The "Future of Work" is already possible
But adoption of sustainable practices in a world of speculation is a challenge.
I’m currently in Vietnam, after visiting the FOSS Asia conference in Hanoi. In general, the open-source software community is similar to web3. They experience the same issues with user adoption and incentivizing long-term maintenance. However, most OSS developers I met seem more experienced in the progressively iterative approach to software development, rather than striving for hypergrowth.
I tried to summarise my insights from recent conversations below.
“Airdrop farming“ into the future of work
Many people in traditional jobs fear “AI taking their jobs“ as the innovation on domain-specific applications for AI is increasing. At the conference, I overheard many conversations of tech-curious people who seek refuge by learning to code or “finding work in AI”.
I don’t think the answer is so easy and it always depends on individual circumstances. Besides, there are already many applications for AI-driven software development (see the announcement of “Devin” by Cognition Labs).
But I’m also noticing many excited teams and VCs picking up the “future of work” narrative with more substance than in the last bull market.
Nan Craig and Robert Skidelsky, researchers of the “future of work“, pointed out that people usually choose the work they like while automating undesirable tasks. In their book “Work in the Future“, they mention that non-automatable work generally falls under the following three categories:
Creative work, i.e. coming up with new ideas and making decisions
Social work that requires human-to-human interaction
Work or activities that require the human body
However, the process of automation is not smooth in practice. Many still find themselves in an undesirable reality, stuck in the pursuit of short-term rewards or participating in financial speculation.
In Vietnam, token airdrop farming through usually mindless tasks seems particularly well-known. I assume it’s mostly due to the accessibility, low wages, and the speculative nature of a potential future reward.
At the FOSS conference, the Ethereum stand was completely overwhelmed by students who were happy to complete small translations in return for a t-shirt or poster.
Considering the current trends in the macroeconomic environment, I can imagine a transition into more educational and meaningful tasks. Ecosystems could hook airdrop speculators and convert them into long-term participants through the “gamified” experience.
So far, we are experimenting with small tasks and quests that can act as an onboarding into Deep Work’s methods. You can read more about our education/onboarding project below or in #education.
Thanks to everyone who keeps the conversation going!
Gamified onboarding into Deep Work
I have also been frequently asked how Deep Work relates to Cal Newport’s book. Charlie and I tried to implement his principles into a collaborative working environment six years ago and a lot of it is captured in our documentation, ready to put into practice.
But similar to the open-source ecosystem, most new contributors at Deep Work rarely go beyond creating an account on Deep Teams and introducing themselves.
In open source, it’s a well-known issue that new developers mostly just browse Github repositories without actively contributing or maintaining them.
So over the next weeks, we will experiment with interactive quests, guiding new contributors through our collaboration practices. I will share details as soon as we have a prototype, which will probably be on Deep Teams.
By the way, you can now leave feedback on the top right in the Deep Teams app in case you have suggestions for improvement:
Updates on our proposal process
After reflecting on a few recent client projects, we will try the following to optimize for higher confidence in the quality of our deliverables:
Splitting larger projects into shorter milestones. Each milestone should be paid separately and act as an opportunity for both parties to exit the collaboration.
Starting each engagement with a paid workshop, facilitated by experts. The purpose is to scope the proposal and understand the needs, before calculating the full scope for all milestones. It can be our existing branding workshops, org chart creation, user journey workshops, etc.
Co-creating the proposal with the client to ensure both parties are aligned on all details.
Interesting research I came across:
“Our efforts to develop a work-oriented design practice are based in the recognition that systems development is not the creation of discrete, intrinsically meaningful objects, but the cultural production of new forms of practice.“
- Lucy Suchman, in “Reconstructing Technologies as Social Practice”, after observing the unarticulated processes of a team of airport operators, seamlessly working together at high efficiency.
Internal presentation at Microsoft, how software can help with organizational cohesion and collective decision making:
Robert Skidelsky talks about the socio-economic consequences of work in an age of automation:
As always, have a nice week ahead, and see you all soon!