agents ... because the problems are identical.

Your AI agents need a water cooler

We run a twelve-session AI fleet that coordinates through an IRC breakroom. A friend asked: why are you making AI agents act like humans? The answer turned out to be more interesting than the question.

Artificial intelligence could hit three in five workers — Possibly replacing their jobs. The warning comes in a new international monetary fund report on the future of work. It warned of lower sala…

AI could replace three in five workers, warns an IMF report, signaling potential job loss and lower salaries. Discover the implications for the future of work.

Atlassians choose where they work, every single day. Download our free report to see what we’ve learned as a result.

Explore Atlassian's insights on flexible work policies and employee satisfaction. Download the free report to learn from their distributed work experience.

Organizations that follow a progression of steps to achieve digital excellence may see improvements in effectiveness, productivity, performance, and more.

Achieve digital excellence by following key steps to enhance effectiveness, productivity, and performance in your organization. Discover how today!